Welcome!

Do your body a big favor and throw away all those heavily processed, chemical and sugar filled products from your cupboards! Welcome to my healthy-eating blog, full of tips on how to make smart nutritional choices, indulge in and add your own delicious recipes, and feel better about the choices you make! The thing about this is that it’s not an actual “diet” in the “starve-yourself” sense. You eat when you’re hungry and you eat enough to fuel your body for its daily needs. Healthy eating doesn’t need to be boring and bland, there are so many possibilities out there! Take it from me, someone who used to be a super picky eater and ate nothing but junkfood.

After opening my eyes to the way I was feeding myself and the things that are being sold as food these days, it shocked me that I’d never even gave it a thought before. After changing my eating habits, not only did I lose a bunch of weight, but my headaches disappeared, I barely got any more cravings, and I felt physically and mentally great. Health is so important yet it’s barely paid attention to. My goal here is to help anyone who wants to change, but not just their diet; This is a lifestyle change.

I try to update this blog as often as I can, while currently traveling through Mexico. Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated to keep this blog growing and going!

Mucho Cocina

For most of my stay in San Cristobal de las Casas, I’ve been fortunate to have met some really nice CouchSurfers who let me stay at their place. And for the first time I’ve been in Mexico, I’ve had a whole loaded kitchen to play with! 4 burner stove and oven, blender, and every little kitchen gadget you can think of. So of course, I’ve been spending lots of time in the kitchen! I really hope that they don’t mind, I always end up constantly worried after a while of being in the kitchen for a long time… but I can’t help it! I’ve gotten the chance to make smoothies, my ABC pudding, cookies and crackers that I’ve missed for a long time, and I’ve gotten to experiment with new recipes.

One of my new meals, which will become a staple once Robin and I return to his family’s place is baked vegetables, since they have lots of potatoes and carrots we can use. I know this is really not a new recipe for anyone, but it is for me. I’ve never been one to be interested in potatoes, and carrots I usually disliked, but this is delicious! Whole or halfed baby potatoes, thinly sliced carrots and onions, a bunch of herbs (I have a fabulous mix of rosemary, thyme, oregano, and something else…), garlic salt and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. Wrapped in aluminum foil and baked in the oven for an hour, sometimes with a side dish of beets.

I’ve finally started to experiment with apple custards and whatnot. This one is made with apples, cinnamon, a little bit of honey (a rare ingredient for me), oat and ground flax flour and rolled oats. I recently bought something called Pinole. It’s ground toasted (organic) corn mixed with cinnamon and cocoa powder. I used it as a base crust and put a mush of banana, zapote and mandarin ontop. I don’t really like the flavor of pinole, I think it’s too… strong, for lack of a better word, but it’s not bad. It seems it’s pretty well known here. Not usually to cook though – Most people put it in warm or cold water or milk and have it as a drink. I tried it once and thought it was worse than baking with.

I also had my first try at a real homemade tomato sauce from scratch. Blanching, peeling, coring tomatoes and boiling them. I didn’t want to waste all the stuff I had taken off – There was a lot! So I put all of it except the really hard pieces into the blender with some spices, garlic salt, and a little bit of garlic. I blended it until smooth and served it cold. Robin really liked it and said it tasted like the clam tomato drink without the clam. I really hate throwing out food that could be used, so this worked out great.

My birthday is coming in two days! On Saturday I’ll be heading off to the organic market to buy and eat organic corn on the cob, yesss! It just sounds so appetizing right now… Also I’m wondering if I should treat myself to some oatmeal with organic original rice milk, or my ABC pudding, or baked potatoes and veggies, or banana cinnamon bites, or organic dried mango… argh, so many choices! Why is pb not in the list? Because I ate more than I should have two days in a row and ended up with some disgusting indigestion which I just got rid of… That should teach me!

Mexican Markets

Finally, a post about the Mexican markets! And I have pictures too, but not as many or as good of pictures as I’d like… It’s hard getting good pictures of markets! All those pictured are located in San Cristobal de las Casas.

The markets are lots of fun to go to. They vary depending where you go, some being really chaotic like the big one in Merida. Some people have stalls, others have little bowls on a rag on the ground outdoors. Some have trucks loaded with one type of produce. You can find all kinds of produce, most local and fresh, and they are usually similar in price from one stall to another. Fruits are often sold in little or medium sized buckets, usually with a 5 peso or 10 peso price to them. I don’t know how much bargaining happens, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much. I’m sure there’s a difference between locals and travelers though, but I haven’t the guts to really try it out yet. I think I’ve bargained three times so far – 1 win, 1 loss, and 1 tie. Sometimes the vendor throws in a couple extra gratis. Even without bargaining, the prices are still good, and sometimes you find really great deals, like 8 ripe avocados for 5 pesos (roughly 43 Canadian cents), a whole bucket of gorgeous little baby potatoes for 8 pesos, and papaya for 3.5 pesos / kilogram (roughly 3.5-7 pesos each). Of course, the markets have fresher produce than the big grocery stores, but sometimes you can get good deals there too. Yesturday I found cantaloupes (Don’t call them that here, the locals will look at you funny – They’re called melon chino) for 4 pesos / kilogram. Honestly though, even though cantaloupes seem to be plentiful in Chiapas, they aren’t good. It’s not that they taste bad, but they’re very very bland. I’m disappointed… Bland cantaloupes, mangos are out of season, but at least the bananas are delicious and plentiful and come in a variety of types!

