I hope you love this dish as much as we do. It feels physically as well as emotionally nourishing. That’s because a good meal can rally our energy in the face of life’s chaos and adversities. One of the best things for lifting deflated spirits is a restorative pot of bubbling yum. All the better if it uses leftovers loitering in your fridge.

Granted, eating cannot resolve our problems; this dish won’t pay the gas bill, it can’t undo the red sock in the white wash, and it sure as hell won’t affect the Strait of Hormuz. But what it can do is soothe disappointment and massage frayed nerves. That’s where food can help. And we could all use a comforting dish during crazy confusing times.

With this in mind, here is a simple recipe stewarding potatoes, chickpeas, spices, toms and leftovers into your favourite kitchen pot. The result is bonkers delicious, as well as being another successful vegetarian meal for your library of meat-free options.

Aside from being tasty and cheap, chickpeas help to feed your gut microbes and squad of SCFAs. Fun fact! Lentils and chickpeas boost the production of faecalibacterium, a major butyrate producer and impressive inflammation referee. Peas seem to nourish bifidobacteria, also linked to lower inflammation says GI specialist Dr Karan Rajan. And, says he, beansbeautifulbeans have shown an increase in the production of akkermansia in our gut, tied to good metabolic health. Different legumes fuel different species of microbes in our gut. I feel a poem coming on.

The topic of gut health is bewitching, and the research available is utterly absorbing. Plus, given that our happy hormone, serotonin, is in fact made in the gut and not in the brain, we need to be paying much more attention to this prime real-estate in our body. This Substack space hopes to do exactly that.

What else???

There’s iron in chickpeas, especially handy for our vegetarian friends; energy-boosting B vitamins to help resuscitate spent batteries (think B for Bolt, Usain Bolt); tomato-rich lycopene for heart and skin health from the tomato bath; prebiotic-rich onions and garlic to feed the party in our pipes; sulphur compounds in these very same foods, to help with our calcium economy and bone density; cholesterol-lowering extra virgin olive oil; and live strains of good bacteria from our sourcream to help with digestion and house-keeping within the intestinal walls.

Phew!

Quite aside from the nutritional yah-yah, it tastes damned delicious. Freezes well. And costs very little.

As always, these healthyassed recipes are the preserve of my paid community, whose subscriptions allow me to continue to write this newsletter, buy ingredients, test and film recipes, style as well as shoot photos. If you’ve been enjoying the newsletter in its free form, please consider upgrading to become a fancy full member, which will mean you get access to my entire recipe archive too.

I appreciate the love and support. I don’t take your attention for granted. I want to supercharge your battery with easy, nutritious recipes that will be your weaponry for your body’s armour in 2026.

Love, light and chickpea maracas,

Susan J

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// Smoky Chickpea & Potato Stew //

Serves 6

1 large brown onion, peeled (leeks also fabulous)

Squeeze of honey or maple syrup

6-8 cloves garlic

1/2 tablespoon smoked paprika

2 & 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 fresh hot chilli, or sprinkle of chilli flakes

1x400g tinned toms (passata also works)

Approx 550g cooked chickpeas & their aqua faba (freshly cooked or jarred)

800g-1kg (maximum) cooked or leftover baby spuds

1 lemon, unwaxed (optional zest and juice)

1 x 225g block halloumi, cubed and fried

Step 1

Start by tenderly sweating your onions over a low heat for 15 minutes. Add the honey and garlic, and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Step 2

Shake in your spices, whack the heat up, and add the tinned toms. Stir well, before tumbling in the chickpeas with their aqua faba as well as your leftover potatoes. Grate over the lemon zest.

Step 3

Allow to bubble and cook for 10 minutes. You can fry up your halloumi during this time, and prep your chosen cheese (grated Parmesan is also ace, as is garlic yoghurt).

Step 4

Serve as is, or with brown rice and wedges of soft-boiled eggs to stretch it to 8 portions.

Smoky Chickpea & Potato

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... to seduce those SCFAs and leftovers

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Hello beautiful friends,

Feeling stressed or overwhelmed of late? A good bowl of soup tends to soothe the areas my deep breaths and kitten cuddles cannot reach.

A soup recipe that requires a walk in nature? Even better.

So that’s what I’m sharing with you today, as well as a hunky dorey lemon cake with stacks of fibre and fire. Something to burst through the dark clouds, and rain sunshine through your veins.

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Wild garlic might just be the new blueberry.

This doesn’t mean we’ll be licking garlic lollies anytime soon. It just means that this extraordinary little leaf has cartwheeled its way up the superfood chart on account of its impressive antioxidant muscle. And its juicy smack.

Plus, it’s free!

Wild garlic and young nettles are everywhere in Spring, and this recipe calls for freshly foraged leaves folks. Get your gardening gloves on and bring a carrier bag on your next hike or countryside trot (the smaller the leaf, the sweeter the taste). Foraging for food will have you feeling more virtuous than an Olympian goddess.

