Eat Dance Live

... mosquito that is. Well, I hope so anyway. Summer in many areas of North America often means it's time to try to avoid the mosquitos, so here are my five cents on that topic. Because of an impending camping trip, we've been dietarily preparing for the hoards of mosquitos that one finds in the Canadian wilderness, and believe me there are plenty. In a lot of campgrounds it seems that mosquitos have actually grown immune to every kind of repellent from the oh-so-chemically-laden DEET to 100% organic citronella. I've tried every kind of natural repellent: rosemary, citronella, lavender, you name it. None of them work. To make matter worse, mosquitos love me. Now I know that everyone says this, but I think my blood won some kind of mosquito-friendly award I wasn't aware of when I was a baby. On my first camping trip, I got over 30 bites on just one leg in one night. Everyone else? A couple bites, maybe a few more over there... the next night, I got bites on my face, my...

Yes, it has begun... the long birth process of my very own kombucha scoby mother. For someone whose pretty lax about sanitation in the kitchen when cooking for myself (double-dipping, re-using mixing bowls, etc.), it's interesting to see how OCD I get about cleanliness the minute anything fermented is involved. Because I assume that things can easily go wrong with the fermentation process (mould, too much oxygen, unclean utensils, etc.) I read the instructions to my starter culture about 10 times and checked out all sorts of kombucha making websites before even touching anything. I was also extra careful to follow the instructions word for word and was probably more sanitary than I have been my entire life. (This coming from someone who has to be tied down to just follow a recipe.) Given the care I've put into this, I'm sure it's going to work awesome though! Starting your own kombucha culture is pretty easy actually. All I had to do was boil water in a steel pot, add ...

So, one of the many reasons to have awesome friends is that when they discover a really amazing place to eat, they share it with you. (Okay, so that was a pretty lame reason to want to have friends, but as a foodie, I guess it's still pretty high on the list.) Though we just moved into Ottawa, we do know a few people here and one of them told us he just discovered a really amazing restaurant in the middle of a random strip mall that not only had organic vegan food but raw options as well. We saw him a couple days ago and he said we had to try it, and that he was trying to tell as many people as possible and share the love. We agreed to go on one condition: that we go with him and meet his significant other, to which he readily agreed, though now I know it was probably more for the food, then our company! It's a small place called Cafe My House that we would never have found on our own. Like I said, it was totally randomly situated. Who knew you could find organic vegan food i...

I and most of my fellow food bloggers are some "special" diet. Whether we're are vegan, bee-gan, vegetarian, high-protein, low fat, raw, or some permutation of all of those and more. The other similarity between a lot of us is that we have a significant other, one who may or may not be on the same dietary road as we are. Now, a lot of you might think that that could lead to some complications, that we would have to prepare two different meals three or more times a day, and that our choices could quickly become a hassle, inconvenient, or downright frustrating. But not so! This post is about how you can make a his and hers food lifestyle work for you, if the two of you aren't 100% on the same culinary wavelength. I'm lucky enough that my other half is on the same path I am. For the most part, we are both raw bee-gans (though we both hate that kind of categorization, as Andrew just said he doesn't want to be an "-an" or "-ist" anything). The o...

A number of events over the past few days have given me the drive to rant again. While I often go on about food or fitness, today's topic is beauty. My first point: Beauty is not vanity if it is pursued with self-love and care . I've talked about skin and " beauty regimens " before, but I'll stress again that if I learned one lesson from my mom (though I promise I've learned many), it's that your skin is your biggest organ and because it's on the outside, it deserves a lot of care. The problem is that most of us believe that taking care of our skin is a vanity. We have equated getting a botox treatment or splurging on some wrinkle cream with getting a natural exfoliation treatment or putting organic lotion on every night. To me, the first is unhealthy, while the latter is totally healthy, and is just basic health and wellness care. I've been made to feel that going for a facial was like I was going to commit a crime, that I was being overly self-in...

