Sunny St. Patrick’s Day With Kate, Kale and Cruda Cafe

I can hardly believe that yesterday was March 17 as the weather in Toronto was absolutely glorious!!

Started off my day with some banana soft serve and fruit I honestly felt like I was eating ice cream for breakfast and I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it!! It was so smooth and creamy and the perfect way to start my day. We have a new roommate here at the house Miss Iris!! I’m delighted that she is with me and having fun watching her get settled into her new digs. Other roommates are less excited… Judas was camped outside my door for most of the day, waiting for an opportunity to greet the new inhabitant. He was unsuccessful, but something tells me this won’t be the last I see of him trying to sneak a peek. We’re trying to avoid World War 3 by introducing them to one another slowly…

I decided that it would be brilliant to spend the morning at St. Lawrence Market as I had not been in quite some time. I had mentioned this idea to Kate when I ran into her on the streetcar on Tuesday and she said she had been thinking the same thing, so off we went! Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market has been around for more than 200 years and has been heralded as one of the 25 best food markets by Food and Wine magazine. There are a wide variety of vendors selling produce, meats, cheeses, housewares, and pretty much anything you can imagine. I scored some great produce including organic purple kale, purple carrots, bok choy, asparagus and blood oranges but there were three other things at the market that made me ULTRA excited… Gluten free grains in bulk at Rube’s! I had just been talking to one of my roommates about teff the other day and was so excited to find it alongside amaranth and other goodies at the market. I grabbed teff and amaranth as well as some millet and sorghum flour. The booth also had amaranth, chickpea and quinoa flours (all well-priced)  plus a variety of lentils, beans and rice noodles so I know I will be going back there again!

Second piece of excitement… Fresh organic sprouts from Uncle George’s Sprouts. I opted for the sunflower sprouts and can’t wait to add them to my salads this week and enjoy the delicious-sprouty-goodness. Last but not least… Cruda Cafe is a raw vegan cafe located in the basement of the North building nestled in amongst the stalls of meat and cheese. I was so excited to try Cruda’s menu of raw delights. After some deliberation I opted for one of the wraps, filled with a pesto and tonnes of colourful veggies and sprouts. It was delicious!! The wrap was flavourful without being overpowering and the pesto was a wonderful compliment to the beets, avocado, carrot, greens and sprouts. There were many other options on the menu that sounded delightful as well as a variety of vegan and/or raw truffles, pies and cupcakes. I hope it does well in the Market as I look forward to going back again. Kate and I declared our market visit a success. I definitely need to visit more often! I celebrated with a delicious stir fry of some of the veggies I had procured. Kale, asparagus, bok choy and tofu with green onions, garlic, ginger, tamari & apple cider vinegar (in Drew’s coveted bowl that I kinda want to steal…) Other than the green-hued sweater I wore, it was the closest I got to sharing in the St. Patrick’s day festivities as I ventured!

How was your St. Patrick’s Day?

Catching Up on Foodie Goodness, Wordless Wednesday Style

F is for Fruits & Veggies

Often when I tell people that I’m gluten free and vegan, I am asked the question “so what do you eat?” At the top of my list is always fruits and vegetables and I am not ashamed of that fact!

I love fruits and vegetables and try to include a wide variety of them on a daily basis. We talked a lot about them this summer during the 4 weeks to 5 servings challenge and I also touched down on some of their benefits in my apple post. I separate our grocery list by where I’m going to get the items, and the list for the fruit and veggie stand is always the longest!!

I do try to buy organic whenever possible, but that is a personal preference. While there’s been much debate over whether organic produce is better for you, I try to avoid putting extra stuff in my body, so I don’t like the idea of pesticides going in! I also find that organic produce just tastes better than it’s conventional friends (or enemies)

Here’s my fruit and veggie tally from yesterday:
banana (morning snack)
tomatoes, zucchini, sweet potato & green beans in my curry (lunch)
carrots in my soup (dinner)
spinach, cucumber, peppers and green onions in my salad (dinner)1 c. grapes (evening snack)

Everything I ate yesterday was delicious, colourful and so filling. I tweeted last night “Just had the BEST supper - you know the ones where you're making sounds because it's so good?!?” – I love that feeling!!

