All intellectual justifications aside, I have to confess that my efforts to remove dairy from my diet have been hampered by my appreciation for centuries- old food traditions. And when you add to that the I come from a long line of people who not only depended on dairy but improved upon it, I feel like I’m denying my roots every time I pass on the slice of cheese. Half of my family, on both my father’s side and my mother’s side come from the area of northern Italy that invented the Parmesan (the true Parmiggiano Reggiano). There’s also some sprinkling of Dutch (also known for being big on dairy) and lots of Portuguese. When the Italian side of my family immigrated to Brazil, many settled in the fertile lands of Minas Gerais, which is known for its Queijo Minas.

Although it pained me, I was prepared to give up dairy if I felt it significantly improved my health. But after a while without eating any dairy product and being very careful of what I ate, I felt no significant improvement. It was nothing like when I discovered a couple of years ago that I have an intolerance to white rice and a mild intolerance to wheat and actually minimized my exposure to those ingredients. Replacing white rice and wheat for other grains improved my life significantly. I now have lots of energy and feel much more focused. Avoiding dairy did not have a similar effect. In fact, drinking coffee without a bit of dairy in it is a bit hard on my stomach. Even if I replace it with non-dairy milk.

For me at least, looks like cutting dairy completely is not the solution.

Lunch was basically the leftovers from saturday – beans, polenta, and kale. For a snack mid afternoon I had some quinoa pudding. And then for dinner, I stopped for a quick soba noodle soup at our favourite sushi place. It was very simple – just buckwheat noodles, a vegetable broth, some mushrooms and scallions. A good day although the black beans and corn makes me feel quite full.

• 2 cups tomato sauce [since I didn’t think it would be enough for a pound of pasta, I added a small can of chopped tomatoes)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 3 small shallots
• 1 bunch swiss chard, stalks and leaves washed and chopped separately
• 1 head broccoli
• 1 tbsp chopped capers (optional)
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1lb pasta (I used fusilli)

Heat some olive oil in a saucepan, add shallots and cook for a few minutes, until it begins to brown, add the garlic and the stems of the chard and let it simmer for a 2-5 minutes. Add the white wine and once it has reduced by half, add the chopped tomatoes and the tomato sauce. Let simmer for 20 mins, add capers and chopped broccoli florets and let cook for another 5 mins or until the broccoli is cooked to your satisfaction (I like al dente). Cook the pasta and add the chopped chard leaves in the last minute of cooking. Strain the pasta and chard and mix in the tomato sauce.

7:00 AM – savoury oatmeal & red river cereal cooked with celery, ginger, and turmeric and seasoned with soy sauce and sesame seeds. Served with an egg on top.

10:00 AM – a cup of black coffee at the library

Noon – leftover couscous salad with kale, dried cranberries, & walnuts

2:00 PM – coffee at coffee social at department

7:00 PM – Veganomicon’s Chickpea cutlets served with homefries mixed with spinach, shallots, and mushrooms cooked in a white wine sauce. The sauce on the cutlets is homemade ketchup. The cutlets were… ok… a bit flavourless, I have to admit. I don’t have much luck with seitan or anything made with vital wheat.

It was in Barcelona that I truly began to reconnect to a simpler life, to go back to basics. Although there were a fair number of supermarkets near our house, I quickly noticed that there were also lots of small independent shops where many of the locals shopped. Each neighbourhood had its own farmers’ market. Ours was the Mercat de l’Abaceria Central, in the neighbourhood of Gracia. I quickly learned to shop according to the seasons. In the last two months in Barcelona, we lived with our friends Jackie and Sebastian. Sebastian was trained as a cook, worked as a chef for a while, and now teaches cooking to the unemployed. Both he and Jackie have a keen interest in food but not in a stereotypical foodie sense. There was nothing fancy, exotic, processed in their house. Just lots and lots of whole foods. Shelves were stocked high with jars of dry legumes and grains of all types. There was not shortage of spices, vinegars, oils. Living a block away from the Boqueria market, everything was bought in small shops or directly from farmers. Daily meals were simple and basic – a few grilled vegetables and seafood with plain noodles;  maybe a simple curry. Meat often as a dressing rather than as a main focus. They shopped often, never for more than a few minutes, and were never stressed about food.

