Eat Dance Live

Back in my optimal health days, I ate a grapefruit every day. There were so many great reasons to do that, and I can tell you I definitely felt a difference! You might already know that along with celery, grapefruit is one of those "negative calorie" foods, ie. it takes more caloric energy to eat it than the calories in it! There's also a flavonoid in grapefruit that helps balance out blood sugar levels and to prevent metabolic syndrome, which is when you pack on the pounds around your waist. Finally, if you start your day with a grapefruit, it actually kick starts your liver into fat-burning mode! Now, I've discovered a way not only to get my daily grapefruit in, but also add a whole bunch of other healthy ingredients to make an optimal morning or post-workout meal. I give you: The Fat Busting Smoothie This smoothie has a satisfyingly tart and "healthy" taste. Packed with fibre, all sorts of nutrients and metabolism boosting goodness, it's...

How many times have I gone on and on about my on-and-off again relationship with yoga? From an ode to discovering the beauty of a Yin  practice, to endless praises for the benefits of a daily 20 minute yoga practice , to my 3 month love affair with Bikram , I always wanted to commit... and finally, I've made the leap! I can now say that yoga and I have been in a steady relationship for about two and a half months. I don't know what came over me when we got back from our trip to France in mid-June, but I got home and knew it was time to nurture that relationship again. As usual, the first month or so was super emotionally taxing, releasing (or starting to release) all sorts of bizarre hang ups. Now, as much as yoga is always  about clearing the mind, I know it's become more about the physical practice as well, learning to push and test my limits just that much more, and grow physically as well as mentally. So far, I've been doing a minimum of two and a half hours...

Over a year ago, I off-handedly mentioned that I made a raw key lime pie that never ended up getting featured on the blog. Why it didn't is beyond me because I remember loving every bite of it. That and I made it fairly frequently at the time. I can't quite remember what went into it aside from avocado, agave, and lime... for all I know that was actually it. So why the comeback? In short, that pie came back to me because I made lots of "key lime pie" smoothies at work over the weekend, and I really wanted to give it another go. While I know that limes are really good for you (they're very alkalinizing), they've never held a prominent place in my kitchen. Yet, every time I use them, I can't remember why they don't. I continue to falsely believe that whatever you can do with limes, you can just do with lemons instead. I know that I'm wrong. They're not the same thing at all. They have a totally different tastes, limes are definitely sweete...

Not only I am excited to guest blog for Laury's Thirsty Thursdays today, I also have an additional recipe to share. When I was looking for ideas of what kind of recipe to send to her, I started off by trying to answer the following: "When summer comes around, I know it's time for ______." The two first answers I came up with were "watermelon" and "berries"... Sheesh, you know you're a foodie when your first two answers are edible. Because I had frozen blueberries in the freezer, I decided to run with that, and used a variation of one of my usuals that looked something like this: Summer Blues 2 bananas 1/2 C blueberries 2-3 ice cubes 1/3 teaspoon cardamon powder dash of cloves Blend away! Just as I was about to send it off, I decided to check out what kind of drink Laury had posted about last week (you think I might have checked that first). To my dismay, I found a berry smoothie that started with "2 bananas, and mixed berries"... Hmm...

Mid-week rant #1 : To all those who post twitter feeds, facebook updates, etc. blaming/complaining to Mother Nature for the "weird weather" we've been getting over the past couple seasons, please stop. It's not her fault that we are thinning out the ozone, polluting, and causing her to go through an early menopause. Let's start taking a little bit of grown-up personal responsibility, 'mkay? Actually, that's my only rant, but it's certainly been building up for some time... Like I mentioned last time, the weather hasn't been getting any cooler in these parts and my LFRV-ism (now called HCRV, for High Carb Raw Vegan, because apparently the movement is trying to reclaim the bad rep given to the "carb") has certainly been helping. Here are a few breakfast ideas when the weather gets hot and you just need to cool down that internal body temp. I promise it'll work really fast! (Cow cup is not required, but a definite bonus.) Creamy Orange ...

Now I've never been a big coffee drinker, and I won't even touch the whole "should you drink coffee debate." (My short answer is no, unless perhaps on the odd social occasion... and by "odd social occasion" I'm not making some kind of loop hole to mean every week because I go out with my friends.) If you do want details on some of the reasons why I stand by this opinion, check out Sabine's awesome post about the subject which she conveniently just wrote up today! Sure I've had coffee. When it's strong, I love the stuff, like an espresso, or better yet like Turkish Coffee ... mmmm,Turkish coffee, it's like liquid chocolate, but coffee... and yes, I do lick the coffee paste at the bottom of the cup that they tell you not to eat. And for good measure, sure, a cafe au lait at a little cafe in Paris is quite charming too, just not all the time. All that being said, I somehow ended up with lots of sample bags of teccino , the supposed "co...

