Welcome o UnReFiNeD!

Do your body a big favor and throw away all those heavily processed food products from your cupboards! Welcome to my healthy-eating blog, full of tips on how to make smart nutritional choices, indulge in some delicious recipes, and feel better about the choices you make! This is not a “diet” in the starve-yourself sense. You eat when you’re hungry and you eat enough to fuel your body for its daily needs with nutritious wholesome foods. 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 migraines disappeared, I felt physically and mentally great, and I discovered a Great love for cooking. 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. The recipes on this blog are all vegetarian, all whole-grain/flour, mostly vegan, some gluten-free and some raw. Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated to keep this blog growing and going!

When I Was at my Best

I leave for Iceland in less than two days – How exciting! I had a blast during the past 1 1/2 months of being back home and biking through the city and cooking ridiculous amounts of food for loads of people. And seeing stuff start to sprout! Spring is finally in full bloom.

And speaking of sprouts and whatnot – Did you know you can regrow your greens? Check it out! Various lettuces and celery and a whole bunch more. For the lettuces and celery, we just used what we needed, chopped off and kept the bottom part and stuck it in a bit of water by a window for a few days, watching it grow each day. Eventually you’ll want to plant it in soil so it can do better and actually have nutrients when you eat it. Radical Montreal actually has an AWESOME post about various urban greenery, and the author also posted about regrowing your produce. Check it out! Very neat and inspiring.

I like learning cooking techniques and flavor mixes from my roommate, and I have to say I am quite impressed with Zbynek’s cooking. He can take any abandoned, rotting, forgotten, random produce he finds in the fridge, mix it more rotting produce in a stir fry and mix in whatever sauces he can find, whether it be BBQ sauce, soy sauce, worchestire sauce, mayonnaise, chutneys, various spices – whatever! – and mix that all up together with a huge dollup of peanut butter and some funky vegan “meat”, and it’s frikking amazing. Delicious food made with stuff that would have otherwise be thrown out because no one else wanted to deal with it. I decided to have a go at Zbynek-style food and cooked myself a stir fry with whatever vegetables I could find in the fridge (that weren’t in THAT horrible of shape), vegan “chicken”, BBQ sauce, spices and a whole lot of peanut butter and added a ladle-full of that schtuff on some rice and, indeed, it was delicious! And filling.

I never thought I’d put this picture online but I thought it’d make a good addition to my blog right now. Like my shorts tan? Haha. This is infact me, about 3.5 years ago while on a trip in Mexico. It saddens me to see I’ve gained back almost all the weight that I started with right before I changed my eating habits (mostly due to living through lots of stress and being an emotional eater with personal issues), but I’m hopeful because I know I can get back to being this slim. I cannot believe that some of my relatives recently informed me that they thought I was Too thin when I came back from that trip and I just scoffed in disbelief. Me, thin? Or even better, TOO thin? Never. During this trip I felt like I needed to continue losing more weight, but I admit I was indeed at my best and I desperately want to get back to that.

I am going to take this jump to Iceland as a “starting fresh” determination to get back into shape, but this time to eat a broader variety of food and to exercise a lot more. Thankfully Siggi will be there with me so we can kick each other in the @$$ to keep in gear. I look forward to hiking through the land of fire and ice, and of course as well as the culinary adventure! Rotting shark, singed sheep heads and cow eyeballs, Mmm!

Sorted Food at the Table

Upon my return to Quebec I dove back into the world of learning to cook. I got a chance to watch a lot of Zeste, which is a neat Quebec channel focused solely on food, and got all foodie excited all over again. Once back home and while searching for a particular cooking technique video, I stumbled upon an awesome YouTube channel called Sorted, which follows a few European friends and their interest in cooking. There’s one major cook in the gang who takes one of his friends as an assistant afor each meal, and after cooking they discuss it ’round the table. These guys really are hilarious and I enjoy their different take at videotaping the cooking and eating process of food. I recommend checking out their under-5-minute videos HERE and hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Sure, people are spending way too much time on their gadgets and screens these days, but it’s hard to say no to such an accessible resource of EVERYTHING at our fingertips, wherever we are. I think it’s neat to come across all these random people pursuing their dreams (food-related or not!) and sharing it with the world to inspire. While I don’t spend all my time on YouTube and *other* websites people have become horribly addicted to, I like to check in for inspiration and ideas.

