UnDiet...Week 30

Hello UnDieters!


It's the lazy days of summer...I always feel that in August all motivation to expend serious energy on anything is lost. So this week, I will ask for a very simple but very powerful swap. Many weeks back, I asked you to add more seeds to your diet and this week I will ask you to start adding more nuts to your diet.


I have never been a fan of low fat diets but it can be easy to go overboard when our main sources of fat are added oils. However, we tend to overlook food sources of healthy fat, such as nuts. When we eat our fats in a package that includes protein and fibre and other vitamins you are getting more bang for your nutrition buck and they help to fill you up too. Nuts are also a great alternative to all those carb-based snacks that we tend to overeat. 


So this week, consider swapping one of your snacks for a 1/4 cup of raw nuts. For a higher protein nut, try almonds. To boost your omega 3 intake, try walnuts. To keep it local, go for hazelnuts. Whichever are your favourite, buy small amounts and keep them fresh in the refrigerator and enjoy daily. Nuts will help to fill you up and keep your energy up between meals without the blood sugar roller coaster of a granola bar. Need a bigger snack? Add a piece of fresh fruit. There are gorgeous BC plums out there right now!


Go nuts, folks.
Desiree

Eat...Winter Apple Parsnip Bake

One of the things I love most about my SPUD produce box (besides the fact that the groceries come to me and they use local and organic producers first) is that my cooking strategy changes from "what do I feel like making" to "how can I use the contents of my produce drawer?" It forces you to get a bit more creative which is good for your health and good for your taste buds. 


I have been staring down some parsnips for a while and wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them. Parsnips, called "carrots with attitude" by Rachel Ray, are a local root veggie that have a sharp spiciness to them that lends well to a bit of time in the old oven. Even though they lack colour, parsnips aren't just nutritional filler: they are a source of fibre, heart loving potassium, bone building calcium and folate for a healthy nervous system. I figured I would sweeten them up a bit so my husband might like them. He thinks that this would be a nice side dish for some pork tenderloin but I served it, of course, as a vegetarian main course over organic quinoa. The nice thing about this recipe is that it can be a completely 100 mile meal with a few adjustments.


Here is what resulted...I had a photo but it turned out so badly I thought I wouldn't bother putting it up. I am hoping Santa will deliver a new camera. 


Recipe: Winter Apple Parsnip Bake


Preheat oven to 375 degrees


4 medium parsnips, cubed or sliced
2 medium apples, cubed or sliced
1 medium leek, sliced
2 cups canned or precooked chick peas, drained


2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (substitute butter for a 100 mile recipe)
1/2 cup demerara sugar (substitute honey for a 100 mile recipe)
pinch salt


2 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces


In a 9x9 baking dish or a 9 inch pie plate, combine all ingredients except for butter and toss well. Then add butter on top. You could cube the parsnips and apples so they are uniform with the chick peas or slice them. 


Bake for 15 minutes, stir and bake for 15 more minutes or until parsnips are tender. I think this would also be tasty curried: Add 1-2 tbsp curry powder and reduce sugar by half and add 1/4 cup raisins if you like them. 


Serve over your favourite whole grain like quinoa, barley, brown rice or buckwheat.


Happy Holidays,
Desiree

Eat...just like old times...part one

Tree Carvings on Ferry Island in Terrace BC

As I write, I am sitting in the house that formed my primary education in food. My mother is Portuguese by birth, having arrived on chilly Canadian soil as a child in 1959…and I am Portuguese by acculturation via these four walls. I grew up, for all intents and purposes, in my grandparent’s house here in Terrace. The small, simple house at the end of a quiet street, anchored by a giant old cherry tree and flanked by lovingly tended gardens. The house where there is always more food than its inhabitants (and neighbours, for that matter) could possibly eat. Where my grandmother does not greet you with a traditional “Hi” or “So good to see you” but “Did you eat?”



After 48 hours here, memories are flooding back and now in a more reflective state, induced no doubt by my recent foray into motherhood, I am starting to make myriad connections between who I am now as a dietitian, a cook and an eater and my formative food experiences which occurred right here.

