May | 2013 | The Real Foodie

May 30, 2013

BM Organics Market is Closing Down

My favourite restaurant BM Organics, sadly, is closing down. I never even got a chance to write a post to showcase their amazing food which is sourced exclusively from Amish or local organic farms. Highlights from my memory include frissee salads made with a Thai coconut meat based dressing and sprinkled with raw, grass-fed blue cheese; brown butter and pumpkin seed spaghetti squash; sprouted lentil or chicken and kale soup made with real bone broth; grass-fed burgers with sprouted wheat buns and homemade fermented ketchup (the ketchup was a miracle and I would buy jars of it because whatever I put it on, my daughter would eat); spicy pastured chicken wings; fries fried in lard; sprouted mac ‘n cheese; raw milk smoothies; grass-fed hot dogs and sprouted hummus; all cooked using real cooking fats like butter, lard and coconut oil.

I knew it was too good to be true that a restaurant following the principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation stuck around for too long. Since changing to the Weston A. Price diet it has been my dream to open a restaurant just like this one and I couldn’t believe it when I found it, in Fort Lauderdale of all places. It made my experience of living in Miami all the more enjoyable and to think that I was afraid when I left New York City of losing all my real food places—I found everything I had there and more with the addition of BM Organics.

We have been making the 45 minute trip from Miami to this place every weekend for their gourmet dinners since their opening in February of 2012. It was a blessing that I just happened to stop by on the day they opened! It was the first time we could feed my toddler a full meal at a restaurant and have a relaxed family dinner, knowing every single ingredient was real food. In all my experience of eating out, I have yet to find another restaurant that is 100 percent real food. Even farm-to-table restaurants still use toxic vegetable oils for cooking, they don’t sprout their grains and it is unheard of to serve raw dairy.

The only good news was they had a huge closing down sale and I was able to stock up on all of my favourite items for a big discount. They will surely be missed by their devoted following but they will still continue their weekly farm deliveries.

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May 28, 2013

It’s Good To Be Back!

We arrived last night from our long trip and though I’m sad it’s over, it feels great to be back to Miami’s tropical climate and my healthy routine! My first food stop was Jugo Fresh, Miami’s newest and only organic juice bar of its kind, to get a green smoothie for Olivia and myself. Olivia had the ‘Suga Sherm’ which is coconut water, coconut meat, banana, kale and spirulina (I asked for it without agave) and I had the ‘Jugo Fly’ which is coconut water, coconut meat, kale, spinach, apple, blueberry, spirulina, hemp and chlorella, also without agave. The smoothies are sprinkled with coconut flakes, goji berries and cacao nibs. The fat from the coconut in the smoothie is necessary for the absorption of vitamins and minerals from the greens.

My only criticism about Jugo Fresh is that they put agave syrup in their smoothies. Not only is agave unhealthy because it is a highly concentrated version of fructrose similar to high fructrose corn syrup, but the smoothies are naturally sweet without it and even more so if you are used to a no sugar diet. To read more about the dangers of agave read here.

At Jugo Fresh they make fresh pressed organic juices and smoothies, similar to the ones at Organic Avenue, Liquiteria or Lifethyme in New York City which I missed terribly after I left until Jugo Fresh opened. The Rastafarian juice man, Melvin, who used to make the smoothies at Lifethyme and had a devoted following (he may have been the one who invented the coconut and greens smoothie) left Lifethyme to start his own juice bar Melvin’s Juice Box at Miss Lily’s. My husband and I started making our own coconut and greens smoothie after learning from Melvin, using a Vitamix blender, but when I’m in a hurry, Jugo Fresh is quick and easy.

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May 27, 2013

Canteen, London

‘It’s amazing to think how far London has come as an eating town since [the early nineties], and the progress restaurants have made is nowhere exemplified better than at Canteen.’ Giles Coren, London 2010.

I had been wanting to go to Canteen for a while because I have their cookbook, Great British Food which came up in my search online for popular cookbooks last year. I love traditional British food and the recipes bring me right back to my childhood. We had lunch at the restaurant in Spitalfields and I was not disappointed. The food was excellent; it was by far the best restaurant we had been to in London and we returned two more times throughout our trip. This was confirmed to me by my stepfather: a true old fashioned gentleman who has spent most of his life wining and dining at the finest restaurants in the world; and came down from Scotland to meet us at the restaurant in Baker street for dinner. He told me he has never felt better after eating at a restaurant because the ingredients were of such high quality. This is not regular traditional British food like the kind you can find in restaurants all over England, especially pubs, which is loaded with additives and far from what our ancestors ate; this is real traditional British food because it is seasonal, nationally sourced, cooked from scratch (many restaurants buy pre-prepared food), their meat is pasture raised and additive-free, and their fish is sustainable, delivered daily from boats on the south coast. Their menu and design are reminiscent of classic British cafes of the past and their philosophy is honest, casual all day dining at a reasonable price.

Salad of Cashel blue cheese, chicory, pear and hazlenut.

Smoked haddock, spinach and mash.

Baker Street location

Scotch egg

‘Full English’ breakfast

Chicken liver pâté

Packet of colouring pencils and book given to Olivia

Olivia drinking freshly pressed carrot juice

Hot buttered Arbroath smokie, a type of smoked Haddock from the North Sea Coast of Scotland, still smoked using traditional methods dating back to the late 1800s.

Interior at Baker street location.

Braised red cabbage.

Sirloin of beef with Yorkshire pudding

Sausages and mash with onion gravy.

Brochure on each table proudly displaying their food philosophy and practices.

Spitalfields location.

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May 26, 2013

Daylesford, London

Across the street from the Pimlico market, Daylesford is an organic farm shop and cafe selling organic produce, prepared food, and pastured meat, dairy and eggs from their own organic farm in Gloucestershire. They have three locations in London, one in Surrey and one in Tokyo. We had a delicious lunch at the cafe in Pimlico and brunch at the cafe in Notting Hill, which has replaced the old Fresh and Wild market: one of the first organic supermarkets in London where I used to buy my organic food over ten years ago. It is on the trendy Westbourne Grove and is giving the popular conventional brunch hang out, 205 Cafe two doors down, a run for its money.

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May 25, 2013

Pimlico Farmers’ Market, London

When I went to London for my long overdue trip back to the city where I grew up, I arrived just in time for the Saturday Farmers’ Market in Pimlico (my mother’s local) to buy raw milk for Olivia. I was impressed that they were selling raw milk in plain sight, something which doesn’t happen in the US (usually it has to be bought secretively as if doing a drug deal!). The market is part of London Farmers’ Markets: a group of certified farmers’ markets around London, established by the food writer Nina Planck in 1999. Nina Planck wrote the book Real Food which along with The Weston A. Price Foundation and The Body Ecology Diet, made a lasting impact on me and is THE book that anyone interested in adopting a healthy diet should read, as it has a very straightforward and simplistic approach.

I was amazed by how much more modern and multicultural the city has become since my last visit and especially since I left ten years ago. While London has always been one of the leaders of the organic movement (it was where I first started eating organically in my early twenties), there is now a vast array of options for me in terms of real food when I visit. I remember during my first trip back after I left, in 2004, my friend took me to the Marylebone Farmers’ Market and it was the first of it’s kind that I had seen. Back then I wasn’t yet a real foodie, I was still just an industrial organic foodie, (eating foods that were labeled organic but not unprocessed, sustainable or from animals that were humanely treated and pastured) and so I couldn’t appreciate it as much as I do now. Now there are 21 certified Farmers’ Markets across the city and several shops and restaurants serving real food.