Like, getting the idea to videotape our own food-madness at the Laurier house – dumpster style! It’d be so much fun to do, but I doubt it’ll happen. Then again, we might one day decide to take the challenge to have something fun like that on tape. I don’t have table manners or people skills and I eat out of the trash so I don’t don’t know how that would go but Hey, who cares anyway =P

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some of you may have noticed recipes for microwave cakes in a mug popping up here and there, and I gotta say, they’re pretty awesome! I’ve never been one to use a microwave, but this is one of the few reasons I use one. It’s easy to make quick, simple, 1-serving desserts, vegan or not. I first started experimenting with microwave cakes late last year and made several different attempts, mostly chocolate, all with mixed results. Upon my return I’ve finally perfected a chocolate version. Okay, *almost* perfected… The texture is unbelievably great (with the bottom being partially under-cooked to create a nice fudge-bottomed dessert), the flavor rich and chocolatey with a nice hint of coffee, but the saltiness of the baking soda likes to make surprise appearances here and there, especially at the bottom. I just tweaked the recipe so it should be fine.

Without further ado, here’s my recipe for a Vegan Chocolate Microwave Cake in a mug!

Ingredients: 3 tbsp sifted whole wheat flour (or 2 tbsp ap flour, 1 tbsp ww flour for better texture), 2 tbsp cocoa powder, 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp mini dark chocolate chips, 1/4 tsp instant coffee granules, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1 pinch of salt, 3 tbsp plain almond milk, 2 tsp vegetable oil, 1/4 tsp vanilla extract.

Directions: Thoroughly mix all ingredients together and pour into a greased mug. Microwave for 1 minute, then let chill for a few minutes.  Pour chocolate sauce (highly recommended) ontop for an extra-moist, extra-chocolatey dessert.

Chocolate sauce: Just mix some dark chocolate chips (about 2 tbsp) with a bit of non-dairy milk (about 1 tbsp) and microwave until melted. Stir until well combined and pour on cake. Enjoy!

For those who care to have an idea of how caloric this dessert is, it comes out to just over 400 calories. You can use all-purpose flour if you don’t have any whole wheat flour (2 tbsp ap flour and 1 tbsp ww flour is a very nice mix). You can also use oat flour but that will give different results. I’m hoping to make a raspberry orange lemon mug cake next; That should be delicious!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And on one random note, I love bundt pans and tube pans for baking cakes – Not only do they make a very pretty and unusual cake, they make it easier to properly bake a cake right through – You know, for those funky recipes that are pretty tasty but just don’t seem to want to set.

Here’s a Moroccan orange cake I made at my first communal dumpster super. While it’s simple – and made with a dented tube pan! – it still makes for a pretty cake =).

I’ve got a vegan carrot cake to share with you all as it’s been very popular at our events lately. I just want to tweak it a bit before posting the recipe. I’m still working on a vegan molasses cookie recipe but Damn those are hard! My last batch was actually really delicious, but the texture was that of a muffin and not a molasses cookie. One day I’ll figure it out!

Oh and I realized that I hadn’t updated the “about me” page in quite a long time so I cleaned it up =)

Back Home for April

It felt sooooo good to be back in Montreal!  You have no idea. It didn’t take long for me to settle back into the kitchen. I was so excited to be back to my lovely home with fantastic roommates to cook for, overflowing dumpsters to raid, new recipes to experiment with, and visitors to keep fed during our various events.

Shortly after my arrival we hosted a house show for some very talented musicians. I made a two-layered cake but drama ensued as I tried to create an icing with funky ingredients that didn’t want to set. It was like a volcano of Pepto Bismol. (Note to self – Don’t mix strange ingredients together to create icing on the fly,and don’t make two individual cakes but rather one big one cut in half for an even side). I was embarrassed and slightly freaking out as I tried to scoop off the excess pink slur as it tried to leak off the plate. Thankfully the addition of cherries and almond slivers saved its image, and while the cake was very, VERY sweet, people enjoyed it. Whew. What a comeback.

