Life in a tree

I really cannot believe it’s Christmas Eve already. I’m really not with the Christmas spirit this year and it’s usually my favourite holiday. I’m currently listening to some Christmas music online to try to get into the spirit of things.

I think it’s working

We went to see Avatar tonight and I loved it. If you ever want an idea of how I would envision my ideal world (without all the war and mayhem, of course) just watch that movie. It’s pretty much my perspective in a nutshell. It helps that I’ve spent pretty much my whole life wanting to live in a tree I’m tempted to do a full movie review here but I’m not sure it’s the place. I work in the film/tv industry and I hold movies very close to my heart so I find it difficult to not want to write whole essays on the subject at times.

Before the movie I did a lovely little hot yoga session. Very mellow and relaxing class tonight. I was really focussed in savasana tonight. When I finally opened my eyes everyone else was already out of the room and I hadn’t even realized it!

My eats today were pathetic because I was in such a rush to get to yoga after I woke up and then in a rush to make it to the movie. I grabbed a key lime pie Larabar (one of my favourites) on the way to yoga and picked up some stuff from the to-go counter of the health food store on the way to the movie. Including an edamame & arame salad, green onion cake, and a kombucha in niagara grape flavour. I really love kombucha and I think it’s a great alternative to pop, which I can’t stomach at all anymore, not that I want to drink it. I do worry about the caffeine content from the tea, though. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on here before but I no longer drink caffeine because I suffer from severe physical side effects from it (I’d rather not get into the details right now). I had a larger bottle than usual so my fingers are crossed that the caffeine content isn’t enough to affect me too badly.

I have a few eats from earlier this week to share, though. Just the good stuff

Truffles! I made these for a work party of Dan’s but there were lots left over so I’m giving them away for Christmas. They are super rich, made entirely with 72% chocolate and cream, so one is a dessert in itself. They were also ridiculously easy to make, if a bit messy.

I also made a raw, vegan version with cashews, flax, dates, agave, cocoa powder and a bit of peppermint extract. These don’t win in the texture department but I think I liked them better taste-wise. But I’m a sucker for minty stuff. And they definitely win the health prize.

Vegetable stew with a homemade biscuit.

I try to stay away from white flour but I had a craving for biscuits and that’s one of the few times where whole wheat or spelt flour isn’t going to do it for me. They were more than worth the small health sacrifice

This vegetable stew was a very simple recipe, I loosely adapated it from Susan’s Beefless Stew. I wanted something close to the kind of stew I grew up eating – traditional British beef stew. This was pretty close but lacked a bit in flavour. I ate it with some Sriracha, though, and that definitely helped a lot. It made a huge pot full so most of it has been slipped into the freezer for a later date.

Lastly, I made a lovely little salad the other night in an attempt to use up some of the oldball ingredients in my fridge. I don’t want to do a grocery run until after the holidays and I’m running low on everything, so I had to get creative. Luckily this “salad” turned out amazing.

Roasted cauliflower with sauteed black beans and shallot, topped with capers, goat feta, almonds & bread crumbs mixed with honey, parsley, tarragon and chives. Lovely menagerie of flavours going on here.

Hopefully I’ll be back in a couple days with some good Christmas meals to share. We usually like to do it right .

Merry Christmas, all!

You can never buy too much chocolate

Today I decided it was time to get out of my winter slump and finally do a decent outdoor run. It helped that the weather was gorgeous finally (and by that I mean it was 0C). So first thing this morning I woke up, threw together a small bowl of banana cereal (just a banana, chocolate hemp protein powder, flax, dried cranberries & almond milk) and headed out the door.

Man it felt good to run outside. No amount of mileage on a treadmill or track ever makes me feel like I’ve actually been running. I enjoy it on some level but as soon as I get back outside on the road/trail/path it’s a whole different world. Unfortunately, the huge amounts of snow make it really difficult to maintain a decent pace. I try not to be bothered by this because it’s not really that important as long as I’m doing what I can, but once I get into marathon training next month I’m worried that it’ll hurt my ability to train adequately.

Distance: 14.5k (9 miles)

Time: 1:31:00

Pace: 10:00 min/mile

Not a terrible pace by any means, but I was aiming for a 9 min/mile pace so it feels crappy anyway.