The wonderful thing about getting into a food routine is that it makes your life simple and yummy. You find a few foods that you love and you can eat them until you get sick of them and move onto something else. The problem? I've mentioned it before. When you're primarily a food blogger, what then do you have much to blog about? I've pretty much been doing the blueberry smoothie breakfast, apple sauce lunch, and big salad dinner thing for a week or so now, and it's been suiting me just fine. This morning though, I chose to go crazy and make a non-blueberry smoothie... wild, I know. Having been a year back in Canada, I forgot how slowly springs starts around here, and it's still so freaking cold. Today, I may have just culinarily snapped for more warm sandy beach, tropical island type foods. Though it was definitely miles away from being a locally-grown smoothie, it turned out pretty dang good! So here's the latest: Wish-It Were Warm Here Smoothie 1 C papaya 1/...

For starters, avid running followers might have noticed that I've taken out the Daily Mile widget from my blog because it was depressing me. I committed to increasing my mileage and running at least three times a week a couple weeks ago, only to find that I've developed some serious knee pain that has forced me to lay off the treadmill for who knows how long. It's often surprisingly been frustrating to the point of tears, but c'est la vie. I realize I'd rather take it easy on my knee that not be able to walk in my old age, so I guess I'll take it for now and I can get back to focusing on swimming! For now, my short lived running career is already on pause. Anyway, I thought I'd follow up my last post about protein powders with a couple recipe example. While I have a couple recipes under my belt, I asked Andrew to jot down the second recipe he's been using a lot recently because it tastes fantastic. I know I already covered workout recovery foods here ,...

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 don't think there will ever truly come a time in my life when I've had too many smoothies. They're not just convenient, but can be so versatile, and can easily boost you with all sorts of energy to start, continue, or end your day. Yesterday, we went out for brunch at one of our favourite Ottawa haunts, Cafe My House (reviewed here ). Among other things,we had a plethora of amazing smoothies. Their choices are as colourful as they are endless. To the seven of us, I think we ordered about 2/3 of their options, and they were all divine. From their mango-lime-cilantro, which is now something I make at home daily, to their raw cacao latte, there's definitely something for everyone. I opted for their Green Protein Plus, a wonderful combination of vegan proteins (pea, alfafa, hemp and brown rice), bananas, and cinnamon. Sunday brunch inspired me to expand my usual morning smoothie repertoire, and it was super successful. In the mood for something a little more tropical tha...

When pumpkin-picking has passed, when the leaves have turned their vibrant colours and fallen to the ground, and as snow starts to blanket my city for three long months of bitter cold, what food better describes the passage from fall to winter up here in the great North than the cranberry? There's something about cranberries that just remind me of the passage from fall to winter. I don't know if it's just because American Thanksgiving seems to fall during that transition period, or if it's just something about the berry's vibrant red hue, which is both such a Yuletide colour and reminiscent of those bright red berry bushes you sometimes see when you're trekking or cross-country skiing through abandoned trails. Either way, they make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. As c ranberry season comes to end, I'm assuming harvesters have long past flooded the last of their bogs before water turns to ice so I want to eat all the fresh cranberries I can get. Cran...

And away I go... ... from my current home to my childhood summer home. Because I'm on a later flight, I've decided to forgo the vegan airplane meal and fast through dinner til I get to France tomorrow morning. Mmm, I can taste the Mediterranean sun-ripened peaches already. To "make up" for my lost dinner, I've been eating things I won't and don't normally eat in France (aka. non-local tropical fruit that are hard to come by like bananas and mangos). Here was my breakfast of traveling champions (the BEST combination ever) 3 mangos 1 frozen naner 1 big handful of cilantro juice of 1/2 lime Lunch was of a course, a banana whip with post-workoutalicious carob powder and matcha green tea. Au revoir!

Sorry for the lack of post last night. I got caught up preparing for my thesis presentation this weekend. I get to make a powerpoint with fun anti-GMO protest pictures like this: Gotta love Greenpeace. Also, ' Man Wednesday ' was put on hold, because said 'Man' was out :) But let's keep the ball rolling! I was inspired by Gina's post last night, asking her readers to show her their smoothies! Considering I eat them every morning (or at least, every other morning), I figured I'd be the perfect candidate for the challenge. So here are my smoothies! Over the past couple years, my breakfast has pretty much consisted in one of these two smoothies (the recipes are for two people): 'Tropical' Smoothie 3 C papaya/pineapple/mango (or any combination) 1 teaspoon of maca powder 1 heaping teaspoon of mesquite 1/3 to 1/2 C water (I like my smoothies thick) (The man version you also see featured has an extra scoop of hemp protein and one scoop of brown rice prote...