While this may look like a failed attempt at a dessert, this upsidedown pear crisp was inspired by a recipe I saw on the French food channel Zeste (which I spent half a day watching upon return to Quebec, a pit-stop at my mom’s in Laval). Bosc pears  embedded with a syrup of butter, brown sugar and maple syrup with cloves and maple alcohol, with a butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, oat crisp bottom. It was supposed to be made with a pie-crust-but-not-really-type-bottom but I had none of that so I made a crisp bottom instead. Absolutely devine, caramelized edges included and everything. My second attempt with small sliced apples was much prettier than this odd-shaped pear star, and just as good.

I just love my home =). Everyone here loves to cook and is great at it, not to mention fun to work with, so we make a heck of a team. Here’s one of my roommates Michael with his girlfriend and my room subletter enoying homemade pakoras (fried veggie explosions of crispy flavor) with steak sauce and plum sauce, tabouleh, prosciutto cream cheese rolls and home-brewed beer. Epic super.

The best dumpster run I’ve had so far is the first one I had when I got back home, with one of my roommates John and his friend Franky at a neighboring grocery store. This looks like a lot of food but there’s actually more behind Franky on a shelf, as well as more on the floor. Seriously, this was insane. We had to keep each other from yelling out our excitement at the dumpster. Expensive cereal, fruit juice, soy milk, tuna cans, yogurt, protein bars, sliced meat and sausages, various fruits and veggies, quality chocolates, whole grain breads, ramen packages, salad dressings, fancy condiments, sauces, and lots lots more including deodorant and food colorant. It goes without needing to say that we had a feast that evening.

Here’s another haul! Lots of Greek yogurt, fruits and veggies and pita bread. My plans to eat moderately were thrown out the window when I got back home, overflowing with dumpstered goods. How could I say no to all these delicious dumpstered goods?? And yes, I am now back to being an omnivore! A freegan, really. I eat what I scavenge. I don’t cook with meat, but I’ll eat it on occasion if someone offers me some or we dumpster some.

One of the things that are rare but a wonderful find in dumpsters is cheese. It just so happens that my roommates hit the cheese motherload a week earlier, so we had a plethora of cheese squeezed in all crannies of the fridge and freezer. With some lovely pizza breads I dumpstered, I got in the habit of making daily pizzas for a while, including this masterpiece. A-mazing pizza.

I also had my first try at making a chutney with a bunch of mangos we got. Made with -duh- mangoes, onions, raisins, sugar, vinegar, salt and a variety of spices, simmered for an hour with regular stirring. The result was a surprising success, gaining “best-chutney-ever” feedback which highly pleased me. I’m looking forward to perfecting this recipe and sharing it here with you all.

It wasn’t long before I asked for permission to host weekly communal suppers. No need for them to be potlucks as we had so much food, I got in the habit of spending a whole day in the kitchen cooking up various goods with dumpstered ingredients, gaining some aid from others to chop, clean, or create their own dish (such as John’s awesome 50′s pineapple moraschino cheery ham haha), and sharing our feast with friends and strangers.

I’ve hosted three suppers so far, creating dishes to feed a dozen to two dozen people, such as cream of potato soup, cream of carrot soup, various salads, vegan whole wheat chocolate cupcakes, carrot cake, vegetable gratin, vegan rice pudding, orange cake, smoothies, baked potatoes, french onion soup with home-brewed beer, fruit yogurt salad and, and, a lot more. I love it. It makes me happy to put my patched-up apron on and cook all day, see people gather together for no better reason than to eat homemade recycled food and chat in a welcoming atmosphere, creating friendships and being food-inspired and just having a good time. I appreciate whatever thanks people throw my way but I find myself very humble about it. I just want to share, to get people together, to create opportunities. I’m surprised to realize that I haven’t been worrying over if my food is good enough or not – I know I have lots of experience in the kitchen and, I mean, it’s free food! =P