Life in this house revolves around food and wine. Everyone who enters will either help themselves to whatever is on the kitchen counter - cake, boiled taro, fried broad beans – or will be lovingly force fed these and more upon taking a seat. If you don’t eat, my grandmother will offer more and different types of food until she finds one that you like and will eat. Not being hungry is unfathomable and therefore you are refusing because she has not correctly guessed what might be appetizing to you.

 My culinary history is filled with a historically appropriate dichotomy of traditional and “modern”, simple and processed, home grown and store bought. Arriving in Canada without immediate access to the foods she knew and wanting to make a life in harmony with her new nation, as was common for immigrants of the time, my grandmother embraced Canadian foods with open arms. Mid century marvels such as Shake and Bake chicken, Jello molds, Cool Whip and Duncan Hines cake mixes shared pride of place alongside the familiar caldo verde, feijoa assado, massa sovada and arroz doce of our Azorean homeland. I remember as a child eating all of these traditional foods happily but still wanting the brand name treats I saw on the Saturday morning commercials. So I pleaded for my grandmother to buy Lucky Charms (from which I removed the toy and left in the cupboard, uneaten). I bought Chips Ahoy and Oreos instead of eating homemade meringues and butter cookies. But I sat down and ate every kind of vegetable imaginable (Brussels sprouts! Kale! Cabbage!) without complaint. And then I downed Pringles for dessert. Now that all of the grandkids are grown up, the processed foods feature somewhat less frequently than the foods of my grandparent's youth but the chips and candy are still hiding in the same spot…ready for snack attacks whenever they occur.

 I spent my childhood watching my grandmother move deftly through the kitchen with admiration. A chair beside the counter was my prime vantage point. There were bowls to be licked (cake batter and cookie dough) and chicken to be shook and I didn't want to miss a minute of it. The turning point in my culinary education occurred one day when I was waiting to shake chicken. My grandmother had received a phone call before she could stuff the first piece in the bag, leaving me on the chair, staring at the chicken…dying to shake it. Patience was not one of my early virtues, sufficed to say. Pestering my grandmother as to when we could make the chicken, she simply stated, “you can do it yourself”. I could? This was serious business. I had not touched raw chicken before. It was slimy. And weird. But as my pulse quickened with the weight of the decision, my impatience finally outweighed my trepidation and so the fingers gingerly grabbed the chicken and placed it in the bag and shook away. Emboldened, I tried another piece, then another, until I proceeded to finish the entire batch.


Do you remember those commercials, the one where the little girl exclaims “It’s Shake and Bake…and I helped!” That day, I did...indeed.
My grandfather, as in many traditional European homes, dictates the menu by virtue of what he will and will not eat. This makes learning to cook in this house more difficult. One can assist my grandmother, but taking over the menu will leave you at the mercy of my grandfather’s critique, honed by years of exacting standards at my grandmother’s hands. My mother knew better than to try and take over the reigns until she had her own family to cook for. I, however, had to learn the hard way.



I remember getting permission as a child to make dinner with my friend, T, one summer vacation. We decided to make fajitas. My grandfather took us to the grocery store to gather our ingredients and once at home we set out creating chaos in the kitchen from which a fairly passable meal emerged. We were so excited to present the first “real” dinner we had ever made. I must have been 8 at the time but what I remember most vividly from that experience was that my grandfather informed us that we had sliced the steak incorrectly, going against the grain.
My grandfather had been a meat cutter when he first arrived in Canada.

Thankfully, he was not able to dampen my enthusiasm for cookery…but let’s just say that young child never again attempted to feed her grandfather. My husband, however, has fared far worse experiments and eats them without complaint. How times have changed...

More to come,
Desiree

To Eat...or Not to Eat...Seafood

Image from http://www.vanaqua.org/oceanwise/ocean-wise-heroes.html

Five weeks in, the sleepless nights are now starting to add up and my little bundle of joy is robbing my brain of valuable thinking time. Well, at least I tell myself that my thinking time is valuable...So my "baby brain" has to thank my friend Steve for all of the good blog post ideas he has been providing me of late. 


