Eating vegetables for breakfast with Nancy Wolfson-Moche BY STACEY DRESNER
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ancy Wolfson-Moche wants to shake up the way we see breakfast. In her new book, Vegetables for Breakfast, from A to Z, which comes out this month, the nourishment counselor, writer, blogger and food educator says that a breakfast that contains a whole grain food and a vegetable every day “can transform one’s digestion, consciousness, and very life.” And the vegetable dishes she suggests are not of the mushroom and green pepper three-egg omelet variety many might envision. Wolfson-Moche starts her book with Asparagus Almondine and ends with Zinguini – zucchini noodles sauteed in extra virgin olive oil and tekka, a Japanese powdered condiment made of roasted root vegetables. In between, her recipes include offerings like Spicy Brussel Sprouts, Purple Daikon Corn Salad, Chopped Kale with Pine Nuts, Green Sashimi, made with green beans wrapped in carrot peelings, and Onions and Shitake on a Tofu Pad. Breakfast veggie dishes are paired with side dishes or “go withs” of grains like millet, barley risotto, rice, polenta, even steamed sour dough bread. Wolfson-Moche, who lives with her family in Cornwall, Conn., has been eating vegetables for breakfast since she experienced difficulty getting pregnant in her 40s. Told that she was “beyond childbearing age” and not a candidate for high-tech fertility treatments, she tried more holistic avenues like acupuncture, yoga, Chinese herbs, rapid eye movement therapy, macrobiotics and more. Through the advice of a macrobiotic counselor, she began making home-cooked meals of whole grains, vegetables and plant proteins, and sitting down to eat them on a regular schedule with her husband. Not only did she soon conceive her first daughter, she also saw improvements in her digestive health and gained more energy, unintentionally losing 10 pounds. Continuing with this dietary change, she conceived her second daughter six years later and has continued to eat this way because of its benefits to her health.
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NANCY WOLFSON-MOCHE, THE AUTHOR OF VEGETABLES FOR BREAKFAST.
Born and raised in Edgemont, a town in Westchester County, N.Y., Wolfson-Moche credits her mother, Harriet Wolfson, for
MASSACHUSETTS JEWISH LEDGER
| JULY 17, 2020
sparking her love of cooking. But not in the way you might think.
“I dedicated the book to my mother because my mother never cooked, still doesn’t cook, and thanks to that she allowed me into the kitchen at a very early age and let me do a lot of cooking,” she said. “I think it was one of those situations where the lack of interest in my mother sparked a great curiosity in myself. I’m grateful for her for giving me that space.” Both of her parents came from observant Jewish families but had over the years become Reform. Her family attended Temple Israel, a synagogue in New Rochelle. “I grew up with a very Reform experience, but very much like my experience in the kitchen, I was the kid who came home from Hebrew school and said, ‘Why don’t we have a sukkah? Why aren’t we celebrating Tu B’Shevat?’” she recalled. “I grew really curious about all of those holidays that we didn’t celebrate. We celebrated the Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Pesach, and Chanukah, and I grew really curious about the others. So once I left home I just became a real learner, curious about Jewish tradition.” After graduating from Trinity College in Hartford, where she double majored in Italian literature and political science, and attending the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, she moved to New York City and joined a Conservative synagogue where she learned to read Torah. “I just became more and more immersed, but feeling like I had lost a lot of time. In the end I feel that was a huge gift; to have come to prayer and Torah later in life so that it’s never rote for me.” Wolfson-Moche worked for more than 20 years as a journalist on lifestyle magazines like Glamour, then spent several years living in Italy – a country she says had influenced her ideas about food as a child. “I spent a summer in Italy when I was 13. It was really a transformative time for me in many ways…One thing that happened to me that summer was a whole new approach to eating and cooking that I developed. “I ended up spending about 12 more years of my life in Italy, in which time I went to several cooking schools there as a journalist and I really developed an appreciation for whole food and fresh ingredients. In those years in Italy you couldn’t get any thing any time. Everything majewishledger.com
