To me, Bolognese sauce is the essence of cooking:  The sizzling of vegetables, the layering of flavors, and then the long, slow simmer to reach perfection.  And that perfection is easy to reach.  There's not a lot of measuring or precision involved, just patience and love.  

The challenge for me was how to make the sauce healthy.  Classic, though not necessarily traditional, recipes call for up to three types of meat (beef, pork, and veal) plus pancetta or bacon.  Sometimes, the veggies are cooked in butter since it's a northern Italian recipe where butter is used as well as olive oil.  I've seen recipes list heavy cream in the ingredients.  First, I swapped out all the ground meat for ground turkey.  Next, I made the pancetta optional.  Last, I eliminated butter and heavy cream.  What did I keep?  The vegetables, the layers of flavor, and the slow cooking method to create all that flavor.

This is the kind of recipe that is great to make on a weekend or when you have time to slowly cook the sauce.  That way, if you're busy during the week, you can store it for five days in the fridge or three months in the freezer and use it when needed.  It's perfect for a cold day, over pasta, or zoodles, or polenta.  If you like cheese, it benefits from a liberal sprinkling of the best quality Parmesan you can afford (I get mine at Trader Joe's).  And if you have leftover Parmesan rinds, definitely throw one or a couple into the sauce for the last hour of simmering as it will really develop the umami flavor of the sauce.  

Healthy & Delicious Turkey Bolognese
Makes 4 - 6 servings, and still you may have a little leftover

2 oz. pancetta, cubed, optional
2 medium yellow onions, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
2-3 stalks of celery, diced
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes or more to taste
2 to 4 Tablespoons of tomato paste
1/2 cup white wine or chicken broth
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
1 cup chicken broth
Parmesan rind, optional
salt and pepper
fresh Italian parsley, chopped, for garnish
pasta, polenta, zoodles, etc. for serving

In a large pot, brown the pancetta over medium heat.  Remove the pancetta, but not the drippings, from the pan.

Add the onions, carrots, celery, garlic and olive oil to the pan.  Stir so the veggies are coated in the pan drippings and olive oil.  Saute over medium heat for 10-15 minutes until the vegetables are soft and the onions are just beginning to turn color.  Stir in the tomato paste and pepper flakes and continue to cook over medium heat for one minute.  Add the wine (or 1/2 cup of chicken broth) to the pan and stir to release the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Add the turkey.  Break it up into small pieces using a fork or two wooden spoons (what my husband calls the "choppy choppy" method).  Once the turkey is broken up, lower the heat to low, add the chicken broth, pancetta, and Parmesan rind (if using), and simmer for 30 minutes to one hour.  

During the last 20 to 30 minutes of cooking, prepare what you plan to serve the Bolognese sauce over, whether that's pasta or polenta or something else.

Once you have simmered the sauce, taste it, and add salt and pepper as needed.  Remove the Parmesan rind.  At this point, it is ready to serve over your favorite pasta or polenta.  If you are using it later, let it cool to room temperature.  Next, package it in a storage container and either place it in the fridge for up to five days or in the freezer for up to two months.    

Nutritional awesomeness:  Ground turkey is an excellent source of protein.  If it is pasture-raised, it also will contain a good ratio of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fatty acids.  Ground turkey is a good source of niacin and vitamin B6.  You can read about the health benefits of vitamin B6 here.  Olive oil is a monounsaturated fatty acid that has been shown to help lower bad cholesterol.  It contains polyphenols which are powerful antioxidants.  Studies in Europe have concluded that olive oil consumption helps lower blood pressure. One Greek study with 36,000 participants concluded that there is an inverse relationship between eating olive oil and rates of cancer.  Onions are a good source of Vitamin C.  Carrots are an excellent source of Vitamin A, which promotes vision health, bone growth, and immunity.  Celery is an excellent source of Vitamin K, which is essential for blood clotting and recovering from injuries.  
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Yup, this is a rant about January, about what happens on January 1, about all the ways we are encouraged to feel bad about our choices during the holidays, about all the ways we should start punishing ourselves immediately, and about how we are pressured to listen to everyone over our own voices about what we most need and want in our lives.  Do you know what January 1, 2018 was?  It was a Monday.  It was a Monday in winter in the Northern Hemisphere.  That's it.  This idea that you should leap out of your house January 1 munching raw kale while wearing the trendiest workout gear as you jog down the street is completely arbitrary.  It's established by our culture and it's a set-up to fail and feel bad.  

Do you want to know the worst month for doing a cleanse, especially a juice cleanse?  Yes, it is January.  Why?  Because your immune system works less efficiently when it is cold outside.  Then you do a juice cleanse and starve your immune system and the result is always illness.  When I taught yoga in upstate New York, I would basically cringe the whole month of January as student after student would do a cleanse because it was recommended by (insert celebrity name here or famous doctor who lives in a mild climate).  The first thing that often happened is that they would get a horrible headache.  Next, they'd have very little energy to do yoga due to cutting out fuel such as protein and fat.  Last, and worst, their immune system would fail because they were starving it and they would get sick.  Not just any kind of sick, mind you, but really bad sick such as bronchitis, pneumonia, or the flu.  

I'm all for cutting out inflammatory foods, such as sugar and dairy, and I'm even for it in January if your body is asking to feel good again.  I'm not for extreme diets, cleanses and detoxes which do more harm than good.   So all those emails you received in the weeks leading up to January 1 urging you to join a gym or a weight loss program that are thinly veiled (or not) body shaming campaigns, you can feel free to delete those.  In fact, have they ever helped you or are they clogging your inbox?  If it's the latter, unsubscribe!

Let's talk about resolutions.  How are those going for you?  Do you feel like you successfully set and keep resolutions?  If not, you are not alone.  All those jokes about not keeping resolutions are proof that our culture encourages us to set resolutions and expects us to fail at keeping them.  It's another set-up to fail.  What are the chances that every adult in the U.S. is going to wake up on January 1 and have the inspiration and motivation to write down resolutions?  I'm going with very slim.  Just because the calendar says January 1, you better hope divine guidance is shining it's big ol' flashlight on you and instilling you with your goals for the whole year.  Nope.  No.  Not happening for most of us.  Again, this is completely arbitrary and allows no room for you to know and trust that when you are mentally and emotionally ready, you will be both inspired and motivated to write down some goals for the year and the steps you can take to reach those goals.  

So if January 1 you were not inspired or motivated and instead stayed in your jammies and watched movies, then let's celebrate that!  And if you don't want to set resolutions because you don't feel like it, then let's celebrate you standing in your power.  Giving your power away looks like letting celebrities, social media influencers, and corporations tell you what to eat, what to do, how to feel, and how to live.  Meh to all that!  

Instead my wish this year for you and for me is that we remember over and over again that we hold the answers to our health and our happiness.  Happy 2018!

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