Surprisingly (or not, for any other health professionals out there), very few of my friends or family actually ask me for nutrition advice. What is even more humorous is the discussions that occur regarding health or nutrition in my presence without anyone even so much as glancing my way. I have gotten used to just shutting my trap when this occurs because I have learned that unsolicited advice is rarely accepted with a smile. Maybe that is why I started this blog in the first place...to spew out all the information held hostage in my brain.


My friend Steve, however, is one of the few exceptions to this rule and a few days ago he asked me about what kind of seafood he should be eating, other than salmon (which is all most nutrition literature talks about). At the bottom of the email, he casually mentioned that the topic would make a good blog post and since I was stumped on what to write about next...voila!


Seafood is an interesting discussion, both from a nutrition perspective and an environmental perspective; one topic which I can claim to have a decent background in...the other, not. Here in BC, we are pretty fortunate to have the king's ransom of seafood at our doorsteps but few of us venture outside of a handful of comfortable favourites: canned tuna, fish and chips, salmon and prawns. When it comes to seafood, there are really two categories to choose from - the "superfoods" and the "healthy options". Read on, Steve...read on...


The Superfoods 
You guessed it, these are the cold water, fatty fish such as herring, mackerel, sardines and salmon. If you were only to eat one serving of seafood a week, make one of these stars your choice. Why are these so good for you? It isn't just the omega 3 fats...but that's a start. 


Omega 3s Cold water oily fish such as salmon are rich in anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats and what makes them really special is the kind of omega 3 fats they contain. We get ALA from vegetable omega 3s like pumpkin seeds and hemp seeds but fish give us what are called the "long chain" or "preformed" omega 3 fats, EPA and DHA. EPA and DHA are not technically essential fats because in theory, our body can make EPA and DHA from ALA - but we suck at it. The most efficient of us turn about 20% of the ALA we eat into EPA and DHA, which are the potent omega 3s in the body; some of us can only convert 5%. So getting your EPA and DHA directly from fish makes a lot of sense, because we know that these two fats can help us soothe chronic inflammation, help us prevent chronic disease and even boost our brain function. In fact, EPA and DHA are so good for you that they are one of only two supplements I recommend everyone take, unless they eat 3 good sized servings of fatty fish a week. Wild fish is your best source; it used to be that it had far greater amounts of omega 3 fats than farmed but of course the farmers just started adding omega 3 to the feed to boost the level in the farmed fish. Nothing like "design your own" salmon...come on, people...eat wild! If your seafood does not specifically say "wild", it isn't.....so look for the label.


Vitamin D The next reason that these fish are so good for you is vitamin D, the other of the two supplements I recommend every man, woman and child consume. You can see my post on vitamin D here. There are very few natural food sources of vitamin D, which is critical for our immune function and likely helps us to prevent cancer. Salmon is the star here, with the most vitamin D: a wild Sockeye Salmon steak can have as much as 900 IU of vitamin D (which is 90% of the 1000IU that many experts are now recommending as a daily dose). Nothing else in nature comes close to this level.


Antioxidants Again, gorgeous wild salmon is the star here (remember, colour equals antioxidant pigments) and in salmon, it is the pigment astaxanthin that is responsible for the lovely colour. Same old story with farmed salmon...that pink colour is added via feed manipulation. A unique member of the carotenoid (like beta carotene) family, astaxanthin does not convert to vitamin A in our bodies but the significance of this is not really known. Astaxanthin is being studied for its potential role in reducing inflammation, protecting our skin from sun damage and preventing cancer.


The Healthy Choices
This is the category I will lump most other seafood into. Fish and seafood stand out for being beautifully lean sources of protein, making them a great addition to the diet. White fish and shellfish are low in fat and calories and nutritious: scallops are rich in heart healthy magnesium and anti-oxidant selenium; oysters excel for blood building iron and skin loving zinc and sablefish boasts the electrolyte potassium for healthy blood pressure. I generally recommend that (non-vegetarian) folks divide their daily protein choices between vegetarian sources, poultry and fish throughout the week for better health and choose red meats only occasionally.


There is one health caveat with shellfish and that is the cholesterol in foods like shrimp and lobster. However, these foods contribute very little cholesterol to our diets in comparison with red meats and cheese. In addition, unless you have a significant cholesterol problem, it is the saturated fat in our diet that we worry about with regards to our blood cholesterol levels than our dietary cholesterol intake so feel free to enjoy shrimp every once in a while, guilt free!