Given yesterday's recipe, you'll noticed that I've been on a summer melon jag recently. Today's breakfast and lunch were variations on my melon sensation. The morning version had mint and ginger and the lunch version had stevia leaves. Tasting the leaves from my stevia plant were the first time I ever tasted stevia, and I have to say, it was... different. Funny thing is, I've only ever seen it in powder form, and to me, it tastes just like artificial sweeteners. It's what I remembered Sweet N' Low to taste like (which I've only had once when I was a kid before my mom noticed, and horrified, told me it was "fake sugar." I never had it since!) Though I love my plant, I'm not sure stevia is a plant I'll get use to. Dinner was zucchini pasta with marinara sauce, and Andrew's dessert was vanilla ice cream with raw cookie pieces. He came up with the brilliant idea to top his vanilla with raw honey, which hardens it like I've heard peo...

When it's hot, drink more water. Otherwise, here's another solution: eat fruit that's in season and the more water in the fruit the better! The hotter it gets the more I crave sweeter more watery fruits anyway. I want the ones that dribble down your chin with yummy sticky juices like peaches, watermelon, honeydews, or mangos... mmm. Here's what I came up with when the heat was just too much to bear, and it hit the spot perfectly: Watermelon Sensation a few very generous chunk of watermelon 4 or 5 ice cubes optional ingredients (not necessarily all at the same time): 1/2 to 1 C of canteloupe 1 tsp grated ginger or peppermint leaves 1. Blend everything in a good strong blender (aka. Vitamix). If not thick and icy enough, add ice. 2. Pour and top with a sprig of mint! Stay cool!

And I thought I was done with recap posts... Sorry for the disappearance without notice (once again). Andrew and I took a week-long trip to London to visit the Canadian 'rents and I thought we'd have internet sooner. However, it happened to be down right when we got here until today. One of the things that other raw foodists have convinced me to do is to be more honest about my diet. No matter what it's about, I hate inconveniencing people, so you can imagine how shy I am to tell people I'm on a raw diet. When we go over to people's places, I usually insist that making a salad is totally fine, or that my hosts don't even have to bother because I can just bring my own food. However, reading about people like Felicia over at the (Teen)age of Raw (a fifteen year old on raw diet, who also has more balls than I do to tell her friends' parents that she's on a raw diet when she goes over) have motivated me not to be ashamed of my choices. I'm on a raw ...

First off, thanks for all the comments on yesterday's post about my trip to the freak zoo . I really appreciate hearing that I'm not all alone in thinking the way I do about the current state of our food and ag system! But on to today... What does a food blogger write about when she realizes only after 3/4 of her day is done that all the meal pictures she took today were shot without a memory stick in her camera? Grrr. I think I've done this about 109 times now. You'd think I might have learned to check! I was really excited about my breakie this morning because it was the first meal for a new era. I was super psyched because today was the first day of my new three month fitness program designed by the awesome Laury Raiken of the Fitness Dish . After asking me about my goals, current lifestyle, and more, she's designed a program directly suited to meet my needs. I have total the confidence that this is going to rock my world. Not to give too much away, I'll be ...

Prepare yourselves for a long rant. So I think that I've officially been banned from having the right to pick out museums forever... Since we got here, I was really looking forward to going to the Canadian Agricultural Museum , as both a farmer and food fan. Because it was a gorgeous day, we decided to break out Andrew's brand new bike and ride there. Before we got there though, we made a quick stop at the Lansdowne Farmers Market where I saw this very entertaining carrot alien plant life: (little did I know, this was preparing me for the rest of my day...) Speaking of carrots, I made these carrot muffins in the dehydrator last night. I was trying to follow a new recipe for carrot cake I found, but found it very tasteless once I'd finished the mix. Instead of wasting it, I waved my own magic wand over it and turned it into something tasty. In the end, I used carrots, an apple, coconut flakes, ground spelt berries, cinnamon, salt, maple syrup, and chocolate chips. I iced th...