Eat Dance Live

There are days, where you eat so much amazing raw food that you actually have to split it into two posts instead of one so you don't look like a total glutton. That was pretty much our day trip to Montreal last Friday, which was pretty much a food trip... just the way I like 'em, and just like I had planned! I've been really wanting to go to a raw food restaurant since moving back to Canada. Though I know Toronto is rife with raw food places, but my heart went out to the slightly closer option, Montreal's Crudessence (get the title? C ru =raw essence =gasoline so "fueled on raw"? I know... I'm so clever) In fact, because I'm a food nerd, I've been studying their menu for months now. We even almost went there for my birthday back in October because they happened to be having a special fall harvest raw food testing menu event. (Instead, I chose to stay in town and go to Cafe My House. ) I've been waiting to check out this place for a long time.

I know, the last thing this world needs is another acronym, but I'll throw one out at you anyway... LFRV stands for Low-Fat Raw Vegan, which is kind of a handful to write down every time. LFRV is known under a few other names, namely "811" (based off of Dr. Doug Grahams ' 80/10/10 ) . The gist of the being 811 is that you get 80% of your calories from carbs (fruits and veggies), 10% from protein, and 10% from healthy fats (avocados, nuts, and seeds). Because you're primarily eating healthy alkalinizing foods, you have to eat A LOT more of them than you would on a standard diet (think how quickly it would take to digest 1lb. of bananas vs. a 1lb. steak). As an active person, it is suggested you eat your weight x 200 in calories (so for me that would be 2400ish+). That usually means 2 ginormo fruit meals during the day (we're speaking pounds of fruit here) and a big salad for dinner. Who says you have to go hungry this way? The thing is, when I decided to go raw

Sprouted kamut bread from our favourite bakery? Check. Bread knife and cutting board ready to go? Check. So, what's missing? Why a spread of course. I've always wondered about the hype there is around Rawtella . I mean, if it's anything like Nutella, I can totally understand. Who hasn't dreamt of taking a swim in a big pool of chocolate hazelnutty goodness... okay, or a least just wanted to eat a jarful, whatever. Being the person I am though, I've always figured I could probably just try to make some myself. However, it just never happened, because at the end of the day, I don't actually eat that many "treats" unless they serve some higher nutritional purpose. Tonight, after Andrew bought a yummy loaf of his favourite spelt bread, I decided he needed something to put on it, so the time had come. I've seen a lot of homemade rawtella recipes floating around the web, so I combined a bunch and tried my own. So far, it's still spread

I'm officially obsessed! Since Tuesday's kitchen fail/success, I've been obsessed with sprouted lentil balls and have been having them as the protein in my salad every night. When I ran out yesterday, I figured I'd just treat myself to making socca the right way again. However, when I found myself in front of the Vitamix to make the socca batter, I had a change of heart and opted for making sprouted falafel balls instead. (having a phone camera is making me way too lazy to take legit pictures) Rather than going through the whole process of making my own chickpea flour again, I just sprouted my chickpeas and then put about 2 cups of them into the Vitamix with a few slices of yellow onion, a clove a garlic, a few tablespoons of water, sea salt, a handful of parsley, a teaspoon of cumin, and blended away. Because I knew there was no use to attempt to shape them into balls yet (because they just break down in the pan), I just threw the whole mush into the pan until the bot

Every once in a while, it's normal to have a kitchen fail, whether it's burnt cookies, overly dry fish, or rubbery mash potatoes... but what if you turned those failures into successes? Last night, my growing love for sprouted beans and legumes had me trying the lentil socca I knew was on my to-do list after last week's culinary orgasm. Like I did with the sprouted socca, I diligently made my own flour, sprouting, soaking, and dehydrating my lentils until I had the amounts I needed follow the recipe... except... a gooey non-flippable mess happened instead of socca. It resulted in something that did in fact look more like rubbery green mash potatoes than anything even remotely pancake-esque. Hrm. What to do with a few giant globs of lentil paste? Why, faux meatballs of course! Refusing to admit failure, I took the paste and rolled a tablespoon or two of it into balls, quickly fried them again for another couple minutes, and served them over a massaged kale salad. The resul

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

I know I don't post about my politics often, but this is a historical moment. (photo from Le Monde ) So, solidarity and respect to all the men and women in Egypt, who have shown both their government and the world that peaceful protest can be the answer to freedom. You've shown us all something of pride and beauty. On that note, I know that any of my achievements today will seem lesser compared to what else has been going on in the world today, but one of the reasons I was really excited about Friday was that I knew that... my homemade sauerkraut would be ready! Yes, I finally bit the bullet and tried my hand at fermented veggies. Last week during my kitchie date , my friend Amanda all but held my timid little hand through the process of making sauerkraut. I recently started taking probiotics to feed my tummy gremlins (I've intuitively been feeling like they haven't been doing great) and it's been making me feel fantastic. I figured that getting non-capsule version

Socca. A word I've been seeing all over the blogsphere and yet somehow never managed to see in my own native South of France where the stuff supposedly comes from! How, oh how, did I live so many years without it? It all started with the Pure2Raw twins whose love for socca was so strong that they created a whole tribute page to it . Then the Fitnessista developed her own crush . Then Bitt, amidst her recipe testing of the I am Grateful recipe book, made some time for socca . Even, Gena mentioned it a couple times like if it's existence was a given! Again, I don't know what planet I've been living on, but every additional mention made me wonder why I'd never had it and made my mouth water. I love chickpeas, and I love savoury pancake-like things, what was there not to love? I've gotta say, since the whole raw thing came into my life, sprouted chickpeas just haven't done it for me. They're good, but they to have a taste that takes a little getting used

From girls nights out to women circles or Stich n' Bitch get togethers, women have always appreciate the act of getting together to just be... well, girly. Though I definitely love participating in all the of the above (including aspects of the latter... I won't hold myself to the unrealistic standard that I don't sometimes just want to get together with girlfriends to complain), I've always really really enjoyed my version of girl time: kitchen dates. These dates probably began when I was a kid and a bunch of us would get together to decorate pre-made gingerbread men with gumdrops and sprinkles. Maybe it was the days we spent appreciating the culinary delicacies of an Easy Bake oven. Either way, I started early. These dates followed me through high school, when my best friend and I would make her infamous chocolate cake of decadence, crepes, or we'd just stuff our faces with cookie dough. For some reason, those days just kind of dropped off when high school finishe