Mercury and other Contaminants
The biggest health risk that seafood poses is that of the neurotoxic contaminants, mercury and PCB. When it comes to seafood and contaminants, think to yourself: "Good things come in small packages." Women who are or can become pregnant and children are most vulnerable to dietary exposure to mercury and should take care to avoid highly contaminated species of fish. 


Since contaminants like PCBs and Mercury are not excreted, they accumulate as you move up the food chain - yes, that goes for us too! All the fish we eat (if we are eating highly contaminated species) deposit these nasty toxins into our own system where they stay put and wreak havoc with our health. The superfood fish are all low in contaminants because they are small fish. Stay away from the "big game" fish like swordfish, marlin, shark and fresh tuna. When buying canned tuna, choose light tuna over white tuna, which comes from smaller tuna species. 


Which fish are best for you when it comes to contaminant levels? Rather than have me reinvent the wheel, read this Health Canada article which lays it all out on the line...pun intended.


Sustainability
Now for the larger question...is it sustainable to eat seafood at all? This is a far more complex issue. With the best Sockeye Salmon run we have seen in BC in years, this little voice might get pushed to the back of our minds as we clammer down the dock to buy this delicacy by the bushel load. As news of the health benefits of eating fish grew, our appetite (and therefore demand) for seafood, salmon in particular, grew alongside. And what the affluent Western world wants, it gets - to the detriment of less affluent nations that used to rely on seafood as the main source of protein in their diets.


As our love for seafood grew, we learned to choose wild over farmed, line caught over trawled and local over exotic. These changes went a long way towards "greening" our seafood choices. However, some experts argue that we should refrain from eating seafood at all as even stocks of typically "sustainable" sardines and mackerel in South America and Scandinavia are at risk of overfishing (some say that we are already there) to supply us with fish meal used to fatten up farmed salmon. Others, like the pioneering chef Frank Pabst at Blue Water Cafe believe in introducing us to less favoured items like sea urchin and jellyfish. 


I will stop there or risk exposing my lack of depth when it comes to exploring this topic. Where you stand on this issue is a personal choice but there are some great resources to help you make your decisions. Home grown Ocean Wise is an education program from the Vancouver Aquarium which guides you towards local businesses providing sustainable seafood options, designated by the Ocean Wise logo. The website also provides a list of more sustainable species. The Monterrey Bay Aquarium has its own program called Seafood Watch, where you can print off a handy little pocket guide that I like because it organizes itself with a stoplight system to categorize sustainable choices and also alerts you to high mercury choices so you can avoid them. If you have an iPhone, you can even download an app to keep at your side as you shop and dine. 


In good health,
Desiree

Eat...figs

Immortalized in the Bible, the Qur'an and Greek and Indian Mythology, figs have long been a luscious staple in the Mediterranean diet (and immortalized in North America by the Fig Newton Cookie) but many of us are not familiar with the fresh fruit. 

Dried figs are widely available but bear little in common to the experience of eating a fig right off the tree. Sweet and creamy with crunchy seeds, figs have a delicate flavour and texture that lends itself well to a variety of recipes. While most figs are grown in the Mediterranean region or even California, the fig tree can even thrive right here in Vancouver. These gorgeous specimens came from a friend's East Vancouver fig tree and I was able to feast on them 24 hours after they came off the tree. I have also spotted fig trees on jaunts around the city so keep your eyes peeled!

Interesting fact: what we call the fruit of the fig tree is actually the receptacle of a flower. The flower grows inside the "fruit" and is pollinated not by bees but wasps! Wasps enter and exit the fruit by the pore in the bottom of the fruit.

Figs, whether dried or fresh, are incredibly nutritious: four fresh figs contain 150 calories and make the perfect summer dessert. Rich in potassium (464 mg) and magnesium (34 mg) for your heart and bone building phosphorus (28 mg) and calcium (70 mg), figs are more than just a sweet treat! Figs are also rich in detoxifying fibre, with 6 grams per 4 fruits, which is one quarter of a woman's daily needs (25 g per day) or almost one sixth of a man's daily requirement (38 g per day).

Figs are also a source of iron, containing just over 1 mg of iron per 6 fruits which make them a great addition to a prenatal diet.

Fresh figs are extremely delicate and should be handled with care and eaten at once! Try them on their own or use this simple recipe. This is a great appetizer to make for company when the thought of turning on the oven seems insane in the summer heat....

Recipe: Figs with Chevre

Wash, carefully peel and quarter 6 fresh ripe figs. Top with 1 tsp goat chevre (I love Saltspring Island or Happy Days). Slice prosciutto or Serrano ham into 1 inch long ribbons and wrap fig with one piece. Arrange on tray and drizzle with pre-made balsamic reduction.

In good health,

Desiree

Eat...local food

You are looking at the gorgeous apricots that finally inspired me to sit down and do another blog post....I bought them today because I thought they were pretty. And I love apricots. I don't know why I love them so much but I would eat pounds of apricots if you let me...the flavour and texture is something special and I love how a perfect apricot is both sweet and slightly tart.

These apricots were also grown here in BC, which makes them even more special. Why? Because eating local food matters for a whole bunch of reasons. And I just might be in the mood to tell you all about it....

1. Local food means supporting your neighbours. When we purchase BC grown and processed foods, BC residents are hard at work to provide them for us. And when our neighbour's livelihoods are protected, so are ours. According to www.smartgrowth.bc.ca, most farmers rely on second jobs to make ends meet and about half of farm sales average less than $10,000 a year. Our farmers need your support otherwise we might well find ourselves without farmers in future generations. Our globalized world has many economists believing that there is no value in maintaining local business if another country can produce at economic advantage (Mexican tomatoes anyone?) but what about the impact on our community? I am no economist so I won't bother trying to make eloquent statements to the contrary...but if you Google hard enough, you can find information on how keeping your dollars in the local community end up producing a far greater economic advantage for that community than allowing your dollars to fly beyond the border. 

2. Local food keeps valuable agricultural land producing food, instead of being developed for another condo or strip mall. In BC, we are fortunate to have highly productive and fertile farmland that enjoys a longer growing season than much of Canada. However, our most valuable farmland also sits among the most in demand urban areas of Greater Vancouver and Greater Kelowna. The BC Agricultural Land Reserve, or ALR, is only about 5% of our total land mass. And 50% of that land is in the north...where we don't have such a hot time growing much through the bulk of the year. We produce an awful lot of food in a relatively small space. From cherries to chickens and buckwheat to berries, BC's bounty is awe-inspiring. There is nothing a developer would like more than to snap up some more land to build on. By valuing locally produced food, we keep local farms producing for another year and hopefully fend off the allure of development as well.

3. Local food is gentler on the planet. A significant proportion of the environmental impact of the foods we eat is tied to how far that food travelled to reach us. And while shipping produces fewer carbon emissions than flight or trucking....trucking 100 miles is certainly less harmful than trucking 1000 miles.

4. Local food can be better for us. Not always, but often. The reasons for this are many. Nutrients peak with peak ripening...so picking fruit long before they are ripe to sustain travel leaves us with fewer nutrients. In addition, certain nutrients like vitamin C are very delicate and degrade quickly. Less travel means less time between harvest and you and better potential for nutrient retention. Long distance travel also favours hardier plant breeds, some of which are not as nutritious. However, if food is improperly handled, nutrients can be lost no matter how far the food has travelled and some fruits like apples and oranges are fairly sturdy on their own and retain nutrients well. My money is still on local though.

5. Local food helps us create more food secure communities. While food security is a complex social, economic and ecologic issue, if a community cannot produce any of its own food it becomes far more vulnerable to a globalized food supply. From political fallout to climate disasters, when drought hits California...we all feel it in higher prices and empty shelves. Just like in your investment portfolio, diversification pays off when it comes to growing food. 

I would love to hear your reasons for or against local food...chat on, my friends!

In good health,

Desiree

Be Happy...National Nutrition Month

Let me guess...you didn't know that March is National Nutrition Month? This year's theme is "Celebrate food...from field to table". Now that is a message we can all get behind and one that this dietitian is excited to promote. Let's celebrate all of the amazing foods available to us here in Canada and better yet, let's take a moment to give thanks to all of those farmers to work from sun up to sun down to put those foods on our table.

