Illustration by Kat Frick Miller
Welcome to The Globe’s new series, What’s In My Cart?, where we’re asking Canadians how they stock their kitchens.
Meticulous measuring, testing and documenting were routine for Sandra Nowlan when she was a microbiology and biochemistry student at Cornell University in the 1960s. Years later, she took that attention to detail she practised in the laboratory to the kitchen after changing careers from scientist to writer.
She tested hundreds of recipes before publishing Delicious DASH Flavours in 2008, and Low-Salt DASH Dinners in 2010, based on her research on the Dietary Approaches to Stopping Hypertension (DASH) diet – a regimen that leans heavily on fresh foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein. The eating plan is also known to help reduce blood pressure and lower the risk of stroke.
Nowlan’s research on the DASH diet became more personal in her 60s when she found out her publisher’s wife was diagnosed with hypertension. It was also around the same time that she was warned by her doctor about her own creeping blood pressure.
Now 82 years old, she says reducing your sodium intake is key to following a diet for hypertension.
“The sodium can be the toughest part,” says Nowlan, who lives in Halifax with her husband. She says that some of the seafood, such as mussels, that are part of their diet in Atlantic Canada can be naturally high in sodium. “When I tested the recipe for mussels, I had to cut the serving down so that people aren’t overloading themselves [on sodium].”
For other recipes, she experimented with different spices, citrus and herbs to replace the flavour the dishes lost by omitting salt. In her own diet, Nowlan typically cooks most recipes from scratch. A family-favourite recipe is a barbecued salmon recipe she developed. The salmon is farmed fresh in her area. She marinates it with lime juice, malt vinegar, Dijon mustard, honey, chives and minced garlic and pepper, and barbecues it on a cedar plank, with no salt added.
At the grocery store, she’s become meticulous with reading labels for prepared foods, looking specifically at the fat and salt content.
“I have to watch my husband, because he loves bright pictures on the processed meats … and often the salt is 800 to 1,000 milligrams a serving, which is more than half of what you should be taking in for the day,” she says.
Here is how Nowlan and her husband shop for groceries.
How we save money on groceries: We have a large garden where we grow our own vegetables and some of our fruit in the summer. We harvest a lot of beans, peas and beets, which I freeze for this winter. We also forage for wild blueberries and Chanterelle mushrooms in a nearby forest.
How we splurge on groceries: We splurge on lobsters, which we buy locally.
The hardest shopping habit to keep up: Keeping my husband from buying highly processed foods which are high in fat and salt. He loves buying a snack, and we also have a weakness for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, specifically the Cherry Garcia flavour.
How we’ve changed our eating habits recently: We eat seasonally. From our own produce, as well as what’s in the stores here in Halifax. Generally, we’re eating more fish and less meat. We throw in a vegetarian dish – such as a good lentil soup – once in a while, and try to make it satisfying. By adding a lot of coconut milk, you don’t miss the meat, and by using great spices I can replace the flavour of using too much salt.
Five items always in my cart:
- Colombian roast coffee beans – Just Us! Coffee Roasters – $14: This coffee is roasted right here in Nova Scotia. My husband usually grinds the beans right before we drink it.
- 12-grain cereal – Speerville Flour Mill – $7.99: I make bread about every week and a half, and this goes into my homemade bread recipe. I usually make a big batch and freeze it.
- Golden smoked sardine fillets – Brunswick – $2: Between canned and fresh, we eat some type of fish three times a week. We usually have these for lunch, they’re a good source of vitamin D and omega-3. They have different amounts of salt or sodium according to the sauce, so I’m careful about which I buy. There’s about 380 mg of salt in the smoked one, so it’s doable for me.
- Honey crisp apples, two-kilogram bushel – $14.99: Honey crisps are my favourite apples. In September, we went to pick three kinds of apples at an orchard in the Annapolis Valley. We picked about 40 pounds of apples. I have three refrigerators, so I’m able to store them.
- Walnuts – Kirkland – $13.99: I buy the 1.13-kilogram bag of nuts from Costco, because they’re the best price. I usually add them to my granola. It’s a recipe with oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, buckwheat groats, coconut, almonds, walnuts, honey, pecans, cinnamon and no salt. I make about 24 cups at a time, and have it for breakfast daily. It’s great because it’s substantial and keeps me full until lunch.