The Slow Kitchen Podcast

Episode 33: "The Whole Kitchen: Herbs, Polyphenols & Feeding Your Microbiome"

• Cat Dillon

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0:00 | 16:21

🌿 What We Talked About

  • Why plant diversity matters more than chasing superfoods
  • The gut-loving power of herbs, spices, and polyphenols
  • Easy ways to add more plants to your everyday meals
  • How different plants nourish different gut microbes
  • Why it's time to refresh your spice cabinet
  • An invitation to join the Gut Garden Challenge


📚 Mentions & Resources

🌱 Gut Garden Challenge

Ready to grow your inner garden?

Join me for a fun, practical challenge where you'll learn how to comfortably eat 30+ different plants each week while supporting your microbiome, metabolism, digestion, mood, blood sugar, and long-term health.

🌿 Join here: https://catdillon.com/GutGardenChallenge


🎧 Love the Podcast?

If you're enjoying The Slow Kitchen Podcast, I'd be so grateful if you'd:

⭐ Follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode.

⭐ Leave a quick review—it helps more women discover the show.

⭐ Share this episode with someone who loves food, cooking, or learning how to nourish their body.


📖 Research Mentioned

🌿 Join the Midlife Nourishment Collective

If you're ready to put these ideas into practice, I'd love to welcome you into the Midlife Nourishment Collective—a membership for women who want to eat well, feel strong, and age with confidence.

Inside you'll find:

🥗 Delicious recipes designed to nourish your microbiome, metabolism, hormones, blood sugar, and bones.

🛒 A drag-and-drop meal planner with smart grocery lists and Instacart integration to make healthy eating simple.

👩‍🍳 Live monthly cooking classes where food becomes your daily medicine.

📚 Evidence-based nutrition education on gut health, hormones, metabolism, bone health, healthy aging, and more.

💚 A warm, supportive community that helps you build sustainable habits—for your gut, your body, and your relationship with food.

Learn more:

https://catdillonrhn.practicebetter.io/#/5cff1132627d791b2c7418df/bookings?p=68262a777031a7f5f3bdc45c&step=package


💚 Work With Me

RevitalizeHER: Wellness & Health Strategy Call

Need personalized guidance?

This 30-minute strategy session is designed for women over 40 navigating digestive concerns, fatigue, hormone changes, stress, or stubborn weight. Together we'll identify your biggest roadblocks and create a personalized roadmap for your next steps.

Book your session: Click Here Now!


💚 Key Takeaway

Eating for your microbiome isn't about one kale smoothie or chasing the latest superfood. It's about feeding a diverse inner garden. Different plants nourish different gut microbes, and together those microbes produce beneficial compounds like butyrate, help make vitamins, strengthen your gut lining, regulate your immune system, support your metabolism, and even communicate with your brain.


✨ Favorite Quote

"Think of your gut microbes as tiny employees. Every plant you eat hires a different team. Together they make butyrate, produce vitamins, protect your gut lining, regulate your immune system, support metabolism, and send messages to your brain. The more diverse the team, the better the job gets done." 🌿

More Resources for You:

Connect with Me:

SPEAKER_00

Hey everyone, and welcome back to this little kitchen podcast, your space to slow down, reconnect, and nourish yourself in a more intentional way. I'm Kat Dillon, registered holistic nutritionist and former chef, fascinated by the intersection of food, metabolism, hormones, and the nervous system and how we actually experience nourishment in daily life. Because nourishment is never just about nutrients, it's sensory experience, nervous system regulation, memory, pleasure, and connection all at once. On the Slow Kitchen, we will talk about food, culinary nutrition, habits, nervous system regulation, and hormone health. We will also talk about something many women quietly experience but rarely put into words. And that is a hunger that never quite resolves. You eat and yet you feel unsatisfied. So you keep reaching for more of the same food or whatever's fast and easy in the moment. But neither one quite meets what your body was truly asking for. Because sometimes what is asking for attention isn't more food. It's your whole self, your physical body, your nervous system, your emotions, thoughts, and your spirit. And learning to listen inward is a skill. It's not a mystery, and it's not something that you were either born knowing or not. It's something we practice together, one episode at a time. I want to tell you what actually lives in my kitchen today. And the best way to learn about herbs and spicos is through someone who actually cooks with them every day, not through a chart on the internet. So before I get into it, I want to give you a quick heads up. The Gut Garden Challenge started this past Monday. And I have an extended enrollment because I want more of you in this with me. I will tell you everything about it before we close out today. So stay with me. And while I have you here, if you have not already, this is your moment to hit subscribe or follow on whatever app you are listening on right now. That one tap means you never miss an episode, and it tells me you want more of this in your life. And so thanks for that. I also want to ask for something small. If the show has ever helped you look at food differently, leave a quick review. And if you know of a friend who needs to hear this episode, send it their way. It genuinely helps this show reach more of the people who need it. Now, the whole kitchen begins with one plant. Cumin. My mother's black beans had cumin in them every single time. So frito first, the onion, garlic, sweating and slow, oh my gosh, and the olive oil. I could just smell it right now. And then the cumin going in right after. That smell still means home to me, but I did not truly understand cumin until I started toasting the whole seed myself years later in my own kitchen. Here's what you do dry pan, medium heat, 30 to 40 seconds, and the minute you smell it, you will understand why nothing compares. Vateralma is the volatile oils being released. And that's where the medicine lives. And once you grind those seeds fresh, you get a depth of flavor that pre-ground stuff simply cannot touch. My mother never measured any of this. She just knew. Now, there's something that I didn't know until recently. There is an actual Cuban oregano. And it's different from the Mediterranean oregano most of us grew up with. The Cuban oregano is thick. It's almost like a succulent with a bolder, almost fuzzy leaf. The Mediterranean is very small and delicate as compared to it. But both are beautiful, both are medicinal. And it's so interesting that I did a call that had uh some of the Cuban oregano to show, and my hands, after a half an hour, are still smelling like the oregano. Incredible. In a Cuban kitchen, cumin and oregano get married together. Add olive oil, a bay leaf, garlic, onion, salt, and fresh cracked pepper, and you have the foundation of most of the most nourishing food on earth. My whole childhood is in that pot, and so is my mother's. Now let's talk about one of my favorite spice blends. Chinese five spice. Five spices, five plants, one blend. Star anise, cinnamon, clove, Sichuan pepper, fennel seed. Each one is its own medicinal plant with its own gut benefit. And together they create something extraordinary. This is what I mean when I talk about plant variety. One blend, five distinct phytochemical profiles feeding five different bacterial populations in your gut at one time. This is actually a perfect place to talk about polyphenols because they tie all of this together. Polyphenols are the compound responsible for a lot of the color that you see in plants. The deep red of the Seshuan pepper, the dark brown of cloves, the purple in asciote, the near black of right black dairy. The color in food is not just decoration. Color is information. It's the plant telling you what protective compounds are inside. Every distinct polyphenol feeds a slightly different population of bacteria in your gut. This is why variety matters so much more than any single superfood ever could. A colorful plate is not about just aesthetics. It's about giving your microbiome the widest possible range of raw materials to work with. Different colors, compounds, different benefits, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, supportive of blood sugar balance, supportive of your gut lining. The research on polyphenols and long-term health keeps growing and it keeps pointing in the same direction. Eat a rainbow and mean it. Now let's talk trinities. I love this. The herb combinations that work as a team. The French, the French go rosemary thyme and oregano, the classic fine herbs or fine herb are chives, tarragon, and sherbil. Zatar, my favorite, is thyme, oregano, sesame, and sumag, one of the most ancient spice blends in the world. And if you haven't tried it with chicken or flatbread or just anything on vegetables, some zatar is just incredible. Mexican cooking has epizote, cilantro, and Mexican oregano, a completely different plant from both the Cuban and Mediterranean oregano we just talked about. Epizote in particular is worth knowing. It has been used for generations alongside beans, partially for flavor and partially because it genuinely helps with digestion. A cook figured that out long before anyone had a word like polythenol for it. Cantonese cooking has its own trinity and it lives at the base of almost everything: ginger, scallion, and garlic. Hitting hot oil together at the start of a dish is simple and it's the foundation of an entire cuisine. I used to work at a restaurant, and it was called Enthuse Cafe long ago in Vancouver. And it was three of us, and we all had our own little section. And one of my partners was in charge of the Chinese kitchen in the