Coming back to Toronto was hard at first. The typical North American grocery store felt huge and intimidating. I wanted to the shopping habits I acquired in Barcelona. I longed to connect with the people from whom I bought my food. I wanted to keep eating seasonally. So we started shopping more at Kensington Market. I began to get my dry goods from local bulk food stores. 4 Life quickly became my main shopping place. I buy all of my dry goods there and store them in canning jars at home. It’s also our main source of local yogurt and kefir. Pots, the owner, gets a lot of his produce from local farmers and is very picky about the quality of everything he carries. He is always true to himself and will rather not make money than compromise on his beliefs. Some of it can be controversial – for a shop that sells only organic produce, I was surprised not to see any soy milk. When I asked about it he told me he believes the hormones in soy were not good for us so he chose not to sell it in his store. Over time we became friends and he now greets me with a big hug when I walk into his store and quickly brisks me to the back to show me his latest food creation in his ceramic rice cooker.

When I need cheese, I go to the cheese store. When I need spices, I go to the spice store. We buy cleaning products at local health food stores. I’ve never liked strong chemicals so choosing to buy natural cleaning products is a no-brainer for me. I don’t eat meat very often but when I do, I buy it at the butcher on my street who specializes on meats from local, humanely raised animals. But what has really connected me to local food supplies and made me feel more a part of a community was joining a CSA. Every week I get $25 worth of fresh produce. I get to really experience the seasons. I also get to buy jams, pickles, maple syrup, bread, flours, fresh pasta, produced locally from real ingredients.

All of that was no sacrifice. Most people find shopping and doing errands a chore. To us it is our break. It’s when I’m able to relax from my hectic week. We wake up on saturday morning, go out for breakfast and then go visit our friends at Kensington Market. We stop at the bike shop to chat with our friends Sean, Liam, Derek, and pet little Mabel (heck, they even put us on their website!) , we then proceed to 4 Life where we spend at least half an hour chatting with Pots and Dwayne, one of the local farmers that helps Pots on saturday mornings. We often meet interesting people at the shop and although I pick up most of what I need in less than 10 mins, we seldom leave the shop in less than 40 mins. We buy our coffee and tea at Casa Açoreana, where we spend some more time socializing with Ossie and his brothers and some of the locals. Either before or after our shopping, we stop at Manic Coffee where we spend some more time chatting with Louie, the portuguese skate-boarding barista that makes the best cortado I ever had.

On wednesdays, after work, we go to the U of T farmers’ market to get our share from Kawartha Ecological Growers and hang out a bit with Shannon, who manages the stand, and her remarkable three year-old son Elliot. Alan meets me there and he and Elliot hang out while I shop. Last time I overheard Alan telling Elliot about the big bang. When we run out of anything – milk, bread, olive oil – we run over to Pusateri Fruit Market, a family-run small grocery store across the street from our place.

The other day we ran into the Dominion grocery store at Yonge and College where we used to shop to pick up a loaf of bread. It’s not particularly large but it is your average chain supermarket with lots of cashiers, and aisles after aisles of … stuff. We hadn’t been there in many months. I hadn’t realized the difference between shopping the way I had been shopping and going into a typical supermarket until that day. It felt completely overwhelming. There were SO many choices of everything. Shelves and shelves or colourful, attractive packaging. Lots of light. No wonder most people feel stressed and anxious.

