Nutrition: Steps to improve women's health

Nourishing Wisdom & Holly's Garden Products. Nutrition Counselor & Natural Skin Care Products

as featured in Woodstock Times July 30, 2009

An organic experience
by Megan Labrise

Are you easily seduced by heads of purple-hued garlic, happy yellow pattypan squash, and bunches of carrots with their long green tops still on?

Vibrant colors and earthy aromas bewitch me. At a local farmers' market, I find it hard to depart without inviting these visual delights home along with their friends, such as red cabbage, red radish, cucumber and kale.

Once I'm staring at my kitchen-table cornucopia, I often find myself at a loss for a dish that incorporates red cabbage, red radish, cucumber, kale et al. A third of my farmers' market finds often rot.

Thankfully, there is hope for those with a failure to produce with produce. I found it at New Paltz's Brook Farm, in the form of a farm-to-table cooking class with certified nutritionist Holly Anne Shelowitz of Nourishing Wisdom in Rosendale.

I attended the first class of the season on July 21. Shelowitz has designed a hybrid curriculum for those who crave a deeper connection with their cuisine: how it grows, how to care for it, how it's harvested, and how to prepare it.

"I want people to be able to go to their farmers' market or go to their CSA pick-up and say, Here's what's available. What can I make?" she said.

Working in conjunction with Brook Farm Project farmer and manager Susan Mitchell, Shelowitz successfully guided our small early-evening class from the field to the kitchen, teaching us how to assemble and prepare a healthful, seasonal organic meal from the ground up.

Lucky for us, it's the most wonderful time of the year: Cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, onions, scallions, chives, lettuce, squash, beets, blueberries and fresh herbs were all at our disposal.

Through an evening mist, we tromped across Brook Farm, a 70-acre CSA, or community-supported agriculture farm that features pre-sold shares for members who each contribute time to cultivating and distributing the annual harvest. The 501(c)(3) non-profit leases its earth from the Mohonk Preserve. It cultivates five acres of non-certified organic fruits and veggies, a herd of grazing beef cattle and a flock of "renegade chickens" which lay their eggs all willy-nilly on the grass.

"Every day is like Easter," said Mitchell, warning us to watch our steps.

Coincidentally, the class was entirely comprised of teachers. Mitchell, too, was a teacher who traded the blackboard for brown dirt just two years earlier, and Brook Farm is an educational outreach operation.

The teachers and I became the students - and we learned plenty. Dressed up in cellophane, pint containers or perfectly spun twist-ties, supermarket produce is red-carpet-ready in contrast to its rural roots. We students got down and dirty, picked onions and blueberries, dug carrots and potatoes, and snipped fresh, bristling rosemary. With muddy boots and soil-smeared palms, we returned to the farmhouse kitchen to wash up our hands and our vegetables.

Shelowitz then disclosed our dinner menu: potato-cabbage-carrot-chickpea curry; cucumber, onion and feta cheese salad; and maple polenta with blueberries for dessert. Imbibing the subtle odor of fresh onions filling the room, we talked about the nutritional value of our ingredients, about whole foods and sweeteners, and about tips of the food-storage trade (snap the green tops off those carrots, and the life force will leach out and they will quickly go limp). After a brief acquaintance with the knives, pots and pans, we donned aprons and began to chop, slice, season and stir together.

There were some things I'd never heard of before. For a saut? base, Shelowitz favors ghee, a strained butter with a higher heat point than our usual. A vital ingredient in a lot of Indian dishes, ours was buttercup yellow, made from the milk of happy Amish cows. From what I had understood, quark was the name of a group of hypothetical subatomic particles. Apparently, it's also a creamy strained cheese that makes a delicious dip for fresh carrots.

Imbued with a heady garam masala mix (cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, coriander, mace), the smell of cabbage curry soon had us salivating.

We sat down to dinner and a blessing from Shelowitz. The shared experiences of digging in the dirt and cooking together had encouraged a bond among us. By the time we'd finished the constant mixing required for our creamy, ghee-imbued sweet polenta dessert, I felt like I was among old friends.

I also felt confident. Incorporating a host of healthy ingredients in a quick, satisfying dish wasn't as difficult as I'd thought. Fresh produce doesn't need much to shine. If it grows together, it goes together.

So the next time I fall through my front door laden with farmers' market finds, I'll know what to do with them. Thanks, Holly.

Shelowitz will hold additional Brook Farm-to-Table cooking classes on August 4, September 15 and October 20 from 6 to 9 p.m. The cost is $45, but only $40 for Brook Farm members. For more information, call 687-9666, or visit www.nourishingwisdom.com.

Holly Anne Shelowitz Email: info@nourishingwisdom.com Phone: 845.658.7887