Britton - My new roots: irresistible, natural food that happens to be good for you

M Y N EW R OOTS BEGAN WITH A TOMATO . It was yellow and shaped like a pear, about the size of a walnut shell. It hung on the vine like a golden teardrop, warming itself in the suns slanted late afternoon light.

When I put the fruit in my mouth, I immediately noticed the softness and delicacy of its skin. But then I pressed it against the roof of my mouth with my tongue, and it burst into a universe of flavor quite unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It was bright, fresh, grassy, sweet, and overflowing with juice. The tomato tasted of all the things that had made itthe sun, the rain, the soil, the hands that had tended it.

In that moment my life changed. Here I was at twenty-three, a total city slicker, just having graduated from design school and thinking I would be happy behind a computer for the rest of my life. The tomato I picked hung on a vine on an organic farm in Arizona. I was here because it was part of a larger project I had read about during my studies, and I thought it would be a fun experience for a month. Now I was contemplating staying at the farm. Forever.

My whole life I had eaten only processed foods, or fruits and vegetables that had been picked before their ripeness and traveled thousands of miles. I was a sugar addict, overfed and undernourished, never really considering what I ate. I realized with that tomato that food matters, and that we are connected to what we eat. That the beauty of the world can be experienced through the taste, smell, and texture of a single fruit. Whole foods became a revelation.

The four-week workshop on the organic farm turned into a year-long, immersive food experience. I ate what we grew, worked the land and my body, gave up processed foods, and the mental fog that I had been living in suddenly lifted. I felt like an entirely new person, and I was.

When I returned to Toronto, I had no idea what to do with myself. Something inside me had shifted so strongly toward a life more in tune with the natural world that I knew my direction had to change. I enrolled in the Institute of Holistic Nutrition to deepen my understanding of food and the body and learned that what we eat impacts our health not just on a physical level but on an emotional and spiritual one as well. One day, while I was enthusiastically telling my uninterested boyfriend about all that I was learning, he suggested that I start a blog to share with people who would actually care. Needless to say the relationship didnt last very long, but the blog, My New Roots, was born.

Later the same year I ran into a very handsome Dane on a street corner in New York City. Romantic fool that I am, eighteen months later I found myself on a plane, moving to Copenhagen to live with the man who would become my husband. Being in Denmark was wonderful, but professionally I was rather lost. After moving overseas, I discovered that my certification as a holistic nutritionist wasnt recognized, and that it wasnt legal for me to practice. Suddenly I had no direction. Despite the fact that I had no professional cooking experience, my next idea was to apply what I had learned in a restaurant kitchen. I biked around the city handing out rsums to all six vegetarian cafs in hopes of finding a job. The last place I visited was foolish enough to hire me. After destroying many soups with too much cayenne pepper and burning a few lasagnas beyond recognition, I got the hang of cooking and loved it. I developed a new menu each day, using seasonal produce. Because of the ever-changing supply of seasonal fruits and vegetables, I was forced to be creative, think on the fly, and invent new dishes every day. The reaction from diners in the restaurant was overwhelming, and the successes and experiences there were brought to my readers through the blog.

Suddenly requests for cooking classes and lectures started pouring in. Seizing these new opportunities while working full-time in the restaurant and keeping up the blog became nearly impossible. I needed some sort of sign from the heavens on how to handle it all. Unfortunately, this manifested in my husband literally falling out of the sky and breaking both arms in a hang-gliding accident. He was completely dependent on my help twenty-four hours a dayto eat, bathe, dress, or just to make a simple phone call. I had to quit my job to take care of him. Serendipitously, being at home resulted in my having a lot more time to work on the blog and allowed me to focus on projects that I had always wanted to pursue, such as writing for magazines, giving lectures, and teaching cooking classes. As a consequence, My New Roots became my full-time job and passion and I havent looked back since.

Even though My New Roots began as a way for me to share what I had learned about wellness and healing, it has become so much more than that. Over the past eight years, through sharing my adventures in the kitchen and my burgeoning obsession with plant-based cuisine, I have inadvertently created a community of readers who are passionate about cooking food that is not only delicious but also very healthy. I found many people hungry for direction and guidance in preparing nutritious food, and discovered that my recipes were actually making significant changes in peoples lives. E-mails began flowing in with stories from readers whose families and communities had become more energetic, lost weight, healed from disease, and rediscovered the joy in cooking. My New Roots is no longer just my passion project, but a resource that thousands of people turn to every week. Knowing this calls me to the cutting board to create yet another dish to satisfy those who want to take charge of their health and reclaim their kitchens. Their inspiration becomes mine, and the cycle continues. Even though Ive never met most of my readers, I can feel us standing side by side at our stovetops, making so much more than dinner.

MY FOOD PHILOSOPHY

I love to eat. A lot. I often joke that my current way of living evolved from needing to find a way to eat a lot and still be healthy. Therefore the diet I follow and encourage others to is not about sacrifice, deprivation, or labels. It is about enjoying delicious food to the fullest extent without counting calories or fat grams. It is about adding healthy, whole-food ingredients to what you are already cooking, taking things slowly, and approaching food with an open mind and a curious belly. I get many e-mails from readers asking for the nutritional breakdown of my recipes, and I can happily tell them that it doesnt matter because every one of those calories is good for them. Health is the natural consequence of using whole foods, organic ingredients, and conscious cooking techniques. What you eat becomes something to celebrate, instead of something to scrutinize. For me that means abandoning diets and embracing this way of eating as a lifestyle, because that is exactly what it is. It is quite simply the most liberating way of eating and living.

The recipes in the book are what I call all-inclusive, meaning they are vegetarian, with options to make vegan versions of the majority, and often gluten-free. I do this so that everyone can use my recipes, even those who have food allergies, sensitivities, or a lifestyle that doesnt include animal products. I use ingredients such as eggs, goat or sheep cheese, and ghee only in certain recipes where I feel it is necessary for flavor or texture, but you can omit them if you like. Overall, I prefer to use the term plant-based whole foods to describe my recipesit makes them approachable even to people who do not label themselves vegetarian or vegan. It is not about what the food is or isnt. The bottom line is, its delicious and it just so happens to be good for you.