Oh, I hate obsessing about nutrition or diets, at the expense of good food or food porn but it is important to know why certain foods are good for your body. I just want everyone to find delicious dishes that are good for you like my favourite cold-weather sipper, my mushroom cappuccino with ginger cream. It’s thick, rich, and full of silky, savoury deep, warm flavours that fill my palate, satisfy my stomach, and excite my psyche – and yes, it’s really good for you too.

Remember when we had no diet culture? When butter was good for you? When we just ate? We ate without fear, shame, expectations, rules, body betrayal and we ate vegetables without thinking it was a deprivation diet. And not surprisingly, we were healthier – and slimmer.

I teach a 5-week course on weight loss through eating healthy but I don’t believe in deprivation diets or the latest dietary advice. I simply believe in eating – the lost art of eating.

The art of slow-roasting a Porchetta for 8 to 10 hours in a low oven while you’re busy doing something else – the art of letting the food cook itself. Don’t know what a Porchetta is? It’s an herb stuffed pork roast wrapped in pigskin and slowly roasted. The fat from the skin marinates the meat while the herbs flavour it. It’s succulent, delicious, and gelatin-rich too. I first had it in Florence, Italy. I was there for Christmas and there was a Christmas market in Piazza Navona. I bought a Porchetta sandwich from the vendor and fell in love with another seductive Italian dish.

I also teach the lost art of enjoying vegetables. Why vegetables you ask? It’s because most people can roast a chicken but when it comes to vegetables – most people are at a loss and they turn up their nose because – you don’t know what you don’t know. My theory about vegetables is this. If you hate them, then you most likely never had them prepared properly. But what’s more important is when you don’t know how to cook a vegetable, how can you feed yourself or your family?

I remember being on a book tour and a very large lady asked me to sign her book. I asked her what recipe she would be making first. She said, “oh, I don’t cook”. So I thought to myself, well then, how do you feed yourself? If you don’t cook, how do you take care of yourself?

If you know how to cook vegetables, even your kids would like asparagus, onions, and red kidney beans sautéed until the asparagus is glistening in garlic-scented extra virgin olive oil. Or how about fennel laced cabbage roasted with delicious fennel sausage. It’s amazing how the combination of fennel and cabbage together makes the cabbage taste so sweet. Just make sure your sausage is coarsely ground with no fillers – just pure, delicious spiced ground pork. I take it out of the casings and cook it up like ground meat in the skillet with garlic and onions before adding the cabbage. Wow, it’s so elegantly sweet and savoury. Yea, good stuff.

Wendell Berry says, “Eating is an agricultural act” and what he’s really saying is we need to eat foods from the earth, unprocessed. For anyone who knows my work, you’ll know that I’ve been the champion of local food for a few decades now. Eating from farmers and farmers markets is one of the healthiest ways to eat.

So I say yes, vegetables are good for us and I teach people how to cook and love them. They’re rich in enzymes, antioxidants, phytonutrients and what science is now calling phytphotons – the life in a plant. And what has life in plants will find new life in our body.

But enough about nutrition, I really eat for pleasure and without rules – and I want everyone to eat without rules as well. I believe we have to cook our way out of bad eating habits. The decline of everyday home cooking doesn’t only affect the health of our bodies, but our families, communities and a sense of how eating connects us to the world around us.

So every Saturday morning on Food Therapy (CKTB 610 Talk Radio) I’ll talk about cooking and eating well – the lost art. The art of melting a pad of sweet butter in a warm skillet with chopped up garlic. When the aromas hit your olfactory senses, I lay a few scallops in the sizzling garlic butter and watch as the colour of the scallop turn from opaque to creamy white to let you know it’s ready to be devoured. Now put that over top of a bed of warm, sweet cauliflower rice. The whole dish is ready in 15 minutes, it’s perfect for an after-work meal and the pleasure your smelling, seeing and tasting is sensual, relaxing – it naturally makes you happy – without any chemical stimulants mucking up your hormones.

Eating well is a philosophy – a way of eating that feels good, is delicious, is sustainable and supports optimal health. It’s a philosophy that uses your body signals, your emotions, and rational thought; body signals such as hunger, satiety, bloating, or acid reflux; emotions such as what do I feel like, am I tired, sad, what foods do I love and who am I cooking for; and rational thought such as what do I have on hand, how much money do I have to spend, how long do I want to be full for, how long before I can eat again, and how do I use up this vegetable in the refrigerator because if I don’t, it’s going to go bad. See how it all works together.

That’s right, an eating philosophy is about having food on hand at all times no matter what life throws your way, you’ll always be able to prepare a nutritious and delicious meal. It’s about having the right ingredients in your pantry, cupboards and freezer. I call it having a “sense” of the kitchen, others call it a culinary sense, I call it our 7th sense and we need it for basic self-care. Yes, eating well is about self-care and self-love.