From sea to shining sea, our country's harvest is immense: from the potatoes on PEI to Manitoba's bison, Maritime lobster to BC's blueberries, we have the healthiest foods in the world at our fingertips. So why are we still feeding ourselves dehydrated, processed and lifeless "food"?

With the latest recall of products containing hydrolysed vegetable protein all over the news, we have to stop and ask ourselves, "what has happened to our food?". These recalls are not going to go away as long as we refuse to hold food manufacturers accountable for what they are feeding us. So much of the stuff we consume is barely even food - have you ever seen the ingredients on a container of Crystal Light? Or Doritos? Nutrition Action Newsletter had a great activity in last month's issue: you are given pictures of 10 processed foods and 10 ingredients labels and you had to match them to their food. It was a pretty tough exercise...and I am a dietitian! That is saying something, because these were common food like Ritz crackers and breakfast cereals.

As consumers, our strongest vote is with our food dollar. Manufacturers exist to sell us food - when they see increased demand for food with simple, natural ingredients they will change their products to suit our whims. Remember trans fats? Those horrendously bad-for-us things that were ubiquitous in our food supply until we started to demand change? Trans fats are all but history now in Canada. This is because we voted with our dollar and bought trans fat free foods. We can do the same thing again.

We should choose fresh unprocessed foods first: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy (or non!) and lean proteins like beans, poultry and fish. However, eating a completely unprocessed diet is not necessarily a reality for all of us. Ready made pasta sauce makes weeknight dinner quick and easy; snack bars ensure we always have an emergency meal in our purses. But it is possible to make these things without MSG, HVP or any other source of nutritional crack. It is also possible to make bread, snack foods and cereals without high fructose corn syrup or its "natural" alternative, agave syrup. And we can be trusted to purchase pasta sauce, soup and noodles without a week's supply of salt.

So how can you make a difference? Demand locally grown and produced food at your grocery store. And read ingredients. Not nutrition facts labels. Manufacturers can manipulate food ingredients to make sure foods are low in fat, calories or whatever they think you want but nutrition facts don't tell you a thing about the quality of the food you are about to eat. Ingredients, however, can't lie. If you don't understand what you are reading on the ingredients panel, move on. Yogurt should be milk and cultures. Salad dressing should be oil, vinegar and spices and maybe a bit of real sugar. Peanut butter should have peanuts and maybe a bit of salt. Choose brands that honour traditional recipes and simple ingredients and the rest will follow. Get to know your food....

To your health,
Desiree

Eat...local food

Last weekend I attended my first Winter Farmer' Market. I organized a tour of the market for fellow dietitians to learn more about local food systems and we had the good fortune of having the Markets' Executive Director, Tara McDonald, give us a tour and a history of the market. The winter market takes place at the WISE Hall, which is just one block east of Commercial on Adanac and we were treated to the first sunny clear day that week on which to explore the surprising display of abundance. I continue to try and convince myself to carry my camera so I can put some fun photos up on the blog. After market day, I actually charged the battery and promise to get snapping.

Vendors spill out of the hall (next year the market will move to a larger venue) and down the street.  2009 marked the first year that demand overwhelmed capacity for the farmer's market society. Vancouverites are walking the walk when it comes to eating local and the market was packed all morning and food was getting bought up quickly. From low mercury, line caught tuna and biodynamic squash to grass fed meat and beautiful organic spelt bread from Rise (which I devoured almost immediately), the market shuts down any dispute that you can't eat local in January. Almost everything you need is here: gorgeous greens from Forstbauer biodynamic, legendary potatoes (I loved the banana fingerlings) from Helmer's in Pemberton, succulent olives from Dundarave olives ( I could write pages about picholines...which take me immediately back to Provence) and even some locally made kombucha - which I didn't try but will pick up next time for sure.

So often I feel like most of our problems with food and eating stem from a true disconnection from what food is and where it comes from. Food raised for export favours woody, tasteless varieties picked early to survive a long journey to our tables. Commodities such as corn become more food type substances than you could ever imagine: various shapes, sizes and artificial flavours in brightly coloured and agressively marketed packages that leave us wondering what food actually is anymore.

I grew up with a huge vegetable garden, a grandfather that spent his weekends fishing and a kitchen that was constantly turning out real food: bread made from scratch, left to rise on the kitchen table; pies brimming with cherries from the tree outside the window and salads made with vegetables picked just an hour before. Growing up around food connects you in a way that a lifetime eating boxed and bagged fare can't. Like most condo dwellers, I too obtain the vast majority of my food in a supermarket (thank goodness for Choices). While many West  Coast retailers take advantage of local foods, it is visiting a farmer's market that lets you get a bit of that connection back. Don't know what to do with kohlrabi? Ask the person who grew it! Find out what biodynamic agriculture is....or why granny smiths make a better pie. And rediscover what food should taste like - food picked just a day earlier instead of two weeks earlier and shipped across the country. Greens that taste like the earth, not like water and new flavours like sunchokes or kabocha squash. The market is filled with small scale farmers - not those selling the cash crops of cranberries and blueberries but those doing the incredibly noble work of feeding us with a variety of winter crops. Whatever can be grown, is grown and then put on offer at the market. And buying from the market provides the farmer with more money for his crops so that his family might farm another year.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention La Boheme - the crepe truck of my dreams. By noon the line up was at least 10 thick for these amazingly satisfying buckwheat crepes filled with any number of creations. My friend Heather had an apple and ricotta number and I went for the cranberry brie...the crepe perfectly tender crisp and flaky, filled with generous wedges of brie and cranberry preserve, just a touch of bechamel and gorgeous winter greens. I have been dreaming about it ever since....

The next winter market is this Saturday January 30th from 10:00AM. Get there early, get a crepe and laugh at how ridiculously lucky we are to live in Vancouver. More information? http://www.eatlocal.org/

Let them eat crepes,

Desiree

Resolve to eat well in 2010

Welcome to 2010....and to the first day of the rest of your foodie life! As many of us wake up from a night of "turn of the decade" revelry and head straight for the greasy spoon cure...resolutions that seemed so on point last night are probably being postponed for Monday. So while you nurse your hangover, why not take advantage of this opportunity and mentally prepare to set some real revolution in place.

A quick and very unscientific Google scan points to a harrowing survey statistic - that only 8% of people keep their New Year's resolutions....and about half fail by January. If any of you are dedicated gym goers, you probably loathe the January gym crush but keep your self serene knowing that the rif raff will disappear by February 1. Why is that? Perhaps we need to look at what is motivating our resolve for the answer. Is it 10 pounds and a serious energy deficit brought on by holiday excesses? Is it a desire to look like the airbrushed masses blankly staring back at us from our magazines in time for summmer nuptuals? Or what if resolutions come from a more serious dissatisfaction from how we are actually living our lives?

The biggest obstacle I see with clients is the "extreme makeover" phenomenon. People who vow to go from take out and Seinfeld to vegan raw and yogic literally overnight. This all or nothing approach is almost always doomed to fail because it suffers from a fundamental disconnect of what your needs really are and what benefits your current lifestyle brings. This concept might take a bit of explanation. For example, if you work a typically harried 55 hour work week, when you get home your primary objective is probably to clear your head and nurture your psyche back from the enormous stresses of the day. You turn on the TV and order a pizza so you no longer have to make any decisions and can conserve that last thread of energy left in your body. You lay down, perhaps without knowing it, because this physically cues your body to relax. And the high fat, high salt, high calorie food is also a common response to stress...and soothing hormones are released as a response to the indulgence. As a result of these choices long term, you may not be that fit or too practiced in the kitchen. Then January 1st rolls around and you commit to yoga 5 times a week...rushing from the office to make sure you get a spot in the class, and then finding yourself at home 2 hours later than normal only to try and figure out how to get some plant based protein and vegetables morphed into a nourishing meal before you have to get to bed.....just thinking about it is already stressing me out. So a few weeks later.....it is back to Seinfeld and pizza because your soul just can't take it. 

