Polenta Recipe + How Diet Connects to PCOS

6.11.2020


New to polenta? It’s whole ground corn, it’s delicious, it tastes creamy without any cow breastmilk needed to make it so, it has a rich sweet-yet-salty flavor, and if you buy it from McEwen and Sons you can get it organic and stoneground.

Well-versed in polenta but think it is a frustrating dish because it takes too long to cook? My method involves adding the water straight away to the dry ingredients, then bringing it up to a boil. This approach removes the standard polenta stumble of clumps, it cooks faster (has never taken more than 15 minutes), and it tastes soooo much better/creamier.

Continue for: our basic polenta recipe, some pages from last night’s reading about how the food you eat affects your hormones (there’s a whole paragraph on endometriosis and PCOS, and I’ve added some links), and a full day of Plant-Based Whole-Food Feasting and a family living-by-example on how to be kind to the earth and kind to your body.

Live Kindly, Feast Kindly, Grow Forward.

Ingredients you need to start: polenta, paprika, bay leaf, salt, garlic.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in your pot (up the garlic ratio if you’re a garlic lover, this one was kept low because it was going to be covered in super garlicky pesto and marinara)

Add the water slowly and stir continuously so you prevent clumps. This is going to look too watery, but I promise it’ll all be absorbed super quick.

Add it to your stove and bring to a boil. By the time it is at a boil almost all the excess water has been absorbed. Keep stirring until all the extra water is gone and it is at the consistency of a thick porridge.

Most polenta recipes can take between 30-40 minutes of continuous stirring. This is always done in under 15. :-)

When it as at the desired consistency, pull it off the burner and let it rest for 5-10 minutes. It’s going to retain its heat, but it is also going to solidify even more.

Spoon it into a bowl and serve with fibrous vegetables, pesto, and balsamic tomatoes.

Or throw it into a bowl and serve with lentil loaf peas, and marinara.

However you choose to eat it, it’ll be a tasty addition to your lineup. :-)

Want more nutritional info about polenta?

• 1 cup has 12% of your Vitamin C and 6% of your Vitamin A

• it is bursting with carotenoids (an antioxidant) which decrease your risk of cancer and benefit eye health

• it has protein (just like every single plant out there)

• you’re even getting that good ol’ beneficial/essential fiber

• it is a whole food, which is what you need to thrive

Q’s morning chalkboard: another reminder that the day would be hot, so he could go to the pool with Ian once he finished his school work and helped me do some cooking.

Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast he made himself: apple, watermelon, berry bread, and a little peanut butter.

Plant-Based Whole-Food Lunch: black rice noodles, vegetable red curry (garbanzo beans, carrot, kale, peas, broccoli, and asparagus), bell peppers, and avocado.

Yesterday’s Nice Cream: vanilla peanut butter. <3

“OOOoooOOOH! Mama, it’s the best day EVER! THANK YOU!” <— What he bellowed when he saw a fresh batch of brussels.

Solo dinner (caught midway through). I’m on the Onondaga Central Board Of Education and we have Zoom meetings that span several hours. I perch myself behind my standing desk and work my way through kind feasting.

That’s a fresh black bean brownie with cashew cream and peanut butter.

What Ian and Q ate (Ian took this photo and prepared this dinner): lentil load, crispy brussels, steamed kale, quick-pickled cabbage, bell peppers, purple sweet potatoes, and smoked paprika hummus I’d made earlier in the day. (I had the same meal, sans the potato which was a good idea by Ian.)

Nightly Reading: the Pout Pout Fish book we like most of all, more Dune (“Mama, let’s just do one picture book tonight, I want to get more pages into Dune), and Fiber Fueled.

The below is some more mind-opening info from Dr. Will Bulsiewicz’s book “Fiber Fueled”. How many folks do you know who have the following conditions? I have at least 6 souls (that I know of) with PCOS, hypothyroidism is so rampant I no longer have a count, female infertility is a heartbreak that has undoubtedly affected everyone of our circles, and I’d be shocked if there is a single person reading this who does not know at least ONE soul with prostate cancer. More likely, we all know multiple souls.

If you’re still consuming cow breastmilk, you should know that you’re setting yourself up for all of the above harms because it is flush with estrogen that inflames these hormonal diseases.

Hormonal diseases? But I get the kind of cow breastmilk that is RGH free, so I’m good…right?

“This has absolutely nothing to do with bovine growth hormone which is being used in the States but not in Canada to increase milk production. That’s an irrelevant factor. But what is not irrelevant is that today cows are milked for about 300 days a year, and much of that time the cows are pregnant. Estrogen sulphate, the main estrogen in milk, is about thirty times as abundant in milk from pregnant cows than in milk from non-pregnant ones. And the amount of estrogen increases during the later stages of pregnancy.”

This is a great interview with Dr. Neal Barnard explaining it all in depth, but in short: estrogen is a handy little hormone that we naturally produce, and it likes to signal cells to multiply and divide. When we add high-in-estrogen-cow-breastmilk into our systems it throws our body out of balance leading to: early menstruation, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer, and prostate cancer.

Are you the sort that likes to listen to podcasts while you work away at something? If so, this Nutrition Rounds podcast interview between Dr Danielle Belardo (<—love every single thing about this amazing doctor) and Dr Neal Barnard (<—health hero/mentor) is mind-opening:

• “We discuss how a whole food plant based diet can decrease your chance of developing hormone mediated cancers like breast cancer, prostate cancer, and ovarian cancer.  How a high fiber whole food plant based diet can reduce menstrual cramps, acne, and may even potentially improve PCOS, and autoimmune mediated thyroid disease.”

• Dr. Brook Goldner also promotes Plant-Based Whole Foods to fight autoimmune disorders, proved it by healing herself, and has gone on to heal her patients. That link is to another great podcast.

Do you prefer books? Here’s a few books by doctors that illuminate the same healing path of Plant-Based Whole Foods (cheaper/healthier than a sleeve full of pills, and tastier too) and the evidence-based mechanisms to explain how animal-product diets inflame hormonal diseases (among others):

• Your Body In Balance, Dr Neal Barnard

• Undo It, Dr Dean Ornish

• How Not To Die, Dr Michael Greger