For the hikers; wild garlic is generally located in wetland areas around rivers and lakes (as photographed above), or the sister version (like the video below). Be sure to clean your freshly plucked treasures thoroughly at home. Roadside nettles tend to be drenched in dust and fumes, so it’s best to find a quiet place of leafy heaven and reverence.

I’ve kept this recipe souper easy (har har). Grab a bag of frozen petits pois, some freezer stock or mushroom tea, an onion, and your freshly foraged cargo. Very basic, but bloody delicious.

Then there’s a scaldingly good lemon cake to rock your weekend. It's a zippy tray-bake recipe that is, at once, sweet and sour with a spicy swoosh of ricotta.

In place of flour, we are recruiting ground almonds and psyllium for an inimitable richness and a crazy-delicious crumb. Swapping out nutritionally void white flour with nutrient-rich alternatives always seems more sensible to me (and my skin). Almonds have a hulk of vitamin E to feed my skin cells and vanity. (By the way, Dunnes Stores own brand stock the best, or your local four-letter German supermarket).

The addition of fibre-rich psyllium negates the need for eggs or gluten, so the cake recipe remains vegan and coeliac-friendly. Think of psyllium as an Ultra Fibre.

My vegan and dairy-free queens can leave out the topping. It is still mesmerizingly tasty served in simple squares. Go ahead and freeze half the squares, to decorate and scoff another day.

Both recipes have harnessed so much joy this week. They have offered a steady hum of happiness in my kitchen.

Love, light, and wild adventures,

Susan Jane

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// Nettle & Wild Garlic Soup//

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If you are enjoying my posts, a quick tap on the ❤️ means a lot. It will also help others to discover my work on Substack. Thanks so much for your support!

My kitchen wizards and fellow grubstackers,

Spring! Finally!

In the market for a something uplifting, yet simultaneously grounding?

You’ll find it in this week’s Spring bowl. Expect brightness from spring greens dropped into hot umami broth; delicious sting from slices of chilli; and comforting jammy eggs with a smattering of flaky sea salt.

Merely thinking of how speedy, easy and nourishing this recipe is, fills my veins with dancing, sparkling Minions. If you happen to be reading this and are not yet a paid subscriber, perhaps it’s time to treat yourself to a membership of what I can only describe as a wholefood rave, a nutritional nerd-out, and a first-class ticket to a healthier you.

An annual subscription comes in less than a leg wax - bargain!

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Now, back to the recipe …

Known as noodle bowls in our house, we use home-made broth to carry as much flavour and nutrition as our motherboard can muster. In the centre of our dinner table we’ll have a juggernaut of leftovers from the fridge, maybe (frozen) petits pois, flaked salmon, chopped scallion, fried mushrooms, our favourite roast veg, some peanut rayu, soft-boiled eggs, strips of nori, lashings of fresh herbs, artichokes jarred in oil, simple sesame seeds, or Spring greens.

It’s like Lego – you build it yourself!

I’ll often have vats of veggie and chicken broth patiently supporting me in my freezer, waiting to be celebrated midweek. Freezers are like fairy godmothers. They can magically gift us with time, nourishment and a slice of sanity when we need it most. Having frozen stock at the ready means that we can avoid reaching for ultra processed choices, and instead, gift our bodies with insanely delicious noodle bowls.

The rest of the ingredients for the noodle bowls are generally loitering in my orbit (see list above). The addition of spring flavours such as nettle, fresh herbs or scallions, offer brightness and interest. And the warmth of the broth will hit the places your woolly socks can’t reach.

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But first, you’ll need some recipes for home-made broths!

1. easy mushroom broth

2. fish broth

3. good veg stock

And if you have no fresh ingredients to hand, don’t worry. Check out my recipe for nori jam and sesame salt (below). Packets of dried nori sheets can last over a year in the cupboard, which means you can always have this recipe as a back-up emergency for just about any meat, broth or fish dish. Hit the Print PDF button, and save to your kitchen folder!

Love, light, and Spring maracas,

Susan Jane

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Welcome back into my kitchen! I’ve got a seriously good treat for you today. I swear this miso mudpie sends millivolts of electricity around my circuitry.

No bake, ballistically tasty, and bloody brilliant.

Why miso?

Miso is a fermented soya bean paste. It means “impossible to describe but hits the spot and makes my tongue jiggy” in Japanese. Pair it with isoflavone-rich tofu, and the result is sweet and salty, creamy and delishy.

Tofu and miso are made from soya beans and rich in isoflavones. These highly intelligent compounds are part of the phytoestrogen clan that prove particularly useful for menopausal felines and other hormonal quakes, we’re told. (Mudpie for menopause, anyone? Sign me up!) Could this help explain why the rate of breast cancer in tofu-eating countries is significantly lower than non-tofu munching nations? But science is rarely that simple. There is, of course, a suite of measures that the Japanese willingly or unwittingly employ to extend their body’s shelf life. This is just one of them. Others probably include green tea, samurai DNA and seaweed.