But we don’t grow our own food, we get it from a grocery store and the average grocery store has over 2000 choices for you on any day of the week and it’s interesting how we make our food choices. Sometimes we chose our food based on cravings or urges, other times it’s based on time or lack of it, some of us are particular about how our food tastes, others are lured by package colour and messaging but how many times have we picked our food based on what our body wants or needs? Not what we feel like, but what our body needs, what our body is telling us – and there lies the difference. It’s called intention. Do we eat with intention or are we easily lured into foods that are not good for us? Are you in control of your food choices or is your food in control of you?

But I don’t want anyone to feel bad because you’re not eating as well as you maybe could be. In fact, a few small changes will often make a great impact on your well-being. I want to teach you to eat broccoli without feeling that you’re automatically engaging in diet culture. I want your attitude around food to be free of any association of morality – morality around broccoli or doughnuts. I care less about what you’re eating than what you believe about what you’re eating. Does that make sense?

And I can teach you a way of cooking that is quick, easy and inexpensive. Like making a delicious weekend soup that cleans the fridge of your soft and older vegetables so you’re not throwing them out. But eating well requires change and change is always challenging. Hopefully, over the weeks that we spend together, I can offer quick, easy solutions so the journey is a little less of a struggle and more of a pleasurable discovery.

But first I want to talk about the most incredible machine in the world – our body. We are gifted with the most sophisticated and dynamic machine in the world and it has one job and only one job to do and that is – to keep you alive. Alive, in my opinion, because eating brings me so much pleasure, it brings my family and friends around the table and good food allows me to express how much I care and love those around me.

That’s right, our body beats its heart all on its own, the lungs breath, it makes its own energy from the fuel we put into it, it has its own army that fights invisible invaders and it responds automatically to what’s going on around us and our internal thoughts – even though we can’t control it directly. But wouldn’t that be great if we could? We could just will off those extra pounds and think our way out of chronic disease. But we know that’s not possible.

So what is our mind good for? I’m not really sure what its purpose is other than to be spontaneous, irrational, unpredictable and to undermine the efficient working of our body. Right? What we put into our body matters and some of us don’t give that a thought or even think it’s a thing. But the truth is, that both our body and mind can work synergistically to give us a beautiful life – right to the end. As long as we believe that what we eat, matters.

So what I put into my body matters because I want to live longer, feel great and avoid disease and I don’t want to eat anything that will threaten that goal. You probably want that too so in episodes to come we’ll talk about a savoury vegetable terrine, layers of seasoned and grilled eggplant, zucchini, peppers and tomatoes laced with earthy, gutsy Emmenthal cheese melted and mingled with the essence of rosemary and savoury herbs. Warm from the oven, it glistens on the plate and luxuriates across the palate. But if the lusciousness of a vegetable terrine doesn’t do it for you, how about something simpler, like a roasted heirloom potato oozing with earthy gut satisfying softness, cut open, drizzled with sweet, grass-fed butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, broiled until the tips turn brown, caramelized and crunchy and topped with sautéed, meaty mushrooms laced with the yummy flavour of thyme in extra virgin olive oil. It’s a meal in itself.

So here’s the thing with the baked potato dish. Baking it in its jacket is once, baked. Slicing it open, buttering it and broiling it is twice baked. Now the starches in the potato gravitate to the surface and become the sweetness that caramelizes along with the sweet butter and the salt emphasizes and magnifies the sweet flavour and you have one creamy, sweet baked potato.

Ok, but is this buttery baked potato ok for everyone to eat? Again, the devil is in the details. For anyone watching their weight or blood glucose levels, they may not want to eat this carbohydrate-rich potato, if you’re healing from any condition, you may not want to raise your blood sugar because it causes metabolic stress and robs your body from its healing abilities, but if you’re a healthy person with no carbohydrate intolerance issues then – yes! Go crazy with these potatoes every once in a while because they make a full meal that is giddy delicious.

Now that I’m a nutritionist, I have different conversations with people than as a food writer and what I’ve noticed is that people eat what they believe to be healthy foods and they’re frustrated that their body is not what they want it to be. They could be overweight, tired, have inflammation that expresses itself as sore, stiff joints, or a low immune system that makes it difficult to fight seasonal colds and the flu – but we all believe we’re eating well. Of course, we believe it, we wouldn’t intentionally make ourselves sick – would we? But here’s a concept for you – have you ever thought that food can heal you?

So if we’re doing what we believe is right and it’s not working for us, then perhaps it’s time to revisit what we believe. So here’s the thing. Never in the history of man have we ever eaten so many man-made foods and never in the history of man have we ever been sicker. So what does that tell you? – it tells me that what you put in your body matters.

So like I said earlier, I’m not going to lose sight of delicious eating by obsessing over nutrition. We’re simply going to have some delicious fun and create a community of eaters who believe as I do – that what you put in your body matters.

Mushroom Cappuccino

Lynn Ogryzlo is host of Food Therapy, a radio show on CKTB 610 for discussions on topics that matter to your health and the food you eat. Listen live every Saturday morning at 11 am or listen to archived episodes here.

The post Food For Thought appeared first on The Ontario Table.

