Eat Dance Live

First off, thanks so much to Lisa and Nicole for awarding first place to my chocolate orange creamsicle cookie in their Raw Ice Cream Sandwich Challenge ! All the entries looked so yummy, I was particularly impressed with the piggie sammie, and thought it would take the prize for sure! This being my first entry in a food-related contest ever, I'd say I'm pretty pleased :) It was lots of fun to come up with a summer treat that would please any palate! Secondly, this is going to be a picture heavy post! Canada Day weekend was a blast. Seriously, it's quickly becoming my favourite holiday ever. Here's a quick photo recap: I started off by making Andrew a raw strawberry banana soft serve for the road. Apparently, everyone in town was excited to see the royals, even the bakers. We were impressed by the amount of local, organic food options in the park. Especially because they seem to be doing better than the pre-packaged crap stands next to them. We found one of Stone S...

Ah running, an addiction to some, a chore to others... I love looking at other people's playlists to get some inspiration, so I thought I'd start off by posting the one I used for today's run. Granted, I like to listen to really cheesy and/or misogynistic songs when I run, but it's generally whatever has a good beat and can keep me pumped. I've learned to stop being embarrassed by the girly pop songs I listen to when I run. A song's rhythm really gets to me a lot, so I make sure they inspire me in some way before they make it to my play list. I busted out 4.7 miles at a 8:30 pace, which might not be that impressive for some, but given that I've just gotten back into the whole running thing over the past few weeks, I was quite pleased. This is what kept me going: 1. Hold it against me ~ Britney Spears 2. Firework ~ Katy Perry 3. Spotlight ~ Selena Gomez 4. Tonight (I'm F**in' You) ~ Enrique Iglesias (feat. Ludacris) 5. I Gotta Feeling ~ Black Eyed Pea...

Is it super appropriate that it's the Chinese Moon Festival and I'm talking about Moon Cycles? So first off, happy Zhong Qiu Jie to any or all who are celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival! Anyhoo, I have a plan: thirty-some years from now I plan on bragging just as much about how easy going through menopause is, as I am bragging right now about how I breeze my way through my monthly cycle. While you may so not want to be hearing about this, I feel that I do have bragging rights. Like the people with the amazing before and after weight loss photos, I'd like to have pictures of how I used to feel around this time of the month. The before picture would be me all but dying on a couch, and the after shots would be me breezing through a Power Yoga class (which I did), or riding a horse (which I have in the past), or climbing Mount Everest (which I plan on doing)... Needless to say, I feel great! Like I've mentioned before , a number of factors have contributed to my female h...

One of the first people I ever heard talk about his experience with the raw food diet was a guy named Nature Love on a We Like it Raw podcast about a year ago. When asked about his diet, he said he mainly (and almost exclusively) ate cruciferous greens and only certain fruit types. He explained that he chose those foods not out of restriction, but because over time he had come to notice that his body didn't optimally digest most other foods at all. He noticed through small cues, whether a minor skin reaction to citrus, or faint digestive problems due to raw brassicas. At the time, being only a couple weeks into my raw journey, I couldn't help but find that he seemed to be an extremely picky eater. Look who's talking now... A year later, I find myself totally getting where he was coming from. Though I'm nowhere near that exclusive in my food choices, I know better now then to be too quick to judge. What most people don't realize is that the longer you are on...

Oh the successes, I have known this week! There's nothing like a 6 day camping festival surrounded by friends old and new, fire-lit drum circles, pine woods and cool rivers to completely rejuvenate you and make you feel alive. These past few days have been extremely curative for me both physically and mentally, and I feel so grateful for the life I have. But on to my successes: Success #1: Mosquito Prevention As I mentioned in my last post , one of the most successful ways to avoid getting bitten by mosquitos is to avoid potassium foods a few days prior to and during your camping trip. So it's been no bananas, pumpkin seeds, strawberries, whole grains, and brazil nuts for us for almost 10 days now and the mosquito bite tally: 5 over 6 days, while everybody else was massively attacked. I don't know if it's the raw diet or potassium or both but it worked so well that at one point, we were talking to a friend and all the mosquitos were swarming around him while we just sa...

I think the best thing on earth right now (aside from our Spirooli which produced another amazingly tasty raw spaghetti dinner) is avocado based chocolate pudding /frosting. Who knew that one avocado, cacao powder, agave nectar, a tiny bit of sea salt, and vanilla extract could produce something that other people only believe comes in one of those plastic Jello pudding containers or on a restaurant dessert menu! Workout of the Day: 5 minutes of cardio warmup on stairclimber 4x12 leg raises (target area: lower abs) 4x12 crunches (target area: r ectus abdominis) 4x12 torso rotation machine (target area: obliques) 3x12 db chest press on stability ball 3x12 shoulder shrugs 3x12 tricep extensions 10 minutes of stretching Recipe of the Day: C is for raw CHOCOLATE PUDDING!!!