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Go ahead and make this mudpie vegan and dairy-free by replacing the white chocolate with 80ml melted cacao butter and 100ml maple syrup.

And for coeliacs, you can swap the brown barley miso with brown rice miso.

Go ahead and hit play on the video. Let me know how it turns out (and if you have any requests for my next live sesh)?

Love, light and Mother’s Day maracas,

Susan Jane

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PS: Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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// Black Sesame & Miso Mudpie//

For the base:

200g walnuts

Generous pinch flaky sea salt

12-14 sticky dates or pre-soaked regular dates, stones removed

Squeeze of lemon

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Welcome back my kitchen fireflies!

More veggie sorcery today. Beetroot firmly puts the super into superfood. (Okay, so it might put the toot into beetroot too, but let’s not speak of that for now).

This purple root veg has long filled the bellies of mankind with boisterous antioxidants and fibre. I can almost feel the fabulousness tap-dance through my system after a plate of roasted beets.

Why tamper with regular hummus?

I hear you. But introducing more diversity into your week and your pipes is a great idea. Our plumbing loves it, as do our little microbes.

Beetroot is a brilliant choice for Peppa Pig obsessionistas or Barbie-loving toddlers. It turns everything, including this hummus, neon pink. And for vegans, beet hummus will provide a nifty source of iron. We need iron for our red blood cells, dedicated to transporting oxygen around the body. No oxygen, no mojo.

Go ahead and grab a packet of precooked, vacuum-packed beet if you fancy. It will still work beautifully, and even reduce the prep time to three minutes.

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Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live demo. I love bringing you into my home and my kitchen. If you missed out, you can join me for my next live video in the app…

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Apart from eating kimchi straight from the jar, in a cheesy toastie, or with avocado and baked rice, we love making kimchi pancakes and broccolini with kimchi cream. Both recipes are mad easy and outrageously nourishing.

If you fancy making something less complicated, I recommend fermenting fennel. Just two ingredients - fennel and salt. Here’s the full recipe.

And if you want to learn more about gut health and inflammation, here’s my post on that. Thank you to my paid members who funded the hours of research, collating great podcasts, interviews and books. It’s a great geek out sesh - I highly recommend a listen!

Love, light, and salty madness,

Susan Jane

x

// Mango Kimchi//

Do ensure the kimchi stays nestled underneath the brine at all times. Even during storage. This will prevent spoilage.

800g Chinese leaf cabbage, shredded

1 heaped tablespoon good quality, fine sea salt

1 carrot

4 spring onions, sliced

1 fresh chilli, sliced

1 mango, flesh only (about 150g)

4 garlic cloves

1 big lump ginger

1 tablespoon nam pla (a type of fish sauce available at the Thai section at supermarkets)

1 teaspoon Korean chilli flakes (gochugaru) or any chilli powder you have

Step 1

Pop the shredded cabbage into a large ceramic bowl, and sprinkle liberally with salt. Briefly massage the salt into your veg. Cover with cold filtered water, weigh it down with a plate, and leave for 1-2 hours.

Step 2

After an hour or so, briskly rinse the salted veg under cool running water for a few seconds only. Drain, and return to your large ceramic bowl.

Step 3

Finely slice your carrot using a potato peeler. This saves on chopping skills, and results in really pretty ribbons of carrot. Drop into your shredded cabbage, alongside the sliced spring onion, your fresh chilli and the chopped mango. Set aside while you get going on your kimchi paste.

Step 4

Bash the garlic, ginger, nam pla and chilli flakes/powder into a paste using a pestle and mortar or a blender. Spoon this gloriously spicy paste into your bowl of veg and massage until it’s practically swimming in its own natural brine. This will take 8-10 minutes of manipulation. Don’t give up! (A good podcast helps).

Step 5

Decant and press the kimchi into pristine-clean jam jar(s), so the brine rises up to cover the veg.

Add a weight, such as a clean shotglass, and seal the jar at room temperature for 3-5 days. Fruit kimchi can ferment much faster than traditional kimchi blends. I like to stand mine in a bowl to catch any adventurous brine going AWOL while it fizzes and burps on my counter top. Taste every day, to track its progress, and remember to press the kimchi down with your weight before resealing.

Transfer to your fridge when it reaches your preferred octave, and enjoy within 5 weeks. That’s it!

Recipe for Kimchi Mango

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Pancakes are so darn delicious, it’s rather puzzling why we don’t tuck into them every Tuesday.

I never get my fill on Pancake Tuesday, partly because I always forget it’s coming. A bit like Mother’s Day, and Visa deadlines. But I’m on it today!

What the heck is buckwheat?

Buckwheat, despite its misleading name, is not even wheat and contains no gluten. If you've ever had Japanese soba noodles, you'll already be familiar with buckwheat's nutty, distinctive (almost smoky) flavour.

