Eat Dance Live

Am I finally an early adapter for the next cool thing? I think I just might be! Sure I might have joined Instagram or Twitter (and even Facebook) months, if not years, after everyone... but I just discovered Vine, thanks to the awesome Christine , and I'm pretty sure I'm addicted! Vine allows you to make 7 second videos with your phone of anything you possible want. It's a really fun and creative way of figuring out how to get a message across in very little time and with only a few images. So much fun! What did I do with my first video? My signature smoothie of course (just click on it and unmute the volume to get it started!): Hehe... kind of feel like the Chairman from Iron Chef at the end of that: Vine was bought by twitter so you can cross-post your vine videos on Twitter , Facebook or you can easily embed them in your blog just like this! Expect a lot more of these in the future... 

Okay, Stanford. *rolls up sleeves* I wasn't even suppose to post today, but I couldn't wait til tomorrow to say I have three letters for you: W.T.F. So, there's been some buzz in the blog/"news"/facebook world about Stanford's latest study  nutritionally comparing organic and conventional produce. To give you a really quick summary on what the deal is, the big claim is that: “The published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods  are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods.”  Based on that sentence, newspapers have found a new way to restate that we are wasting our precious dollars "buying in" to some organic fantasy. Well, this girl doesn't think it's a fantasy if you don't mind, and here's why: (Note: Though these thoughts are my own, I've also done some background research. A lot of these points are motivated by the more scientifically legit opinion of  Charles Benbrook .) 1. For st...

This is a post for skeptics, because I was once one of them as well. I'm also going to go all scientifical on you, which doesn't happen very often, haha. As much I believe in the power of the raw diet, its capacity to provide me with everything I need to achieve and maintain optimal health, it still sometimes seems unlikely to me that I can get my daily dose of ALL my vitamins and minerals by just eating fruits and veggies. I was feeling this particularly strongly when I was on my banana island , pretty much just eating bananas and greens. Call me the Saint Thomas of the raw food diet but I need to be "shown" that this works... I finally took the suggestion of lots of seasoned LFRVers and downloaded Cron-o-meter . Cron-o-meter is the best nutrition tracker I have used to date. More so than just giving you the usual boring caloric breakdown, you can program it to your own specific dietary needs. In short, you can set how many calories you want to eat, how much o...

As I briefly mentioned last night, my first use of Irish Moss has proven an absolute success! To inaugurate my Irish Moss experience and to use up apples I bought on specials at the health food store, I settled on I am Grateful 's I am Home Apple Pie. (For more nutritional info on Irish Moss, check out an earlier post here .) I have to admit I was kind of scared of Irish Moss at first. How I was supposed to turn a translucent tree branch-looking plant into a yummy part of my pie? I had no idea! I started by very religiously following the instructions laid out by the recipe. I soaked the Irish Moss in water for about 24 hours, and it looked... exactly the same as when I put it in there. Hrm. But it sure does look funny: All I needed was an aquarium and some tropical fish... The recipe was a little more labor intensive than most of the other raw apple pies I've made, but it was definitely worth it because it brilliantly simulated the ooey-gooeyness of cooked apple pie. To make t...

I believe that there are only so many instances in ones life when one is able to partake in a truly gourmet meal. Good food, yes. Delicious food, often. But truly gourmet? I can count those times on one hand. Whether at the Courtyard in Ottawa's Byward Market in 2007, at Luke's Gastronomy in Kingston, Ontario in 2008, or at Lou Fassum in Plascassier, France, in 2009 (where a French restaurant, yes a French one , accomodated my vegan diet), those experiences were rare, but all a unique delight. Tonight, I had my gastronomic experience of 2010 at none other than the Ottawan gem, Zen Kitchen . Walking into a gorgeous heritage house on Somerset Avenue, we were immediately struck by the place's vibrant energy. It was both peaceful and energetic aside, as warm as it is classy. In terms of their ethic, Zen Kitchen boasts that they are local, organic, and gourmet, but the added bonus? They're vegan. No more do vegans have to bemoan the idea that they are stuck with bu...

