You can never buy too much chocolate

Posted: December 17th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: food | Tags: raw, recipe, run, Song of the Run | No Comments »

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.

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Whoever has the most saliva, swallows the most pinole

Posted: December 15th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: food | Tags: breakfast, recipe | 1 Comment »

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

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A long time coming

Posted: October 29th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: food | Tags: recipe, yoga | No Comments »

Well I’m already a terrible blogger. I’ve been so busy this week and am dealing with some technical issues so I haven’t been able to do much posting.

I’m crazy excited though because I just heard back about a volunteer position I applied for (I know, it’s not exactly hard to get a volunteer job, but let me have my moment). Anyway, it’s with a new hot yoga studio near my house that my sister and I tried out at Thanksgiving. The awesome thing is that I only have to volunteer from 7:30-10pm on Friday nights and I get unlimited free yoga, which is a crazy bargain. On top of my gym and pool memberships I just can’t afford to do yoga otherwise. I also love the atmosphere in this place, it’s the only real studio I’ve ever done yoga in so I don’t have much to compare it to, but it has a nice dark studio, with great instructors and a very modern, zen decor. They follow good environmental practices as well, which is important to me, especially when they’re using as much heat as they have to.

Anyway, I had some great breakfast this week. I made some Butternut Squash pancakes out of leftover roasted butternut squash that I mashed with some Pumpkin Pie in a Bowl, almond milk, and a flax egg, then added to my oat pancake/waffle mix.

I actually tried to make these into waffles at first but they went a mess in the waffle maker (too gooey), so I salvaged them into pancakes. No worries – I salvaged the sketchy waffles for use elsewhere.

I served my lovely pancakes with my rid-onk-ulously delish homemade cranberry sauce. I have to tear the spoon out of my hand on a regular basis in order to not shovel the whole batch into my mouth at once. I also added some chopped walnuts and a little maple syrup (I don’t sweeten my cran sauce very much so I wanted a little added sweetness). And I put them on my penguin plate! Mumble would approve.

Later in the week I made some classic banana oats with a little added flax and used one of my discarded waffles as a topper with more banana and crantastic sauce. I can never get over beautiful fall flavours like this.

You might be thinking, do you ever eat anything other than breakfast? The answer is, sometimes, but the lighting pretty much starts sucking the second I wake up so it’s the only meal that looks good this time of year. Nonetheless, I’ll share a couple photos of some dinners under a beautiful kitchen-fan glow.

This is a congee-esque dish made from millet and veggie broth, with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, sauteed mushrooms and spinach, a fried egg and green onions. Not bad, not great. I’ll definitely either cook the millet longer next time (I was hungry and impatient) or use a different grain (oats, maybe? I know – the horror!) because it wasn’t as creamy as I would have liked.

I also had collard wraps and a yummy garlic soup but my camera decided to eat the pictures. I can’t really blame it, they were delicious.

One last thing to share – I know, it’s more breakfast, but I had the pomegranate muesli again and it deserves to be shown again. I swear this one deserves to go down in the overnight oats hall of fame. It’s so good.

In case anyone wants to try it here’s the exact(ish) measurements I used:

1/2 cup oats

1/2 cup almond milk

1/2 scoop hemp protein powder (I used Manitoba Harvest’s Hemp Pro 70)

1/4 cup pomegranate arils

Let sit overnight. Then add:

5-6 almonds, chopped

1-2 tbsp dried currants

1 tbsp coconut

more pom arils

drizzle of maple syrup

So good! I’ll hopefully get another post up soon with more interesting topics. I really don’t want this to be a food journal but so far that’s all I have to share. I’m working on some more pages to add to the header as well.

Kisses.

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