But that’s the best thing about sexy topics; they’re rarely predictable. The sultry Brazen Café on King Street in St Catharines has a row of crystal chandeliers that reflect elegantly against the sleek, black ceiling like diamonds sparkling on a starry night. In a corner, a tall, elaborate candelabrum erotically drips with creamy coloured candle wax against the sensual black on black wallpaper, the perfect foil to the scantily clad dancers in red satin costume and rose-red lips – Paris burlesque, it could be.

During the day, the sunshine floods into the coffee shop and brightly coloured modern art hang on the walls reflecting a more modern-day Paris. It’s an experience that creates a mood. For some it’s exotic, for two women regularly meeting for coffee and who accidentally discover they’re motivated by a community in need; it’s inspiring and energizing.

It’s here, on this burlesque dance floor where Sense and Saneability was born. With a strong sense of freedom and abandon, Sharon Demarko and I, both accomplished writers, found new life in issues that concern us most.

For example, Sense and Saneability petitioned the mayor’s office providing a possible solution to the desperation of the homeless in downtown St. Catharines. We did the legwork, pulled in some sympathetic partners and asked others for in-kind services. With nothing short of a shoe-string budget, it seemed like we just might have a chance to improve living conditions for those who have nowhere to live. It’s a project still in the early stages and Sharon is spearheading this one, but it looks promising. It’s a perfect example of a community coming together to help each other.

Sense and Saneabilty is an organization that takes the insanity in the world, and tries to create sensible solutions using nothing short of common sense. Almost like a mother would take the craziness of a toddler acting out and help him/her see there are easier and better ways to get results – better meaning, better for all. In these scenarios, we all become better people.

Sure saneability is not a word, but as Sharon and I are both writers, it’s our prerogative to invent new words when the English language fails to provide any suitable icon of intended expression. The only challenge is the spelling. Here’s where we differ. I say, “saneability”, reflecting the ability to find sanity in an insane world and Sharon prefers, “sanability” as a natural conjuncture of the two words. It’s a good thing we agree on most everything else.

My focus in on creating a healthier Niagara. In a region with a growing epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, I would love to see a stronger voice for preventative health options. To this end, Sense and Saneability started an organization of natural and preventative health practitioners. It’s where doctors, nutritionists, and other health experts meet to discuss outreach options. To date, the group has organized a series of health seminars called, The Power of Prevention. Held at many of the local libraries throughout the region, these seminars are free to anyone wanting to improve their health, reach a health goal or protect the health they have. It’s a great example of how a number of voices can speak louder than any one individual.

In an insane world where organizational solutions have come to mean the benefit of the establishment instead of the good of its people; in an insane world where political policies benefit special interest groups instead of the population, is it any surprise to find ourselves living in a world of great disparities – disparities with winners and losers. However, to Sense and Saneability, venting about disparities is more like foreplay, what really pleasures us in this burlesque house is the art of conceiving common-sense solutions to the issues that imbalance our community and society.

Currently, we have no website, Facebook page or other technical means of communication but what we do have is a page on my website – LynnOgryzlo.com. Here you’ll find the campaigns that Sharon and I are working on, but more than that Sense +Saneability offers a journey for other change-makers who want to focus on their journey of changes for the next decade. The actual format of this journey will evolve with and adjust to the situation unfolding around us. Let’s do this. Join us for virtual coffee, get inspired, have fun, get active, and be part of something bigger.

SOME OF OUR GREATEST CAMPAIGNS

Niagara Alliance of Holistic Health Professionals (NAHHP)
A group of preventative and natural health professionals in Niagara who seek to raise the voice of holistic alternative options for those looking to heal or prevent lifestyle diseases. NAHHP delivers a seminar series called The Power of Prevention. NAHHP intends to organize roundtable discussions with regional stakeholders to discuss possible solutions to Niagara’s obesity and chronic disease epidemic.

FOOD 101
A culinary institute that teaches the science of nutrition to all who struggle with lifestyle diseases, particularly weight loss, obesity, and diabetes. The goal is to empower people with information about their bodies and lifestyle choices. This way people can make their own positive changes to achieve and/or protect their health goals and improve the quality of their lives.

Good News Niagara
An organized, strategic and engaging network to inform residents of Niagara on the issues that affect them the most, to motivate and empower residents with current affairs, to educate about lifestyle subjects and to bring a community together through communication.

Food Therapy
A CKTB Talk 610 radio show discussing the food we eat, with the philosophy that what you put in your body matters. Weekly discussions centre around food and how food influences our body, our health, our mind, our children, our families, and our community. There will be food solutions to health issues and simple recipes for listeners to take action for their own dietary changes.

Artists Repurposing Gallery
More than another second-hand shop, this retail and artist studio environment will have a selection of new art made from repurposed, second-hand materials along with some second-hand goods. It will offer local artists a new sales venue, create employment and offer household and fashion goods to the public at less than half the retail value. Profits go to fund the Compassionate City Sanctuary.

Compassionate City Sanctuary
A group effort to help those less fortunate, the voiceless Niagarians who no longer have the resources to support themselves with a roof over their head, food to eat or community support. It aims to gather the appropriate community support, repurpose one of downtown St. Catharines empty buildings and offer solutions to make a change. It aims to be self-supporting through a variety of means within the first 5 years.