Song Of The Run : I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

This song always makes me want to dance and as I’ve mentioned before I love to dance while I run, so this one always gets my spirits up. It doesn’t hurt that the song started just a minute after this lovely old man smiled at me as I ran past and lifted his adorable, puffy yellow gloved hand to give me a thumbs up. I couldn’t stop smiling after that. It just shows – no matter what you think about your performance, there’s always someone out there who thinks that what you’re doing is pretty great.

I stopped in to my local health food store after my run to pick up some groceries. I wasn’t planning to get much but there were so many fun items on sale that I ended up with a full bag (funny how that always happens ). I don’t usually buy very much packaged/processed foods so I thought I’d share some of today’s purchases, just for fun.

This is my favourite brand of tofu. It’s made somewhat locally (Nelson, BC is about a 7 hour drive from Calgary), it’s organic and made with minimal ingredients. I try to stay away from too much soy, but I love tofu and this is the freshest, most authentic stuff you can get. Even the herbs used for flavouring are local and organically grown. I haven’t tried the curry flavour before; I usually buy the ‘hot’ flavour and it’s my favourite by far.

This is the only brand of raw milk cheese I’ve found but that’s okay because it’s really good and it’s Canadian as well. I’ve had both the old cheddar and now the parmesan. The texture of the cheese is a bit harder than traditional, pasteurized cheese but the flavour is better than most commercial cheeses.

Delicious, delicious Manna Bread. I like to pack chunks of this into my lunchbox. It’s so dense and flavourful that I just eat it straight, either cold or heated slightly. I also got some Ezekiel english muffins. Now that I’ve been converted to sprouted grain bread products I just can’t imagine going back to the regular stuff. For some purposes I can see wanting a softer, more refined bread but I’m a big fan of breads that are full of grains and have a more dense texture. For a softer grain bread I eat Healthy Way’s Flax Multigrain bread, which is probably my favourite brand of sliced bread.

I don’t usually like canned soups and the ingredient list on these isn’t ideal but they were on sale so I decided to pick up a couple for those times when I just want a quick bowl of soup on a cold day. I’ll let you know how I like them.

PB&J Larabars! I was so excited to see that my store finally got this flavour in (still no Tropical Fruit Tart, though). They were on sale 3/$5 too.

I’m really starting to have a stock-pile of protein powder but when I saw this today I couldn’t resist. I haven’t been able to find brown rice protein powder until now and it has a higher protein count than the hemp protein I usually use. I like the nutritional quality of hemp protein better so I’ll probably still use that primarily but this will be a nice change. Plus, Cafe Caramel flavour sounds yummy.

Now onto the onslaught of chocolate. Haha.

I’m making truffles for a function at Dan’s work on Friday so I had to pick up a bunch of dark chocolate.

They only had one bar of Green & Blacks baking chocolate left so I had to supplement it with some Cocoa Camino. I’m sure it won’t be a problem

They also had the regular Green & Blacks bars on sale so I picked up a bunch. These may or may not get slipped into some Christmas stockings. I don’t trust myself around this much chocolate.

I also picked up this gourmet chocolate bar from Wild Sweets. They had a good selection of different chocolates so I picked this one to do a taste test and see if it was worth the cost. I had a piece after dinner and good God in Heaven, this stuff is so good. The quality of the chocolate is amazing – dark and rich with a nice smoky finish – and the fillings are perfectly balanced. I really love praline so this was perfect for me. It’s definitely a special occasion chocolate, but lucky for me I consider a lot of things to be special occasions .

As much as I love when companies are Canadian, knowing that I can order these chocolates online at any time is a terrible temptation. I want pretty much everything on their website. The wine confits alone are enough to make me want to cry with sheer pleasure.

I also finally got my hands on some raw cacao powder. I bought this mainly because I needed some to coat the truffles but I’ve been wanting to splurge on some of this for months, so it was really just a good excuse

And thus ends my cornucopia of chocolate shopping trip. I made sure to let the cashier at the store know that I was baking with and giving away most of this chocolate because it looked pretty funny stacking it all on the counter.

When I got home I made myself a real dinner, once again involving my new obsession with cornmeal.

