Eat Dance Live

Please bear with me as I mess around with my blog over the break to try to make it new and snazzier looking! Check out lots of new tabs and such in the New Year!

Sometimes you eat a new superfood because you think it has some property that will make you healthier, sometimes you eat a new superfood because it's the latest fad and you want to keep up with the times, but sometimes you just want eat a new superfood because it's so damn yummy! This was my experience with a random bag of Savi Seed Sacha Inchi seeds that Andrew brought home a couple nights ago. Two words for you: NEW ADDICTION. I think I could seriously sit down to a bin of these and spend the rest of my life quite content. Now, I don't usually get non-raw food cravings that seriously, but I don't know what it is in the air but I've been craving childhood comfort foods so bad recently (that being real Chinese food, not the fake take-out crap) or more generally, anything that people around here would call "ethnic" food (Indian or Middle Eastern food have been the two things constantly on my mind recently). On the Chinese food note though, I...

When I was in high school, if I ever asked a friend if I could come over to their place for an impromptu baking session, their first question would always be "What's wrong? Are you okay?" When I shared a place with housemates and they came home to the wonderful aroma of carrot cake or banana bread, someone would always asked "Okay, who pissed off Chantal?" In both those instances, 95% of the time they were right... I confess, I'm an emotional baker. I know I'm not the only person to think this, but baking has always been my primary method of coping with anger, sadness, frustration, stress, or some combination of those four emotions. I don't know when that habit started... it was probably when my babysitter Evelyn taught me to bake banana bread from scratch for the first time when I was about 13. Ever since that day, whenever I was pissed, whenever I'd gone through some tragic teenage heartbreak, or when I'd just had a bad day, I woul...

When pumpkin-picking has passed, when the leaves have turned their vibrant colours and fallen to the ground, and as snow starts to blanket my city for three long months of bitter cold, what food better describes the passage from fall to winter up here in the great North than the cranberry? There's something about cranberries that just remind me of the passage from fall to winter. I don't know if it's just because American Thanksgiving seems to fall during that transition period, or if it's just something about the berry's vibrant red hue, which is both such a Yuletide colour and reminiscent of those bright red berry bushes you sometimes see when you're trekking or cross-country skiing through abandoned trails. Either way, they make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. As c ranberry season comes to end, I'm assuming harvesters have long past flooded the last of their bogs before water turns to ice so I want to eat all the fresh cranberries I can get. Cran...

So, if you want to know what has happened to me since those days of yore of daily blogging, I think this explains it quite well: I call it... the PhD This means I've been really antsy because that means more time vegetating studiously writing in front of the computer and less time being creative in the kitchen. On the upside, another hoop jam (as in a hooping party not, a fruit preserve) saved my life this evening. Seriously, best thing ever, try it ! Getting into my dance trance while still being focused enough to spin a hoop is the most wonderful feeling. It's so curative, especially because I've been in such a dance rut recently... Anyway, my kitchen time has been pretty productive. I've made a beautiful love child between Meredith 's and my "grawnola" recipes, which has just about spawned the best thing ever: You know I don't take measurements, but the general idea was replacing Meredith's use of raw pepitas and sunflo...

♪ ... Pretend like it's the weekend now. And we could pretend it all the time... ♪ But who says we have to pretend? It IS the weekend AND we get banana pancakes. What's better than that? Well, actually they were raw banana crepes, but that's even better! It's all the yumminess and nutrients and none of the sugar/carb-induced post-eating coma. The recipe? 3 large ripe bananas + 2 tbsp of ground flax + the juice of one lemon, mixed and spread over dehydrator sheets and left to dehydrate overnight. They made for a glorious weekend breakfast. Of course, what's a crepe without the toppings? They included peanut butter, cacao nibs, fig jam, chia seed, berries, melted dark chocolate, and a chestnut spread. Breakfast of weekend champions for sure! And as if you're weekend couldn't get any better, please check out Ayla's awesome CSN giveaway ! She's celebrating the 100th post of her blog, High on Healthy .

Yay, finally a food post! Strangely, it had been a while. This one is definitely for a worthy cause though since it is in celebration of Andrew's birthday! However, instead of publicly blowing birthday kisses or posting embarrassing/cute birthday pictures over the internet, I'll cut straight to the chase and get to the food. Birthday dinner was an impromptu spinach-hemp-basil zucchini rolls over a sundried tomato marinara. In short, I've been seeing lots of zucchini cannelloni recipes all over the raw food blog world for long enough that I really wanted to simulate my own nut-free version. While the insides had nothing to do with cannelloni, I still thought they looked awfully pretty: Those were followed by the pièce de résistance, a pomegranate and chocolate-frosted vanilla cheesecake! The crust was meant to be ginger snap-ish, the cheesecake was based off of Miss Meredith 's awesome fermented nut cheese recipe and some added personal creativity (read, I ha...

