excellent PCOS recipes: eat yo' greens edition
Today’s theme is PCOS recipes that I make on the reg to get greens in as a PCOS kid / venerate salad hater. Keep me posted if you make them / if you need more info, and enjoy!
Here’s a PCOS recipe for Jingalov Hats:
Jingalov Hats are a traditional Armenian recipe that I first saw on an ep of Buzzfeed’s Worth It (an EXCELLENT series, if you’re not familiar - go YouTube it now!). They were framed as a way that families have used up herbs and greens for, like, a million years….and I watched the vid and was like HEY I HAVE LEFTOVER HERBS. Here’s the deets:
- Make the world’s simplest dough out of flour, water, and salt. Get it to the consistency of play-dough, then oil and leave for an hour or accidentally most of a day like I did.
- Grab all of the veg and greens and herbs that are expiring in your fridge. If they’re a little stale or wilty, that’s fine.
- Chop everything up super fine. Dress the greens with something you’ll really, really enjoy. I went with lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper, and harissa.
- Roll out ya dough. Real thin. 8-10 inches.
- Put 2-3 cups of greens in the center of the dough.
- Pinch it up decoratively or whatever? Just make a roll and hope it sticks?
- Heat a cast-iron over medium heat; throw the hat on the heat; flip when it starts to smell delicious; wait two minutes; flip again. Eat. Make again. Enjoy.
(Psst: Here’s a more real recipe from someone who knows what’s what.)
Here’s a PCOS recipe for Rice Paper Rolls:
- Get rice paper from your grocery store.
- Grab any old veg from your fridge, plus, if you want, any soba or rice you have leftover.
- Cut up the veg super fine.
- Set up a wrapping station. (I have a pie dish I allocate to rice paper rolls because I’m extra like that) You’ll need a hot water container, a flat surface, and a plate for your finished rolls. And your veg and other rando fridge fillings nearby.
- Put the rice paper in the hot water and swish it around for a sec.
- Carefully transfer the paper to your cutting board.
- Put some veg or grains in the center, and wrap it up like the clingiest burrito you’ve ever made
- Make like four
- Also make a dipping sauce (mix peanut butter / acid / hoisin or soy / hot sauce together; mix hot sauce and mayo together; or try these) and enjoy.
(Psst: Here’s a more real recipe from someone who knows what’s what.)
Here’s a PCOS recipe for Noodles with Greens:
- Make some noodles. Salt the water. (Choose noodles that you love AND won't make you feel terrible. I do Banza, buckwheat soba, or rice noodles.)
- Cut up some veg, or get a big handful of arugula or kale or parsley.
- Throw the noodles in a bowl and season with EITHER lime juice and olive oil OR lemon and butter.
- Throw the veg in.
- Enjoy.
(I’m sure someone else has made this before, but that was about as real of a recipe as I felt like looking for.)
Here’s a PCOS recipe for ~Tartines~
Tartines = veg on toast. That’s it. Do that. I do a slice of toasted sourdough with either poor man’s bruschetta (diced Romas, lemon, olive oil, s+p, herbs de Provence), sautéed crispy mushrooms, lightly dressed arugula and an egg, or like literally anything. And there’s always avo toast, duh.
(Psst: Here’s a more real recipe from someone who knows what’s what.)
Now, to the post.
Tell me if this seems familiar: You make a sweeping declaration to Avoid Grains Forever (or dairy, or processed meats, or whatever) and, hey, a week in, you’re doing pretty well. You’ve figured out how to make tapioca pizza dough. You’ve got a go-to nut cheese or DF creamer. You’re feeling pretty good about yourself as you balance steak and Daiya cheese on a corn chip. Later, you’ll have some potato noodles and pork meatballs and call it a day.
But, like, are you feeling good, period?
SO here’s my thing: I have PCOS (duh) and it’s definitely still a thing that most people don’t know about. And even people who do know about it really only know how their own version manifests, because it’s such a personal, weird, sneaky syndrome.
Doctors put you on the pill or on metformin or tell you to lose weight and call it a day. Which isn’t helpful.
However, even most PCOS nutritionists or researchers that I’ve met or followed or stalked will have - maybe better advice - but still sweeping, generalized advice. There’s one PCOS resource that I love love love (and have linked before, and will reference elsewhere so I’m not pointing them out in a bad way) who do a great job at spreading info and normalizing the condition.
They also tell everyone who has PCOS that they should give up gluten and dairy. The way they frame it, it’s those simple steps, and, like, the weight will vanish. The cycles will regulate. The sleep, it will come.
Not to be pedantic, but it’s obviously not that simple, right? Obviously? I get that gluten and dairy can lean inflammatory for some, but not all—and our metabolic/nervous/circadian/hormonal systems need WAY more than the absence of lactose and gluten.
To flourish with PCOS—to get from feeling pretty triumphant about our diets to just feeling pretty good, full stop—I think we need to focus less on what we’re not eating and more on what we are.
Obvi, right? But like let me make my case with some pretty little bullets: Focusing on what we ARE eating (instead of what we not) promotes…
- Satisfaction (instead of ‘ah, I can’t eat donuts’, you think ‘wow, this basil, cantaloupe, and goat cheese salad is the bomb’)
- Variety (instead of eating the same four ‘safe’ foods, you shift to thinking about exploring different food cuisines)
- Actual knowledge of how foods hit you and make you feel (Eating a variety of foods and taking note of how you feel = real information, instead of boxing yourself in to thinking ‘I can only eat spinach and feel like a human’)
- Probably a healthier gut, so when you do eat an inflammatory agent you're good (Eating a wide variety of real food heals you, so when you do down a pepperoni-and-mayonnaise sandwich, you don’t die)
For me, the big thing is not being afraid of certain foods, and not toeing the line of a restrictive diet by eating like one or two things for every single dang meal that are technically not not-bad for me. So, like, I’m the type of person where if someone authoritative says GIVE UP THIS THING AND YOU WILL BE MAGICAL, I’m all in. I’m a sucker for that stuff.
So I carefully craft one meal that technically meets that standard of healthiness, and that’s all I eat. Which gets boring and obsessive and sad and isn’t that healthy. It’s also not doing food its real justice: When we say things like ‘dairy is inflammatory’, we’re ignoring all the good that dairy can do for us - good fats! Calcium! Probiotics and fermentation and etc! - and the fact that like not all dairy’s inflammatory? And that if we really wanted to we could probably find a stinky cheese we could enjoy in moderation?
Anyway. All this to say that instead of being GF/DF or grain-free or vegan or whatever - all of which I’ve tried before, and none of which (after months of doing ‘em) did a dang thing for my PCOS or general happiness levels, I’m focusing less on avoiding specific food groups and more on eating a wide variety of colorful, awesome foods….and we’ll see where that goes.
I despise recipe posts where the recipes are at the bottom, as much as I get it, haha. So I threw those up top. If you read the following rant anyway, ya cool. Go eat something green! (Today I’m eating pears, goat cheese, and beets - and later we’re having cabbage and chorizo tacos. So FREAKING much better than lettuce, lettuce, chicken breast, and more lettuce.)
Weight stuff:
This morning I weighed in at a 71.8 (to yesterday’s 72.4). It’ll be interesting to see where I even out after the Easter festivities, haha.