I jumped on the chance to work with Food Not Bombs again, this time with a crew at the co-op sur Genreux. We set up our tables on Mont-Royal street and got a surprising amount of interest, even more surprising – a great amount of people picking up panflets but not taking any food. They were genuinely interested in our cause. Of course the cops eventually came and gave us a visit, after getting a call from someone who thought we were starting a great manifestation and about to create a road block. What an idiot! What a ridiculous… Ugh! Couldn’t they take a moment to actually find out what it was they were complaining about first? Geez. I could atleast kinda understand the angry manager of the coffee shop infront of us who thought we were selling food and stealing his customers; More assumptions made without a moment’s thought or investigation. The cops were understanding to say the least, and let us continue our cause. It was a lovely warm grey day despite the slush and some rain drops. People enjoyed the food, learned something new. Volunteers laughed and shouted out their cause; Others stuffed their face with delicious food as they hung around on the wide sidewalk.

Noooo! I don’t want to say goodbye to this in 2 1/2 weeks time – I just got back! Yet I’m heading to Iceland at the end of the month to go to Iceland for 3 months. While that’s exciting, I’m sad to be temporarily leaving this wonderful community behind. I’ll try to bring some of it along with me to Iceland. I really do plan on settling down more when I get back… I swear!

5 Months Later

I haven’t made a post the entire time I’ve been South in the States, but I haven’t forgotten this blog! My living and eating habits had gotten poor so I’ve completely taken it around since the end of February, cleaning up my diet and getting active again. I learned how to make hallaca during my stay in Florida, amoung other things, which I’ll share with you at some point.

So what HAVE I been up to? I hitchhiked South with Siggi. Once he went back home to Iceland, I volunteered at an awesome hostel in Florida City for two months. I’m currently house/dog-sitting in Sanford Florida and I’ll be back in Quebec on the 19th! Then I gotta start preparing for my three-month trip to Iceland!

Before I head off again, let me at least share this tasty breakfast with you: Fluffy quinoa with coconut oil, soaked raisins, chopped pecans, and a bit of salt and cinnamon. Delicious! Give it a try.

Canned Goods!

My roommate Michael and his best bud Shane put together a canning workshop last week and it was frikkin great. I’ve been meaning to learn how to can goods, especially after trying some of Michael’s to-die-for pickled vegetables (such as beets!) so this was a great opportunity for me to learn, have fun, and meet some cool people. At the People’s Potato at the Concordia university! I hadn’t been there since last year!

After some funny introductions we started peeling and chopping apples – We were going to make apple butter! By boiling the peel and core of apples you get pectin, which is often used in jams as a thickener -  Very cool if you ask me.

And after the apples we started chopping carrots. Lots and lots of carrots. I enjoyed quickly cutting matchstick carrots and piling them into a mountain more than I should have. During so I also learned about a cool organization called For Peace and Freedom, who invited us to join their caravan South. Very interesting! We’ll have to see.

So with all of these carrots, daikon and ginger (which I learned can be peeled with the back of a blade!!) we were to make Vietnamese pickles!

We learned about sterilizing jars and their lids in boiling water for 5-10 minutes and making sure not to get any food touching the lip, hence why using a funnel is a great idea.

Here’s Shane cookin’ up an apple storm. He’s in a cage ’cause he’s crazy, duh.

And here’s me with Michael and my canned goods! I’m so excited about these! I can open up the jar of Vietnamese pickles in a week’s time for semi-pickled vegetables if I’m impatient. (Update: We were impatient and opened one of each can almost a week afterwards and it was delicious!! The daikon had a wonderful gingery taste to them, and the apple butter was thicker than thick and went great with cheese in my crepes). These guys can stay canned for a couple of months. The apple butter will last ’til next Spring. I will share the recipes with you once I get them so stay tuned!