For all of you who actually got that joke, hah, sorry... So I have a new addiction: Hooping . By that I'm referring to the cooler version of hula hooping. It's not the kind you used to do as a little kid, but the awesome adult version, using bigger and heavier hoops. I totally recommend this to everyone! Why am I picking up this random hobby though? 1) As an avid summer festival go-er, I love to acquire as many miscellaneous talents as I possibly can. My long-term romance with tribal fusion aside, I've attempted poi (a skill I have left up to Andrew, seeing as how most people argue it was started as a flexibility exercise for male Maori warriors), have some pretty mad skills with the chinese yo-yo , tried Acro Yoga quite a few times, love love love our Om Gym , and more. Now I'm seeing hooping as part of my array of renaissance woman talents. Once my skill increases, I'm seeing LED hoops, fire hoops , and so much more... 2) As an avid dancer, hoopi...

So I'm assuming that organic mango season is over in countries that Canada trades with, because mangos have virtually disappeared from natural food store shelves. While I'm sure I could find regular pesticide mangos in some regular food store if I really wanted to, that's just not the way I roll... So I'll wait til they're organically available again. And hey, the world probably doesn't need my extra mango food miles anyway. In the meantime, I've had to forgo one of my favourite summer breakfasts: the infamous mango-cilantro-lime smoothie . With the weather getting colder, my body is conveniently not really into having those kinds of flavours anymore anyway, but I still absolutely loved the sweet and cilantro combination and was dying to get it any way I could. The solution? The banana-cilantro-spinach smoothie. Who would have thunk? Now I get that yummy taste AND extra greens. The recipe? 1 or 2 frozen naners, that iron-licious handful of cilantro, a few l...

Does anyone else feel like like they've really put themselves on the line when you do something as simple as bake a batch of brownies for your friends? I don't know if it's just me, but I put a frighteningly large amount of emotions into my food prep. It's like the most OCD perfectionist hiding inside me comes out and I have to make sure that what I'm making is perfect. I know it's because I'm of the strong belief that the food you make is a representation of yourself, and that I guess I hold the same standard for the food I give to the way I live my life, but whatever I'm making, whether living or cooked, it has to have the perfect taste, texture, smell, and visual appeal. Some people say that this feeling comes from the idea that sharing food you've made to others is one of the best ways for someone to know you in a deeper way than simply through what they can superficially see. The way you cook cannot tell lies. Through the way you present and pr...

Though this is coming slightly belated: Happy Halloween/Day of the Dead/ Samhain to all! Hope you all had an amazing weekend, I certainly did! It's funny how during certain times of the year, we are compelled to make changes in our lives. For some it's at the turn of the calendar year, on their birthday, or before bikini season starts, I have always tended to want to make resolutions in the Fall, and that time has come yet again. I don't know if it's because I've now been a perennial student for the past 20 years (holy crap! I just realized that when I wrote it... scary...) or just because I love Fall, but there's something about the leaves turning and the way the air smells that strikes me as a call to action. More than that, it's the time when I've made resolutions that I've actually stuck to more than during any other time of the year. So for the Celtic New Year, as market stalls are closing down for the winter here in Ottawa, and as I can feel th...

Yes, I am a vegan. Yes, I am a raw foodist. Yes, I am a lover of optimal health. But I am also a lover of food. And as I implied in my last post, I am also someone who supports "omnivores who make good choices," in other words, those who may still have a desire (for whatever reason) to eat meat, but do so in an ethical, conscious, and informed manner. (Obviously, I support them even more if they keep their meat eating to a minimum, for obvious environmental and health reasons!) To all you conscious omnivores, I say kudos to you. I'd much rather have you eat a diet of organic free-range bison and whole fruits, veggies, and grains, than being a vegan who eats processed squeaky meat and sugar-coma inducing cupcakes. Once again, my sister was up for a visit this week and I took it as an opportunity to go to a place I would have never stepped into were it not for an Ottawa foodie adventure with a meat eater. We went to The Works . In short, the Works is a local burger chain t...

Ah yes, that time of the year has come anew. It's one of my favourite times of the year! It's neither Christmas, nor the first day you can go for a really good warm summer tan... it's pumpkin season!!! Because we're already a few weeks into the pumpkin harvest, the blog world has exploded with pumpkin recipes for all meals and all dietary choices. While I've immensely enjoyed eyeing everyone's recipes, this one particularly caught my eye: it's Ashley at (never home)maker's tri-coloured pasta with a pumpkin sauce of awesomeness. Spiralized veggies? Pumpkin? Broccoli? Maple Syrup? What more could I want in one dish? Despite it obvious appeal, I kept holding off making this recipe because it called for coconut milk and pumpkin puree, neither of which I really use on my high-raw journey. While I know that you can puree raw squash, I'm of the belief that that the squash family is best digested when it has been steamed or cooked to some degree. I find i...