Whole, we add it to granola recipes and bake it in the oven. Milled into a flour, we love buckwheat served up as banana bread, French galettes (large thin pancakes like today’s recipe) or Russian blinis (small thick pancakes).

And kimchi?

Yep. Kimchi is a sour and fiery cabbage dish with an absurdly delicious tang. It lasts for weeks in the fridge, making it really easy to reach for something healthy to eat. All credit goes to the lactic acid produced by Lactobacillus bacteria, preserving or enchanting everything it touches. If you were to view your microbiome as a garden, this kimchi would be your fertiliser.

Our health is not a simple picture of genes and environment. There’s a third element that we now know of – let’s just call them nifty dudes. Nature, nurture and nifty dudes.

At any one time, our gut can contain 2kg of nifty dudes says Dr Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology. This bacteria metropolis is our microbiota, and each strain has its very own biological function within our body and our microbiome. Mind blowing, eh?

So where can we find these nifty dudes? Liv fermented foods like this week’s kimchi.

Here’s a step-by-step photo recipe on how to make your own beginner’s kimchi. So easy, and considerably cheaper. But you can buy really good live kimchi in Ireland now. Take a peek in SuperValu Food Academy sections for a variety of kimchis (no kidding!) Or your local health food store will stock it.

I’m happy to schedule a live cook-along (massage-along?!?) on making your own kimchi later this month, if you fancy? Let’s throw a spin in, for the more seasoned reader (mango kimchi? pineapple kimchi?)

Go forth, and make merry!

Lots of love and pancakes,

Susan Jane

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// Cheesy Buckwheat Pancakes//

I like to make a double batch of this pancake batter, and store it in the fridge all week to service hangry teenagers. They are warm, pillowy in the centre, and softly crisp on the outside - guaranteed to mend moods and marriages.

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Hello my kitchen fireflies!

This coming Saturday is Valentine’s Day, a time to make yourself something fabulous and shower love and attention upon your very own self. To me, with love from me. Yep.

These wholefood caramels are vitally important in my life, in order to survive this ludicrously demanding world we live in. Besides, I’m a nicer person when I’m doped up on them.

Add a signature addition, e.g. miso paste, peanuts, freeze-dried strawberry powder, black sesame seeds, chai spice, pistachios, rose petals, rose water, even whiskey! The recipe below is the fail-proof basic version, ready to be curated by your wildest desires.

What is wholefood caramel?

Instead of boring white sugar, we use fudgy dates. Dunnes Stores now do a variety of fresh date in their fruit n’ vegetable aisle, in boxes by Yogi & Yousef. They are outrageously tasty. If you can’t find fresh dates, then medjools in Tesco and SuperValu are recommended, with their toffee notes and hypnotic sweetness.

In place of conventional butter or dairy, we are funneling protein-rich cashew nuts into our caramel frenzy. The result is at once satisfying and silky, lifted by the lemon and sea salt. Yup. Date caramels are so fine that they’ll have you reciting poetry in no time.

AND! Luckily for us, Mother Nature gave the cacao bean heart-healthy flavanols plus magnesium. Both nutrients are loyal friends of the cardiovascular system, helping blood-flow and circulation.

In fact, I believe the smell alone of chocolate can send a feline’s pulse into frenzy, making this recipe the perfect companion to Valentine’s Day. Just saying.

The endorsement of “chocolate” comes with a very big qualification however. It must be raw or dark. Untreated, raw cacao is the nutritional heavyweight champion of chocolate. But dark choc is fairly fabulous too, indecently rich and muscular. Anything else is disqualified, especially the white or milk varieties. Commercial everyday bars rely upon nasty fats, sugars and artificial additives to make them palatable. They imitate chocolate, and only succeed as cheap imposters.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Oscar Wilde, in the midst of this crazy chaotic world we live in…

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”

Love, light, and real dates,

Susan Jane

x

// Date Caramels//

Makes about 18

20 sticky juicy dates (e.g. deglet noor, medjool, or fresh dates)

4 heaped tablespoons cashew nut butter

Squeeze of fresh lemon

Smattering of flaky sea salt

A little hot tea or water

100g dark chocolate, melted

Dried rose petals, raspberry powder, or flaky sea salt (to dust)

Step 1

Start by removing the inner stones from each date, and discarding the stones in the compost. Pop the date flesh into the bowl of your food processor.

(If you’re using very dried dates, or parched dates, then cover them in hot boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain, and transfer the hot dates to your food processor).

Step 2

Add the cashew butter. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the dates too, and sprinkle in some flaky sea salt. Turn on the motor.

While the mixture whizzes, pour 2-4 tablespoons of freshly boiled water down the chute into the food processor bowl. This will help the mixture whip into a lusciously smooth caramel. How much water you pour will ultimately depend on the brand of nutbutter you are using. It’s best to start slowly, and determine how many tablespoons of water are required. Two tablespoons is generally the sweet spot.

Step 3

Taste, and decide if it’s ready to roll. Adjust the salt and lemon, if not.

