Soba noodles have been enjoyed in Japan for thousands of years. Made from buckwheat flour, soba noodles have such a wonderful flavour that they are commonly eaten on their own as zaru soba with just a bit of dipping sauce as an accompaniment. Since my time in Japan, I have used soba as a base for so many meals, some more traditional and others not so much, like this soba dressed with my savoury Miso Pecan Butter. Enjoy this dish as a light and simple meal or serve with some steamed edamame sprinkled with shichimi togarashi as a Japan-inspired meal with friends.

Soba with Miso Pecan Butter

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 package (8 ounces/225 g) soba noodles, gluten-free if required
• ½ batch Miso Pecan Butter (recipe follows)
• Soy sauce or gluten-free tamari
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
• 1 (6-inch/15 cm) piece English cucumber, diced
• Shichimi togarashi or red chili flakes, for sprinkling

Directions

1. Cook the noodles according to package directions. Reserve ½ cup (125 mL) of the cooking liquid. Drain in a colander, then give the noodles a quick rinse under cool running water. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, mix the miso pecan butter with 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of the reserved cooking liquid until smooth. Toss with the noodles to coat. If the soba looks dry, add more cooking liquid, 2 tablespoons (30 mL) at a time, until the sauce looks glossy. Taste and adjust the seasoning with a bit of soy sauce, if needed. Top with the green on-ions, cucumber, and a sprinkle of shichimi togarashi or chili flakes. Store leftovers in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. Re-heat with a splash of water to rehydrate the sauce.

Miso Pecan Butter

Makes about 1 cup (250 mL)

Rich red miso adds an enormous depth of flavour to fresh pecan butter, which is surprisingly simple to make! You can also use this butter spread on sandwiches or thin it out to drizzle over roasted vegetables or tofu.

Ingredients

• 2 cups (500 mL) raw pecans
• 3 tablespoons (45 mL) red miso
• 1 tablespoon (15 mL) pure maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons (45 mL) hot water

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Scatter the pecans on the prepared baking sheet and toast until fragrant, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the pecans cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Toss the pecans into a food processor and blend until a smooth butter forms, 7 to 8 minutes. Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together the miso, maple syrup, and hot water. Add a dollop of pecan butter and whisk thoroughly. Add another dollop of pecan butter and whisk again. Add the remaining pecan butter and whisk until smooth and creamy. (If the mixture seizes and becomes too thick to mix, you can drizzle in a bit of avocado oil to fix it.) Use immediately or transfer to an airtight container and store in the fridge for up to 1 week. The texture will change when stored. Revive the sauce by warming it in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until it looks creamy again.

Excerpted from Plant Magic by Desiree Nielsen. Copyright © 2024 Desiree Nielsen. Published by Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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I’ve watched many of my friends make the journey into motherhood, and so I’ve heard a lot about the pelvic floor. For our millennial generation, it’s common knowledge that urinary incontinence can be a side effect of pregnancy and labour—almost one-third of women will have bladder leaks after the birth of their first child—and all my friends have prioritized pre- and/or postpartum pelvic-floor physiotherapy as prevention or treatment. Since I’ve never been pregnant, I thought I was off the hook.

Imagine my surprise when, the year I turned 35, I started waking up to pee multiple times in the night while also experiencing urgency during the day and the occasional itty-bitty leak. At first, I figured the disruption was temporary. But after about a year, I realized the problem wasn’t going away. At the time, I was busy working at a celebrity news magazine, plus I was emotionally exhausted from dealing with an early-stage cervical cancer diagnosis that required two minor surgical procedures. I was told that the urinary frequency wasn’t related to the cancer, so I put it on the back burner, even as it continued to disrupt my sleep and daily life. (My boyfriend once joked that going out with me for the day was an opportunity to tour Toronto’s many bathrooms.)

So it felt fortuitous when a press email about Urospot, a rapidly expanding chain of Canadian pelvic health clinics, popped into my inbox. If I hadn’t responded, and subsequently booked a consultation at one of the Toronto locations, I might never have learned about my body’s reaction to stress, as well as the bathroom habits that were impacting my wellness.

Urospot is a franchise that was started by entrepreneur Erin Craven in 2019. “I was in my early forties and I was struggling with bladder leaks, urgency and waking up at night to go to the washroom,” she told me. A mother of four with a busy career in the health-care industry, she believed she was too young for bladder troubles to be impacting her life. So she started researching her condition and was appalled by the lack of education and treatment—the available physio, medication and surgery options seemed disjointed, insufficient and hard to navigate, despite the fact that pelvic floor disorders likeurinary incontinence, fecal incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse affect one-quarter of all women and over a third of older women. “One of the saddest stats is that 45 percent of women [dealing with incontinence] give up intimacy entirely because they’re afraid they’ll leak during intercourse,” she says. “And 46 percent of women give up exercise. But we’re just expected to live with it and think it’s normal.” That’s why Craven created Urospot: to change the conversation around pelvic floor dysfunction and bring more treatment options to the masses.

The clinic’s buzziest attraction is its “Kegel Throne” (a.k.a. Emsella chair), which uses high-intensity focused electromagnetic stimulation (HIFEM) to strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor. One 28-minute seating contracts the muscles the equivalent of 11,000 kegels (a form of exercise that targets the pelvic floor muscles). The difference from other places, like med-spas, that bring in Emsella technology is that Urospot also uses education and physiotherapy to create a well-rounded treatment plan. That way, if issues other than muscle weakness are present, they can be addressed.

That’s what I discovered during my first in-person meeting, when a nurse took me through a series of questionnaires commonly used by health professionals, like the Female Sexual Function Index, the Pelvic Floor Disability Index, and the Pelvic Floor Impact Questionnaire. I ended up scoring high on the short-form version of the Central Sensitization Inventory, which measures a nervous system response that can cause women to hold tension in their pelvic floors. If you sit on the Kegel Throne while your pelvic floor is in a “protective” state, it might not be beneficial. It’s like trying to do a bicep curl without fully extending your arm; you won’t be able to properly strengthen that muscle.