What kind of exotic produce have I been able to find at the markets? I can’t mention that many because there are still many that I’m really unfamiliar with, but I’ll tell you of the ones I recently came across. Jicama is a root vegetable, looks like a brown tuber and it’s hard, but easy to cut. You cut the skin off, and chop the vegetable like fries. Serve raw with carrots and other veggies to go with a dip, or garnish with lime juice and chili/salt (like for everything else in Mexico!). It’s very tasty for a vegetable. As for bananas, I have tried the usual most popular type, the red (smaller, slightly different texture, a bit of a raspberry flavor, delicious aftertaste), and the plantain, which comes close to nothing compared to the gross ones in Canada. Same goes for the baby bananas, they seem much much tastier here. And the beans! Mmm, fresh beans in a rainbow of colors, a bowl for 10 pesos is usually the price, and they are delicious! If you leave them for a few days they start to sprout, which may or may not be what you want, but they are great.

I have no idea what this is, but it’s good. The inside is kind of like a pomegranate (I think – I’ve only had pomegranate once before…) except the seeds are super fun to eat. They’re really srunchy but not at all annoying, and the flavor is fun. As soon as it touches your lips it has a certain flavor, then once you start chewing it, it has another.

I believe this is called ¨Tuna¨. We’ve tried the green one in Canada before, so we decided to try the red one here. I was really surprised by the beet-red color of the interior, but the flavor didn’t appeal to me at all.

I’ll eventually get more pictures of the markets. We are headed down to the Pacific coast soon, so we should see some new stuff there. ‘Till then!

Tierra Verde

Robin found himself a new favorite recipe, slightly similar to a recipe many Mexicans and Africans make – Plantains (a.k.a. platano macho), cut in small slabs and fried in coconut oil, and topped with peanut butter.

Wait, what’s this, did I say peanut butter? Yessss!! In San Cristobal de las Casas, my favorite city in Mexico as of yet, is an amazing health food store located downtown called Tierra Verde. And they sell fresh local 100% peanut butter. We have found it at last! Beyond that, they sell a variety of products and food, lots organic, such as dried mango (an expensive snack I treated myself to), plain rice milk, unsalted and unroasted cashews and peanuts, quinoa, a variety of pastas, tofu, some vegetables, coffee, chocolate, and a variety of homebaked breads, desserts and marmalades.

Needless to say, we bought many things, including a big sourdough loaf of organic stone ground whole wheat pecan bread for 35 pesos (after we got someone to hand us over the ingredient list). We don’t eat wheat, but ate some slices with my garlic olive dip last night, so this was an exception which gave me a chance to see if I really react to wheat. And I do, so I’ll continue to stay away from it. It was a very hard loaf and hard to cut, but delicious.

Behind their store is a lovely vegetarian restaurant, 80 pesos for the buffet. We got to talk to the owner and got enlightened, and she was excited to hear us say that it was the best health food store we’ve come across so far in Mexico. If you ever find yourself in San Cristobal de las Casas (Chiapas), check out this store!

And the markets. Wow. I really do love it here. I have no pictures of the markets yet though! I promise to post some pictures soon. Tomorrow I’ll be going to an organic market I was told about, I’m very excited about it!

Cocoa!!!

While staying in Merida, I came upon a store advertising Maya chocolate, brownies and coffee. I don’t eat at restaurants and therefore don’t pay much attention to them, but I felt a need to visit the interior of this lovely, dimly-lit store, and guess what I saw upon the shelves… Cocoa powder! Not just any cocoa powder – Organic cocoa powder, cocoa beans, cocoa nibs and chocolate from Chiapas, said to be of the highest quality and well known for it. I was in disbelief, and eventually extremely joyful. The prices were good too. I bought 2 bags of cocoa powder and 1 of cocoa beans. The flavor is truly fantastic. Not as strong as what I’ve tried in Canada – It’s more subtly, and very rich and creamy tasting. I still can’t believe I found some. You should have seen me dancing back to our hostel, one block away! The name of the company is something like Ki-Xchocolatl.

Oh I forgot to mention an amazingly delicious fruit I got to try the other day! It’s called Zapote, I believe the one I tried was the chico zapote. It looks a bit like a potato, but browner/dirtier and softer and more of an egg shape. It doesn’t look like a fruit, but its pink/red/brown grainy flesh is very sweet and reminds me of the soft, dark red persimmons. They are so good! The only problem with them is that they get bruised and cut easily. The smoothie in the bowl is 1 yellow banana, 1 (delicious) red banana, and almost 2 zapotes, blended. This way, the graininess is hard to notice. I did some quick research on the fruit and it sounds like it’s often used for smoothies and marmalades. I should really test out more of the local produce while I’m here! One thing I’m hoping to have on a hot day is dragonfruit (a.k.a. pitaya), cut in half, frozen, and eaten as sherbert out of its own bowl. Yum!

Avocados and Other Things

I learned a new technique to cook garlic! Simply take a whole garlic bulb, wrap it in aluminum foil, and cook it in an oven or toaster oven for a while! (until they’re soft and can easily come out of their shell) I cooked mine for about 25 minutes in a toaster oven at about 250 degrees, popped them out of their shells, mashed them in extra virgin olive oil, added a pinch of garlic salt, a bit of herbs (such as rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano etc) and made a spread for my rye crackers, so so good! I also tried this method without the aluminum foil and it turned out just fine.

Something else I created recently is a mix of bananas, lime juice and chia seeds (all to taste) blended and chilled in the freezer until just the smoothie touching the top and sides of the glass are hard, or take out of freezer a few minutes before eating. Chia seeds are inexpensive here, when you can find them.

I found out that although Mexicans love avocados and use them in all kinds of dishes, they never use them for desserts. I always get faces of surprise when I tell them of my ABC pudding (4 ripe bananas, 1 ripe avocado, 2 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder) but they seem to really like it. The problem is… we just ran out of cocoa powder! So I’ve got to do some research and find out where I can find some. But speaking of avocados, Robin can’t get over the size of the big ones. He says the flavor is not as intense as the small ones, but they are generally cheaper. We usually end up making guacamole with a big one, a bunch of lime juice and a decent amount of green tomato salsa.

Check out the 0.007$Can prunes my eagle eyes spotted in a grocery store the other day! I really can’t eat too many of these though!

The fruits and veggies and not cheap around here though, especially in Tulum. I can’t wait to go to the open markets of Merida and Chiapas. Until then, I think I’ll be eating a lot of grapefruit. They are so inexpensive. I used to hate them, but now I take the time to take off all the bitter flesh and eat just the little droplets of citrus inside.

I Come with Food News from Cancun!

Hello Cancun! So far our adventure has been going great. Thanks to Robin’s lucky green shirt, we got through customs without hassle – We got the green light! I was really happy about it because I didn’t know how much of the food I had brought would make it over, even though I declared it. In the end, I was able to bring organic red quinoa, brown rice pasta, Ryvita sesame rye crackers, natural almonds, organic cocoa powder, organic raisins, dates, foodbars and larabars. I wish I could have brought hemp hearts and nut butters but those are no-nos. Had I known that I can’t get just straight up salt here, I would have brought my iodized sea salt.

You would think that after getting to Cancun, I would head for the beach. But you all know where I went =P. I visited Chedraui, Wal-Mart, and Soriana. Wal-Mart has a nice big selection of produce, Chedraui is okay from the one I saw, and Soriana has a good produce section too but also has some organic and whole-grain products. I also visited the Costco and it has a nice selection of food too. The beach will come – I gotta feed myself first, right? =P

Alright! Onto the stuff I wasn’t able to find so far, after visiting about 5 supermarkets (I haven’t gone to any farmers markets yet, will soon)! No luck with dill weed or natural peanut butter, but it’s not like it’s hard to find unroasted and unsalted nuts. I’m sad to see that there doesn’t seem to be such a thing as canned beans – That haven’t been refried, heavily processed and loaded with all kinds of ingredients. So I have to stick with dry beans, which are plentiful. I’ll probably stick with lentils mostly since they cook fast. Rice? Sad to say, but most of it is white. I was ecstatic when I found some brown rice (organic too) – It’s the stuff that takes 45 minutes to cook, but honestly it’s the best rice I’ve eaten so far. I didn’t spend lots of time looking, but wasn’t able to find any unsalted tomato sauce.

Robin found some non-gmo corn chips that are made with partially whole grain corn, calcium hydroxide, tocopherol,and a pinch of sea salt, oven baked. The company is Sanissimo. So far they’re the best chips we’ve seen. We also found some salsa without anything ”bad” in it, but all they had to warn people of it’s extreme spiciness was a picture of a green chili, with a mark half way up it. Hot!

Okay, onto the grains! For oats, all I’ve found is the same one thing – Thick rolled oats (and I have to say, they smell and taste a bit different from those back home). Besides wheat and oats, that’s pretty much it… plus amaranth! Yes, amaranth is native to this part, and I was able to find some puffed amaranth. I’m sure I’ll be able to find whole uncooked grains of it too. Extra virgin olive oil is easy to come by too. For being a country that’s known for its cocoa, I haven’t found any yet.

Now, what about the prices? Oh my garlic! I thought bananas were pretty cheap at 9 cents each until I saw a banana sale at 2.70 Pesos / Kg. That’s about 10 cents / lb by our standards. Lots of things are very cheap compared to what we’re used to, and some stuff is about the same as home. Here’s a small list of prices I saw that I converted into Canadian dollars (12 Pesos = 1 Canadian dollar):
1 kg rolled oats: 1.40$
250ml extra virgin olive oil glass jar: 3.04$
500g dry chickpeas: 1.08$
little 5g packet of cinnamon: .25$
3kg frozen mango chunks: 9.80$
1.3kg natural walnuts: 14$
750g organic brown rice: 1.27$
250g organic shredded coconut: 2.42$
plastic tub pack of crimini mushrooms: 1.25$
250g baked non gmo corn tortillas: 1.79$
1 avocado: .19$

So now I have one (school-sized) backpack and one lunch/grocery bag of food to carry around with me. I’ve been eating pretty simple since I got here, mostly oatmeal (rolled oats, cinnamon, raisins) for breakfast after having a fruit, avocado banana chocolate pudding, frozen mango (since they aren’t in season anymore – I’m very sad about it), chickpeas or brown rice with green lentils and onions & garlic, nuts / granola bars, and rice pasta with tomato sauce, broccoli and crimini mushrooms.

My tropical granola bars (rolled oats, banana, mango, coconut, walnuts).

Going to Cancun

Okay, I had written up a nice long post about my vegan lasagna and some other goodie recipes I had made up, but I left the text on our laptop, which is not with us now. Robin and I are currently at his relatives’ place, and tomorrow they’ll be giving us a ride to Ottawa to catch our plane to go to Cancun!

We’ve got everything packed, including some foodbars, larabars, natural nuts, red quinoa etc that we hope we can bring through customs. My food plan for tomorrow is 1/2 cantaloupe, oatmeal with unsweetened soy milk, 2 bananas with 2 tbsp hazelnut butter, and after we land I’ll have a larabar or something. No idea what I’m going to cook up for the afternoon or supper yet. It was fun figuring out how to use up all of the food in my cupboard since I didn’t want to waste any or leave anything for the winter.

Well I can at least show you what my lasagna looks like! It is mild but absolutely wonderful. Made with brown rice lasagna noodles, soft tofu, crushed tomato, tomatoes, frozen spinach (hence the scattered little pieces), zucchini, onions, garlic and a variety of spices.

And here’s something I’ve been making pretty regularly these days: Brown rice and curried chickpeas, with a bunch of winter squash and rutabaga – vegetables that I otherwise would never encounter in my meals. There’s lots of rice in the one pictured below, but usually I have everything balanced our properly. Also pictured is rainbow chickpeas! I didn’t know there was such a thing until a couple of weeks ago…

And the first picture of Robin on the blog! He’s eating rice & beans, with a small side dish of organic corn and some avocado dip with some organic whole corn torillas he made. That was a seriously big meal.

To finish it off, here’s a picture of my eggless, sugarless, oilless cocobana muffins. I made a version like this but without cocoa powder or cocoa nibs, with a bit more banana and a bunch of chia seeds and oh my garlic I have never tasted such delicious banana bread!

Where to Buy Fruits & Veggies in Quebec

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this! By far, Sami Fruits is my favorite store to buy produce. There’s one in Laval and a couple of them in Montreal, and I seriously recommend all those who live nearby to go check them out! In those big square cold buildings are piles and piles of fruit and veggies… Sure, the stores are not as pretty and warm as an IGA, but the prices of fruits and vegetables is as low as it can get… and I’m not talking about rotting produce either! These are delicious, ready fruits and vegetables, and those that Are super ripe get sold in packages for 1$-1.50$ each. You will not believe the amount you will save on produce if you shop here… Careful going there on a weekend though, it’s packed and fast-paced. But don’t go on a Tuesday! That’s when they’re closed…

Here are some price examples from Sami Fruits:
Bananas 39¢/lb (No green or ripe bananas, they’re always yellow without spots!)
Tomatoes 59¢-89¢/lb (They’re often the ones that don’t have a true hard middle but lots of random swirls inside, which are great)
Pears 79¢/lb (Delicious)
Mangos 3 for 2$ (Absolutely fabulous, but I don’t like the big green ones they sell, personally… Right now you can get a box of 13 mangoes for 5$! I couldn’t resist, I carried it 1/2 hour back home by bike)
Cantaloupe 3 for 5$ (Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they kinda stay hard)
Lettuce 59¢-79¢ each (Make sure you wash ‘em, but they’re great)
Avocados 2 for 1$ (If you’re lucky, you can get a pack of 8 ripe avocados for 1.50$- A ridiculously low price for so many produce calories)

Another place I love to go to when I want to purchase local produce is the 440 Marche (440 Market); The one that’s actually on the 440 highway. There is a wonderful selection of fruits and vegetables, enjoy samples, and the market is connected to a fabulous food mall with all kinds of stores and restaurants inside such as produce, butcher, bakery, beautiful pizzas, and a health food store.

As for health food stores, my favorite in Laval so far is Marche Tau. It’s big, and has good prices. Address is 3188 Boulvard St-Martin Ouest (Chomedy) #450-978-5533

It just so happens that Sami Fruits, Marche Tau, and Loblaws (decent health food section) are all within walking distance from each other (they’re basically on the same street block!). So if you’re in the area, go wild! =)

Vegan

That’s right, I’m now vegan. I’ve been one for the last two months and it’s been going great considering such a transition in diet. I don’t miss the animal products, I substituted them for more beans, grains, nuts and seeds. My body doesn’t feel ill or like it’s lacking, but sometimes I feel like I should be eating more, which I am. Still working on the ratio of ingredients since this change. I guess it’s fitting too, since it’s the Vegan Month Of Food. I have to say, one question I always get asked when people ask if I’m vegan is ­”So you don’t eat eggs?”.

I’ve often found myself in this situation, comicly drawn by Happy Cow. Although I’m more than happy to help out people with their eating habits and give them tips, I don’t force my ideas on others and I don’t insult their way of eating. Not everyone can live the same lifestyle, and for me, this lifestyle and my eating habits work well for me, Robin, and our healths. We wouldn’t eat this way if our bodies didn’t agree with it. As for expenses, some organic, or raw, unrefined etc food may be more expensive than your usual processed and refined food in the grocery store, but by living a lifestyle that doesn’t count me going to restaurants, watching movies at the theatres, buying brand name clothing and buying the newest ipod, I’m able to purchase these food items without going into debt because I don’t spend much money to begin with. I can buy it without a problem and feel satisfied with my purchase, and happily go home to cook something up with it. And actually, I find we’ve been spending less money on food than we used to.

A bunch of people have said that Robin is too skinny. It’s true that he’s skinny for his height and doesn’t have much muscle, but he says he feels great and he’s still very strong. The problem is his eating habits; He doesn’t pay attention to his body’s calls for food and often unintentionally skips on when he should eat. Once he gets focused on something, it’s really hard for him to pay attention to anything else. But we’re working on that. Every time a guy talks to Robin about food, the first word that comes out of their mouth is ”protein”, and it’s usually recommended in powdered flavored form with fat free milk. We prefer to get our nutrients from wholesome sources, and the least processed and modified as possible. Once Robin tunes himself in to his stomach, I believe it won’t be an issue at all.

Anyway, I decided to take this survey that I found on Michal’s blog, from Heather (Be Well and Take Care):

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

Organic original Yu basmati rice milk, it’s ridiculously delishious and brings out the epicness in oatmeal. Other than that, I enjoy Eden’s organic unsweetened soy milk or rice & soy blend because they have barely any ingredients in them and taste good.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?

Recipes that I’ve already made in the past? Some decadent chocolate balls, tofu veggie soup, and a peanut butter banana smoothie. Recipes that I’ve never made before? Brownies, curried chick peas with veggies, and raw cincinnati chili (from Gena)

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?

I’ve never really been interested in popcorn.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?

I’ve had two, and I can’t remember them at the moment… Must have been bad!

5. Favorite pickled item?

None. In the past it would have been cucumbers.

6. How do you organize your recipes?

I write them as I create them, and the ones I like I type them in my laptop into my Recipes file. Once in a while I print the collection out to be handy.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?

I’d compost if I could, but traveling a lot and living on a sailboat make it hard.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?

Rolled oats, bananas, and nuts.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood? Homemade non-bake cherry cheesecake, especially when I learned to make it myself and binge on it…

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?

My ppbb smoothie, a mix of frozen bananas, rice milk, and peanut butter!

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?

My measuring cup and spoons.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?

”Garlic! Garlic! GARLIC!! I don’t understand how some people just don’t like it. For me it’s the more the merrier!” – Hahah, this is not my quote, it’s Michal’s but it’s exactly what I would have written!

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?

World’s Healthiest Foods, but I’ve only had it for less than a year. I’m new to the land of cookbooks.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?

Apricot.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?

My decadent chocolate balls. For a meal, it’d be my lentil chili.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?

I’ve never tried seitan or tempeh, so I guess it’d be (organic) tofu.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?

All and whenever!

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?

I don’t have a refrigerator.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.

I don’t have a freezer either, but it would be organic corn, green beans, and sliced bananas.

20. What’s on your grocery list?

Nothing. I just came back with 50 bananas, a dozen tomatoes, 3 bags of rolled oats and a bunch of canned chick peas so I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere for a while!

21. Favorite grocery store?

Rainbow Natural Foods in Ottawa! As for produce, it’d be Sami Fruits in Laval and Montreal. Loblaws and SuperStore have a decent health food section now too.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.

Nothing comes to mind.

23. Food blog you read the most. Or maybe the top 3?

I’d have to think about it! Lately I don’t have as much time to surf the internet as I used to, but there are so many great healthy eating bloggers out there!

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?

Organic Vegan Food Bar or Larabar.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?

A coconut. I didn’t know what to do with it! I didn’t know when I should open it, or how I should open it. I’ll spare you my embarrassement as to the handful of ways I tried to open it, but eventually, it ended with a nail sticking out of the top, and being left alone and out of sight out of frustration and better things to do. Sadly, it ended up being tossed.

26. Ingredients you are scared to work with?

It’s not an ingredient, but I must say, I’ve always been scared to use the high settings on blenders. It gets super noisy and I always feel like it’s going to break apart and cause a mini explosion!

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Here are two awesome blogs I came across today:

http://www.choosingraw.com/

http://bewellandtakecare.wordpress.com/

I haven’t had the chance yet to thoroughly go through them, but they seem to have some delishious looking recipes and great tips on eating healthy, and/or vegan, and/or raw. Enjoy!

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I know I’ve already posted some pictures and/or recipes for chocolate balls, but I love them so much! I still don’t have a real recipe for them, I just use whatever quantities I feel like. But here’s a guide to how to make your own tasty little chocolate treats by hand, without the use of a food processor.

~Decadent Chocolate Balls~ makes 35-40 balls

Ingredients: 375g pack packed pitted dates, couple tablespoons of organic raisins, cocoa powder (or carob powder if you don’t want the cocoa’s caffeine, or both), raw cocoa nibs (or nut of choice if you can’t afford the tasty expensive nibs and want a crunch in your chocolate balls), and garnish to mix in of your choice: hemp hearts, cocoa powder, coconut oil and coconut flakes, natural peanut butter.

Directions: Mince the dates the raisins, pour in the cocoa/carob powder and raw cocoa nibs/ minced nuts of choice and mash it all together until it’s evenly distributed. Your hands will obviously get sticky. Taste and tweak ingredients to your liking, then separate into little balls. I have 5 flavors I make (1 ungarnished), all of which I either roll the balls into or mash them into, and then roll them between my hands. One is rolled in hemp hearts, one is mashed in coconut oil and rolled in coconut flakes, one is mashed in crunchy peanut butter, and one is rolled in cocoa powder. These are fabulous little treats and make excellent little gifts or snacks to bring to a party. They are my favorite giveaway =)

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To contribute to VEGANMOFO, here are some recipes I’ve made recently.

~Tofu Garlic Veggie Soup~

Ingredients: tofu (cubed), potato (cubed), broccoli, green onion, organic frozen corn, garlic, garlic powder, fennel seeds (just a few!), a piece of bouillon cube (optional, you can use your own favorite spice mix)

Directions: Mince garlic, garnish tofu cubes with lots of garlic powder. Stir fry the tofu and garlic with a little bit of oil until they start to brown just a little bit. You can decide to skip the stir frying and just roll your tofu cubes in garlic powder and throw them in the soup, but lightly frying them and the garlic adds more texture and flavor. Prepare your veggies and let them simmer in water (with bouillon cube/spices), and throw in your tofu. Simmer until potatoes are ready, not too soft. Enjoy! A simple and wonderfully mellow soup, my new favorite.

~Salsa and Giant Tortillas~

Ingredients: Tortillas: organic corn flour, ground flax seed(optional), lime juice, water, spices (dill weed, or chili, etc). Salsa: tomatoes, peppers, green onions, onions, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, spices (chili, black pepper, etc)

Directions: For the salsa, well, there’s lots of recipes out there and they’re all easy to make. Just mince and chop and mix your ingredients together. For the tortillas, (honestly, I had no idea what I was doing) I mixed my corn flour with a little bit of ground flax seed, some lime juice and some spices, and some water and formed it into a ball. Make sure you don’t use too much water or else you’ll have troubles later on. It’S easy to deal with when it’s not sticky. I layed out a piece of saran wrap and pushed it into a very thin circle. I put a little drop of oil in my pan and carefully layed the tortilla in the middle of the pan and stir fried it until it became hard and started to get a couple of small burn marks. Be careful not to heat them too high or they’ll rupture in the middle. I made these for Robin because he loves chips and salsa and he rarely buys chips because they’re usually loaded with pretty bad ingredients. He justs breaks them into the shapes and sizes he wants. If you want more of a soup for salsa, use crushed tomatoes and a bit more extra virgin olive oil, and cut your ingredients smaller.

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I’ve been able to weigh myself accurately since I moved to Laval, and my lowest weight (morning) is 124.5lbs. Woohoo! That’s 26 lbs less than when I first started my diet change! I’m quite pleased with that considering I was concentrating on eating healthy and not starving myself to lose weight, but I’m hoping to get down to 120lbs. I don’t want to look like a stick, but I do still have more reserve fat than I want to have in my upper arms, and some in my thighs. I know it’s because of lack of exercise. I’m still not doing lots of exercises so I can’t expect miracles. I decided to do some real pushups out of nowhere the other day and was able to do 10. Some say that’s great but back when I was a teen I could do 50 (when I was crazy for pushups). I know that I can’t expect myself to do lots suddenly, but I really do wonder where my love for exercising went, it still hasn’t completely come back yet… but I know it’ll come back eventually! I know I’ll get to my ideal weight and strength after a while of living in Mexico. That’s… two and a half weeks from now!

1 Year Anniversary to my Health

Upon returning from a great sailing trip, I realized that I’m a few days short of my healthy eating anniversary! I don’t know what specific date I changed my eating habits, but it was the beginning of October. And I’m so happy that I made that change. It hasn’t been tough for me to stay on this diet, actually I think the hardest things were having relatives and friends not understand our eating habits and try to force their food on us, and once in while having a hard time finding decent food in remote areas.

So what am I cooking up there? “Fries” and onions. I just cut up a whole bunch of potatoes into small fry shapes, steam them at first, then “fry” them (lowish heat with just a little oil) in a bunch of spices like dill or curry, with sauted onions mixed in.

The sailing trip was awesome. I really loved sailing a junk rig. I got lots of great experience, but froze for a good part of the journey!

Now I’m getting ready to move to Montreal in a couple of days. I need to look up some health food stores in Montreal and Laval, and locate farmers markets. I don’t know when I’ll be posting again because I’ll be really busy… We’ll see!

Finally, a Picture of Me and the Galley

Yes, it’s been quite a while since I posted an update! I’m still living on my sailboat, except it got moved back on land last week, because… We’re going to Mexico for the winter! Woohoo! It’ll be my first time out of the country and I cannot Wait to eat fresh, local bananas, cantaloupe and mangos for dirt cheap! No, I swear I’m not only going to Mexico for the fruits…

Here I am, cooking up a storm while listening to some music.

In about three days, Robin and I will be sailing East to Picton Ontario on a steel junk-rigged boat of some friends of ours. We’ll be gone for 1-2 weeks, then we’ll make our way back to Iroquois and prepare to move to Montreal / Laval for the month of October to sell my beads and jewelry before we head south – Our tickets are set for the day of the dead, November 1st. They were really cheap so I jumped on them.

So what happened to the whole sailing plan? It’s still there! But it’s getting late in the year and we don’t have enough money or experience to go South right away. We’re also having issues with our engine and the way it’s mounted, so we decided we’d go on a little sailing adventure East, then live in Quebec for a month, then travel Mexico (and possibly other countries) for a while. We’ll return in the Spring, fix up the boat, and put her back in the water.

But on to the real subject of this blog… Food! It seems like there’s always an unholy pile of dishes in the galley and navigation area, but I guess that’s to be expected in a small area when I cook all my own meals. We’ve been mostly eating bananas, oatmeal, bean dip and rye crackers, cabbage and soy soup, pasta, and carrot potato hashbrowns as it seems to be the cheapest – by no means unpleasant at least.

I have a task for you that you might be glad you undertake: Calculate how much you spend on food every month. You would be amazed by the amount of people that think they’re spending 1/2 – 1/5 of what they actually spend on food. Restaurants obviously take a big chunk out of the wallet, but you’d be surprised by some of the foods that are cheap and expensive. For example, berries bought at your usual grocery store are usually really expensive when it’s boiled down, whereas nut butter is cheap. I once saved myself 12$ (total was 24$) by simply buying foods that were on sale. The bananas looked delicious and were on at 39 cents a pound. The reduced bin had some excellent tomatoes for half price, same as a cantaloupe I found. It was nearing it’s expiry date, but at least I could eat it right away. If I was feeling selfish and impatient, I would buy what I want to eat all the time, but by keeping an eye out on sales, I save a lot. Yes, even 12$ is a lot. I can feed Robin and I very well on 12$ for a day, whereas that would or wouldn’t be able to pay for one meal at a restaurant.

It takes a little time, but (I find it really fun to do) I think it’s really worth it. First, figure out how much your ingredients cost in total. You can estimate, or you can go to the grocery store and write down the prices of the ingredients you use the most often (don’t forget to add the tax!). Then, cross multiply to find out the cost of the amount you use for a certain recipe, add all the other ingredient costs together, and do this for all the meals and snacks in one day. Do as many days as you can since it can fluctuate a lot. I think at least 5 will give you a good idea, or calculate a couple of days that are made up of the types of food you usually eat. After a while you’ll remember the price of certain things easily, but you don’t need to keep at it unless you feel like it. I plan on keeping at it so I can squeeze as much food out of my dollar as I can. I plan on doing the same in Mexico too! I’m looking forward to it =)

I still don’t do exercise except for the strolls on my mini bicycle to town once almost every day to get to the library and the grocery store, but I noticed that my caloric intake bumped up sometime late last month – When I first started out the big diet change, I only ate about 1100 (I did no exercise and was barely active for a while). Then for a long time I would eat about 1700 calories a day, but these days I eat about 2200 calories a day! I’m surprised that I need so much to keep going. I don’t binge, and actually I just realized that I’ve lost all my cravings completely (yay!) but I’m not that active, and I feel that I need to eat more to keep my stomach feeling fed. I wonder why the sudden boost… I wonder if it’s because I’m now a vegan? Do you think that no animal products whatsoever would do that? Am I missing out on something? But I don’t feel like I am, I feel fine. Hmmm…

Oh, and living without a fridge has been working quite well! I thought it’d take me a while to get used to it, but no. In a sense, it seems like we waste less food by keeping a very close eye on all our leftovers and produce and eating what has the shortest shelf life first. I haven’t missed my blender either, but I must say, my chocolate banana avocado pudding is just not the same as if it were blended. Both the texture and flavor are inferior, but I must go with what I have! By lacking certain things I’m able to try out other new things. Anyway, I gotta head back home to my dear bananas… I’m hungry!