PS – when I started writing this story we were just beginning to hear rumours of a virus on the other side of the world, millions of miles away, that would affect us her in Niagara. How difficult was it to conceive of this reality. But as I finish this copy we’re all in personal distancing paranoia, toilet paper is being horded and stacked, we line up to be showered with disinfectant so we can buy food and we’ve entered an era of confusion, fear, and paralysis. Instead of being proactive, doing what we can and taking the necessary and smart steps to stay healthy, we’ve become mindless zombies, our inept governments are eagerly sharing their desperation and sense of futility – nothing makes sense. More than ever we need leaders and a voice of sanity and common sense in these uncertain times – the time for Sense and Saneability has arrived.

Lynn Ogryzlo is a food writer, cookbook author, culinary activist, founder of FOOD101 and holistic nutritionist. She can be reached for questions or comments through her website at www.LynnOgryzlo.com.

The post From Sex to Solutions appeared first on The Ontario Table.

Below is a 12-step program for cleaning up your diet. Take a month to complete each step below. Taking time means your new healthy eating habits will most likely start to become the norm for you, that your palate will adjust to the new flavours of real food, that you will find new quick and delicious dishes to eat, and that your hormones can balance and remove carb or sugar cravings. Taking it slowly removes UDP Syndrome (Unreasonable Diet Perfection) which can cause spikes and crashes in your self-esteem and will-power that leads to typical diet failure.

Your diet is but one part of anyone’s personal wellness program – but it’s a great start.

Step One: eat twice as many vegetables as you are eating right now. Click the link for more details.

Step Two: reduce the refined carbohydrates by half. Click the link for more details.

Step Three: eat whole foods – meaning fruit and vegetables. Click the link for the details.

Step Four: remove all added sugar from your diet including sodas and sugary fruit juices. Sugar in processed foods is a danger to your health. These are called empty calorie foods, meaning the sugar adds calories but the food doesn’t offer any vitamins, minerals or any other live ingredients to balance it off or make it healthy, despite what the front of the package claims. Sugar is the number one killer in Canada and is not an essential nutrient.

Step Five: I don’t agree with the low-fat movement, however, what was born out of that era was a distinction between good and bad fats – that’s a good thing. Today we understand that we need to eat more good or healthy fats such as extra virgin olive oil, olives, avocados, avocado oil, butter, coconut oil (in moderation). You can increase your consumption of healthy fats and don’t need to worry about weight gain. Eating a good amount of healthy fat daily will curb carbohydrate cravings.

Step Six: too much animal protein can be hard on your body in many ways. By cutting back on your animal protein and eating more vegetables, you lessen the burden and allow your body space it may need to heal. Choose grass-fed or organic options. Try eating more fatty fish such as cold-water salmon, trout, tuna, and seafood.

Step Seven: Learn to cook and flavour your dishes. I’m not talking about cooking as entertainment, as a skill or even as art. Cooking is more than what TV has made it out to be, cooking is everyone’s right. Knowing how to cook is about taking care of yourself, and your family; cooking allows you to control what goes into your body. If you plan and prep well, you can cook more often. Then learn to flavour your dishes with nutritional herbs and spices such as basil, mint, rosemary, sage, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper. If you can cook and add flavour to your food, you will always love what you eat and loving what you eat can keep you moving along the path to reach your health goals.

Step Eight: cut out 100% of the refined carbohydrates. The same as the first step, but now we’re going all the way. In your kitchen, you should no longer have any boxes, bags, cans or jars of factory-made food with the three deadly ingredients: flour, sugar, and fat. Processed foods are highly addictive and if you have increased the number of healthy fats as recommended in Step Five, you have less to no cravings for carbs and sugar.   Tip: eating more healthy fats will satiate you and lessen your cravings and binges.

Step Nine: eat twice as many vegetables as you are eating right now. This is the same as Step One, but you’re still not eating enough vegetables. So take this month and make it delicious vegetable research month. Eat about 75% of your plate in vegetables for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I guarantee there are more varieties of vegetables in the produce section than you are used to eating. This means plenty of opportunities to vary your diet in the right direction.

Step Ten: make water you’re go-to beverage (without sweetener), even 1 glass per day more than your usual consumption is a giant step in the right direction. Drink coffee and black tea in moderation (caffeine reduction), about 1 cup per day. Herbal teas are unlimited. As always, avoid sweeteners. Drink wine in moderation, around 1 glass per day, however, this is completely optional.

Step Eleven: too much commercial dairy products can be hard on your body in many ways. By cutting back on commercial dairy products and eating more vegetables, you lessen the burden and allow your body the space it may need to heal. If you like lattes, try making your own nut cream. Nut cream and/or milk can be used in any recipe that calls for traditional cream or milk

Step Twelve: eat more nuts and seeds but only choose raw to avoid rancid, oxidized or the wrong kind of fats that can be inflammatory and harmful. Pick almonds, walnuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds to start with.

