Happy Valentine's Day & Pear Smoothie Recipe

Happy Valentine's Day! Whether you're celebrating the single life or spending some quality time with your other half, hope you have a beautiful day :) While we try to hold to the whole "show your love to each other every day" credo, it's still nice to be more formal about it every once in a while and indulge in the whole wooing/date thing. I'm totally going to show off here, and tell you that the Valentine's Day wooing began on Thursday, when these were delivered especially for me during my class:

I know, right? Talk about planning!

♥ you so much.

Secondly, by pure coincidence, I received the Ottawa vegetarian/vegan association's (the NCVA) newsletter this week. I have to admit I rarely read it, but this time I did, and was psyched to find out that the NCVA has just helped a local Italian restaurant, Trella, veganize a lot of their menu items for people just like us (those would be the green dots on the menu).

Not being able to eat Italian (and by that I mostly mean yummy crusty melty pizza) is often something I rant about because of all the cheese and meat and what not, so when I read that there was now vegan pizza at a nice place in Ottawa, I went on and on to Andrew about how awesome it was, reading out what they were offering, when they were open, and how we should check it out sometime. Little did I know that he is the more clever monkey in this relationship, and had already made Sunday night reservations for us there long before I knew the place even existed, let alone, that it offered vegan options. So when we showed up there last night after I was told to get dressed up, it was such a surprise, a deliciously veganized glutinous faux-cheesy surprise...

But on to, breakfast and raw-er things! As much as I love spontaneity, I'm also a big fan of routine, especially when it comes to breakfast. I think I've been having some permutation of the smoothie/cereal breakfast combination for about four years now and I'm still not tired of it. So when I woke up this morning and realized that we didn't have anymore of my usual smoothie-making ingredients, my breakfast-mind went into a panic. No blueberries? No ripe mangos? How does one live??? Time to get creative! This was the delicious outcome:

Pear Ginger Puree

1 ripe pear

1 inch piece of ginger

1/3 C almond milk

Blend! (serves 1)

I added a heaping teaspoon of hemp protein to mine later. Andrew's version became more of a pear-ginger-chia pudding, by adding 2 tablespoons of chia seeds and letting it sit for about 10-20 minutes for the chia to do its gelatinizing thing. When it had set, I sprinkled it with hemp seeds and drizzled maple syrup over it. Andrew's latest contention for using maple syrup is that it maintains a healthy prostate... if girls can use their period as an excuse to eat lots of chocolate, than why not! And with it being Valentine's Day and all, shouldn't I be behind this healthy prostate idea?

Anyway, have a fantastic week!