Roasted Vegetables & Black Beans on Cheesy Grits

This was actually a really easy meal to put together. I’d soaked the black beans overnight so I threw them on the stove to cook while I showered and took pictures of my shopping trip. Then I cooked up the grits using this basic recipe:

2 cups water

2/3 cup almond milk

1/3 cup cornmeal

salt & pepper to taste

1 tbsp earth balance or butter

1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese (I used my raw cheese mentioned above)

1/4 cup grated parmesan

Heat 1 cup of the water and the milk until boiling. Add the cornmeal and stir quickly so it doesn’t clump. Reduce the heat and cook until thickened, adding the remaining cup of water 1/4 cup at a time until it reaches the proper consistency, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from the heat, add salt & pepper, earth balance and stir in the grated cheese until smooth.

Makes two servings.

While the grits were cooking I chopped up some broccoli, brussels sprouts, zucchini & shallot and roasted them in the oven at 425 for about 20 minutes. They were topped with olive oil, salt, paprika and cayenne pepper.

Then I put everything together in a bowl and topped it all off with a little nutritional yeast and sriracha.

This is pretty much the definition of comfort food to me. I love roasted veggies and the grits really added a nice textural element, different from the rice that I often have instead. And sriracha pretty much makes any meal better, IMO.

That’s it for me. I’m making truffles tomorrow so hopefully I can get some good pics to share of how it goes.

Whoever has the most saliva, swallows the most pinole

After reading Born to Run I’ve been a bit obsessed with some of the things discussed in the book. One of those things being pinole – a traditional Mexican food that is often used when travelling, or by the Tarahumara when running long distances for energy (in dry form). It’s hard to get an official recipe on how to make it, since it’s such a simple food, but this is my take on a traditional ‘pinole’ and I’ve been enjoying it many ways for the past few weeks.

Basic Pinole Recipe

1/4 cup course grind cornmeal

1 tbsp sweetener (I’ve used agave, maple syrup & brown rice syrup)

cinnamon to taste (I use a lot)

~ 3/4 cup water

1 tbsp chia seeds (optional)

Combine the first three ingredients in a bowl and mix. Add the water, stir, and microwave for 1-2 minutes (you could also cook it on the stove for 15 min or so). Once cooked, stir to smooth out the mixture and add the chia seeds if using. Let sit for a couple minutes to let the chia seeds absorb the excess water, adding more water or other liquid to reach the consistency you like. If you don’t want to use chia seeds you can either microwave the cornmeal mixture for longer to thicken it up or just use less water. I like mine to be a bit thinner than I would oat bran with more of a ‘cream of wheat’ consistency.

I usually add toppings and eat this about an hour before exercising. It digests really well and is very filling for less of a caloric load on the body. I love the slightly gritty texture from the cornmeal and the chia seeds give it a really cool consistency. It’s also a flavour that lends itself well to many different additions.

Here’s another bowl, topped with raisins and pom arils. This was a pre-run snack.

And another with sliced banana. I like to keep my pinole pretty simple so far, mostly because I usually just use it as a snack.

And today’s breakfast. I played around with this one a little and added pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon, maple syrup and 1/4 cup pumpkin puree to the cornmeal. I also added some hemp protein powder to give it a little more protein heft. Topped with raisins and apple butter. This might be my favourite combo yet.

Some people seem to think that ‘grits’ or ‘pinole’ is less healthy than oatmeal or oat bran but I find the nutritionals to be pretty comparable if you’re buying a good brand. I buy Bob’s Red Mill brand coarse cornmeal and when compared to the same brand of oat bran or rolled oats the only real difference is that the cornmeal has less protein. It actually contains more fiber per gram than most of the oat products. So, not so bad at all.

Of course, it’s never going to replace a good bowl of oatmeal, but so far I’m quite the fan.

BTW – the post title comes from the Wikipedia article on pinole. In case you were wondering

And I’m back

Sorry for the long hiatus. Once I got sick I got a little off in my schedule. I’m a very habitual person and not exercising and eating oddly for almost a week threw me off my game. I’m only just finally getting back to normal.

My food photography has been pretty sporadic and I don’t actually have any pictures from yesterday or today so I’m just going to share some of the ones I’ve taken this month and you can just pretend that’s what I ate today.