Step 4

Then, using two teaspoons and a lot of patience, scoop the mixture into beautiful little bonbons and drop on a lined tray to freeze until set.

Step 5

Once they are frozen, you can roll them into smooth balls between your palms, and collect them in a freezer bag.

As soon as you have collected all the gorgeous date caramels, briefly and briskly tumble each one into the melted chocolate, directly from their frozen state. I find a fork handy for this step. Let the chocolate coated caramels set in the freezer once again, on non-stick parchment, before popping back into your reusable freezer bag. If you want, you can dust each one with rose petals or extra flaky sea salt.

Store them in the freezer, ready to plunder at will.

Recipe for Date Caramels

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As promised, two kitchen demos this month. And seven new recipes to kickstart your 2026; an inflammation-slaying winter-spiked milk, cosy mulled apple juice by the fire, a wholefood take on the Dubai choccie craze, Snockers for my Snickers fanclub, and an invigorating blood orange slushie.

This week we are focusing on an ingredient that often ends up in the bin. Broccoli stalks.

I’ve been stalking (bad pun, sorry) leading researchers in the field of bone health and am happy to report that cruciferous veggies are your bones’ BFF (Best Friend Forever).

The cruciferous family contain calcium, but more importantly, lots of other good stuff to facilitate the proper utilisation of this calcium from our food. I think broccoli might just be one of the cheapest ways to better bone health and killer yoga moves.

So two fun recipes for you today, that focus on jump starting your health, your bone economy, and your wallet. Both are fantastically moreish, and will help you to inject more greens into your lives.

What else?

Broccoli contains a mighty superstar called sulforaphane. But you already know this. For those of you new to my little corner of Substack, sulforaphane is a compound that can ramp up our body’s antioxidant industry. Yes, indeedy.

Studies show that sulforaphane helps to upregulate genes that suppress nasty oxidative stress, inflammation and DNA damage, simultaneously enhancing mitochondrial function. Jeesh. And all for €3 per head! (Better still - use the stalks of your broccoli heads that were destined for the compost).

Both recipes celebrate the majesty of sulforaphane and zero waste cooking. My kids go bonkers for these, which is its own source of deliciousness in itself! Lots more details in the vid. (e.g. broccoli stalks keep for up to 3 weeks in the fridge).

Love, light and broccoli maracas,

Susan Jane

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Good morning friends and fireflies,

I’ve wholefoodied the Snickers concept. And it was so easy.

Go ahead and switch out the peanuts for pistachios, if you’d rather a Dubai Choccie vibe. Both are sensational, and demand your attention.

You, dear reader, already know that eating rubbish (ultra processed foods) in the long term will result in feeling like rubbish. This is because we rob our body of the nutrition it needs to function optimally. It is, in my opinion, an expensive opportunity cost. This is not not quantum physics. It’s basic algebra.

The definition of madness, warns Beckett, is in doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. If your body isn’t functioning well on junk food, here’s a recipe to consider. One thing we can be sure of is that scientific evidence consistently proves that eating well is good for body and mind. Eating poorly will short-circuit your system.

If we eat natural, whole, minimally processed foods with a plant slant (see tahini vid above), our body will function well and we will fizz through the day like a Pokémon on four espressos. Okay, so that’s my subjective experience. But it’s there for you to discover! Michael Pollan probably puts it more eloquently when he advises “it’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor.”

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High five to everyone who tuned into my live video today! Like my teenagers and my husband, the blender refused to do what I asked it to do. I’m surrounded by misbehaving miscreants. Anyway, RIP blender jug. But at least the attachments behaved and I got my slurpie in the end …

A HUGE welcome to all my new subscribers. And, as always, to my loyal regulars who give wings to my kitchen and soul to my saucepans. As a famous Stoic philosopher once observed, we become what we give our attention to. So let’s continue our epic 2026 wellness adventure.

The video above is filmed in my home kitchen, where we’ll hang once a month (with a healthy side serving of miscreants!) I am so looking forward to you all joining me there. If you have any special recipe requests for 2026, fire them over!

In between the monthly demos, I’ll be sending you two posts to play with. Think of this space as a playground for your kitchen and a bootcamp for your microbiome. You’ll also have access to my back catalogue, so you can plan to visit a bean recipe every week for example, or simply focus on turning your sugar cravings into a nutritional slamdunk.

I decided to do another outrageously easy recipe this week, to shoot energy back into your veins.

This one is cheap, quick, simple and not overburdened by a long list of ingredients. (But be warned - next week we’re doing a wholefoodie version of Dubai chocolate. Still working on it, but it keeps disappearing from the family fridge).

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We loves our turmeric. Inside this root lives a snazzy compound called curcumin. It’s what gives turmeric its psychedelic glow. The same compound plays a role in decommissioning the inflammatory mob. How so? Curcumin has shown to reduce inflammation in our body by interrupting the production of odious leukotrienes. These chaps usually like to pinball through our veins, causing swelling and inflammation along their merry way. Leukotrienes are basically the inflammation mafia. Yeesh.

Many conditions ending in “-itis” relate to inflammation in the body, and might just benefit from a good frolic with turmeric.

Inflammation can also speed up ageing (we all know people who look older than they are) and fuel pain. So recruiting ingredients that help to quell inflammation in the body seems like low-hanging fruit to me. Especially if we eat at least three times a day. That’s a minimum of 1000 opportunities a year to help redress inflammation. Let’s go!

So on to today’s recipe … one sip will have your tonsils tooting and your lips purring.

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A Stoic philosopher famously observed that “you become what you give your attention to.”

So let’s get going on our epic 2026 wellness adventure, where I help you to nudge junkfood off your radar, and substitute it with plant-powered, fibre-forward, massively tasty dishes that don’t compromise your taste buds or satisfaction sonar.

I do the research, so you don’t have to.

All you need to do, is make these recipes every week and decide which ones work best for you. Then print them out to keep forever (from the handy PDF at the bottom of every post).

Recipe index here, for the very enthused. My back catalogue has loads of treasures. Care for your body, like it’s your best friend. Because it truly is.

Over to today’s recipe…

For a non-drinker on New Year’s Eve, mulled apple juice is about as welcome as a bubble bath to a Bach sonata.

Boring syrupy cordials are usually proffered to the designated driver this time of year, or an unimaginative sparkling water. Where’s the New Year glee in that? This recipe promises to keep toes toasty, and 2026 spirits glittering.

The same flavours used in mulled wine are recruited for today’s recipe, starring a jamboree of healthy Ayurvedic spices…

There’s cinnamon to warm your insides and serenade your system; clove to kick sore throats; star anise for jazz hands and sexy breath; ginger to soothe misbehaving tonsils; and citrus zest to bewitch every sip. Combined with freshly pressed Irish apples, expect a battalion of potassium to surge through your mainframe and service achy muscles, all the while seducing blood pressure.

If you’re looking to stock up on ice-cold drinks for your New Year’s rave (or Dry January) I recommend Irish kombucha (obvs). There are lots to choose from now - Synerchi or Katie’s Kombucha available at Supervalu, Holo or My Goodness Kombucha from specialist stores and trendy delis, and an own-brand from Aldi.

Other recipes from my archive to help rinse the last of the festive debauchery from your veins?

• · Pineapple slushie

• · Turmeric elixir

• · Grapefruit & ginger slushie

• · a mango lassi to serve as a bootcamp for your microbiota

• · how to make really good stock that costs nothing

• two more tipples to come in January (you can subscribe to receive them both)

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See you in 2026 my friends. May it be filled with mischief and magic.

Love, light, and fibre farming,

Susan Jane

X

// Mulled Apple Juice//

2 litres (locally-made) unsweetened apple juice

2 mugs rooibos, green tea or water

7 cloves

1 large cinnamon stick

1 star anise

Chunk of ginger, sliced not grated

A strip of unwaxed or organic orange zest

Step 1

Bring all the ingredients together to a brief simmer. Then turn down the heat to a very low glow to infuse the flavours and maintain warmth.

Step 2

Serve on cold evenings in January, or as guests arrive, using a soup ladle for maximum theatre. No need to remove the extra ingredients - they are large and obvious enough to avoid while sipping your 2026 elixir.

Mulled Apple Juice

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Happy Christmas friends!

Dropping into your inboxes with a last-minute recipe, to save you time and stress on Dec 25. Grab a packet of ricotta-filled tortellini or ravioli. They cook in 4 minutes, while you tend the bottle of sherry or gaggle of guests on Christmas day.

The chestnut ‘cream’ can be made today and kept in the fridge all week. It’s a simple…

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How’s my very busy December crew?

I’m hoping to help ease any chaos in the kitchen for you. I can’t recommend this recipe enough to help use the leftovers from throwing parties (wine and cheese?) All you need is a packet of prunes, and good quality frozen pastries, then you’re sorted.

And given that my synapses are usually on Annual Leave during yuletide, I rely on these gorgeous cinnamon & sesame bars to scoff and to gift. I think you’ll love them too.

Plus, my perimeno peeps have this dark chocolate & chai muffin recipe to fuel their isoflavone pathways.

But first, let’s look at Brussels Sprouts and their new destiny!

Brussels sprouts are insanely cute and talented teeny cabbages.

Talented? Absolutely. Their highly developed nutritional moves are enough to make a field of kale blush. Think of sprouts as little lovebombs for your body. And your liver (fa la la la lahhhh).

Inside each one is a swanky cargo of antioxidants and glucosinolates. These are sulphur-containing compounds that convert into beneficial isothiocyanates and are partly responsible for persuading those pesky pre-cancerous cells to self destruct. The official term is apoptosis (deliciously onomatopoeic). Food-induced apoptosis is an exciting arena in science.

