Eat Dance Live

Everyone knows that fall means it's time for Pumpkin EVERYTHING! I feel like I'm surrounded by a sea of Pumpkin Spice Lattes when I walk down the street, that the smell of pumpkin pie haunts all my favourite restaurants (no complaints there!), and we may or may not have just brought back TONS of pumpkins to carve from our trip to the pumpkin patch last week... b ut did you know that aside from being nutrient packed for your tummy, th ey're also great for your skin when used externally?  Pumpkins have oodles of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that are amazing for your skin. Pumpkin's Vitamin A is great to soften your skin while vitamin E repairs it from free radical damage... and how about all that nourishing zinc, beta carotene, Vitamin C and those antioxidants! Pumpkin also contains a natural enzyme that helps dissolve dry or dead skin sells, allowing the clear new skin underneath to come out vibrant, refreshed and glowing. Though I haven't test this out myself,...

I actually find it really bizarre to eat certain foods out of season. I think it's my body recalling the ancestral days when we could only eat what was only readily available given the time of the year. Eating watermelon and strawberries in the winter? As much as I love them, that's just plain wrong... so is eating pumpkin in the late spring/summer. Okay, so I know lots of you out there love pumpkin, so you might disagree and want to eat it at all hours of the day and all seasons of the year. That's totally cool, and also exactly why I busted out this high raw pumpkin ice cream recipe yesterday to make Andrew happy: High Raw Pumpkin Ice Cream Yield: About 4 servings. 2 C cashews, soaked 1 1/2 C canned pumpkin pie mix 2 C water 1 T of coconut oil, melted 2 T maple syrup 1 inch chunk of ginger 1 teaspoon of cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon of xanthan gum (optional) 1/2 teaspoon of salt Directions: 1. Place all ingredients in a high speed blender and b...

One of my favourite captioned photos of all time is of this kid: Seriously, he's the cutest. Doesn't he just look SO excited? If you look at that picture though, that's kind of how I feel about fall. I love fall. Really it's kind of insane. A few days ago, I was trying to explain that the feeling I get in my mind and body when fall comes along. The only real way to describe it was that fall actually turns me on. Now don't get me wrong, if you actually look up the definition of a "turn on" in the dictionary, it doesn't have to apply to something sexual. In fact, it just means "something or someone that causes excitement or pleasure," and Hello does fall do both for me! Since fall started a few weeks ago, everything has been amazingly falling into place. Yesterday, Andrew and I met at Dow's Lake for a kayaking date, and this is just one shot of my beautiful walk from class through the Arboretum to meet him: No crazy colours...

Once again, three cheers to the power of positive groupthink. I've been falling on more and more blogs over the past couple weeks talking about the advent of Fall, otherwise known as the return of pumpkin season. 'Lo and behold, I get an email from VegNews that has both the words "pumpkin" and "frozen yogurt" in the same sentence. Heck yeah! THEN, I accompany Andrew to his shift at our food co-op and I find organic soy yogurt there for the taking AND one remaining can of organic pumpkin puree. Well if that isn't a sign that the Universe wants me to make frozen pumpkin treats, I don't know what is. I highly recommend this recipe! The first step in the original Veg News recipe is to strain the yogurt through cheesecloth overnight to get rid of excess water. My soygurt was so thick that it barely let off any water at all... so I didn't get much out of that step. Also, I'm not particularly a fan of agave (this is a good article about som...

Ah yes, that time of the year has come anew. It's one of my favourite times of the year! It's neither Christmas, nor the first day you can go for a really good warm summer tan... it's pumpkin season!!! Because we're already a few weeks into the pumpkin harvest, the blog world has exploded with pumpkin recipes for all meals and all dietary choices. While I've immensely enjoyed eyeing everyone's recipes, this one particularly caught my eye: it's Ashley at (never home)maker's tri-coloured pasta with a pumpkin sauce of awesomeness. Spiralized veggies? Pumpkin? Broccoli? Maple Syrup? What more could I want in one dish? Despite it obvious appeal, I kept holding off making this recipe because it called for coconut milk and pumpkin puree, neither of which I really use on my high-raw journey. While I know that you can puree raw squash, I'm of the belief that that the squash family is best digested when it has been steamed or cooked to some degree. I find i...

So I know most of you are probably thinking "bla bla bla, enough with the philosophy and organic brainwashing, where's the food?"... and I totally understand, so here I go shaking off my foodie laziness to blog about food again. It's fall so that means it's time to experiment with yummy pumpkins and squash again! There's something that really excites me about this particular change of season. One thing I've realized about raw 'cooking' is that y ou really don't have to pay attention to measurement as  much as much as when you are doing something as chemically complex as baking. If you have a problem with a raw recipe you  can always tweak it a bit and there is only so wrong you can go. Given my first post , it would seem raw food is perfectly suited to the way I cook anyway! Here's my latest creation and it's unfortunately not 100% raw. I still haven't fully figured out how to manage using squash/pumpkins without steaming the...