Let’s start with a yummy plate of french toast-ed cinnamon raisin ezekiel english muffin. That’s quite the mouthful. I topped it with sliced pear, maple syrup and some goat feta. I love using tangy cheeses with sweet breakfast dishes, it’s such a good combo.

For lunch, lets say I had this:

I remember this meal as if it were yesterday, so close enough. A massaged kale salad with chipotle avocado, tomatoes and hemp seeds. Paired with a foodgasmic sandwich on whole wheat baguette – hummus, sliced radish, carrot, cucumber, avocado and pesto. So, so good.

And, what about dinner?

A stuffed acorn squash, perhaps. Filled with a vegan stuffing of whole wheat bread, apple, onion and cranberries. Stuffing is one of my favourite foods but I usually don’t think to make it for just a random dinner. I’m so glad that I did in this case because it was really good. I also had some spicy baked tofu with BBQ sauce for dipping.

Now back to reality -

Yesterday was a fun gym day. I was supposed to go to my weekly strength/cardio class but my favourite instructor wasn’t there and I don’t usually bother going if she isn’t teaching. Nothing against the other instructors, I just don’t usually find them as challenging and I end up regretting that I’m not off doing my own thing. So, I was left with an unplanned gym trip on my hands, my very favourite kind.

If I don’t have a set plan at the gym I just have fun with it and do whatever my heart desires. Yesterday that involved the following:

2 min on the rower (was supposed to be 5min but, being the klutz that I am, I jammed the hand grip against my knees and it hurt too much to continue).

1 min limping around in pain, deciding what to do next.

10 min on the step machine (I did the ‘aerobic intervals’ on level 10) while reading Impact’s feature on triathlon training.

5 min run around the track, gradually increasing speed to a sprint and then back down again. (~ 1km)

2 x 10 @ 12.5lb – bicep curl to shoulder press

2 x 10 @ 12.5lb – tricep extention

1 x 20 @ 12.5lb – lunges

5 min run around the track, gradually increasing speed to a sprint and then back down again. (~ 1km)

13 min on the bike (2 min spin, 1 min right leg, 1 min both legs, 1 min left leg, 1 min spin, 1 min climb, 1 min spin, 1 min right leg, 1 min both, 1 min left leg, 2 min spin). 6km total.

1 x 20 @ 12.5lb – squats and hammer curls

10 min run around the track, varying speed however I felt like (~2km)

I was a sweaty mess after this. Does anyone else sweat like gangbusters on the bike? I’m always dripping and it’s kind of gross, although also awesome.

Today I started off right with some pancakes . . . okay, not really.

But they were definitely worth sharing. I made these from a gluten-free baking mix I bought on accident but I really like it as a healthier alternative that still comes out with similar consistency and taste to classic, white flour pancakes. I made a really lovely sauce out of sauteed apple, pomegranate arils and maple syrup.

Then I half-jogged my way to yoga with 50lbs of baggage through a foot of snow, did a 90 min class, cleaned the studio (as part of my volunteer job), walked 25 min to the bus and came to work. I’m actually really exhausted now, even though it doesn’t seem like much I’m definitely feeling it. I’ve been ravenous all shift and finished my whole lunchbox before 3. I might have to scrounge up something from the dregs of the office fridge in an hour if my stomach doesn’t settle down.

Tomorrow should be pretty fun. I’m going to the gym to run, then meeting up with some friends for some swimming and then I have a family party to go to for my twin cousins’ birthday. The theme is Hollywood and I have no idea what to wear. Any ideas?

Second Breakfast

Just so we’re clear.

One may be so sick that one can’t go outside on a much anticipated trail run in the unbelievable November weather we’re having.

One may be so sick that one must call into work sick for only the second time in over three years.

But one is never so sick that one cannot artfully arrange banana slices on one’s breakfast.

Even if it’s the second breakfast of the day and it’s happening at 4pm.

It’s not so bad when you consider that the first one happened at 12:30.

First breakfast: Green smoothie in a bowl (banana, pineapple, cucumber, black kale, Vega) with apple cinnamon cereal and almond butter toppers.

Second breakfast: Cinnamon banana waffles with almond butter/maple syrup dipper.

Sometimes being sick isn’t all that bad

But damn I wish I could run. Or bike. Or swim. Or do anything.