back. I was in charge of the cold food case, so all of the different salads and hot foods that just would come out on the in the to-go area. And so I learned how to make that crispy duck with this beautiful ginger sauce, the most incredible ginger and scallion and oils together. And I tell you, that is the most incredible. If you've ever tried it, you know what I'm talking about. So it's so fresh that ginger and scallion are just a match made in heaven. I'll never forget that. It was funny because as I worked there, one of the aunties would come in with her spring rolls. I know this is probably not the best exposure to a kitchen, someone coming in from the outside, but we won't care now because the restaurant's not there anymore. But, anyways, great place and just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful experience. All right. Thai cooking, as I digress. Thai cooking gives us lemongrass, galanga, and kafir lime leaf. Love the kefir lime leaf. Bright, sharp, and a little bit medicinal, the way that best Thai broths always are. Incidentally, you can always order or buy kafir lime leaf and snip it and freeze it. Same with galanga and freeze it in ice cube trays with a little bit of water. Or you can just snip it. And I've had good luck just leaving kefir lime leaves and just grabbing kefir lime from whole frozen, and they definitely work great in curries. I do have a deep love for Japanese food and ingredients, and that brings me to one of my most prized plants, shiso, also called perilla, and it lives in my kitchen almost year around. And it is a Japanese herb in the mint family, but the flavor is unlike anything else. It sits somewhere between mint and basil, but really there's no comparison. I have to say shiso is shiso. And I use it with sashimi, with fatty fish and salads, and anywhere I want something that feels alive and fresh on the palate. The origin story of shiso is fascinating. It's been used in Japanese medicine for over a thousand years. It's anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and its deep purple varieties are loaded with the same polyphenols we just talked about. One in particular called anthocyanins. And we haven't really talked a lot about those, but I'll save that for another podcast. Coulantro is next, and it's not a typo. It's not cilantro, it's coulantro. And a lot of people think it's sulantro, but it's actually culantro. It looks like a long serrated leaf, nothing like cilantro visually, but the flavor is intensified cilantro, almost tuned up to 10. It's used throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, and it is extraordinary. Keep your eyes open for it at Latin or Asian grocery stores. Once you find it, you will not go back. All right. Then there are the everyday heroes I'm never without. Mint, cilantro, parsley. These three alone add three distinct plants and three distinct polyphenol profiles to any meal in seconds. Fresh, finishing, new cooking required. And I should throw in there my basil. And there's so many different types of basil, Thai basil, pineapple basil, regular basil, purple basil. And one thing I have to mention before we close this part out your spice cabinet needs a refresh twice a year. I know no one talks about this, but here's why it matters. Herbs and spices contain volatile oils, and those oils are exactly what makes them medicinal. Over time, these oils they evaporate and they oxidize. And what you're left with is colored dust with no benefits left in at all. Ground spices last maybe eight to 12 months at the most. Whole seeds hold on for about one to two years. And if you open a jar and there's no aroma, throw it out. No aroma means no medicine. Twice a year, spring and fall, go through the cabinet, smell everything, replace what's gone quiet. This is not an exhaustive list, not even close, but it's a start and it's where my kitchen begins every single day. Now, listener, let us circle back to what I mentioned at the top of the podcast because everything we just talked about, my mom's beans, the polyphenols, all the colors and the varieties, all of it comes back to one place, and that's your gut. So here is a quick gut check. Pun very much intended. The gut garden challenge started this past Monday. That was, well, I'm recording this on a Monday, but we started today. And I have extended enrollment because I want more of you in this room for this one. Already I've had people chiming in and wanting to join. And I did close the group yesterday, but I extended it for a couple more days. What I should mention is the gut garden challenge is for those of you who would like to support healthier blood sugar and insulin regulation. Maybe you want to feel fuller, longer, and reduce cravings naturally. Or maybe you want to learn how the microbiome influences mood through the gut-brain connection. Or maybe you want to improve digestion and regularity, build simple, sustainable habits instead of following another restrictive plan. And one thing I want to be very clear about is we're not adding a bunch of random plants to he just to hit a number. We are actually learning how to think about plant diversity and how to expand the variety of foods you already enjoy so your microbiome has a richer and more resilient ecosystem to work with. The polyphenols we talked about today, the color on your plate, the shiso, the coulantro, the five spice blend, this is exactly the kind of variety I need. If you have IBS, SIBO, diverticulitis, or you already know that fiber can be tricky for your body, simply go slow. Add plants gradually, listen to your body, use the challenge as inspiration rather than trying to do everything. That's the approach we're taking inside the challenge, anyway. You'll discover simple research-bapped ways to nourish your microbiome with more intentional variety without overhauling your diet or your life, without becoming vegan and giving up the foods you love. All right, my listener, if any part of what we talked about today, my mom's beans, the color on the plate, this whole person approach to food that I love, if you feel like it was speaking directly to you, this challenge is where we take it further. And I'd love to have you with us. The link to enroll is in the show notes. And before you go, if you've not subscribed to this podcast yet, please do so now. It is the single easiest way to support the show and make sure the next episode lands right in your feet. If this episode gave you something today, take 15 seconds and also leave a review and share it with one person who you think meets it. It matters more than you know. I will see you inside the Gut and Garden Challenge. Bye for now.