If I had to choose a favourite fruit and vegetable… I would have to say mango and Brussels sprouts, both full of vitamin C and fiber (although strawberries, kale, broccoli, avocados would be very close in the running!)

What is your favourite fruit and veggie? How to you maximize their presence throughout the day? 

 

Ron Popeil taught me well

When I was a kid, I loved watching infomercials. My parents thought I was nutty, but I really enjoyed watching Ron Popeil promote various kitchen gadgets (or spray on hair) to the masses. My absolute favourite was the food dehydrator. I realistically knew that my family was never going to buy one, but I was intrigued by the "fruit roll ups" and jerky nonetheless. So you can imagine my excitement when I got this...

My very own dehydrator!

(Eric making good use of the box)

I opted for an Excalibur dehydrator (purchased from the lovely folks at Upaya Naturals) in the "apartment sized" 4 tray model. I had a credit (from my doomed Sun Warrior purchase) and I thought it would be a cool gadget to have. I've been experimenting more and more with Raw Food and I decided the dehydrator would open up my options!

My first experiment was Raw carob-cherry cookies from The Complete Book of Raw Food (you'll remember that this is the book Joey got me for my birthday)

They were delicious!! I was happy to find a new use for carob. Dried cherries are delightful and the centers are made from fresh cherries and honey. I also love that they have ZUCCHINI in them!! They were really easy to make and incredibly delicious. Joey really enjoyed them too.

As you can imagine, dehydrating takes time. Things don't "cook" very quickly at 105 degrees, so you need to plan ahead. That's fine by me!! I know that I'm going to learn more about the nuances of my dehydrator as I use it more, but overall I'm really happy that I got it. Next project: Corn taco shells.

Since we're talking colour this week, I thought I would share yesterday's colourful eats with you.

Breakfast: Scrambled tofu with spinach, 1/2 an avocado & orange juice

I've never "scrambled" tofu before, but this was delicious!! It's basically tofu with onion, garlic, a bit of oil, curry powder and salt. You break up the tofu into chunks, sautee for a little bit and voila! I usually go for sweet breakfasts rather than savory, so this was a nice change. It didn't take much time to make and it kept me full for HOURS!! I will definitely be making this a staple in my breakfast rotation.

Lunch: Cauliflower, broccoli, & veggie burger with cherries & blueberries

Dinner: Wild Rice soup with sweet potato croutons, cauliflower, cucumber slices and walnut crackers (recipe from Meghan's class)

The soup wasn't what we expected, but it was a good meal nonetheless. Joey and I decided that the cauliflower was probably some of the best we've ever tasted!! Yay for the Farmers Market - I can't wait to go again this week!

How are you doing with colour this week? Any good dehydrator recipes/books to share?

Tortilla and Muffin Goodness

This weekend was incredibly busy. Not only did I do shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I led three meetings on Saturday morning, took at WW conference call, did my meal planning and grocery shopping but also managed to make homemade tortillas and muffins. Even I'm amazed!

First let's talk about the highlight: homemade tortillas

In my opinion, making the tortillas was very easy, but when I tried to explain the process to my coworkers at lunch they gave up after step one - make the dough, cover and let sit for 20 minutes. Everyone is different I guess.

Here are my little spelt-y dough balls:

Sadly I didn't get a picture of me rolling them out. My countertop is a similar colour to the dough so I couldn't get it to work between rolling out each ball, placing it in the skillet and flipping. Here's one in my pan:

They were DELICIOUS! I tried to make the black bean burrito filling from Refresh, but sadly didn't have enough cooking time for the beans. My friend Lori said she enjoyed the crunchy texture but I didn't love it (neither did Joey) It had good flavor, but I'll have to try again with more bean cooking time. Luckily I had a variety of other toppings ready for our burritos including baby spinach, extra lean ground beef, red peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, salsa, low fat yogurt and shredded cheese.