... and by "me", I mean little "me" or "i", my ego, my pain body, rather than who I actually am: "Me", the big "I", or my higher consciousness (check out Eckhart Tolle 's works to give you incredible insight into that kind of vocabulary). Today's Bikram class was yet another experience in my personal path to Enlightenment... I get surprised every time it happens, even though it's happened every time I go. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how much this is doing for me. Today was an experience in letting go, letting go of a portion of my pain body that I still struggle with today: self-image. I woke up this morning feeling wonderful; physically, emotionally, I was just as happy as could be. Within 20 minutes of my Bikram practice, having taken in the heat, starting to release my usual toxins, I began to slip. I was getting progressively more upset, my thoughts were clouded, my attention unfocused, my position...

So after a day of classes, I got caught up having a wonderful dinner out with my family at a vegan Chinese Restaurant, Yuan Fu , that has officially made my family's roster of 'restaurants we go out to on a regular basis'... love the healthy food changes happening within the household. We then proceeded to back to my parents' place to watch old home videos, and that proved to be much more entertaining than I thought it would already be. It's funny how we all believe that, over the years, we really develop emotionally, physically, and spiritually as people. However, I think that a lot of our mannerisms and core emotional and/or spiritual beliefs actual develop from a very early age, that we keep them for a lifetime, and that we in fact change very little. I burst out laughing when we watched a video back from 1992 (when I was only 4 1/2) when I watched my child-self display behaviour identical to something I was doing just last night. It's also really entertainin...

My victory of the day: a new yummy green juice made up of kale, cucumber, ginger, carob, and plantain. The plantain and carob went very well together, giving a nice kick to the monotony that has become my green juices (even though I still love 'em!). Workout of the Day: 1.5 hours ballet class 100 crunches Recipe of the Day : Yummy green juice mentioned above I'm still toying with raw black bean brownies, but the outcome is still not satisfying...

My day began and ended with mint in stranger ways than I could have ever imagined... Over a breakfast of green juice for breakfast (kale, cucumber, apple, celery, mesquite and maca), I created yet another raw ice cream. This time it was a variation on previously made mint chocolate-chip ice cream in what Andrew called my new raw 'mint oreo ice cream'. Here's the secret: Raw Mint 'Oreo' Ice Cream 2 C cashews, soaked overnight 1 C water 2/3 C agave nectar (or maple syrup, I think I did half of each) 1 tsp vanilla (or 1 whole vanilla bean) 1/3-1/2 C crushed mint leaves 1/2 tsp (or to taste) of mint extract dash of salt pinch of spirulina for green color raw oreo cookie dough (see below) cacao nibs, optional 1. Blend everything in a Vitamix (or blender or food processor) until smooth 2. Pour into ice cream machine and follow directions! 3. In the middle of the ice cream machine process, or once the ice cream starts to get a solid enough ice cream consistency, blend in t...

I just got an email from NutsOnline to fill out one of their customer surveys and that got me thinking about how much I love them. NutsOnline are a third generation family-run company that has quickly made its way into my little heart, and has become my favourite supplier of bulk organic and raw nuts, seeds, dried fruit, raw superfood powders, and everything I could dream of that may exist under the sun (I plan on ordering some organic matcha powder from them soon for more cookie/ice cream experimentation). When on a raw diet, I highly recommend you to find some way of buying bulk. Everything I can't find at supermarkets or co-ops for decent prices (which is the better option since it limits the environmental footprint of shipping), I just head online; not only is it often a lot cheaper, it's also a heck of a lot more convenient. I used to buy from Live Superfoods , but randomly fell upon the NutsOnline family and couldn't turn back. They just have a catchy way of making y...

When preparing food, I always try to follow a lesson my mom taught me a long time ago. She said that Chinese food is always prepared to excite all of your sense: smell, taste, appearance, and texture. Obviously that lesson can be applied to all culinary cultures and all types of cooking or in my case non-cooking. Coincidentally, I've just fallen upon this really interesting article about Feng Shui and Food. Aside from making your food taste wonderful and properly combining textures (soft and crunchy, etc.), other things include always making sure that your food is colorful or seasonal (warm autumn colors in the fall, bright colors in the summer, etc.) and that it's presented on pretty china, pottery, or whatever you use. One of the decisions Andrew and I made when we moved out of our last place was that we would donate all our china and start from scratch. We decided we would only buy things that were made with love, made by someone we had talked to, and meant something to us ...