Yes, I’m now living on the water!

Our sailboat, by the dock on a gorgeous, quiet, misty morning. We’ll be naming her Serotonin, a neurotransmitter that has to do with happiness, hunger, and sleep. Our sailboat is our home and has to do with all of these, so we believe it’ll be very fitting. I have to do more research on the definition though (usually the definitions for Serotonin are long and complicated to understand!). Anyway, Robin and I often talk about a food’s amount of Serotonin, which for when talking about food we’re talking about the amount of happiness it brings, so bananas and peanut butter are definitely the best bearers of Serotonin =).

Here’s another picture of her, taken a few days before the big move.

It’s been stressful but exciting, and I’ve finally found some time to write up a post. Robin and I have been living on our 30-foot sailboat on the St. Lawrence River for the past week and a half, and have been anchoring since the past three days. As most sailers are aware of, the to-do list never gets finished. Problems often branch out into multiple ones and new ones always arise, as well as many projects to make things better and comfier on board. We’re no exception.

Foodwise, one of the biggest problems is that we can’t really use the refreidgerator/freezer – It takes Way too much energy to power, even with the big new batteries that we got. So we’ve been trying to use up what needs to be kept cool, but it’s a challenge. We’ve already had a bunch of stuff go bad on us. It’s ok though, I just need to plan around this. We’ll have to buy the smallest size available of food that needs to be kept cold, and eat lots of it to use it up quickly. We do have small ice packs and, if docked and needed, we can use the fridge again for a short amount of time. I’ve had to get rid of my blender, something which I really loved, so now I’m stuck with mashing my bananas and avocado by hand to make my puddings. It doesn’t feel or taste as good, but it’s still really tasty. We do have a small hand blender we use to make hummus.

We have a propane stove top and the lowest setting is really hot so I don’t think I’ll ever go beyond the lowest setting. It sure calls the mosquitos over, and they’re already bad so I try to limit my cooking in the late evening. We have no oven but we do have a travel oven Thing, I’m not sure how to explain it, but anyway I haven’t played with it yet. The marina we go to has a public kitchen, so when we dinghy ashore, I make dry and wet batches of muffin and loaf mixtures ahead of time and cook them there. There’s no timer and the temperature is wrong on the oven though, I also have no eggs so, considering all this, I can’t believe how well my muffins and loaves have been coming out! They’re not soggy, but they’re definitely not crispable.

The heat is pretty bad. Not only are we fridgeless, but the rest of our food that doesn’t need to be refridgerated, gets roasted in the cupboards. I’m not kidding when I say that I burn myself if I touch the interior of the cupboard wall for longer than a couple of seconds on a hot day. We painted the topside (the top half of the sides of the boat) a dark blue so that definitely doesn’t help. Sometimes it gets really humid too. Not having a fridge will take some getting used to and I think I can deal with it, but I’m worried about the shelf life of all my dried goods. I’ve double bagged my oils and liquid sweeteners but even then most of them have seeped through because of the heat.

Now, how do I find cooking while anchored, with power boats zooming by us? Exciting! Heh, once in a while I have to stop what I’m doing and hold onto the hand rails, but usually I just deal with it with a grin on my face. There’s a alot of musical chairs that happens in the galley; My kitchen counter is a small L shape, so I stack my plates and measuring items all over the place, including the steps to go on deck. It’s a little tricky to wash the dishes because we have no water pressure. We have two pumps – One is drinking/cooking water, the other is river water from under us.

My little galley (“kitchen” on a boat), picture taken from the same angle that I cook in. Also, that’s not margarine in the margarine tub =P. I was preparing sprout sandwhiches with kamut bread, a mix of red clover, alfalfa, radish, canola and adzuki bean sprouted seeds, lettuce, tomato, dijon dressing and garlic. I don’t know why but I always have this need to load up my sprouts sandwhiches as much as I can =).

Here’s a better picture of the galley, also showing off the cupboards and the behind of the (in-progress) sofas, where I keep all of my food. I plan on making a spice rack above the galley, so I can have the last cupboard empty for other things. And yes, there is a small white table that flips out as an extension of the kitchen counter, but it’s a hassle to take out – I have to move both top and bottom sofa pieces out of the way for it. That’s another project, to cut the extension on two edges so I can flip it up without hassle.

Being a big fruit eater, I had to deal with lots of fruit flies at first, but now they’re all gone (I hope I didn’t jynx it!). Instead, I have to deal with spiders, flies and ants. Yeah, ants. Lots of them. We believe they were living in the mast while it was laying in the grass during the summer. When we put the mast up the day after the boat was put in the water, I think that’s when we started to notice them. And their larvae. They Really hate when we tack and sail at over 5 knots (Weee!) so we often catch them trying to move their hoard around. I hate killing creatures, even insects, but this is our tiny home and they Can take it over if we let them. As for spiders, as long as they don’t bite me or start some serious upgrades, they’re welcome on board… in small amounts. Oh we’ve also had bees come zinging through, as well as wasps, and this is while we’re anchored, quite a ways away from land. I’m expecting to see some elephants soon!