Similar to glucosinolate is the wondrous sulforaphane, another sulphur-rich compound. Sulforaphane is the 2025 buzzword of health geeks and the Hollywood glitterati. You’ll find lots in affordable everyday cruciferous veggies such as broccoli, cauli, and today’s sprouts. Sulforaphane is also thought to help prime our liver’s natural ability to detoxify (hello December!)

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More veggie sorcery today. If you missed my live class, here it is! (Although it’s axed for brevity my friends! Any missing deets are below).

As many of you know, shrooms are one of my top three foods. That meaty umaminess and affordability make them particularly attractive to health divas like me. Chestnut, shiitake, teeny button ones, Portobello, Hen of the Wooods – all are certain to drive hot-blooded foodies wild. There’s a reason for that. Try this week’s recipe and see for yourself.

Want to join my other live classes? Or access my catalogue of kitchen demos here on Substack?

And if you fancy mainlining more shroomy magic, check out these shroom kebabs made from thinly sliced king oyster mushrooms.

Or watch me making Portobello shawarma with ready-bought flatbreads and red onion pickle.

There’s also this unmissable staple for every family’s armory … mushroom and chickpea mince. And an easy veggie burgers for those who like to continue BBQing during the winter months!

I love you being here, nourishing your body and your brain. We are our best selves when we treat our bodies like the prize-winning trophy it is. Be good to your body – you are the one who has to live in it.

I live for food that excites my taste buds, but also my body’s mechanics. I love feeling strong. I need my battery fully charged to cope with life’s stressors. I want to keep my skin glowing and my toes tingling. I can’t do that on a compromised or substandard diet, frankly. Eating well is as important to me as breathing clean air.

Know what I mean?

See you next week, for some festive recipes to kick off the silly season. Let’s keep your liver on speaking terms with you!

Much love, light, and tinsel to you,

Susan Jane

X

// Shroom Larb with Chilli, Mint and Lemongrass //

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My darling cooks, fellow geeks and thirsty readers …

This dahl is rather special and insanely easy to make. ‘Tis a dreamy confluence of flavours and textures, and of Irish superfoods and South Asian brilliance.

Okay, so it’s a ragingly inauthentic dahl recipe. But using local seaweed and pinhead oats brings me one delicious step closer to the majesty of Indian cooking all the way from Irish shores.

Now that the evenings are shorter (the suddenness manages to shock me every year), Autumn is officially pelting through my veins. I start to crave nourishing bowls of root vegetables and wholegrains. This recipe helps to defibrillate my stove and deep winter pots, with its bubbling cauldrons of goodness.

Dahl freezes really well, but also feeds a party with rice and naan on the side. It’s a gorgeous way of welcoming in the darker evenings, ensconced in good company and steaming bowls of goodness.

It’s also cheap and simple to make. (There’s a handy printable PDF below, and step by step photos).

We are using whole pinhead oats, also known as steel cut oats. They give a fabulous chew amidst the slurping, lip smacking deliciousness of a soupy stew. Expect the red lentils and pumpkin to melt into submission, imparting both flavour and colour. I seem to always have a little pumpkin left over from chopping and roasting earlier in the week. Pumpkin divas will understand. This works as the perfect way to use up the ends of pumpkin or butternut squash, and high five your inner zero-waste warrior.

Of course, regular readers will already know the divine brilliance of lentils. Yup. Not only do they look after our busy little community of gut bacteria by feeding them, but lentils also deliver those essential B vitamins for energy (think B for battery, B for Bolt). Couple this with wondrous Irish oats, and you have yourself a lovebomb for your microbiota. All that resistant starch is enough to make a gastroenterologist wildly applaud.

Resistant starch is a type of carb that’s also a fibre. It literally resists digestion. Our gut enjoys fermenting resistant starch (toot toot!) and turning it into short chain fatty acids. SCFAs strengthen our gut wall and are among the most exciting and healing molecules science has discovered in gut health, according to gastroenterologist Dr Will Bulsiewicz.

If you’re looking for more oaty goodness, perhaps for cholesterol reasons, or for budgetary consideration, or ssimply for taste reasons, check out this pinhead risotto or my gorgeous crumble recipe with step by step photos. There’s also matcha oat balls or black sesame & chai energy grenades plus lots more in the recipe index. And one of my most downloaded recipes? Flapjacks, 2 ways. If you want to get ahead of your gift giving this Christmas, a box of flapjacks is a total winner.

Love, light, and oaty goodness,

Susan Jane

x

P.S. Hit reply, if you’d like to purchase a subscription for a colleague, a pal, a friend or another shining human being in your life. We’ll work something out (e.g. happy to post you a personally written card, to gift your nominee so that it’s not just a generic email confirming the gift subscription, but something a little more thoughtfilled).

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Hello, you.

How is autumn landing with you?

Shorter evenings always come as a shock to my system. So I’m comforting myself with rye banana bread smothered in pistachio butter when the sun starts setting. On the days I don’t have time for the oven to preheat, I knock these mocha ballss up faster than a sight-hound chasing a chihuahua.