Look for the monthly post called, FOOD101, The 12-Step Diet Clean-Up Challenge posted at the beginning of each month. Each post will offer up details, tips, information, recipes and food lists for each step. 

The post 12-Step Diet Clean-Up Challenge appeared first on The Ontario Table.

Some of them were incredibly extreme and complicated to follow, but I’ve always been a person who can follow through with any goal I set for myself – I just do it! So when I was given a blood sugar stabilizing diet of eating 3 meals and 3 snacks a day I threw myself into it. I read all the assigned material and it began to dawn on me that this diet would keep your blood sugar at a certain constant level  – but would it not be better to just lower it and keep it lowered?

Blood sugar fluctuations as you probably already know is not the greatest thing for your body. Constant spikes and drops send insulin levels through the roof, can cause fatigue and sleepiness, insatiable cravings for carbohydrates, irritability, brain fog and if not addressed, will lead to insulin resistance and eventually obesity and diabetes.

So I began to research blood sugar issues and found there are a few things that can help not only stabilize blood sugar levels but keep them in a normal range. You can remove all refined carbohydrates from your diet, you can skip a meal, you can eat more healthy fats and you can time your meals so you eat in an 8 to 10-hour window every day.

Of course, I did all four. From my diet, I cut out the five most blood sugar disruptive foods: refined sugar and flour, rice, potatoes, and all dairy products. What was left I discovered was an almost comically long list of vegetables with meat added in for flavour and a good dose of healthy fats. Yes, vegetables are carbohydrates but fresh vegetables are what we call a whole food, that is the sugar is balanced with fibre, vitamins, minerals and an abundance of other nutrients so it doesn’t spike your blood sugar levels as a refined product that is solely sugar does.

So what did I eat? I had giant, colourful salads that looked more like Buddha bowls with seeds, nuts, marinated artichokes, black olives, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil. When I wasn’t chowing down on a large salad, my plate was full of sautéed vegetables cooked in butter with whatever meat I felt like eating. I had marinated flank steaks, roasted lamb shanks, simmering duck legs, grilled salmon and lots of glistening shrimp and scallops. Breakfast was an egg or two cooked in butter or a savoury soufflé (ok, I broke the dairy rule for this). I ate as much as I wanted as long as I stuck to my rules of no refined carbs. Basically, I was living like a queen!

When I began, my diet was already pretty healthy so I didn’t think that cutting out these five ingredients would be such a huge deal. Boy, was I wrong. The first four days were not so dramatic, but then it happened – my body suddenly clicked into a different mode. I had an overwhelming feeling of contentment, my body felt lighter, I lost all cravings for carb or comfort foods and the excess fat on my body started to melt away.

That’s when I decided not to eat if I wasn’t hungry. At first, I skipped one meal a day and to my surprise, I could go without food almost all day long if I wanted! As long as I stuck to whole foods and drank plenty of clean liquids (water, herbal tea, and bone broth), my body was content and I was somehow happier.

After a few weeks of eating this way I had lost inches around my middle, inflammation disappeared, I was sleeping better at night, my moodiness and irritability was gone, I had a high and consistent levels of good energy, I didn’t experience anxiety, I started exercising again, could think clearer and – my blood sugar levels were consistently in the normal range and stable.

I’m proud to say that during the holidays I only fell off the wagon once – I had a glass of champagne at New Years. For the most part, there were so many great foods to eat that it was easy for me, but then I’ve always had a pretty good diet to begin with and that definitely helped. I think if anyone eats a lot of refined and packaged foods, then they may have a more difficult time and it may take longer to reach the same results, but it is possible. Eating this way reminds me of my grandparents who ate mostly from the garden, preserved food for winter, made their own sausages and almost bathed in olive oil (they consumed so much).

It’s been about four months since I started this way of eating. I have scaled back on the fats (the initial high levels are important for satiation) and I have allowed some grass-fed, non-homogenized dairy products and some quality cheeses back into my diet (not the refined dairy so common today). I no longer have a taste for pasta, pizza, bread, pastries or any other calorie-dense, nutrient-poor, refined carbohydrate.

My family asks me if I’ll stick to this diet and I try to explain, “it’s not a diet”. It’s a change in the way I eat that supports a healthier me. So yea, I’ll stick to it because removing refined sugar and flour, rice, potatoes and dairy will go down as one of the best things I’ve ever done for my health.

My Favourite Breakfast

1 portobello mushroom cap, dirt dusted off
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
large handful of spinach
1 red chili (optional)
1 tsp butter
1 egg
1 tomato slice
sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Preheat the oven to 450F. Place the portobello, rib-side up on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from heat and turn it over to let the excess moisture drain.

Meanwhile, in a skillet add the olive oil and chili (if using) and warm over medium heat. Add the spinach and let cook for 5 minutes until well wilted and water has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper. Remove the spinach, add the butter and let it melt. Crack in an egg and let it cook over medium heat to your liking.

Put it all together by placing the mushroom on a plate, top with spicy spinach, then the tomato slice and finally the egg. Season and enjoy.

Cooking Tip #1: This recipe serves 1 but easily multiplies to accommodate the number of diners.