I served our non-black bean burritos with steamed broccoli. Everyone really enjoyed the meal and we all went back for seconds.

Today I started off my day with one of the muffins I made following our burrito supper last night. I used a recipe from Refresh for banana muffins. I made a few substitutions (used spelt instead of durum flour, adding a bit more water and blueberries and made 36 instead of 24 to give them a lower Points value) There is no added sugar in the muffins - they get their sweetness from a date puree and the bananas. I enjoyed one of the muffins with a glass of orange juice and it kept me nice and full until lunch!

For lunch I filled one of my homemade tortillas with all the leftover veggies and some blue cheese dressing with corn and edamame on the side. I finished the meal with some spelt shasha ginger snaps.

It was a great Sunday of cooking and I will definitely be making the tortillas again. At only 110 calories and only two Points they are a great bang for your Points buck. They're very inexpensive to make and taste amazing (probably because they only have 5 ingredients vs. the many, many ingredients that can be found in commercially produced tortillas) And I'll be enjoying the muffins over the next few weeks! I packed most of them away in my freezer and will pull them out when needed.

Still excited...

The novelty hasn't worn off yet and I'm still excited about my Laptop Lunch. Yesterday comments from my co-workers ranged from "is there a Strawberry Shortcake on the front?" and "are you going on an airplane soon?" to "wow, that looks good!"

Round two includes leftover fajitas with lf sour cream, brown rice salad with an extra lime wedge for tang and half a honey crisp apple. Yum!

My first Laptop Lunch

Okay so I have to tell you about my new obsession that is scaring my fiance - Laptop Lunches. Now I have to say that since joining Weight Watchers, I have developed a passion for food. I love cooking, baking, planning lunches, planning meals, making grocery lists and grocery shopping. It brings me a lot of joy and my fiance really likes it as well!

I usually pack our lunch every day. Sometimes it is exciting (homemade soup or leftovers from the previous night) and sometimes it's pretty mundane (a sandwich).

A few weeks ago I was in a store near my house and I saw these containers called Laptop Lunches. They are reusable lunch containers with various compartments and lids. I stood there looking at the containers, trying to decide if we would use them, if Joey would think it was silly and couldn't make a decision so I left the store. Today a poster on the GDT mentioned them again and I had a look at the site and then started looking at other sites - this whole Bento lunch box phenomenon is HUGE!! You can find pictures on the site or if you search flickr you'll come up with 3,444 pictures of Laptop Lunches. I marched back to the store near my house and purchased two - a pink and a blue - for Joey and I. The set include the box, 5 smaller containers (2 with lids), a fork and a spoon. Everything fits together nicely and I'm also happy that it will be good for the earth as we'll be producing less waste with fewer plastic baggies, forks and spoons.
Here is my first attempt:














Lunch for Joey and I tomorrow includes leftover Shepherd's Pie, some carrots with hummus and two homemade cookies. While I'm not sure I'll take pictures of my lunch every day, I've rediscovered my passion for packing lunches and I'm excited to encorporate some more variety into my daily routine! Joey thinks I've gone off my rocker a little, but I'm sure he'll smile tomorrow around 12:00 and he opens up his fantastic lunch.

Today's Menu & Quote from the Weekend

Breakfast: Tall soy extra hot Tazo Chai, mixed fruit salad
Snack 1: Nature Valley Fiber bar
Lunch: Cauliflower & Leek soup, baby carrots, WW oatmeal cookie
Snack 2: FF hot chocolate
Dinner: Macaroni with tomato sauce & cheese
Snack 3: TBD

Water: 1.5L


Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain