Pimp My Grocery List: Fazilah

Yes folks, it's time for another edition of Pimp My Grocery List!

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can get the lowdown here. Basically, I am 'renovating' readers' grocery lists, suggesting healthier options for what they put in their carts every week. I'm not trying to make everything spic and span, now - just trying to make it a little bit healthier while keeping the convenience and tastiness of the original product. If you want your very own grocery list pimped, email me at info[at]wholesomehedonist[dot]com!

This week I'm tackling the list of my good friend and fellow mama Fazilah. See her list after the jump: 

Putting Kitchen Scraps to Good Use

I've been thinking a lot about respect for food lately. It all started with an interview I did with Zahra Parvinian, board member at the Toronto Food Policy Council (I'll be sharing this interview next week.) She talked about how, as an immigrant, she was disturbed by the North American attitude towards food. She thinks of the kitchen as a place of family, of community and respect, so when she saw shows like Hell's Kitchen, where Gordon Ramsay throws away platefuls of food while screaming abuse upon his underlings, she was shocked.

That got me thinking about how I view food. As I've mentioned here before, I'm hardly the patron saint of food preservation, but lately, I've been trying to make more of an effort - planning my meals in advance and using my List of Endangered Foods method. So when I heard this Splendid Table podcast about using up kitchen throwaways, I was intrigued. Here are some of their tips (as well as my own) on using up scraps you would normally throw in the trash:

Interview with Rhonda Teitel-Payne, Green Barn Manager at The Stop

As part of this blog, I love to speak to inspirational people who are changing the face of health and wellness - either in their own lives or for a larger audience. That's why it was such a pleasure to speak with Rhonda Teitel-Payne, Green Barn Manager for the Stop Community Food Centre. Instead of operating like a conventional food bank, The Stop invites people in to eat, make and grow local and healthy food. It's an amazing community space with lots of events and programs for the population that needs it most as well as the general public. Below is my interview with Rhonda.

“Food is a way of reclaiming and validating who you are and where you came from.”

Rhonda Teitel-Payne wasn’t born with a green thumb. But she earned one – heck, she earned a whole green hand – over the last 13 years.

That’s when she joined The Stop’s Community Food Centre, coordinating both the community kitchen and the community garden activities. She had lots of community experience and a Master’s degree in Social Work, but no gardening experience. “I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job now,” she laughs. “But 13 years ago, there wasn’t such an organized urban agriculture scene, so I was able to get in there and learn from the ground up, so to speak.”

Rhonda is now the Manager of the Green Barn, where she oversees the community garden, the community kitchen, The Stop’s education programs and the Saturday Farmer’s Market. I caught up with Rhonda to talk about her passion and what she brings to the Toronto Food Policy Council.

You can read the full interview on the Toronto Food Policy Council website here.

How Manufacturers Make a Label Sound Better Than it Acually is

I've talked here before about marketing claims you should watch for on packages, but did you know that there's ingredients you should watch for too? I've always said that the ingredient list never lies, but unfortunately, because more and more consumers are reading the ingredient list,more and more companies are learning to 'spin' it. They are legally required to list all ingredients, but they sometimes make ingredients sound nicer than they really are or they play with the order of things to make the product sound healthier.  Here are a few examples to watch out for (after the jump)

Build a Better Bowl of Cereal

As I said in my Supermarket Survival Guide on cereal, there are a lot of Sneaky Peters out there in the cereal aisle - cereals that promise low-fat, wholesome goodness but rarely deliver. Don't get me wrong - I think cereal is an easy, nutritious way to start the day, as long as you build your bowl right. The following are some tips I got from Mairlyn Smith and Liz Pearson's great book, The Ultimate Health Eating Plan That Still Leaves Room for Chocolate. Though it was published in 2002, it's packed with meticulously researched nutrition information (conveniently decoded for the regular Joe), sensible, non-neurotic advice for eating well and delicious recipes.

Here's an easy way to build your best breakfast:

Supermarket Suspects: "Healthy" Foods that Don't Deliver

So we've talked about granola, crackers and juice as being less healthy than they're touted to be. But are there any more suspects lurking on the supermarket shelves? Of course there are! My top contenders (plus healthier switch-outs) below:

3 Ways to Fall in Love with Your Oatmeal Again

I have often told A that I can tell the changing of the seasons not by looking out the window, but by looking at my bowl of oatmeal. 

I am a die-hard oatmeal fan and I love to use it as a blank canvas and top it with whatever's in season: sunny peaches and pecans in summer, crisp pears and honey in fall, pomegranate and maple syrup in winter and tender strawberries in spring. But even I get sick of oatmeal, especially as the long, interminable winter sets in. Here are some fresh combinations to keep your oatmeal exciting during the long months ahead - minimal chopping needed.

Wholesome Banana Pecan Chocolate Bites

A few weeks ago, I tweeted out a call for a healthy cookie recipe. I wanted to give delicious thank-yous to some of the amazing people I've been connecting with recently, and I thought, what better way than healthy, home-baked goodness?  I didn’t have high hopes, though – as I’ve said, my adventures in healthy baked goods often fall flat (literally – leaden cakes, sodden squares and muffins that could be used as hockey pucks.) Cookies, I thought, were a good way to dip my toe into the healthy baked good pool (imagine? A pool of fresh, warm baked goods…mmm…wait, where was I? oh yes) – after all, they need no leavening, so the absence of white flour and butter is less conspicuous.

But first and foremost, this cookie had to be good. I am a cookie maven. (I should have a t-shirt emblazoned with that.) I absolutely adore a chewy, crumbly, not too sweet chocolate chip cookie. Or an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Or a peanut butter cookie…

See my experiments in healthy cookies and the recipe after the jump...

Pimp My Grocery List: Naaz

I'm so excited to pimp my very first grocery list! 

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can get the lowdown here. Basically, I am 'renovating' readers' grocery lists, suggesting healthier options for what they put in their carts every week. I'm not trying to make everything spic and span, now - just trying to make it a little bit healthier while keeping the convenience and tastiness of the original product. If you want your very own grocery list pimped, email me at info[at]wholesomehedonist[dot]com!


Naaz, a friend and fellow member of my book club, came to me with her list. I've got to admit, at first I was intimidated by how clean it was! Does this girl need any help at all?!?

See her list - any my suggestions - after the jump...

"Are you creating to be happy or happily creating?"

Today: Part 2 of my amazing interview with Meghan Telpner, Nutritionista. I'm sure you'll  find her as inspiring and engaging as I did! Read Part 1 here.

What’s your biggest reward?

We get a lot of love notes – emails from past participants, or people who came to a class and keep coming back and tell us how much it’s impacted their health and their lives and their families. To have a job that has a massive positive impact on individuals’ lives - it doesn’t really get any better than that!

How do you keep yourself motivated?

Because I get bored easily, I need to take on new challenges - for example, getting our online courses up and running was a huge learning curve for me. In the spring I have my book Undiet coming out, which was also a huge project. I just look to constantly keep it fresh.

What’s looking for advice to those looking to change careers, and what are your keys to success?

First of all, you have to really, really want to do this and live like this. It’s amazing and terrifying at the same time – you only have yourself to rely on and there’s no safety net. A big part of it is being really clear on how you plan to make money and how you plan to continually love what you’re doing – and they have to go together. A lot of people, especially in health and healing, say ‘I just want to help people,’ but at the end of the day you need to buy your own good food and your own yoga classes so you need to take a good, hard look at the feasibility of it. You have to be very clear about why you’re doing it, that you love doing it and that you’ll be able to support the lifestyle that you want to have.

I encourage people to quit their jobs all the time – I think it’s a great thing to do, because you need to work somewhere that nourishes you. We fall into this horrible habit of thinking ‘If I do this now, then I’ll get this later.’ The reward has to come immediately; otherwise you’re creating for a person that doesn’t even exist. In one of my workshops, I ask the question “Are you creating to be happy or are you happily creating?” It’s all about the process.

What’s next for you?

In February we’re running a 25-person retreat and in April I have my book coming out. We’ll be taking the school to the next level where we won’t be able to have 12 person hands-on cooking classes on a regular basis, which is why we are transitioning to online classes. I want to write another book – in fact, I’m already working on it. We’re also shooting another pilot, so there’s lots on the go!

In the future, I’d love to run more retreats during the winter and spend the rest of the time writing and cooking and continuing to play. I want to retire in two years. Everybody laughs when I say that, but it’s true. I’m not even sure what ‘retire’ means for me – I just know that I’ll just be working differently. It may mean writing books, having children, speaking and teaching in group settings – but whatever it is, I know I’ll be having a blast!

"I enrolled in nutrition school because it was the only way I could make myself well."

Meghan Telpner

 Interview with Meghan Telpner, Nutritionista

I first heard of Meghan Telpner as the former nutrition columnist for The National Post. As a bubbly twenty-something with a clear voice and strong opinions, she was just out of nutrition school and already making a name for herself with the Making Love in the Kitchen workshops. Her life was far from perfect, though – she’d turned to holistic nutrition after spending several agonizing years trying to figure out her own debilitating health issues which were eventually diagnosed as Crohn’s disease. After deciding that conventional medicine wasn’t the solution for her, Meghan went to nutrition school, revamped her lifestyle and got healthy. She decided to share her knowledge with others through cooking workshops, which quickly spread into media appearances, retail products and a soon-to-be published book. I caught up with Meghan to ask her about her amazing transformation.

You spent years in the midst of a really tough health crisis – going from doctor to doctor, being unable to work or even function some days. How did you take such a traumatic negative life experience and turned it around for yourself? Did you have a vision of yourself as a success story in the nutrition world?

I didn’t really have a vision – it was borne more out of necessity. There was a moment where I was in a health food store with my mom in the spring of 2006 and I was really sick at the time. The associate was telling my mom the health benefits of this protein powder and it was like this light went off – “This is what I need to know!” I’d been through so many doctors at this point and no one was able to help me; I knew I had to help myself.

I enrolled in nutrition school because it was the only way I could think of to make myself well. I was so sick that I couldn’t imagine being well enough to go to work, so I certainly didn’t think I was going to be a nutritionist. Unfortunately by August of that year I was diagnosed with Crohn’s and became too sick to go to school, so I went to California and spent three months healing myself through meditation, yoga and acupuncture.

I realized then that there was something massive missing in the system because I wasn’t able to find the answers in three years; in fact, I’d been told that there was nothing wrong with me. I thought, these doctors are blatantly wrong – I need to make noise about empowering yourself and making educated decisions about the right treatment choices for your health, whether they involve conventional or alternative treatments. I thought that the best way to do that would be to create a community of what I called ‘cooking parties.’

My focus was on building a community, knowing that anyone who’s gone through a health struggle often feels alone and excluded and it’s scary. Through these cooking parties, we could all cook together and eat together to create a community where people who were trying to change their lifestyles would have a space to come and play and meet people.

When did you get the vision to make it bigger?

Again, there wasn’t really a vision – it just evolved.  We’re constantly coming up with new things to try here. My life would be easier if I could just be happy by focusing on the cooking classes, but I get bored easily. So we started stocking products in our space, then we created an online store, and eventually we started branding our own products. Also, I love to write and almost right away I got the opportunity to write for the National Post. That led to some television opportunities, which led to a book deal (for UnDiet, Eat Your Way to Vibrant Health coming out in April 2013)…it happened very holistically.

Our newest adventure is the online courses we’re offering. We realized that we just didn’t have the space in our little school for all the people that wanted to sign up for our courses, so we decided to offer them online, available any time, anywhere. So far it’s going really well!

What’s the biggest thing you did to ensure you success?

I didn’t quit. Things would inevitably happen where I would think, “Maybe I should just get a job that gives me a paycheck every two weeks and not have to worry about this 24/7,” but I think that that my success comes from the fact that I truly love what I’m doing most of the time. I only take on jobs and work with people that I like. I love the creativity of cooking and I love writing - my dream job would be to just cook and photograph and write, and that’s what I’m working towards.

Also, I was adaptable. Nutrition has changed in the last four years. Social media has changed, technology has changed and what people are looking for is growing. I think part of my success was that I started the business in 2008 right before the economic crash, when DIY was becoming cool again – canning and fermenting and traditional cooking methods were becoming popular out of necessity. The awareness around whole foods and farmers markets and CSAs has dramatically grown in the past five years as well. So a little of it was being in the right place at the right time.

What has been your biggest challenge?

My biggest challenge has been finding the right people to work with me, to be part of my company and help grow it. At first I didn’t have the finances to pay what I really needed from someone, so I relied a lot on interns. Then it was finding the right people to fill the right roles where everyone was doing what they were awesome at – that’s been one of the biggest challenges in growing the business. It was a huge risk to take people on and pay them on time and manage the cash flow. I’ve been learning business management as I go and that’s been pretty tough because I’m not an administratively minded person; I’m creative and I find spreadsheets tricky, mainly because they are painfully boring!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my interview with Meghan Telpner later this week.

Have you had your grocery list pimped yet? Read here for the details on how you can get me to give your grocery list a free makeover!