Understanding your cat’s emotions

A little something that is awefully cute, sent to me from someone who said it reminded them of me =3

Hoooo boy…

Okay, how am I going to condense 1 1/2 – 2 months worth of info in this post?… I just won’t be able to! XD I am getting ready to go vagabonding once again, woohoooo! It was about time I guess. It’s taking me tons of time though, between getting the right travel equipment, getting my government papers all ready, working my full-time job, hosting potlucks, practicing the guitar, and getting my room ready for my subletter. That and spending more time than I want to admit with Siggi, an awesome Icelandic guy I’ll be traveling with – South! Warmth, yesyes. In about two weeks time. I think I’ve decided that I’ll actually Not bring my travel cookstove with me, and rely much more on dumpster diving and asking restos for freebies. Much more of an adventure that way, and I’m sure I’ll often be hungry, but I wouldn’t mind losing a bit of weight haha. I am soooo excited! So yeah, that is why I’ve been afk so much. I still have the time to put up a few pictures though, and add in a few snipets of info here and there.

Actually, not to waste time, I’ll just send you to one of my most recent posts on my travel blog HERE to read as I’ve got some food-related stuff there, and whatever I haven’t mentioned there food-related will be posted here, which may or may not cause confusion or irritation; That’s entirely up to you. I swear I’m not being lazy. Just majorly preoccupied =P.

What better to do than mix dumpstered strawberries and cherries with dumpstered chocolate chips? Yes, chocolate chips. A big box full, I kid you not. The Laurier House is one happy family!

Also with all dumpstered or scavenged goodies are these flourless pb cookies! You must be familiar with the recipe on Kraft’s peanut butter containers? If not, check it out. These are super delish, easy to make, and gluten-And-dairy-free. You can even get away with using simply three ingredients: peanut butter, sugar and eggs. You’ll have to adjust the recipe a bit if you use natural peanut butter. Oh and P.S. Cookies with one chocolate chip in the center of each don’t stack well at all =P. I actually made two plates full like this. The other cookies had dinosaur sprinkles on them =D.

Okay I can at Least post one recipe in this post! I made two lemon yogurt cakes, the first of which was more or less half whole wheat flour and half all-purpose flour for the Laurier house, and the second with whole wheat flour and a few tweaks. The second cake made entirely with whole wheat flour was actually not as great as the second because I belive the flavor of te whole wheat took over, but that’s what whole wheat generally does, and lemon desserts are usually very light in flavor so I guess I should have seen this coming. Wait, I did. Well it was alright cake anyway. But here’s the first recipe I wrote up. I scribbled all over the place on my little paper so I hope I write the right numbers! If I get my hands on more lemon yogurt I’ll try making this recipe again to make sure I’ve written down the proper quantities. P.S. This cake is *wonderful* to cut. My roommates think I’m crazy cause I kept talking about how it was the most amazing cake I’ve ever cut.

Dry Ingredients: 2/3 cup all-purpose unbleached flour, 1/3 cup whole wheat flour, 1/4 sugar, 1 tbsp ground flax seeds, 1 tbsp poppy seeds, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking soda. Wet Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups lemon yogurt?, 1/2 cup oil (or is it 1 cup??), 1 beaten egg, 1 tbsp + 1 tsp lemon zest?, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions: Stir the dry ingredients together. In another bowl, mix the wet ingredients together then combine everything together until just mixed. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake at 350 until a toothpick inserted in comes out dry. Once it cools down, pour lemon yogurt on top (which you can sweeten to make it less tart as a garnish).

We’ve been dumpstering a lot of Greek yogurt these days so I try to make cheesecake with them when I can, but obviously it’s different than your usual cheesecake. I’ve experimented lots and can tell you from experience to NOT experiment to much on your own at first. Start off by using a rare recipe like Oikos’ Greek yogurt cake. I warn you now – They forgot to mention the temperature to bake it at. It’s probably 325 or 350 – You be the judge. DO have fun adding a bit of flavor or nice garnishing though.

Hmmm… They have all kinds of recipes! We still have lots of Oikos Greek yogurt left…  I’m definitely going to check out their recipe list!

