Fertility Foods 

One Woman's Fertility Foods are Another Woman's Cause of Digestive Nightmares 

One of the frequently asked questions we receive is: Are there fertility foods that can reverse my PCOS, heal my scar tissues, or jumpstart ovulation? The Ally in the Cupboard Chapter as well as the Recipe Chapter of The Fertile Female answers this question and the Fertile Heart approach of working with food as part of the Ovum tool. In this corner Edward Baum, graduate of the Culinary Institute of America with 10 years of professional cooking experience, and our resident chef shares some of his fertility food recipes. 

To give our bodies the best possible chance of healing and fixing what's broken, we want to make sure that the tough job of digestion is completed before we go to bed. Soups, since they are usually easy to digest are ideal for an evening meal. If you eat flesh foods, you are best to eat them before 3:00PM, to give your body plenty of time to diget them before retiring.

Soups are a staple in our house, especially in the colder months. I like to make a lot and freeze some. Beans and legumes freeze well. Vegetables don't freeze as well, especially potatoes (they also get usually eaten too fast).

A lot of soups are made with meat stocks; chicken, beef, veal; and it wasn't until I worked in a vegetarian restaurant that I really perfected meatless vegetable broth based soups. I found that the secret is onions. You need to add a lot. I rarely see any recipes with the quantity of onions I like to use. When you think you've added too many, add some more.

There are also certain aspects of these recipes that are hard to quantify. For example the amount of water used will depend on many things; from how long the soup cooks to how high the heat. Salt and garlic are two other ingredients that are very taste dependent. I tend to like the garlic to not be too overpowering. Whereas my wife and two daughters like to eat garlic raw with oil on bread. It's a question of taste.

Remember the cardinal rule - You can add more but you can't take away. So go easy. You can always add more salt or water, but it's a little tricky to remove them.

Fertility Foods Recipes

Black Beans

Potato Soup with Greens

Vegetable Soup

Lentil Soup

Sweets

For me, it's always good to remember that it's usuallly not my body that craves the sugar, but my heart. For one of the recent phone circle homeworks I asked everyone to think about the sources of "sweetness" in their lives. Curling up with a good book, taking a delicious nap, a fifteen minute "FH body talk session, gardening, a walk without an agenda--these were some of the answers that came back.

So if you find yourself hitting the cookie jar a little too often, you may want to ask yoursef: How do I sweeten my life? What desert would my heart delight in right now?

And if after all that, you still want a bite of something to comfort and soothe the senses, here are two good, and I mean good, sweet recipes:

Recipes

Rice Pudding

Buckwheat Waffles