Three varieties grown from seedlings purchased at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal Farmer’s Market in organic potting soil on my terrace in NYC.
A summer supply of fresh basil for our salads and cooking has been a great treat! Pruning frequently from the top sounds counterintuitive but it kept flowers at bay and more leaf flourishing vigorously all summer, while the lower leaves were the solar panels of the whole operation.
Seedlings from Whitehall Ferry Terminal Farmer’s Market in Lower Manhattan (Open Tuesdays and Fridays all year long).
Driving to work one morning on the M6, then WSET Advanced Certificate student Rashida Veronique Serrant turned a corner - literally and figuratively! As she rounded a bend in the roadway on the South Island of New Zealand to enter Gibbston Valley and laid eyes on the sun-drenched vineyards of Chard Farm Winery on the other side of the Kawarau River gorge, Rashida knew what she wanted to do with her professional life.
Fast forward 15 years, through the Wine & Spirit Education Trust Diploma program (hence the DWS), opening and closing wineLIFE Wine Shop, and experience in wholesale, retail and sommelier work with wine, Rashida shifted gears and launched Really Nourish Movement, through which she educates about food and advocates for food empowerment for all.
The first step she took on her way to her current, excellent state of health and the beginning of Really Nourish was to listen to God and feed herself a lot less sugar and refined starch. Her motivation: Donating a kidney to her father. It was not an Atkins thing, if that’s what you’re thinking. She still ate carbs, just what she had learned to be better ones. She continued to indulge in animal products, did not reduce her fat intake on purpose, but reduced her intake of free sugars to less than 25g a day.
During that first month, it was like weaning off of hard drugs! She had headaches from time to time and often found herself to be quite cranky. Eventually, as her body grew accustomed to the change, she achieved two consecutive days with no free sugars at all – no juice, no sugar sweetened foods or beverages. She was already off of refined starches. She very rapidly lost exactly 20 lbs by the end of those 30 days.
Her theory is that much of that was inflammation in my body. Much of the excess weight that people carry is indeed inflammation, and excess amounts of sugar are known to contribute to that. Nonetheless, as we also are learning, sugar is not the lone culprit in the obesity and metabolic disease epidemic. Rashida witnessed this for herself. After losing that 20, going down from 212 lbs to 192 lbs, she hit a plateau. All summer long she stayed at that pesky 192. She did yoga and Pilates almost daily and never went back to my normal American high sugar, high refined starch, processed food diet. But still, Rashida's 192 lbs remained steadfast.
Then, in October of that year, with some encouragement from the Lord, the documentary Cowspiracy and Chronixx, Rashida decided to give up all things carnivorous. That’s when the 192 started to tick downward again. By the the following March, she was 160. She was ready now to donate her kidney to her dad. More than a year later, I am 155 at the start of the pregnancy that will bring forth my third child by the grace of God.
View all posts by Rashida Serrant-Davis DWS
