Back in the Game

It's always when one is busiest that they both have the least time to blog and the most they want to write about. Taking a blogging break to settle into our new home has not let me do justice to some of the wonderful raw foods we've been having since we got here. I'm psyched to say that Ottawa thrives with raw options! Every natural food store has a least one entire shelf dedicate to raw foodies. Our favourite vegan restaurant, the Green Door, now labels their raw dishes. And our city even has its very own raw guru, Natasha Kyssa of Simply Raw who holds awesome events including a monthly raw vegan potluck!

This will be the last quick recap of my life before I get back into the food & fitness blogging game. I'm sure most of you are more interested in the latter anyway... So long story short, since we got here, I've gotten absolutely addicted to these Bio-Sphere raw burgers:

Found a space in our kitchen for my new baby:

Celebrated Canada Day (I love you Canada for having both organic and vegan options as part of your outdoor Canada Day food vendors):

Bought Natasha's Book:

And found out that our cat really likes prickly pears (which can now be added to a list including raw strawberry ice cream, corn cobs and spirulina...):

One note on fitness: one of the ways we knew we were truly home was getting a gym membership (getting a library card also gives me that feeling). We settled on the local YMCA which is only a few blocks away (very important for the insanely cold Canadian winters). We've been going pretty regularly since we got here, but I've been falling out of habit with a lot of things recently, namely motivation. Since my whole life seems to be about "getting back in the game" recently, the one thing I did find to boost my workout moral is by going to exercise classes instead of doing the usual cardio-weights-cardio-weights routine. Yes, I used to be the person who questioned if a person could actually get a "real" workout during group "fitness" classes and yes, I was a total workout snob in that respect, but I've come to my senses and have decided to give them a second chance, especially considering that I got into working out thanks to those classes back in the day. It's actually been pretty fun (even though I've only been once), and I plan on going again tonight. I think I will be incorporating these types of classes into my life for the next little while along with the usual until my own self-motivation returns.

Finally, I was really really psyched to finally get my copy of this in the mail today:

It's Jae Steele's new Ripe From Around Here (her first book, Get it Ripe, was a staple in my vegan kitchen). One of the main reasons I'm excited is because I was acknowledged in it for being one of its recipe testers:

So please except a shamelessly biased review of the book sometime over the next couple days! I'm baaaack!