So, instead of having me jump straight onto the Throne, the nurse at Urospot referred me to registered physiotherapist Nicole Guitar, and I can honestly say that our first virtual consultation changed my life. I learned that pregnancy and childbirth are far from the only cause of pelvic floor dysfunction. It can also be hereditary or provoked by a chronic bad cough, surgery or weight gain. Losing estrogen during peri- and postmenopause has an impact, too. A report from the Menopause Foundation of Canada states that 23 percent of postmenopausal women struggle with incontinence. After 65, almost 24 percent of adults wake up two or more times per night to pee.

In my case, central sensitization was at least partially at play, and Guitar told me it’s a common issue for women seeking pelvic floor physiotherapy. Central sensitization occurs when the nervous system’s fight-or-flight response becomes unbalanced with the rest-and-digest response. “It often happens due to chronic stress, prolonged periods of poor sleep or as a result of an injury,” she told me. “The brain perceives there could be a threat, so it starts sending more messages along the nerves in the body involved in fight or flight—called ‘sympathetic nerves’—as opposed to the nerves involved in rest and digest—called ‘parasympathetic nerves.’ These activations keep the body on high alert.” You then live in a constant state of hypersensitivity and high tension, which can lead to grinding or clenching of the teeth; tightness in the neck or shoulders; and pain with tampon use, pelvic exams or intercourse, along with feeling like you need to pee all the time.

The version of the Central Sensitization Inventory the clinic had me complete is a nine-point questionnaire where each response scores a number of points (between 0 and 4). The highest score is 36, while a score of 20 or more indicates that the body is likely in a state of central sensitization. I scored 23. Since my body was experiencing central sensitization—possibly due to my cervical cancer diagnosis and treatment, though I find I’m almost always in an anxious, high-stress state—Guitar said it was important to practice diaphragmatic breathing to stimulate my rest-and-digest response. “The diaphragm works closely with the pelvic floor,” Guitar says. “When we take a deep, diaphragmatic inhale, that helps to relax our pelvic floor muscles. It also stimulates the vagus nerve, which tells the brain that we’re safe.”

To do a proper diaphragmatic breath, lay down and place an item like your cellphone on your lower rib cage. When you breathe in, the phone should move upward, not your upper chest. “I call it belly surfing,” she says.

Over the course of three weeks, I spent several minutes each day doing diaphragmatic breathing while sitting, resting in a supported child’s pose and rotating through “cat-cow” stretches. During these sessions, I focused on the sensation in my pelvic floor and what it felt like to release. “Creating that body awareness is really important,” says Guitar. Now, when I take some time to focus on diaphragmatic breathing and the feeling of release in my pelvis, my entire body starts to uncoil.

Guitar also told me that sleep is another part of the puzzle for regulating the nervous system. “If you have a poor night of sleep and stub your toe, you’re going to get ‘warning’ messages that it hurts more than you would have yesterday,” she says. That’s because your nerve responses will be out of balance. Practicing mindfulness and taking part in restorative movement like walking, stretching and yoga instead of cortisol-spiking workouts like CrossFit and HIIT can also be key.

But steps for reducing central sensitization aren’t all that I took away from my time with Guitar. She also gave me crucial information about how my lifestyle and habits have impacted my bladder. The first knowledge bomb she dropped: Restricting your water intake can make you pee more often. Without really noticing, I’d stopped drinking water because I didn’t want to add even more trips to the bathroom. That’s a no-no because water acts to dilute our urine. Since I wasn’t hydrating properly, other items I consumed—like caffeine, carbonated drinks, alcohol, spicy foods and acidic fruits like lemons and tomatoes—were irritating my bladder, prompting the urge to void.

To figure out your ideal water intake, Guitar recommends drinking, in ounces, half your body weight in pounds. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, you should drink 75 ounces (around 9.5 cups) of water each day.

Once I was consistently drinking enough water, Guitar asked me to track how often I was urinating and how long my stream lasted. She helped me realize that one of the reasons I pee every 60 to 75 minutes is because I can; I’ve worked from home for years and if I have a tiny urge, there’s nothing to keep me from relieving myself. That’s a problem. “A good, healthy pee happens every two to four hours and the stream should last about eight to 10 Mississippi seconds,” Guitar told me. That’s a long time. If you’re frequently peeing for only three or four seconds, which I was, that means you’re either emptying your bladder before it’s full or your bladder has shrunk. “The bladder is a muscle, which means it’s capable of changing its size and capacity like any other muscle in the body based on how it’s used,” says Guitar. “If I’m peeing all the time, my bladder is going to get smaller because it’s going to say, ‘I don’t need to hold more than this. You pee every hour anyway.’”

To retrain the bladder, Guitar recommends tracking your bathroom breaks for a couple of days and figuring out how often you typically go. Then, over a series of weeks, increase the amount of time between pees—try adding five minutes every three days. After three weeks, your bladder capacity should have grown so you can hold your pee for an average of 95 minutes instead of just 60, for example.

There’s one more tip Guitar gave me that changed the way I go to the bathroom, and it’s to buy a Squatty Potty or any stool that brings your feet up seven to nine inches when you sit on the toilet. The reason? To reduce straining during urination and bowel movements. (Did you know you’re supposed to pee without pushing? Because I didn’t.) “In North America, we’ve designed our toilets to be at 90-degree angles where it’s like we’re sitting in a chair, feet flat on the ground,” she says. “That’s not the ideal physiological position to empty our bowel or bladder.” Instead, sitting with the knees higher than the hips (a sort of modified squat) allows the pelvic floor to relax, which makes peeing and pooping easier. “Having a bowel movement or going pee should be a completely passive process.” Mind blown.

After gaining all this knowledge from Guitar, then adding positive behaviours into my life and altering some of my habits, I decided not to complete any Kegel Throne sessions at Urospot. Though HIFEM stimulation can help to strengthen the pelvic floor once someone experiencing central sensitization has learned to fully relax, my doctor told me that the treatment has a few contraindications, including those who have or recently had cancer, as the treatment increases blood flow. I was told that the Kegel Throne is safe for me because my cervical cancer was found at a very early stage and has been treated, but I still have a lot of anxiety about it and would prefer to get a few years past my diagnosis before I reconsider. That said, I did sit on the chair for five minutes just to try it. For me, it felt like mildly uncomfortable tapping right in the centre of my crotch.

Here I am, a few months on, and I haven’t experienced any leaks lately. At my last appointment, my central sensitization score moved down more than 10 percent (a win!), and I continue to practice diaphragmatic breathing whenever I feel stressed. I’ve also been drinking more water and touting the benefits of the Squatty Potty to anyone who will listen. I still pee a bit more frequently than I’d like, so I’m working on adding time between bathroom breaks and trying to avoid peeing “just in case.” I feel like I’m on the right track and am grateful for what I learned from Craven and Guitar. This type of therapy can be expensive ($2,400), especially if you don’t have insurance. But every woman deserves to prioritize her pelvic health and there are many ways to improve the situation and protect yourself. Start by talking to your doctor—and maybe give diaphragm breathing a try.

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Flavoured yogurt, granola, barbecue sauce, premade smoothies—it’s in everything. And not to pile on, but added sugar has been linked to serious health problems like high blood pressure, inflammation, diabetes, obesity and fatty liver disease, all of which increase your risk for heart attack and stroke.

To reduce their intake, many people have switched to sugar substitutes, which are plant-based or chemical substances that sweeten the flavour of foods and drinks without additional calories. But those substitutes also make headlines for various health risks. A 2023 study published in the journal Nature Medicine found that people who had a high concentration of erythritol (a common sugar substitute) in their blood were more likely to have a stroke or heart attack. Does this mean we’re better off switching back to plain old table sugar, or even health-haloed variations like coconut sugar or manuka honey? Not so fast.

“It doesn’t matter if you eat white sugar, brown sugar, honey, fruits or syrups—they all break down in the body into simple sugars and increase your blood sugar in pretty much the exact same way,” says Anisha Gupta, a registered dietitian in Mississauga. What’s more, “the sweetness from artificial sweeteners can trick your body into thinking it’s getting a blood sugar rise, but they don’t actually raise your blood sugar,” she explains. “For many people, that just means you end up with more sugar cravings later on, which means you may end up eating more sweets.” Great. But as for that recent study on erythritol, Gupta isn’t concerned. “The study shows a correlation, but not a causation, between erythritol and heart disease. The participants in the study were already at higher risk for heart disease, meaning that the results may not apply to everyone.”

Currently, there isn’t enough research to suggest that this particular substitute should be eliminated from your diet, though Gupta cautions that there’s room for more research on all sugary swaps. “My recommendation is the same as always: Enjoy the sweetener you like, but be mindful of how much you’re consuming, and look for ways to reduce, when it’s convenient.”

Here’s what you need to know:

The Limit
Ideally, we should consume no more than 48 grams of sugar per day, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. That’s not as much as you may think: A single Kit Kat bar contains 23 grams of sugar.

Hidden Sugars
Sugar creeps into seemingly unlikely foods, like pasta sauce, peanut butter and cured meats, making it even easier to surpass that 48-grams-per-day recommendation.

Pay Your Dues
A 2022 study by University of Alberta researchers pegs the economic burden of excessive sugar consumption in Canada at $5 billion a year, thanks to the direct and indirect costs related to 16 chronic diseases. One of their proposed solutions? Higher taxes nationwide on all sugar-added products (Newfoundland and Labrador has a head start).

“Healthy” Sugar
According to the British Dental Journal, coconut sugar retains some natural vitamins, minerals, fibre and antioxidants (unlike table sugar). But the nutrients have a minimal effect unless you consume large amounts, and by that point any benefit will be outweighed by all that sugar you’re eating.

Fructose Facts
Fruit has fibre, which helps the body digest food more slowly, so sugar from fruit will be absorbed more slowly, too. “There’s no need to avoid fruit because of the sugar content,” says Gupta. “No one is diabetic or has heart disease or obesity because they’ve eaten too much fruit.”

Next: The Healthiest Sugar to Eat, Bake With and Mix Into Your Tea, According to a Dietitian

This story is part of Best Health’s Preservation series, which spotlights wellness businesses and practices rooted in culture, community and history.

Tarn Tayanunth can remember sitting around her grandmother’s table as a child in Bangkok, listening to her mom, aunts and neighbours share news and gossip while they made dumplings together. It was exactly that warm memory Tayanunth wanted to conjure when she learned her mom, Toom, had early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 53. The family doctor advised Tayanunth and her stepdad to keep Toom busy but stick to familiar routines that might stave off depression, which could exacerbate her symptoms. Tayanunth and her mom already had a standing Friday lunch date (they live near each other in Victoria, B.C.) meant for checking in and catching up—now, they’d make dumplings as well. All that folding and pinching is dexterous work, a redress to a disease that cuts away at fine-motor skills. Making dumplings was also muscle memory for Toom: “It was something she was really good at, which was important,” Tayanunth says. “I wanted her to feel capable, to know there’s something that she could do without making a misstep or mistake.”

At first, Tayanunth would freeze the dumplings made during those afternoon sessions, and give most of them away. But the stockpile kept growing, and friends encouraged her to sell packs on Instagram. She was busy managing a restaurant, but she soon started a little delivery service, and it provided enough income that she could leave her regular gig and spend more time taking care of her mom. Then COVID hit and demand for the dumplings surged; she went from 25 deliveries per week to more than 250. Victoria residents couldn’t get enough of her thin-skinned, Chinese-style dumplings filled with pork belly, lemongrass chicken or shrimp and chive. “My dumpling business became a bit of a restaurant-community effort. One friend made my logo, one took photos, someone built me a website, a few more helped us make dumplings.” By November 2020, she’d opened a small downtown storefront for takeout orders.

Today, Dumpling Drop has 20 employees between two locations. Toom is less involved in the dumpling making (the production needs are far beyond what the duo can get done in an afternoon), but she still contributes by stamping and stickering the packages. “My main thing right now is to give her purpose,” Tayanunth says. “I’ll bring her into the shop to say hi to everyone, and of course she wants to get in there and help.” It’s second nature. Mom and daughter moved to Canada 30 years ago, when Tayanunth was 14, after Toom married a man from Victoria. Toom’s first job in the city was at a Thai restaurant, the same one where Tayanunth worked alongside her for 16 years. “Mom was so good at her job. When she had to quit—she was missing orders and getting confused—it was a real blow.”

Even if Toom can no longer follow the thread of how the business came together, she is continually delighted by her daughter’s success. Tayanunth is involved in fundraising activities for the Alzheimer’s Society, keen to raise awareness of all the resources and supports for both people who live with the disease and those who care for them. “Caregiving is hard; it’s isolating. I want people to know that connecting with a community can really help,” she says. “I’m so proud that I’m now able to take care of my mom financially because of Dumpling Drop. I’m proud of what we made together.”

This story is part of Best Health’s Preservation series, which spotlights wellness businesses and practices rooted in culture, community and history. Read more from this series here: 

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“The ultrasound found ovarian cysts,” I texted my friends in a WhatsApp group. It was 2014, I was in my mid-twenties, and I had gone off the pill to discover an irregular period. My friends wrote back instantly—one said she also had them and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. One said she was worried about whether hers would burst. Another said she had several, and asked if we, too, had been told they looked like raisins (we had not).

Over the next decade, after a few ultrasounds and in my current stint as a health editor, I’ve learned that ovarian cysts are not only incredibly common but also come in different forms. Some cysts are small and shrivelled; others can grow to the size of a baby. Some sit there politely and some aggressively rupture. Some are elegantly called “string of pearls,” while others have hair and teeth. Here’s what else I’ve learned: We’re all incredibly confused about these many forms, why ovarian cysts are there in the first place and what we should do about them.

“Ovarian cyst is a really broad term used for anything that grows within the ovary or even next to it,” says Michelle Jacobson, a gynecologist at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. “Traditionally, cysts have been defined as fluid-filled sacs, but now we know they could also be filled with tissue or septations, which are compartments of fluid.” She explains that the most common cysts are benign ones called follicles that occur during ovulation. “In normal menstrual cycles, a follicle grows an egg each month, and when the egg matures, the follicle releases it,” she says. The empty follicle sac then shrinks and produces hormones to prepare for the next egg. In this case, cysts are a good thing—they’re essential for reproduction. But as my friends and I know, some cysts have to be monitored, some are painful and some muck up your menstrual cycle.

After my most recent ultrasound, I was told I don’t have a cyst anymore—just many follicles. What happened? And how many variations of cysts are there? How can they impact our health? Jacobson breaks it down for us.

How many types of cysts are there?

There are a lot. It’s not even within somebody’s scope to know all of the different kinds of ovarian cysts. They come from all sorts of different tissue origins, which is how we characterize them.

Where do they come from?

That’s dependent on the kind of cyst. But in general, it has to do with fluid or material that gets trapped or extruded into another compartment. So in a follicular cyst, which is the most basic one that develops during ovulation, it contains the fluid that surrounds the egg.

Should we be concerned about any cyst beyond the ones during ovulation?

There are many types of benign cysts. You can have other variances that are not part of normal ovarian function, but are not necessarily cancerous. Those cysts can have blood in them, either because blood has ruptured into a cyst or filled with old blood, like if you’ve been diagnosed with endometriosis.

To name a few benign cysts: There are ones called fibromas that grow out of solid fibrous tissues, which look a lot like a solid tumour or a hard tissue. There are ones called dermoid cysts that are made up of different tissue lines and can have body parts like teeth and hair. And there are polycystic ovaries, in which ovaries have lots of little follicles—they’re called “string of pearls”—that have never produced an egg but can grow into a full-sized egg within the ovary.

Wait—some cysts have teeth and hair?

Yes, but not everybody who has them knows that they do. They’d only know if they had an ultrasound so we could see the different types of tissue in them, or if we follow them to see if the cyst grows or changes in a concerning way. But rarely do they have to be removed.

And what about the string of pearls? Is that worrisome?

In a normal menstrual cycle, women will recruit many follicles, even though only one usually becomes the dominant—or lead—follicle that ovulates. So it’s quite normal to have lots of little follicles at any given time in a normal menstrual cycle. But in polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) or polycystic ovaries (PCO), you get lots of little cysts that might have immature eggs in them, but haven’t had the signal to go on to ovulate and don’t necessarily have a lead follicle. There’s still a bit of a mystery around why some women get PCOS and others don’t.

Why are some cysts bad?

Some people have a cyst that causes pain, which can be due to a number of reasons, like if the cyst is extremely large—it might be pressing on different anatomy. They can also twist and cause an ovarian torsion, which means the blood supply to the ovary has been cut off, and that’s extremely painful and can lead to the loss of an ovary. Cysts can also cause pain by rupturing. They can leak fluid or blood into the peritoneal or abdominal cavity, which is irritating to the tissue. Some sizable cysts may need to be removed because they’re impeding fertility.

If a patient carries a genetic mutation or has a family history of ovarian cancer, there’s a higher chance that a suspicious cyst is cancerous. We don’t know if it’s cancer or pre-cancer until it’s removed and sent to the pathologist. So a small, suspicious, asymptomatic cyst might be removed because we want to know what it is and if there’s any additional treatment that needs to happen.

Do cysts ever go away on their own or are they with you for life?

That depends. Some of them will regress on their own, like a follicular cyst, which is an egg containing a sac. But both endometriomas, cysts made of old blood, and dermoids, made out of solid tissue, do not tend to go away on their own. If they’re causing discomfort they can be removed.

What do we still not know about ovarian cysts?

There’s a lot we don’t know about how cysts become cancer, and specifically ovarian cancer. I could say that’s because women have traditionally not been the focus of research, but also, it’s hard to develop studies to understand this. It’s hard to do research on tissue, and especially in reproductive-age women, where we’re not taking ovaries out. You’re not getting autopsy specimens to do research on young women. So there’s just not a lot of opportunity. And ovaries are complicated.

If there was a way to know if a cyst was cancerous and to pick up ovarian cancer early, that would be a huge gamechanger for the world. We can’t screen for it, pick it up early with an ultrasound or MRI, or blood test—so we can’t find it early. It’s usually not seen until it’s too late.

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For years before I went plant-based, a frittata was a weekly staple because it was a quick way to get dinner on the table, no matter what I had lurking in the fridge. After experimenting with a bunch of variations, this simple chickpea flour–based version has come out the clear winner. Long used in South Asian cuisine, chickpea flour makes a beautiful replacement for eggs because it is packed with filling protein, fibre and important minerals. Deeply savoury, with a creamy texture, this not-a-frittata will lend itself easily to as many variations as you can dream up.