Coffee and chocolate are the two most powerful words in the English language. Add them together, and your ticker might hum with happiness. I like to think of these mocha balls as a nifty defibrillator for the heart. You’ll be doped off your nutter on joy, while the actual nuts do their scientific jazz.

Ready?

Unsalted raw hazelnuts contain special-agent fats that can help raise your protective cholesterol (HDL) while lowering that menacing cholesterol (LDL). Hazelnuts have a cargo of arginine too, necessary to make our own nitric oxide thereby relaxing blood vessels and blood flow. Think of it as the Bach of the blood. We like. This might also help explain why nuts are applauded for their role in protecting arterial walls, making the walls more pliable and less susceptible to damage. Good news for health insurers. And health nuts like me.

Reishi Mocha Balls will make cute gifts in the coming weeks. You can get your mitts on Medjools in health stores or the fruit and veg isle of Supervalu and Tesco nationwide. Dunnes do large boxes of sticky dates which work out perfectly too. And I’ve spotted good quality roasted hazelnuts in Lidl of late.

As for coffee, take a listen to Dr Rhonda Fitzpatrick …

Obsession with shrooms?

In many cultures, mushrooms are revered for their health-enhancing pursuits. Housed inside each mushroom are lentinans and beta glucan polysaccharides, believed to stimulate the immune system by activating certain cells. In the field of immunology, Dr Jenna Macciochi’s research highlights beta glucan’s ability to improve resistance to infection. Wild! Dr Macchiochi describes beta glucans as “keen modulators of the immune response.”

Here is a quick recap of some shroomy magic from 2024, if you want to inject more goodness into your week …

1. Mushroom broth

2. Mushroom mince

3. Portobello Shawarma

4. Ricotta Veggie Burger

5. Shroom Kebabs & Satay Sauce

6. Cacao Reishi Smoothie

7. Shroom Larb kitchen tutorial at the end of the month (watch this space)

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I’m back, with another kitchen demo.

Scrambled tofu is not meant to rival scrambled eggs, but rather complement your diet and provide a little more diversity for your gut microbes.

If you aren’t enjoying any soya bean products in your diet (miso, soya yoghurt, tempeh, tofu) that are naturally high in issoflavones, well then this might be the recipe for you. (Although, if you missed it, we made a fairly fabulous tart from silken tofu earlier this month).

Many of you asked about perimenopause menus to help with renegade hormones.

Aside from a diet rich in isoflavones and omega 3 (especially during our 40s), plates filled with colour and variety will likely deliver the best results. Fall in love with wholefoods. I’m here to help you do exactly that.

You can listen to Rich Roll interview Dr Gemma Newman, author of “The Plant Power Doctor” specialising in female hormone health. (Start at 10:36 into the episode, to skip the ads and platitudes!) In terms of hormone health, our diet doesn’t have to be exclusively plant-based. Nope. Just abundantly planty! As with many podcasts, watch out for the rash of advertisements (just skip 15 seconds at a time until the ads end).

I also love Dr Lisa Mosconi. Here’s what a neuroscientist has to say about perimenopause and diet in particular.

Why soft scrambled tofu?

I love scrambled eggs. So I really didn’t embrace this tofu trend raging in 2005. But now I see it as a simple, scrummy way of mainlining isoflavones into my perimenopausal booty. Hope it helps!

If you can get your hands on black salt, great! It’s high in sulphur, and gives that eggy smell which complements the tofu perfectly. I love eggs - don’t get me wrong. I have no intention of replacing my love of eggs for scrambled tofu. But I want my menu to be diverse, so I can tick off all those love isoflavones available to me in soya bean products. And this is a wonderful way to do exactly that.

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Lately, I’ve been making a collagen-rich broth with the carcass of a John Dory from my local fishmonger.

I tend to ask him what types of fish frames he’s chucking, and simply use what he kindly offers. It certainly beats shelling out €50 on organic collagen powder. And, as you’ve probably guessed by now, I rarely eat meat or fish, so utilising bones that are destined for the bin feels like I’m honouring the animal’s life, celebrating every part. So much gratitude.

I know quite a few vegetarians who share this view. It may indeed be the emergence of a New Vegetarian. I think it’s becoming more accepted because broth-making does not directly increase the demand for fish or meat. It’s harnessing the zero waste ethos in an overactive, mindless industry. What do you think?

I’d love to know your thoughts on this. I find it philosophically fascinating. (Other deep questions my son asked while exploring vegetarianism … Are we still vegetarian if we feed our pet lots of meat? If meat is being thrown in the bin, are we still vegetarian saving it from the bin? Why, or why not?)

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Back to broth.

Fish bones contain a juggernaut of healthful minerals, amino acids and chondroitin, now sold as expensive supplements for joint pain and sports injuries. This recipe is far tastier and cheaper (practically free!) than necking collagen supplements.

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