New York City | The Real Foodie

March 20, 2015

A Nourishing Traditions Dinner with Sally Fallon

Marco Canora and Sally Fallon

I had the honour of sitting next to Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, over dinner last week at Hearth Restaurant in New York City. Chef Marco Canora, who has become a celebrity with his take out broth window, Brodo, hosted the dinner which was made entirely according to the principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation, as illustrated in Sally Fallon’s cookbook, Nourishing Traditions.

Sally Fallon has a devout following all over the world since she started the Weston A. Price Foundation, a dietary philosophy, based on the teachings of Weston A. Price. Weston Price was a dentist who traveled the world in the 1920s and ’30s, studying the diets of indigenous tribes and found that they had perfect bone structure and no tooth decay or disease. I first read her cookbook Nourishing Traditions eight years ago and I have been on the Weston Price diet ever since. Sally Fallon has changed my life and the life of so many others by improving their health, so this was a very special and rare opportunity to talk to her.

The table was beautifully set on a long table in the private dining room and lit by candles. The dinner was five courses, each accompanied by a different wine. Sally stood at the beginning of each course to make a speech, the theme being reduction sauces, followed by Marco explaining each course. The first course was a tasting of each of Brodo’s bone broths: grass-fed beef with ginger, Pennsylvania Amish organic chicken and Hearth broth; a combination of their chicken, beef and turkey. The second course was a trio of root vegetables, wild salmon eggs, Finger Lakes farm cream, chicories and a beet kvass vinaigrette. The third course was a sprouted grain risotto (lentils, red fife wheat berries, red quinoa) cooked in Hearth broth with wild mushrooms, cabbage and grated Spring Brook Reading raw cow’s milk cheese. The fourth course was a seared calves liver, bone marrow, soft scrambled eggs and alliums cooked in a Bordelaise sauce. Marco pointed out that the liver was from a rare veal from Vermont, fed only mother’s milk and grass instead of powdered milk. The fifth and final course was a selection of three raw milk cow cheeses, served with hazelnuts, sliced pears and honey. The blue and cheddar cheeses were from Sally Fallon and her husband Geoffrey Morell’s own organic bio-dynamic farm, Bowen Farm.

I have been to many great restaurants in my life and I would say this was one of the best, if not the best dinners I have ever had. It was unique in that it was not only cooked to perfection but also using ingredients of the highest quality. This rare combination was what made the dinner so memorable. Once you are on a real food diet and are used to the superior taste of real food ingredients sourced from grass-fed animals and organic farms, there is no comparison to conventional food, even when it is cooked by well known chefs. It is this combination that has made Marco Canora’s Hearth Restaurant such a success.

March 9, 2015

Brodo, New York City

My mother used to make broth from chicken bones when I was a child and used it as a base for her many soups and other recipes. She would especially give it to us when we were sick and always had a bowl of it in the freezer. She told me my great-grandmother who was born in Devon, England, in 1870, used to drink a cup of beef tea (broth made from boneless meat) every day. She used to say it was a cure-all and give it to my grandmother when she was sick. I have been making bone broth regularly myself, ever since reading about it in Nourishing Traditions (the cookbook that changed my life) and adopting a real food diet eight years ago. I usually make it from chicken bones but if I have leftover beef, duck, marrow or lamb bones I will add them. Oxtail also makes a very rich, gelatinous broth. Every time I roast a pastured chicken, I freeze the bones and when my freezer is overflowing with various containers of bones, I will boil them in my 16 quart stock pot with filtered water and four tablespoons of vinegar for twenty-four hours, according to the recipe in Nourishing Traditions. Sometimes I will also add fresh uncooked chicken parts to make it more gelatinous and nutritious. Then I sift it and store it in glass mason jars and use it to make soups, lentils, beans, vegetables, meat sauce or I just drink a cup on its own. My freezer is always fully stocked with jars of bone broth.

I was amazed to learn recently that this real food staple has taken off amongst the fashion crowd in New York City. Along with the opening of Brodo–a take out window serving nothing but bone broth–and a number of butchers and home delivery services also selling it, bone broth is being recommended not only by nutritionists and health coaches but also by beauticians and personal trainers for its many health benefits and skin boosting properties.

Brodo (Italian for broth), opened last November as an addition to chef Marco Canora’s East Village restaurant, Hearth, serving bone broth from 100 percent grass-fed beef, organic pastured chicken and organic turkey. Canora says he can’t keep up with the demand. So when I was in New York for my father’s birthday, I had to go and check it out. Sure enough there was a queue of people waiting to buy their cup of broth. They had three different types: beef; chicken and a combination of beef, chicken and turkey. You can also get a healthy add-in such as freshly grated turmeric, beet kvass or bone marrow. I ordered the beef broth which was deliciously rich in colour and taste with a hint of fresh ginger. It certainly warmed me up on such a cold winter’s day and I felt well nourished.

I was impressed with Marco Canora’s brilliant idea of a take out window, popularising a healthy cup of bone broth over of a cup of coffee. As the real food movement grows, I hope we will be seeing more of these broth bars and fewer places like Starbucks.

Sally Fallon, the author of Nourishing Traditions and founder of The Weston A. Price Foundation, has come out with a new book devoted to bone broth: Nourishing Broth.

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January 20, 2015

Real Food Goes Mainstream

When I read in dismay about the increasing use of pesticides, GMOs and other chemicals, how bees are becoming extinct and nature’s perfect food—breastmilk—is contaminated with toxins such as BPA and fire retardants, I feel hopeless and think we are heading towards total destruction of our planet. Sometimes however, I see a light at the end of the tunnel and believe the tide is turning, that we are finally winning the war against processed, chemical ridden food and GMOs which are poisoning our children.

I keep reading in the news about McDonalds sales continuing to drop. Perhaps the day I have been waiting for, when we will see an end to the infamous McDonalds we all grew up with and places like fast-growing burger chain Bareburger replacing it, is nearer than we think.

On a recent trip to New York I came across the new supermarket, A Matter of Health, on First Avenue between 72nd and 73rd streets. I was impressed with how many products they had in stock and how much variety there was. They sold many products that are hard to find, that I usually have to order online or go to various different stores to buy. It impressed me that a neighbourhood like the Upper East Side which has been slow to pick up on the growing real food movement, with few healthy restaurants and markets, is catching up with the more foodie-forward areas of the city such as Williamsburg and Downtown.

Also on the Upper East Side, on Lexington Avenue between 73rd and 74th streets is Organic Avenue, opened three years ago, where I get my breakfast each morning when I stay there. Organic Avenue was the first juice bar of its kind; Juice Press in New York and Jugo Fresh in Miami were soon to follow.

On my way back to Miami at La Guardia airport, I stopped by the market Cibo Express, which I was also impressed to find were selling some healthy food products such as Vigilant Eats superfood cereals and Maple Hill Creamery 100% grass-fed organic yogurts. A few years ago you could never find a healthy snack other than a banana in any airport.

In Miami the long awaited Wholefoods Downtown opened in Brickell last week, with yet another branch of Jugo Fresh located inside, as soon as you walk in. With so many new health food markets opening on a grand scale, such as Wholefoods (the first national grocery chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency) and A Matter of Health, we may be seeing the end of the average conventional supermarket.

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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