So when people look at me funny when I say I don’t want to go back in there, I explain how easy* it can be. All of them say they would love to do that but it would be too expensive. I have honestly not compared every single produce I buy against the supermarket’s price. I find life is too short for that. All I can say is that we spend less overall – perhaps because we are not tempted to buy all kinds of processed junk we dont need since we rarely see them – and that we can still pay all our bills, go out, and do all the same things we ever did. And we are far from being well off. I’m a student and my husband is a pensioner. It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of will. Or of changing habits. But worth every minute.

* I have had the occasional person tell me that it’s easy for me to do that because I don’t have kids. I think I would be even more likely to stay away from the supermarket if I had kids. Besides, families with kids shop this way all over the world, every day. And I see them at Kensington Market every saturday. The kids walking around on their own, the whole family (often three generations!) shopping together and making it a big family event. I’ve seen them going over the years, the kids growing from babies to 7 year-olds who know the local shop keepers by name and who can pick produce on their own. The beauty of kids is that it is up to us, adults, to get them used to the lifestyle we want.

Having said all of that, I have to say the week didn’t start all that well since I wasn’t all that inspired when I went to the market on saturday and ended up not buying much. That has meant a few trips to the local stores and a lot of creativity with leftovers.

For today I made a meal out of the quinoa tabouleh I made on the weekend by adding some lima beans to it. I was going to add some tuna but forgot to buy them… For dinner I’m having a bit of the leftovers, some hummus, and some kefir for dessert.

For tomorrow, I’m thinking of using some of the radish salsa I made on the weekend as the basic seasoning for a rice and chickpea salad. I’m cooking some brown short grain rice and I’ll mix it with a can or chickpeas and the radish salsa (I have nearly 2 cups of it left). That should take care of lunch tomorrow and the next day at the least.

I’ll update this post as the week progresses in case anyone is interested.

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Day 3 – I felt a bit more inspired today, and tried Syrian rice, homemade Babaganoush, and a spinach & chickpea stew. The red/orange bits in the middle is some left over tofu with tomato sauce. It was so good that I’m seriously ready to explode any minute…

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Day 5 – success! We went from Monday to Friday without eating out once. It wasn’t difficult and I didn’t cook every day. Most of the dishes I made had at least four servings and would last more than a day. The above dish, for example, lasted quite a while as the spinach dish and the Syrian rice were quite large. So on Thursday I made a fried rice with the rice and spinach by adding an egg and eating it with some kimchi.

1. Eat fewer animal products than average
2. Eat all the plants you can manage
3. Make legumes part of your life
4. Whole grains beat refined carbs
5. Snack on nuts or olives
6. When it comes to fats, embrace olive oil
7. Everything else is a treat, and you can have treats daily

Numbers 1 & 2 are the hardest for those in a strict meat-and-potatoes kind of diet. But you can cut down gradually, making dishes that combine meat and grains to reduce the proportion of meat. Number 7 will depend on how you feel. If you are feeling fine, losing weight and your doctor is happy, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t indulge on your daily dessert but if you are not getting the results you want, it might be better to reduce the treats.

His plan is not really a diet in a faddish sense. He doesn’t preach we must eat all organic although he admits that eating what is produced locally and in season would be best not only for us but for the environment. And this is where all this eating sanely leads to – better health for us and for the earth we live in. Bittman started becoming more conscious of his eating habits after he read a scientific report that showed that the meat industry was responsible for producing one-fifth of greenhouse gases, much more than the transportation industry. At the same time his doctor raised the red flag telling him his cholesterol and blood sugars were out of wack. By switching the proportions of animal and vegetable products, cutting junk food and prossessed food (anything with more than 5 ingredients or with ingredients with more than five syllables), he lost 15 pounds in the first month, his lab work turned out normal in the second month, and within four months he slept better than ever before, lost 35 pounds (his weight eventually stabilized) and he felt confortable and well with his new eating style.Without counting calories, nutrients, feeling hungry, or rebounding.

Makes a lot of sense to me and I do try to follow many of these tips in my daily life.

Worth a read if you feel your health is below optimal and/or you are concerned about the environment.

Check the Globe and Mail review of the book.