Chickpea Frittata

Serves 4

Ingredients

Main

• 2 cups (500 mL) chickpea flour 1½ cups (375 mL) water
• 3 tablespoons (45 mL) avocado oil, divided
• 1½ teaspoons (7 mL) salt
• ½ teaspoon (2 mL) garlic powder
• ¼ teaspoon (1 mL) ground turmeric
• ¼ teaspoon (1 mL) ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon (1 mL) baking powder
• 2 cups (500 mL) bite-size broccoli florets
• 1 small shallot, finely chopped 1 cup (250 mL) frozen peas
• ½ teaspoon (2 mL) sweet paprika
• ¼ teaspoon (1 mL) ground coriander
• ⅛ teaspoon (0.5 mL) salt
• Freshly cracked black pepper
• ¼ cup (60 mL) vegan feta or Parmesan cheese (optional)

For the Herby Salad

• 4 cups (1 L) lightly packed arugula
• 1 cup (250 mL) mixed fresh herbs (basil, mint, dill, parsley), thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon (5 mL) freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon (5 mL) avocado or extra-virgin olive oil
• Flaky sea salt

Directions

1. Make the chickpea frittata: Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the chickpea flour, water, 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of the avocado oil, salt, garlic powder, turmeric, coriander, and baking powder. Set aside to let the flour hydrate while you cook the veggies.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of the avocado oil in a heat-resistant medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the broccoli, shallot, and peas and cook, stirring occasionally, until the broccoli is bright green and the shallot is soft and translucent, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the sweet paprika, coriander, salt, and pepper to taste, and stir. Remove from the heat and let cool for 1 minute. Add the vegetable mixture to the chickpea batter. Sprinkle in the cheese (if using) and stir to combine, ensuring that the vegetables are evenly coated with batter. Wipe the pan.

4. In the same pan, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon (15 mL) avocado oil over medium heat. Pour in the frittata mixture and tilt or swirl the pan to evenly distribute the vegetables. Transfer to the oven and bake until the frittata is dry to the touch on top and starting to crack around the edges, 25 to 30 minutes. The frittata won’t brown. Remove from the oven and let sit for 10 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, make the herby salad: In a medium bowl, toss together the arugula and fresh herbs with the lemon juice and avocado oil. Season with flaky sea salt to taste.

6. To serve, cut the frittata into wedges and transfer to plates. Top the frittata with some herby salad. Store the frittata, without the salad, in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. It makes an excellent sandwich filling.

Excerpted from Plant Magic by Desiree Nielsen. Copyright © 2024 Desiree Nielsen. Published by Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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The pain started in waves in my lower back and travelled down my left thigh as I worked bent over my laptop on my couch—the pandemic years had crystallized bad habits. The uncomfortable tightness turned searing over the coming days, building quickly, like I’d crossed an invisible damage threshold. The sciatic nerve is the largest in the human body, two inches thick at its widest. It stretches from the lower back, down past Achilles’ weak spot to the bottom of the heel, creating problems for around 40 percent of us—and not just, as I’d always thought, for old people.

(Related: Should You Use Ice or Heat for Back Pain? What Experts Say)

A year and a half in, my symptoms have varied as widely as the cures I’ve tried. I’ve experienced lower back soreness, tingling and numbness from my butt to my heel, all sorts of painful muscle tension and a sharp electric shock in the back of my leg. I’ve been X-rayed, then MRI-ed, which revealed that my three lower discs (the toothpaste-textured jelly between my vertebrae) bulge out, creating pressure on the nerve. I’ve seen physiotherapists, acupuncturists and a neurosurgeon, who counselled patience, which is not my strong suit.

I’ve used a standing desk, floated in a sensory deprivation chamber and had six massages, including one from a woman who stood on my back. I’ve applied hot magic bags, freezing ice packs and the pummelling force of an M3 Pro massager. I’ve ingested ibuprofen, Robaxacet, naproxen and amitriptyline—an antidepressant doctors prescribe for many ailments, including nerve issues—to keep pain from waking me up as I sleep with a pillow stuffed between my knees.

And, my god, I have walked, like I was trying to give my pain the slip at every corner. I imagine my pain like a baby, howling its needs at the crack of dawn. Walking was the only way I could start my summer days. I learned to document my nearby park’s native plants and spot the cormorants who visit its water basin.

I gave up the gym, biking and yoga and, around the one-year anniversary of my sciatic woes, took up swimming a couple of blocks from my Montreal apartment. Though the bored-out-of-their-skull lifeguards seemed barely old enough to vote, they bopped their heads to hits from the 2000s—MGMT, Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” a Ja Rule and Ashanti duet. Maybe their boss was a millennial who’d given up new music in 2008 or maybe I’d become the target audience here. Maybe this was nostalgia-fuelled motivation for the newly broken. Among the many cruelties of the pandemic, a minor one was dealt when, as I doomscrolled from my couch with a curved lower spine, a meme informed me that 35 is middle-aged.

My third physiotherapist, who could have been my son if I’d made different contraceptive choices in high school, asked if I’d had any falls. I answered no, but later spliced a mental supercut of all the times my boots lost contact with icy sidewalks slicked by Quebec winters. I added genetic predisposition on my mother’s side and incalculable hours spent working in a half-recline worthy of a seder table. My current physiotherapist and plain old therapist have emphasized that trying to pinpoint a specific cause, or blaming myself for the onset, is not helpful. Neither suggested that the pain was all in my head.

(Related: 6 At-Home Massage Tools Physiotherapists Swear By)

But Tanner Murtagh, a registered social worker at the Pain Psychotherapy Canada clinic in Calgary, clarifies that, actually, pain is all in your head, because it is processed in the brain—though that doesn’t mean the pain isn’t very real. He explains that consistent experience of pain can often become neuro-plastic, or what used to be called psychosomatic. “It’s occurring due to the brain and nervous system being stuck in danger mode,” he says. “This can come about after long bouts of pain. The brain has learned to fear it, interpreting non-painful stimulus as painful. It can also be tied to childhood trauma.”

Examining fearful relationships to pain isn’t just valuable in psychotherapy. Kalem Kachur, the founder of Physiothérapie Solution Active in Montreal, focuses on back and sciatica issues, using the McKenzie method of treatment—a system that zeroes in on the problem, identifying what tissue needs to be stretched or strengthened, and addresses relationships to pain, too. “We end up having so much fear of moving, fear of the pain, that it can very often lead us to have pain for longer,” he says. “We don’t become desensitized but are actually hyper-sensitized to it.” After identifying with that fear, I made an appointment at Kachur’s clinic, where Duc Nguyen became my fourth (and hopefully last) physiotherapist.

Rather than starting me with a long sequence of stretches and strengthening exercises, Nguyen began with just one pose. He had me lie on my stomach and push myself up, fully extending my arms into a yoga-style cobra, which made my pain furious. The pose is the opposite of the forward flexion we do so often, and can help restore equilibrium to the joints. Repeating it up to 40 times during the session alleviated pressure on the nerve, leaving me more pain-free than I’d been in a year. I was also told to use a cylindrical lumbar pillow to correct my posture, since slouching overstretches and irritates the back’s tissue, and better posture allows things to heal. “It’s like leaving a scab alone and not picking at it,” Kachur says.

One of the best strengthening exercises I now do is sitting up straight with my core and back engaged, shoulders down and chest out. Friends and family have poked fun at what has become my default posture—it’s never too late to find your trademark look. Kachur highlights the need for regular movement during work hours, to step away from desks, sitting and standing alike. “If you’re really bad at that, drink lots of water,” he advises. “You’ll get up.”

After initial success for a few weeks, my progress plateaued, potentially because of my pain’s inflammatory nature, which takes longer to heal. Nguyen had me change the angle of my cobra pose, then do spinal twists, attempting to home in on the right remedy. He had me put my left foot up on a chair, bend toward the floor to open my hip, and intensify the pose by pulling on the bottom of my foot.

This simple manoeuvre bumped the pain down a few notches, reigniting the embers of my faith that I can get better, slowly and steadily. Murtagh encourages keeping an eye on the big picture. “Anyone who comes to our clinic says, ‘I want my pain gone.’ We want to aim for it. But that can create a lot of pressure,” he explains. “Collecting all the small wins, like, ‘I’m actually a bit less fearful when the pain comes on now,’ that’s a huge piece.” I learned that it’s key to listen to my pain rather than fear it, trusting it will improve as it’s increasingly understood.

Recently, I went back to my childhood pool with my mom, who goes there to exercise and help heal various injuries. I watched her swim back and forth, at her own pace, a few lanes over, before I pushed off into the crawl. As I moved through the water, I hoped that the pain would loosen its grip. Then I remembered I needed to loosen mine, too.

Next: My Severe Back Pain Turned Out to Be Due to a Hip Misalignment

“Today’s workplace thinks and operates much as it did in the 1950s, when people expected the world to be neatly divided into two separate and unequal worlds: the man in the gray flannel suit who could devote himself entirely to work in one, and, in the other, his homemaker wife, taking care of everything and everyone else,” writes Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. However, this idyllic portrait of work-home life was always a myth, reserved mostly for upper-middle class white families but never the reality for lower-middle-class and working-class families and women from racialized communities.

“For most women, the luxury of being a housewife, simply caring for children, cooking and cleaning and creating a peaceful haven for the hard-worked husband who brought home the bread at the end of the day, was only ever an illusion created by the middle classes,” writes researcher Amanda Wilkinson for The Guardian. Wilkinson’s research has revealed that most women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries held nontraditional working roles in agriculture, warehouses, and manufacturing.

The heady days of the 1950s in suburban North America seem to be a bit of a blip in our historical understanding of women and work. The 1950s and subsequent feminist revolution also painted a picture of choice, which has spilled over into our twenty-first-century conversations about “working moms” versus “stay-at-home moms,” as though somehow everyone can freely choose which camp to join if they start a family. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that some of the “choices” we make about work are a result of social pressures women face and the rigidity and inflexibility of the modern workplace. Often, it feels less like a choice and more like we’re just getting pushed out.

This transitional postwar time also created a popular professional persona, what Schulte calls the “ideal worker”—the individual who puts in 80-hour workweeks and eats, sleeps, and breathes work (likely they’re not doing much actual sleeping and eating). Western capitalist culture continues to idolize this kind of dedication, and we champion it as if it’s a model for success, especially for men and fathers. In the modern economy, the “ideal worker” and “ideal woman” have blended together, with specific gendered expectations for work and home life.

“When we imagine the ‘ideal feminine woman,’ she is a caregiver, she is strong, assertive, but also loving and warm, and is the person people can come to. She is emotionally available all the time, and can juggle it all, in a way that men are never ever expected to do,” says Alani-Verjee. “Even when we can recognize the impossibility of being that woman, it’s still the version that comes to our mind of success . . . we still try so hard to be a version of that, to fit with our values and beliefs and identity.” Because the ideal woman is the benchmark, it always seems like we’re failing, says Alani-Verjee. “If you’re a nurse, a teacher, or a mother, particularly, we love to pay lip service to these people, but we don’t give a shit what we pay them,” says Bethany Johnson, coauthor of the book You’re Doing it Wrong!: Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise. “You’re supposed to feel good about your job because it’s a nice thing to do.” She points out that once middle-class women were encouraged to work full-time after second-wave feminism, they weren’t offered resources or help for dealing with the mental load. “A lot of people are also struggling because our expectations have gone up for what mothering looks like and what having a family looks like and what the family unit is responsible for doing,” she says.

So, wealthier women invest in private tutoring, swimming and music lessons, purchase ecofriendly products and organic food, and insist their children learn two languages, all in the name of providing them with a super-enriched childhood experience that mothers are usually tasked with managing and organizing. This has been dubbed “intensive mothering,” which some researchers suggest could be something that perpetuates traditional gender roles. And while none of those activities are inherently “bad,” intensive mothering on the whole benefits men by absolving them from doing a lot of the unpaid emotional work. There are also socioeconomic implications, as the bulk of this intensive mothering is carried out by wealthier women in opposite-sex relationships; women with less financial power may feel similar pressures but face greater barriers to achieving the idyllic family life that wealthier women present on social media and blogs.

What’s more, increased pressure to maintain intensive mothering leaves many women exhausted and on the brink of burnout. It’s a form of burnout that arises just as much in the home as it does in the workplace.

***

In much of the medical literature, burnout has been studied as it relates to our adult working roles; a clear line in the sand is drawn between who we are as employees, managers, or entrepreneurs and who we are in the home. The latest revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) states that burnout is a phenomenon with three defining characteristics: emotional exhaustion, a sense of detachment from one’s role (or what is called “depersonalization”), and reduced productivity in the workplace. This means that, at least within our medical understanding, we aren’t meant to apply the concept of burnout to our lives outside an occupational context.

I would argue that this makes the concept of burnout—both our cultural understanding and treatment of it—a largely capitalist one. The notion that individuals can “heal” from burnout in order to jump right back into their jobs fails to address the root cause of the problem. There is a fundamental truth that burnout for women is about more than discovering “work-life balance” or tackling inequality in the workplace—it’s also about the mental load (both cognitive and emotional) and how it spills over into our working lives.

In a large cross-sectional study of 2,026 workers from Canada, a deeper exploration of the gendered pathways that lead to burnout identified that women had lower levels of decision latitude, which means they have socially limited access to control and power within the workplace. Women also experienced higher work-to-family conflict, which could mean they struggled more with their recovery from burnout. Strategies to reduce burnout included women investing more time outside the workplace (perhaps through part-time work arrangements), working from home, and in non-work activities like childcare and household responsibilities.

The authors cautioned that while these strategies may help women to feel better, reducing time spent on work activities can lead to fewer career opportunities and likely exacerbates gender inequality in the workplace. This observation isn’t intended to put more pressure on women to set higher goals or to work harder. Instead, it highlights the reality of the modern workplace: less “face time” at the office often means fewer opportunities to get noticed, fewer promotions, and weaker relationships with managers and coworkers.

***

A set of experiments conducted with undergraduate students at the University of Pittsburgh illustrated how women are expected to cater to others. A computer randomly created mixed-gender groups of three people who were tasked with getting one group member to volunteer to click a button, without using any form of communication. (Each student was seated at their own computer, and all decisions were anonymous.) If no one volunteered to click the button, everyone in the group received $1. If someone volunteered, the volunteer received $1.25 while the other two group members each received $2. This continued for 10 decision rounds.

Lo and behold, women were 48 percent more likely to volunteer compared to the men. The researchers hypothesized that women volunteered more because others expected them to. To test this, they reran the experiment with the groups made up of only men or only women. In this case, the all-men and all-women groups ended up having the same success rates in finding a volunteer to click the button and take the pay cut. The researchers concluded that it isn’t that women like to take on extra tasks (often menial jobs that no one else wants to do!); it’s that there’s a social expectation that women will always step up.

Researchers are still trying to tease out the overlapping relationship between burnout and mental illness. There does seem to be a strong link between burnout, depression, and anxiety, but no conclusive evidence that one causes the other. One study of nurses found that participants with significant levels of burnout were more likely to screen positive for any mental disorder, particularly major depressive disorder.

In a study of Finnish employees that measured biomarkers of physiological stress (called “allostatic load”) and depression, the authors found that burnout was indeed putting strain on the body, but that depression explained 60 percent of this association—which means there was a lot of overlap. The study suggests that the association between burnout and depression is likely two-way: burned-out people may be more likely to become depressed, and depressed people are more vulnerable to burnout. However, the path from burnout to depression appears to be stronger.

When women are experiencing burnout in a more general “I’m so exhausted with everything” sense, it is sometimes diagnosed as anxiety or depression. The authors of a 2019 review caution that the similarities between burnout and depression or anxiety could lead to a false diagnosis and that burnout itself might be overlooked. When this happens, treatment solutions may prove ineffective, leading to worsening symptoms or an abandonment of treatment altogether. Treatment for mental illness generally centers on therapy and medication; treatment for burnout would likely encompass more holistic solutions, like time off work to rest, negotiating different working hours with an employer, and self-care strategies including sleep hygiene and exercise. Of course, treatments for these conditions overlap in many ways, but treating burnout as mental illness may mean that the underlying economic and social issues women face are not being addressed.

Though it’s speculative, I would like readers to consider something: What if the high rates of anxiety and depression among women are, in large part, caused by burnout? What if the reason you can’t get out of bed is more about the world you live in, the job you hold (or no longer hold), and the power you lack rather than about you as a person? Personally, this realization completely changed the way I relate to myself and my mental illness. I believe that misdiagnosing burnout feeds the illusion that mental illness is due to a personality flaw, negative mindset, my family’s genes, or an imbalance in my brain rather than an understanding that is closer to the truth: I’m facing a social problem that has real, lived emotional consequences. For some, this realization may be distressing: it means acknowledging that you don’t have as much control over your well-being as you once thought. But I hope that some of you find this freeing, that it lifts the veil shrouding mental illness and sets you on a path to rediscover your own capacity, the ways in which you are limited, and what tiny acts of resistance you can make.

Excerpted from All In Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women’s Mental Health by Misty Pratt. © 2024, Misty Pratt. Published by Greystone Books, greystonebooks.com. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved. 

Next: Can Treating Inflammation Offer Relief From Depression?

Last year I surrendered to my chronic fear of missing out on what the kids are talking about and traded the morning news for TikTok. I began starting my days with an iced coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, scrolling through the app and treating myself to celebrity gossip, mid-century house tours and Gen Z’s takes on beauty trends. It was a match made in heaven: my limited attention span was appeased by the platform’s short videos and ease of swiping to the next one. I leaned into the algorithm’s ability to spoon-feed me what I wanted to see—20-year-olds teaching makeup tricks.

While the pivot to TikTok aficionado was seamless, my re-entry into the beauty world was not. Following the pandemic lockdowns, I retreated from makeup. Multi-step skincare? I was too tired for it. Liquid eyeliner? No patience for that. The joy I once found in experimenting with bold colours had been replaced by general disinterest. The reason? Being well into my thirties, I felt I’d aged out of trying new things (which we can chalk up to internalized ageism). Social media exacerbated the quick speed of beauty trends, and my bandwidth for keeping up with new products and techniques seemed to have shrunk alongside my interest in staying up late. I was tired, mentally and emotionally, recovering from a tumultuous few years, and was under the illusion that I’d outgrown having fun. Not to mention, the pandemic had whittled down my industry (I’m a writer, hi!), and I didn’t care to justify buying new makeup.

The version of myself who once looked forward to doing her hair and makeup felt like a stranger. I pared back my routine, and reserved makeup for spot treatments and camouflaging my under-eye circles instead of approaching it as an avenue for self-expression. I felt that I’d outgrown the world of beauty trends, and, rather than embracing the creativity of temporary reinvention, I stuck to a routine that neither brought me joy nor made me feel inspired.

That is, until TikTok. While the algorithm initially entertained my quests for Succession spoofs and ghost stories, it also fed me the odd beauty video hosted by a Gen Zer, which I’d watch in full, so more appeared in my feed. What’s more, the app managed to combine my niche interests by serving up creators who’d show how they execute a beauty trend while simultaneously offering the lowdown on celebrity conspiracies or haunted Appalachia.

(Related: Can the Facial Massages on TikTok Really Change Your Face?)

As my generational successors roasted millennials for their contouring, overly shaped brows and affinity for side parts, I found myself enthralled with the way they executed their own beauty trends. I learned about “Clean Girl Beauty,” which touts the glory of minimalist makeup, built on a healthy glow (read: dewy highlighter) and relatively neutral palette—far from the more-is-more look we left behind in 2020. “Tomato Girl” and “Strawberry Girl” trends emphasize pink and red lip colours and rosy blush. And then there is “Quiet Luxury,” inspired by the likes of nineties-era Gwyneth Paltrow and the late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, with its swept-back hair, matte lipstick and focus on enhancing one’s features.

Some of these looks I knew I’d never carry off (there’s nothing quiet nor luxurious about me), but as someone who over-romanticizes the nineties, I jumped at the chance to relive the rosy cheeks and pink lip glosses of my 13-year-old heyday—that small window of time when makeup was exciting and glamorous and didn’t feel like a necessity. And much like the tween I was in 1998, I could only swing beauty on a budget. Conveniently, “Strawberry” and “Clean Girl” looks meant I didn’t have to buy anything new; I just had to learn new ways of applying products I already had. Like, I started applying lipstick to my cheeks for a dewy-pink look that helped me look particularly alive.

Admittedly, the Quiet Luxury trend wasn’t the only look that didn’t work for me (or that was remotely appealing). As a 38-year-old woman whose family and friends know her face well, I chose not to adopt fake freckles—especially since I don’t trust myself to place them in the same spots every day.

But pink lipstick? Glittery eyes? These are trends that are easy to play with. I stopped accepting the myth that growing up means an absence of playfulness. I cut my shoulder-length hair—a safe, sensible choice—into a blunt chin-length bob. I dusted light shadow in the corners of my eyes after learning that was a go-to technique in Barbie. I applied berry-scented lipgloss with abandon. I began to remember the person I was when I used my makeup to feel powerful, even artistic. I reconnected with my teen self who dove into glitter shadow to look like Ever After-era Drew Barrymore. I was a 38-year-old woman who’d re-embraced the confidence of an eighth grader in a dandelion flower crown she’d fashioned during recess.

Witnessing Gen Z’s beauty boldness reminded me that it is possible to treat makeup not as something I need, but as something that I do because it is fun. Makeup no longer seems tedious, too time-consuming or too expensive, especially since the trends I connect with use products I already have. I mean, maybe I need one new lipstick—a splurge I can justify.

I owe Gen Z and their TikTok videos a thank-you. They’re a daily reminder that there’s no age limit for self-expression. I may need a little more under-eye coverage than they do to carry off Clean Girl, but it’s been a joy to try on makeup-centric personas whenever the creative mood strikes.

5 Gen-Z Approved Products

Rhode Lip Tint
Hailey Bieber, the reigning priestess of Gen Z beauty, is the founder and creative director of Rhode—a beauty brand that’s unsurprisingly become a sort of religion for her generation. The brand’s peptide lip tints offer a glossy coating in rouge-y hues with tasty names like espresso. The peptides they’re made with help give lips a plumping effect, perfect for those of us who are syringe-adverse.
$24, rhodeskin.com

Fenty Skin Pre-Show Glow
All hail dewy skin! This twice-a-week serum brightens skin and whisks away dead skin cells, making your mug a smooth, glowy canvas for whichever makeup look you choose. Budget-conscious? You’ll be happy to know a little goes a long way.
$57, sephora.com

Rare Beauty Brow Harmony Flexible Lifting and Laminating Eyebrow Gel
If you’ve ever watched a Gen Z beauty tutorial, you’ve surely asked yourself one question in particular: How do they get their brows so fluffy? The answer is often Brow Harmony—an eyebrow gel by Selena Gomez’s makeup line Rare Beauty. The best part: It shapes and tames brows without crunchiness, stiffness or flakiness.
$23, sephora.com

CoverGirl TruNaked Eyeshadow Palette
In case you missed it, let me repeat: I love nostalgia. And this eyeshadow palette is a goodie I could’ve taken from my tween self’s makeup bin. With a range of beige to brown shades in a mix of matte to glittery finishes, this drugstore palette can be your easy gateway into fun makeup looks like Clean Girl and Quiet Luxury.
$20, shoppersdrugmart.ca

Lip Smacker Party Pack Lip Balm
Join me in revelling in the feeling of spending those hard-earned babysitting dollars on the only beauty product we used until eighth-grade graduation. Few things can bring us back to those days better than a good old pack of Lip Smackers—particularly the ones that smell like our favourite fizzy drinks.
$14, amazon.ca

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In countries like Portugal and Spain where tinned fish is a staple, it can be a dish’s superstar or background player. Tinned fish newbie? Try it in bowl that also boasts grains, peas, eggs and greens.

Smoked Mackerel Bowl

Makes 1 bowl
Prep time: 10 minutes   
Total time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

• ½ 110-gram tin of smoked mackerel, oil drained
• ½ cup cooked whole grains, such as quinoa, brown rice or farro
• 1 cup snap peas, sliced
• 1 Persian cucumber, thinly sliced
• 2 cups chopped dark leafy greens, such as kale or spinach
• 1 soft-boiled egg, sliced in half lengthwise
• 1 green onion, thinly sliced

Dressing

• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• ½ tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• ¼ teaspoon sriracha

Optional garnishes

• sesame seeds
  pickled onions
  sauerkraut

Directions

Step 1: In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, honey, ginger and sriracha until well combined. Set dressing aside.

Step 2: Assemble bowl with the cooked grains, greens, vegetables, mackerel and egg. Drizzle all over with dressing and garnish with sliced green onions.

Tip: Swap mackerel for another type of tinned fish, such as salmon or sardines, or switch up the vegetables with shredded carrots, cabbage and avocado.

Next: Here’s a Good Reason to Buy a Pretty Little Tin of Fish