Ok back on track, I Have come up with a couple of new recipes while on board. I made a few new ones before I moved onboard that I was planning on posting but I can’t even remember what they were, I’ll have to look into it later on. Well, for starters, there’s the eggless, low sugar, low salt muffins and loaves that I mentioned earlier. I’ve yet to really experiment with it, but I suggest you try it out. So far I’d been using lots of ground flax seed and it’s been holding everything very well. You don’t Need eggs to make baked goodies. One of my new staples is hummus, which Robin says I’ve finally mastered. The recipe always changes a little bit, but here’s the ingredient measurements that I took for the last batch:

~Dill Hummus~ Serves 2

1 540ml can of chick peas

1 tablespoon dill weed

1 tablespoon (raw) tahini/sesame paste

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

2 big garlic cloves

Directions: Put all the ingredients in a bowl. Blend using a hand blender until smooth. Best eaten with (sesame rye Ryvita) crackers. =)

Something else I’ve recently created on board is Chocolate Hemp Balls. Here’s the recipe. (As with the hummus recipe, this recipe always changes a bit so these are the measurements for the last batch I made)

Just so you know, it’s Really hard to take good crisp pictures on a boat!

This is the mixture without the raisins or dates. I assume you could use it just like that as a topping for oatmeal or as a topping for a pie.

~Chocolate Hemp Balls~ Serves 2, Makes 10 balls

1/4 cup hemp hearts

1/4 cup raisins

3 tablespoons minced pitted dates

1 1/2 tablespoons carob powder

1 tablespoon cocoa nibs

2 teaspoons coconut oil

2 teaspoons crunchy peanut butter (optional)

Directions: Mince raisins. Mix all ingredients together by hand and divide into 10 portions. Squeeze hard into balls and serve.

Remember my Millet Mania? Ive got a 2nd version, which uses stove-top heated garlic, much more tomato sauce, some green onion instead of a bunch of yellow onion, extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 a Celifibr bouillon cube and some spices, and it’s really tasty. It’s another one of our staples. I’ll put the recipe up sometime in the future. Earlier tonight I came up with a simple, super quick, no-bake sweet bar recipe for Robin, since he wanted to eat almonds and goji berries and he likes sweet stuff. I mixed together minced almonds, goji berries, and minced pitted dates into a nice compact bar, then coated it with ground flax seed (This makes a Great alternative for coconut flakes, and it keeps the bar from being sticky very well, but that’s if you eat it right after making it. I’m really glad I found this out, because I have lots of ground flax seed I need to use up quickly!). Then I felt like experimenting, so I made sweet sprout bars, made of dates, sprouts, some raisins and coated with ground flax seed, delish!

My sweet sprout bar.

Speaking of ground flax seed, another new staple snack of mine is two mashed bananas with one tablespoon of ground flax seed. Mashed bananas seem to be more intense and delicious in flavor, and the ground flax seed stops the bananas from giving me a sugar rush. I’ve heard of some people speak about not mixing sweets with fats and proteins, but if I eat peanut butter alone it goes down really hard, and if I eat lots of bananas sometimes it’s too much, but together there’s no problem whatsoever.

And speaking of bananas, aren’t they absolutely wonderful!? =) They are sooo delicious, easy to find and eat, excellent for their flavor and texture in various recipes, and are loaded with wonderful calories and vitamins (and yes, potassium too, although there are other fruits that have more potassium), considering how much they cost… They’re cheap! We are on a tight budget, and living on a sailboat definitely doesn’t make it easier to buy food at a good price. I’ve given up on apples… sometimes you can find good deals for a box of them, but these days you usually have to pay over 1$ for 1 apple. Tomatoes are usually quite expensive too. Eating vegetables is important, but considering their low calorie count, they’re expensive. I treat myself to a cantaloupe or mango once in a while because I really love them, but my staple fruit is bananas because they’re the cheapest from what I’ve calculated. And actually I’ll be posting all of my calculations in the near future – Calories per Dollar. I’ve calculated a bunch of foods so far, like fruits, bars, canned and packaged goods, and have come across a couple of surprises, for example, nut butters can be Really cheap compared to other foods, even organic ones. And I know that grains are very inexpensive, but even certain organic grained pasta can be very cheap. I can forsee myself living on a diet primarily composed of oats, bananas, canned beans and nut butters, organic when posible. Oatmeal is definitely one of our staples, it’s so delicious, quick and easy to make, and cheap! Oh and “healthy” bread, when on sale.

Oh My Garlic! Right before we moved the sailboat, we went to Rainbow Natural Foods (my favorite health food store ever) and found a bunch of organic kamut and organic spelt bread for 1$ each loaf, which is super cheap. The bread is super delicious and simple – kamut flour, sourdough, kamut flakes, sea salt, and water. But best of all, I got myself a 1$ loaf of spelt cinnamon raisin bread from little stream bakery – organic, local, wood-fired oven, wrapped in a biodegradable bag, and Absolutely Delicious! The loaves are usually over 7$ each so this was a real find. I was so happy. We ended up with 3 or 4 loaves of bread in all, and that’s mostly what we ate for the next few days – as is, or with applesauce, or as sandwhiches with sprouts and veggies. Annnnyway, I’ll leave all of my calculations and conversions and lists for another post. I have to figure out a way to get fruits and vegetables cheaper…

I have to admit, Robin and I ate a decent amount of foodbars right before and during the time we moved the sailboat into the water. We usually bought the organic vegan foodbars (3$ for a 300 calorie bar) which made a delicious quick meal for when we had all of our hands tied. The 200 calorie raw organic foodbars are delicious too, but they have more types of ingredients I’d prefer to stay away from or atleast not eat in excess (I can’t remember what all the ingredients were…). I don’t really eat Larabars anymore unless they’re on a big sale when I need one, because the last couple of ones left Robin and I feeling farty and Really lethargic. We tried 3 Raw Evolution bars (or something like that) once, a cashew, raspberry, and another one. I preferred the raspberry, Robin preferred the cashew, but generally speaking we found them to be too chocolatey and rich, and they didn’t feel as satisfying and filling as the Larabars and Foodbars. It’s hard to say “No” to these types of delicious quick meals, but I try not to buy them too often.

Ok I think that’s enough writing for one post! It’s rather hard for us to get internet now, so I’ll probably be making long posts like these in the future instead of many short ones. Stay tuned! =)