So I guess I made the false assumption about a week ago that buying food from a French farmers' market was cheaper than doing the same thing in Canada. Like most people who falsely claim that organic is more expensive than conventional, I got it in my head that food in Canada is more expensive than in the US or in Europe. Apparently, it is all in my head. I was gladly proven wrong this morning, when Andrew and I headed for our weekly trip to the Main Farmers' Market . For only $10 more than my parents paid in France, we picked up 100% organic and local produce for a comparable amount of food. While we did get slightly more produce in France, but everything we bought here was certified organic, so to me, that definitely makes up the cost difference! Cost aside, the awesome find of our day was this bad boy: Yes that is a mushroom bigger than Andrew's face! It's a Wine-Cap Stropharia grown from wood chips by Colin Samuels over at Jambican Studio G...

As I've mentioned before, I'm one of the DC interns for the Organic Consumers Association . The best working perk of my life is that my awesome boss has taken me to the OCA's newest offshoot, Via Organica ("the Organic Way") in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for the week. Our director, Ronnie Cummins, is truly the most inspiring figurehead of the organic revolution that I've met. He and an amazing team of activists here launched Via Organica about a year ago to bring organics to a new level in Mexico. Continuing the OCA's tradition for grassroots activism, VO has begun a number of projects to help San Miguel's compasenos reclaim their land and dedicate it to sustainable, organic farming. VO also has a fully operational farm on their land through which they partially supply the Via Organica store and cafe in downtown San Miguel. In addition, they hold workshops and classes to teach local compasenos about everything from affordable green buil...

After the storm that Food, Inc. has caused since its release, here's another quick video about an upcoming movie that'll keep your mind on organics: And check out their super cute website !

One of the major draws of coming back to the DC area was knowing that we could be close to my parents' place aka. that we would have access to their garden to get back into some serious veggie planting. Throughout my childhood, my family has always stuck to the simple herbs, tomatoes, and sweet peppers side of gardening as those are usually fairly low maintenance plants and are pretty fail safe. But this year? Noooo. Andrew and I decided that this year would be our serious gardener year, our first year of really gardening together, and that we would go big or go home... and it's worked out great! Organic gardening is both a lot of hard work and very little effort all at the same time. It blows my mind how many people (ie. my entire extended family) think that organic gardening comes with all this extra effort, that our garden will be torn apart by bunnies, infested with pests, and grown over by weeds. You know what? When I see 'conventional' gardeners spraying their gar...

So for those of you who don't know, Jae Steele , author of Get it Ripe (probably my favourite vegan cookbook as of yet), is in the process of publishing a new book on raw local  food! Not only does she amazingly advocate for organic vegan food, the new local angle will be a great recipe collection to help you deal with every season of the year! On the even more awesome note, I'm having the privilege of being one of her recipe testers. It's been ridiculously fun to be able to test all these recipes. I've made twelve so far, so here are a few pics from what I've recently been doing in the kitchen.  I have unfortunately  been very lazy to take pictures of all of this so there are a couple for now. I also didn't take the time to photograph things like d ressings and teas... I promise to be more diligent from now on!   For a wonderful breakfast (my partner's 'last' cooked vegan feast before going raw with me), here are Jae's tempeh 'soys...

(repost from my article for the Organic Consumers Association) Ignoring its dedication to providing low-income women, infants, and children with more “nutritious foods”, WIC’s increasing cuts to its list-approved organic foods should no longer be tolerated by WIC recipients nor by responsible taxpayers. As  recently mentioned , a growing number of states have been preventing WIC recipients from purchasing organic products based on three major excuses: the ‘high’ cost of organics, a lack of scientific evidence that organic produce is more nutritious than their conventional counterpart, and recipient preferences. Organic Food and Nutrition To the OCA, WIC's first major area of concern is the stubborn adherence to the belief that organic produce has not proven to be more nutritious than conventional food. On the contrary, a number of doctors and nutritionists are increasingly telling expecting mothers to favor organics to limit their and their child’s intake and exposure to unnecessa...

(repost of my article for the Organic Consumers Association website) Am I the only one who finds it frightening that low-income pregnant women can't buy organic produce with their WIC allowances? It's one thing to have to be on welfare, and quite another to have people make your food choices for you. I was fuming when I found this out: The Truth Behind WIC: Organic is NOT an Option! By Chantal Clement Organic Consumers Association Straight to the Source In February 2009, Washington State decided to remove organic milk from its list of ‘approved foods’ reimbursable by the Women, Infant and Children Program (WIC). Though this decision led to serious backlash from organic consumers and supporters nationwide, what may be a little known fact to many is that slashing organic produce from WIC approved food lists for ‘reasons related to cost’ is currently being practiced in almost every single state. Forbidding organic products from WIC is frighteningly not...