Cooking Tip #2: If you prepare your vegetables in bulk, you will already have cooked mushrooms and sauteed spinach on hand and all that’s left to do for this quick and easy breakfast is to cook the egg while the vegetables are warming in the oven and enjoy.

To learn how to eat healthy, for time-saving cooking tips, how to stock a healthy pantry and more check out FOOD 101, an introduction to medicine that tastes good. It’s a 5-week program to get you started on a change in eating that you will love too!

The post I Gave Up Sugar and I’m Stickin’ To It! appeared first on The Ontario Table.

As many of you know in September of 2017 I started full-time school to become a holistic nutritionist. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten. It’s been so intense I haven’t had a moment to share anything on social media. Believe me, it’s not because there hasn’t been anything to share. Quite the opposite; every day I’m learning at least thirty to fifty new facts on health, our body and how food affects it but by the time I’m able to process this amazing new information and put it into some kind of perspective, we’re on to the next thirty new pieces of delicious information and on, and on, and on it goes; part of my Gemini personality is exhausted, the other part is excited.

So I’ve been silent for most of the time; at least until now. So where do I start? Holistic nutrition, for those who aren’t sure, is the study of ‘food as medicine’. I’ve taken biological chemistry, anatomy, physiology, pathology and body metabolism. You’d think they were training a mini-doctor! All the difficult science courses are now behind me (I hope) but I now understand what the body does with food – or is supposed to do.

In school I’ve learned that the quality of food you eat really does makes a difference to the way you feel physically and emotionally and I now understand why. Most importantly, I learned that sometimes you have to get out of your body’s way and let it heal. So what does that mean? Well, that’s where all of my training comes in.

With the generosity and support of naturopathic doctor Dr. Stephen Tripodi, I’ll be in his St Catharines clinic, Optimal Wellness Niagara working as a holistic nutritionist, counseling patients on eating to support optimal health. I might write out menu plans or health protocols for some, others may need recipes specifically designed for their unique health challenges; I might walk some through an educational diet change from poor choices to better ones or do a few cooking classes and take people on grocery store tours – quick and easy kitchen cooking tips will always be involved. Anything Dr. Tripodi’s patients need, I’ll be there to hold their hand and help them along to reach their successful and delicious health goals.

It’s a whole new journey for me from local food advocate to (local) food-as-medicine practitioner. Usually, I’d be telling you where to get the best lemon tart and now I’ll be telling you how to put that tart into perspective. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned and I’m happy to share with you right now is that eating healthy is even more delicious and easy than I’d ever imagined. It’s not about deprivation at all – and it’s not about dieting!

So I’ll be helping patients to think, cook and eat healthy with culinary tools they can use to overcome almost any health issue and inspire them to make better lifestyle choices. Changing a lifetime of eating habits doesn’t happen overnight but with a little help they will be well on their way to improved health! Please come and see me!

Dr. Stephen Tripodi
905-988-9009
26 Hiscott St, St Cathairnes
www.optimalwellnessniagara.com

The post I’m a Holistic Nutritionist appeared first on The Ontario Table.

The Ontario Table cookbook features over 500 of Ogryzlo’s seductively delicious food photographs, both of recipe dishes and also of rural Perth County with stories of farmers, the food that grows there and the culinary entrepreneurs that are creating from its bounty.

Opening night for this appetizing affair is September 15 at 7 pm. Food Photographer, Jon Ogryzlo and his wife, author of The Ontario Table, Lynn Ogryzlo will be in attendance. The exhibition runs from September 15 to October 14. Once you’ve worked up an appetite for delicious food at the St Marys Station Gallery, stroll through the town and taste your way through the cookbook at the participating restaurants. St Marys restaurants like Little Reds, Jenny’s, Barristas, Four Happy and the Kitchen Bakery will be featuring a dish from the cookbook with the corresponding photograph. The local Independent grocery store (also in town) is sponsoring the promotion of this delicious food exhibition.

Why St Marys? The Thames River flows through St Marys in the heart of Perth County. The water snakes it’s way under stone bridges, cascading over waterfalls and rocks. Around the Thames, the land swells upward revealing Victorian homes, rolling lawns, mature trees and on top of each hilltop peak, a different church with a grand steeple towering skywards. Around the town are rolling hills of golden wheat, corduroy fields of corn and vast curly expanses of soy. The little town of St Marys has all the hallmarks of an English countryside village tucked into rural agricultural and one of Ontario’s best-kept secrets.

It’s only fitting then that St Marys has a historic railway station. VIA Rail rumbles through St Marys twice a day on it’s way from Toronto to London and other than the little commuter business that exists, the railway station has become an artists enclave.

One of those artists is Cameron Porteous. If that name sounds familiar, Cameron’s fame comes from his work at the Shaw Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, designing stages and costumes that are legendary. Since then, Porteous has travelled the world lending his talents to working on historical documentary films.

Porteous not only has his own studio in the St Marys Station Gallery where he paints amazing icons of rural Perth County (amazingly no landscapes) but he established and curates the first railway art gallery in Canada drawing artists the likes of Scott McKowen and his unique form of scratch art.

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To the north I walk 6 blocks to Young Dundas Square and the Eaton Centre and a further 2 more blocks to Nathan Phillips Square. To the west, I’m just 1 block from the St Lawrence Market. I’m surrounded by small brown-stone historic buildings including the Flat Iron Building, parks like Bursey Park and the new dog fountain (beautiful – you’ve got to see it!), restaurants that spill out onto sidewalks and every imaginable business, entertainment venue and store you can think of. I want for nothing!

So life in Toronto has been different from Niagara-on-the-Lake. While I miss the beautiful, lush, green landscapes and the closer connection to the earth in Niagara, I find I’m drawn to the life that exists in a big city and the availability of everything – on foot! Yes, I haven’t driven a car since I moved to Toronto except to come back to visit Niagara. I think that’s what I’m most in love with is the walking!

So I take my work to the beach or a park of which there are many, I shop for groceries at the various markets and grocery stores that surround me (6 of them to choose from!), both of my banks are within a block of each other, I no longer have a wine cellar because we’re surrounded by three LCBO stores including the amazing head office store (Cooper St), I no longer have an overly abundant spice rack because there is a Bulk Barn across the street, there are a few live theatre venues in my neighbourhood or I can walk 15 minutes to the Canadian Opera Company or Roy Thompson Hall. There’s even a movie theatre I can see from my living room window and the library is in the adjoining building so I’ve joined their amazing book club.

There are so many choices and opportunities in Toronto that it makes me think I can do things I never thought were possible. For example, I’ve just put my projects on hold for a year while I take a full-time course in holistic nutrition. That’s right, I’m going back to school.

Photo courtesy of Jon Ogryzlo.

Why? You ask?  Well, I’ve been trying to write my next book. Of course it will be another book about local food but I want this one to explain why local food is the most nutritious and healthy food available. In addition, I’ve been asked to deliver cooking classes to people who want to become healthy (or healthier) and to learn the basics of cooking to make it easier, quicker and more enjoyable in their busy lifestyles. But to write my book or even think of helping others, I need to know more. And since I’ve always believed in preventative health and using food as a way to stay healthy, I’ve chosen holistic nutrition over an allopathic occupation, such as dietitian.

It’s funny as I think back over my career as a food writer. I’ve always had a strong desire to connect people to farmers and the food that grows in Niagara; to show them a better way – a better way to eat, a healthier way. All of my books focus on this as did my newspaper column, tv show, magazine stories and local food organization (Niagara Culinary Trail). I wanted to help people eat better. But I’m not sure if I ever helped many, I think it was more entertainment than anything else. But now I’m given an opportunity to really help others and I’m so glad I’m in Toronto where there is the opportunity to learn environmental medicine and holistic nutrition.

So I’m going back to school. I can’t promise to be more active on social media, but I might from time to time, feel compelled to share some healthy information or resources with everyone. Likewise, feel free to reach out to me at any time. To give you a little look into my new direction in food, watch the Netflix movie, Forks Over Knives. No, it’s not a movie about a celebrity chef. It’s a story about choosing to focus on healthy food (that you pick up with your fork) over eating a bad diet and ending up under a surgeon’s knife. And it will be the focus of my next book.

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The tradition of Italian cooking is all about the grandmother, about the matriarch of the kitchen and therefore the family. There is no memory on earth more symbolic of love than the sight of someone’s grandmother making a meal for the people she loves. My grandmother didn’t waste time thinking too much about the tomatoes or the sausages. She simply grew the best, bought the best and made the best meal. Her food became symbolic of love and all other words to describe what she did are inadequate.

Michael Pollan said, “the shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.” My grandmother resembles that sentiment. They’re big shoes to fill.

Like my grandmother, I cook because that’s just what I do to take care of myself and my family. My children need proper nutrition to grow healthy brains and bodies and my husband and I need proper nutrition to be healthy and happy. Yes, that’s right, food makes us happy on many levels.

First, sharing food as Pollan suggested creates family and community and being interconnected with others in a positive way will actually support physical and mental health in our bodies. Besides the act of sharing, the quality of the food you eat creates the quality of our bodies and also our minds. I may not have the scientific reports to support my theory but it’s really just common sense.

Think about it. Today we live in a world of abundance with attitudes of lack, we’re overfed but starving for nutrients and the average person eats about 150 pounds of sugar a year. Yikes. Who can have a healthy mind and attitude when, as some experts claim; we’re drowning in the toxins we’re consuming?

But I’m safe from all of this – because I cook. I cook because I know the ingredients I’m using and like my grandmother, I pick the best and make the best. I cook because the quality of my health depends on it. I cook because I’m proud of it. I cook because it makes me happy. I cook because I need to take care of my family. I cook because food creates my community. I cook because it creates family traditions and memories.

Because I cook, I know that good food is not about spending a lot of money. Because I cook, I listen to my body and feed it foods that make me feel good. I cook because it’s the only way to be the healthiest possible version of me.

What about you? Why do you cook? Let me know why.

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But if you’re like me and you eat local food it’s not just your taste buds that are leading your thoughts. It’s the fact that I haven’t seen my favourite farmers, the Pohorly’s or the McSween’s since last year and I feel like I’m long overdue for a visit. They grow my tomatoes and cucumbers. Well, them and a few dozen other amazing farmers in my region. I can’t wait to hear about their family, of this years’ plantings and how I’ll be alerted to the new heritage vegetables they’re growing this year. My culinary life evolves around them.

Food growing in or near your neighbourhood and the extended family that comes with it creates a very healthy life. Food, naturally grown, attentively ripened and soberly prepared is a cycle that brings us back to basics, feeds our body and nourishes our mind.

Yet today too many people are so disconnected from their source of food, from real food and from local food that the benefits of local food comes as news and they hunger for all there is to know about it. And that brings me to my news…..my fourth cookbook.

It’s called My Local Kitchen, the art of eating well. While my previous cookbooks focused on local food from different perspectives; from farm to table, seasonality and terroir, this one focuses on local food and how it’s the healthiest way to eat.

The truth is, eating locally means you become part of the link to the food you eat. It’s a healthy link and like the food chain is interdependent, so are we all dependent on fresh, whole foods for a healthy body, a healthy family, an enriched lifestyle and even a healthy planet. So it’s not a diet book, it’s just about eating local because it’s good for your health.

Because eating local foods, or eating whole foods as others call it, is what I do naturally, I don’t really understand the deterrents or challenges to why everyone wouldn’t eat this way. It’s something that has always baffled me so it’s time for you to teach me a thing or two about your life.

I’m conducting a survey about the challenges to eating better. If you are someone who is wanting to eat healthier but for some reason can’t seem to make it happen or don’t know how, then you’re a perfect candidate for my questions.

If you are willing to participate by answering a few of my questions, contact me by email and in the subject line write, Healthy Eating Survey. If you’re selected for an interview, there will be a complimentary copy of my latest cookbook, The Ontario Table, the best food from across the province as an appreciation gift. I hope to hear from you soon.

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Jon and I were sitting in Zoet & Hartig Bakery on Haarlemmerduk in the Jordaan neighbourhood when we saw the beautiful Dutch Apple Pie, it was highly recommended so we went for it.

Dutch Apple Pie is nothing like the American apple pie that is made with thin layers of flaky pastry encasing juicy, sweet apples. The Dutch Apple Pie looks more like a cake, tastes like a soft shortbread with apply richness and hints of angel dust. Since I’m not a cake eater, I ignored the beautiful appeltaarts in every bakery window and restaurant menu, but here I was on my last day and I had to try it before I left.

Just one bite and it sent my eyes rolling up and over my head! There’s no sugary sweetness in this pie, cake or tart (whatever!), but a velvety rich, buttery, citrusy sweetness that mingles with the juicy, flawlessly cooked, ripe apples laced with the perfect amount of cinnamon. Our waiter Ronny Kaufman tells us the apples are a mix of Golden Rennet, Cox and Braeburn. But the pastry, or dough comes from Maastricht, a little town in the south of Holland that has perfected the apple pie dough. “Everyone in Amsterdam buys this”, says Ronny. But when I asked for a recipe, he wasn’t eager to share.

I spent the rest of the day in search of a good Dutch cookbook, but it didn’t happen. So when I got home I did what I loath doing – searching the world wide web! Now I should tell you that unless you’re looking at a trusted source (Jamie Oliver, Martha Stewart and the likes), most recipes on the web don’t work, but when it comes to baking, double this rule. Baking is more science than experimentation, so you need a good source for the best end result. Unfortunately, no trusted source has ventured into Dutch Apple Pie baking – pity.

So I took a few lesser known google sources, looked for commonalities and decided on the one that showed the most promise, with a few alterations of course. I bought all the ingredients and spent the better part of an afternoon working away. When the pie had cooled on the counter, I put it into the refrigerator overnight.

The next day I released the pie from the springform pan, put it on a cake plate and went to cut it. The pastry was a hard as a rock, probably because of the near pound of butter that was in it. It was far to dense to be the light caky apple pie I tasted in Amsterdam. Perhaps I should import some dough from Maastricht? In any event, the apples weren’t as sparkling on the palate and there was way too much thick gooey paste on the bottom.

But the good news is that the elements of crust texture, apple texture and flavour were enough that I could give it another few attempts before I nail it. And if you’re wondering why go through all this trouble? Well, let me just say that you need to put this on your list of culinary quests before you die. It truly is pure art for the palate.

If any of you are Dutch (or not) and you think you can lend a hand perfecting my Dutch Apple Pie, please reach out. We’ll do this together! In the meantime, I’ll share the recipe when I’ve perfected it.

My memories of Amsterdam cuisine are nothing I’d expected before I went. If you’re planning a trip, do yourself a favour and don’t google Dutch cuisine before you go. I also learned that the Dutch still send tulips to Ottawa each year. I think instead of tulips, they should the same number of Dutch Apple Pies our way, we would be eternally grateful!

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