I personally am a big fan of the quiet revolution. The challenge I find is convincing people that taking small steps will actually result in the kind of monumental change they are looking for without the headaches. But it is far easier to work on goals in an achievable stepwise fashion. Want to be a vegan? Perhaps your first goal should be buying Becoming Vegan, a great book by two Canadian dietitians that will teach you everything you need to know. And since that is an easy one, you could add that you will experiment with cooking tofu or tempeh each Sunday. This way you will have time to look up a recipe and then have fun experimenting. Once you have that one down, you could make the switch from cow's milk to soy milk in your morning latte. By working each new change into your lifestyle permanently, by the end of the year you might actually get to vegan. And you won't be struggling...each new change will become habit.

I am going to leave you with 10 mini resolutions to get you inspired. Perhaps try adding one a week....and within 10 weeks you are going to have gotten a lot farther that most of the resolution crazed masses.

1. Add 1/2 cup of blueberries to your breakfast every morning for an antioxidant boost.

2. Trim up your milk: if you drink 2%, move to 1%; if you drink 1%, switch to skim

3. Replace your afternoon snack with chopped celery, baby carrots and a bit of hummus to sneak more veggies into your day.

4. Replace your second cup of coffee with green tea for less caffeine and cancer busting phytochemicals.

5. Swap veggie ground round for ground beef once a week to save saturated fat and calories...not to mention the eco effects of eating veggie.

6. Snack on yogurt with 1/3 cup of Bran Buds or Smart Bran to boost fibre intake in a big way.

7. Keep prewashed bags of spinach in the fridge and add it to everything: saute in omelets, pasta sauces and stews; stuff sandwiches and wraps or toss with dressing for a super simple side salad to an otherwise veggie-free meal.

8. Keep good quality pureed veggie soups at the office so you always have a healthy lunch or snack option.

9. Swap at least one energy drink or flavoured "water"  a day for actual water for a natural energy boost.

10. Try one new recipe per week; buy a beautiful new cookbook or troll great, free recipe websites like eating well or epicurious.

PS. My own resolutions this year pertain largely to my committment to this blog - I am going for a post a week. If you have any topics you would like to see covered...just let me know!

Here's to personal revolution,

Desiree

A Local Table...in stores now!

Here it is folks! I am officially (self) published....A Local Table: the Choices Markets Cookbook launched at Choices Markets and Cookworks yesterday. It has been a labour of love over the past six months and it is amazing to finally see it in print. I hope you all love it!

The cookbook features 98 recipes by Choices Markets' executive chef, Antonio Cerullo. Antonio comes from an Italian fine dining background but he is a bit of a cowboy when it comes to food. No matter what we throw at him, from tofu to gluten free, raw foods to reinvented Italian classics, his flair for creating simple yet elegant and delicious meals that anyone can create makes his monthly cooking classes at our White Rock store pretty popular!

A Local Table reflects what Choices Markets is all about  - there is something for everyone! Many of the recipes are gluten free and there are plenty of meal ideas for the vegan, vegetarian or meatarian in your life. Each recipe is colour coded according to diet suitability and comes with nutrition facts to help make diet planning a snap, just in case you're counting calories....I prefer to count sheep, myself!

What makes this cookbook unique is that not only is it about local foods but it also focuses on what is local right where we live, here in BC. The recipes are divided amongst the seasons -yes, you really can eat local in February! To help prove it, our wonderful friends at Farm Folk/City Folk provided us with their Get Local Metro Vancouver map and they even created an Okanagan calendar for us too! So if you live in Kelowna, you can crack open our book and see that in November, you can get local cauliflower and garlic to make a curry. In Vancouver, you might take advantage of the local potatoes and leeks to make a soup to ward off the rainy days.

We have featured 4 amazing local farms in BC and other local businesses who are making healthy and sustainable food for our family tables. I have also written a section on sustainable nutrition that talks about how each one of us can help to reduce the carbon foot print of our meals every day.

If you are in the Lower Mainland this weekend, join us at Cookworks on West Broadway (near Granville) on Saturday, November 21st between 11:00AM and 4:00PM for our launch party or attend our Cooking Class at our White Rock store on Monday November 23rd (call the store to pre-register).

A Local Table is just $19.95...with $5 dollars from each book to Farm Folk/City Folk!

Let me know what you think of the book...and get cooking!
Desiree