I remember writing about chocolate coffee cupcakes this summer but these are *special* – They’re made with raspberries! It’s very similar to the other recipe, vegan as well, but they are *really* delish so I’m going to add this recipe here as well – Here ya go! ~Raspberry Truffle Cupcakes~

Dry Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt. Wet Ingredients: 1 cup brewed coffee (I used chocolate raspberry-flavored coffee for more flavor! P.S. Let it cool down just a bit before using), 1 tbsp vinegar, 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/2 cup frozen raspberries.

Directions: Stir dry ingredients together. In another bowl, mix wet ingredients together. Mix all the ingredients together until just combined and pour into greased cupcake molds and bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. Let cool before taking them out of the mold. This recipe makes about 24 cupcakes.

My bi-monthly picnic potlucks and jams have been a blast, but unfortunately it’s gotten so cold and dark so early these days that I’ve had to cancel Thursday evenings. I want to have one more potluck before I leave but I’ve yet to decide on the date. I only have 3 days of work left and then I’m freeee!! It’s going to be a busy weekend at work though – Lots going on. It’s been a great experience working there (and lots of stress! Also lots of learning how to create soups, salads and main dishes on the spot with limited ingredients) and I’m unsure what awaits me when I get back (heck I don’t even know WHEN I’m coming back!) but I’ll see if I can work part-time there in the future if they have space. But speaking of work, I created an awesome dairy-free coconut orange muffin while there. It’s made with all-purpose flour but I wanted to keep the flavor and color very light, so I think I’ll post the recipe once I found out where I scribbled it. Oh!Oh! And I started recycling our chocolatines and croissants to make bread pudding which is AWESOME, especially with cinnamon and apple slices.

I have to get back to my schtuff but expect at least one more post before I head out in about two weeks. Until then!

Raw Vegan Pesto

Wow, it’s been over a month since I last posted! And for a while there I was posting every 4ish days… I must say, I’ve been incredibly busy these days (hop over to my travel blog Bohemian Vagabonds for some info) and I don’t even cook much these past couple of months – At home that is. I still cook lots at work. I only have a few days left there though, then… Stay tuned to find out!

I meant to post this over a month ago but here it is now:

~Raw Vegan Pesto Sauce~

Thanks to a man I met who’s into raw foods, I got back on the raw vegan wagon for a short, short while. We decided to make raw vegan pesto and cheesy kale chips together. Both turned out amazing. I made the pesto a couple of times but never wrote down the exact quantities so here’s a good guess.

Ingredients: 6 cups lightly-packed fresh basil,  1 cup sundried tomatoes (the dry ones), 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp nutritional yeast, 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 2 garlic cloves, about 1 3/4 cups water.

Directions: Put all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Modify to your liking (You can add spices, use a different ratio of the seeds, or try using pine nuts etc) to your desired consistency, and store in the fridge.

For the pasta, just take some zucchini and cut it into thin noodles. You can use one of those super expensive fancy twirly things to make zucchini noodles with, but you can also get a peeler that has teeth on it that is far much cooler and FAR much less expensive! Zucchini noodles are really fun! They don’t have flavor but that’s the case for normal grain pasta, but these have a small crunch to them.

The color isn’t pretty at all, it’s actually a muddy brown, but the taste will surprise you! You can keep the pesto thicker as a dip for crackers and vegetables, or thinner to be used as a sauce for pasta or, even better, raw zucchini pasta! This makes for a good quantity of pesto - Enjoy!

I also came across another pesto, a vegetarian version with few ingredients, that I modified to make into an amazing pasta sauce at work. This is from memory! But it should be pretty accurate. I’ve only made it once so far but everyone who tried it thought it was amazing.

Ingredients: 3 cups lightly-packed fresh basil leaves, 1 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 cup natural non-salted almonds – toasted, about 1/2 cup semi-melted cheese (mozarella and cheddar), about 4 garlic cloves – crushed, black pepper and salt to taste.

Directions: Process all ingredients in a food processor until well combined. This down as necessary, but keep in mind that the oil easily separates from the paste. Unlike the pesto recipe mentioned above, this one is a nice green color.

There is lots of zucchini pasta to be made…

Jammin

I feel bad for not posting much these days… Much has been happening in my life! I’m still cooking up a storm though – Either at home or at work. Things are going well, and I’m having another picnic potluck & jam this Thursday 13th! At the Champ des Possibles on Henri-Julien (Montreal), from 6:30 till sunset, then we move to the public piano on the curb nearby – Let me know if you’re interested!

Cafe L’Artere

Thanks to one of the “intervenantes” at the CCHM, I got to do my “stage” at Cafe L’Artere, a really sweet co-op. “L’Artère is a creative dynamo. It is an alternative space that seeks to stimulate emerging artists, to create a neighbourhood coffee shop, to offer healthy and quality food options, to have transparent and self-managed governance, to encourage neighbourhood solidarity and to offer a workspace for the self-employed.”

(P.S. The photo wasn’t taken by me and I don’t know who the owner is.) Instead of two weeks it lasted three, and my tasks were shared like the rest of the crew (there is a total of 8/9 of us, with 1-5 working at the same time) from preparing meals to serving them, making coffee to cleaning up the place. I admit that preparing coffee and being a waiter really scared me because I’ve actually never done that before and I know that I lack social skills, but it’s been going smoothly, and I feel really comfortable here. It’s amazing, actually.

Everyone’s really cool, the ambience of the place is real chill, we listen to music all day, I get to wear what I want, I get to eat good food for free, and I can even create the dishes to be served on certain days! The kitchen is openaired which is a neat concept. Every Monday afternoon we have a meeting and discuss various important matters together. They regularly host shows and events, with a full-blown piano and classical guitar I can play to my heart’s content during my off-hours. On top of it all, starting Monday I’m officially hired and I’ll be working 4 shifts a week which is really awesome, but I have to come in once in a while on an off-day for catering services.

Everyone puts aside 4-8 hours a week to do their own work to help the business grow (which opened just over a year ago), such as accounting, creating menus, getting the word out, building shelves, taking care of catering orders and ordering ingredients. I’ve given myself the tasks of finding and creating creative recipes, working on a recipe book, calculating the costs of all the dishes, and taking care of hygiene and conservation of food. I’ll be working 32 hours a week plus 4 extra hours to work on these tasks, and I look forward to them!

How lucky I consider myself for having landed a job at the CCHM, which finally ended this month, and for now having found an awesome co-op cafe/resto to work at. Come say Hi! The address is 7000 Avenue du Parc, near the Parc metro station.

Still, I can’t believe how quickly that 6 months South at the CCHM went by – they said it would – and how it’s behind me now but it’s left me a lot of kitchen experience and knowledge which I greatly appreciate. It’s nice that I still see my old co-workers once in a while. Now I have new friends to make in the North end of Town.

**Update**

Things are going great at work except that I’m working more shifts than I initially wanted to, and my work schedule is kinda weird and not grounded. I work early Monday with our weekly meetings running from 8:30pm-10:30/11pm, Late Tuesday (when there’s events), possibly Wednesdays on occasion (when there’s a catering service, though this date can possibly change), early Thursday, mid Friday, early Saturday, and Off for sure on Sunday… When one of the girls said everyone works 4 shifts, this is definitely not what I had in mind – I was actually hoping to work just part-time once I left the CCHM to work on my own projects. On top of that though, I’m on a government subvention which means that they have to say I worked the same amount of hours each week for the government to pay me, so I have to mess around to make sure my hours match up, which is more complicated than if I was just getting directly being paid by the cafe. Argh! I did mention I was looking for less hours and that I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a semi-floating schedule, but I guess I should have spoken with more assertion, but of course I suck at that. Well, we’ll see how this works out. Maybe it’s not that bad; I just need to get used to it.

Recipes from Over a Month ago

More failures and successes to share with you!

I’ve always kept myself far away from anything that involved hard boiled eggs due to it’s unpleasant odor, but only since I’ve been working with them at work have I been able to appreciate them and, actually, I really love them plainly with cajun and salt! Mayo added works too, – the good kind. So how to make hard boiled eggs? Simply and from what I’ve seen, you put your eggs in a pot first, then add enough cold water to cover about 1/3 inch over and boil it – Once it starts to boil, count down about a dozen minutes. At that point, run them under cool water and once they’ve cooled down enough, peel them. And then cajun it up. Seriously, cajun spice is the only way to go with these stinky bad boys.

Excited since my last accidental dye-job on eggs at work, I was eager to play around with new colors. I guess you could say I was disapopointed with the result of these after using boiled beets to dye them, but maybe they needed to be raw and touching them directly. Maybe I didn’t soak them long enough. But you know what, this is nice… The yellow dye is exactly the same color as the yolk! Apparently there are special techniques you can use to give special dye jobs. I just got lucky with this one and gave it a spotted look.

So, sticking to the beets, I shredded them and decided to make “veggie burgers” with them. The result was surprisingly good – and super red! Sorry, I don’t know where I put the recipe so I can’t share the ingredients list with you at the moment… It was my first experience making veggie burgers, and these really were predominantly veggie-loaded, but next time I’d really like to make them with walnuts and mushrooms… Mmmmm…

I made tabouleh with basic ingredients (parsley, tomato, onion, lemon juice, mint, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, salt) and quinoa and it was nice and all, but honestly I always feel like I need to add a bunch of spices to give it a nice flavor, but I never know what to put in it… Any suggestions?

I don’t remember if I hinted at my vegan chocolate coffee cookies yet but… now they’re cupcakes and they’re so much more awesome! I haven’t perfected the recipe yet of course but it’s coming out nicely, and I find that cupcake-sized is perfect, so here’s what I got for now:

~Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes~ makes 12

Dry Ingredients: 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup unsalted cocoa powder, 1/2 cup evaporated cane sugar (or just plain sugar), 2 tbsp ground pistachios, 2 tbsp instant ground coffee, 1/2 tbsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt. Wet Ingredients: about 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp (vanilla) rice milk, 2 tbsp vegetable oil, 1 tsp vanilla extract, about 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips.

Directions: Stir the dry ingredients together. In another bowl, mix the wet ingredients together. Add the wet to the dry mixture and mix until just combined. Pour into greased cupcake molds and bake at 350F for about 20 minutes. Let cool in pan 5 minutes before taking them out to a cooling rack.

Originally they were made with minced almonds but I ran out of that. I plan to tweak the oil out and make them extra chocolatey – Yes, more!

I tried making a chocolate souffle for the first time, and it didn’t quite work out… It wasn’t chocolatey or sweet enough, and it was kinda dry… Geez! Well I guess that’s to be expected after just doing whatever and not following any concrete ideas, again… But I am hoping to have a concrete recipe for chocolate souffles, as well as that amazing chocolate microwave cake I was raving about earlier (the one with the mouth-watering picture).

Oh and,

On my last day of work I made some awesome matcha cupcakes with green creamcheese icing, and some gluten and dairy-free almond orange cake, which everyone seemed to drool over (*pictures to come!*). I’m angry at myself for having literally waited until the end of my formation there to start trying out my own recipes or recipes quite different from the cuisine collective’s norm, but atleast I dedicated a day to it! I’m REALLY digging the whole moist almond-orange cake thing now…

I made some “Vegan’s Pie” again, almost completely made with dumpstered goods! (Btw the mashed potato topping is hiding on the other side – it flopped over) I just love this recipe- It’s so quick to make, and so tasty!- With loads of ketchup. I’ve got it written out on my misc meals recipe page – Check the right panel if you’re interested.

And yeah yeah I just can’t let go of the rice krispies treats… I’m surprised that my bag of rice krispies isn’t finished yet! It’s getting there though… Here’s more chocoalte-infused crisps. I never make the same recipe, but here’s a simple (and rich) one I made last: 1/4 cup natural peanut butter, 3 tbsp maple syrup, 3 tbsp cocoa powder, 2 cups rice krispies. Stir, modify to your liking, pack down, freeze, chop, done.

Coming up next are: Apple carrot cookies (or cupcakes), apple pie, carrot cake , chocolate microwave cake, and some raw vegan treats!: amazing pesto, curried carrot flax crackers, sundried tomato flax crackers, and apple granola. Yes we have lots of apples and carrots, how’d you tell??