I'm back... summer recap and a recipe!

Well hello there... it's been a while. Apparently I decided to take the summer off from blogging. Oops. Let's recap:

The first two weeks July were spent at my favourite place in the world... my real home on Prince Edward Island. The weather was spectacular and we had great fun with my family (immediate and extended) and friends. Lots of time at the cottage, beach walks, seafood, bonfires, wine -- everything needed to recharge the batteries after a couple of very busy months!

Arrived in time for Canada Day fireworks in Summerside!
Just waiting for it to get dark.

My mom and I hosted a baby shower for my sister-in-law.
This was one of my contributions for it.

Oh Charlottetown, you're so quaint and lovely.

Ah wine, I love thee.

Cottage life demands bonfires. Every. Night.

Love North Cape! Colours are always spectacular.
The tide was coming in on the reef.

The next couple weeks, I can't really remember what we did, but lots of taking in the sunshine here in Ottawa. Which finally lead to early August, when my other half had a pretty serious surgery -- a total knee replacement. That unfortunately put a bit of a damper on plans for August as we were mostly house bound. However, I still felt like I had a good restful summer despite being the sole cook and cleaner, not to mention ice getter, pill pusher, and all-round "fetcher" of too many things to count. On the one hand, having this surgery so young is a bit of an anomaly, on the other hand, I think his recovery might be going better than the norm. Blessings!

Since I've left you for so long, I've got a treat to share with you! There is a serious abundance of zucchini at my house, and I didn't even grow any in my little garden. Between our produce deliveries and my farmers' market outings, I've got a fridge full! And I don't really care for sauteed or roasted zucchini! So what to do? Make lots and lots of raw zucchini noodles! And baked goods. Yummy baked goods. I give you my gluten-free and vegan zucchini muffins!

Zucchini Muffins
Gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, refined sugar-free
Yields 12 muffins
Adapted from Florida Coastal Cooking

Ingredients
2 chia eggs (2 tbsp chia seeds + 6 tbsp water)
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/3 c maple syrup
1 cup shredded zucchini (tightly packed)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Mix the chia eggs and set aside for about 5 minutes. Mix the coconut oil, maple syrup, zucchini and vanilla in a medium bowl; add chia eggs once set. Stir in cinnamon, flours, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt; mix until wet and ingredients are just combined.

2. Spoon batter into muffin tins lined with liners, or oiled with a bit of coconut oil. Bake for 18 minutes or until browned and a toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy the bounty of the season!

My new weekend pastime: Juicing!

If anyone follows me on Instagram (@raes_16), you will have noticed that for the last two weekends I have been juicing! Oh what fun it's been! And I don't even have a fancy, expensive juicer!

I will admit to being spurred on by reading this blog post from a lovely Ottawa-gal, who I happened to meet in Toronto last fall while attending some classes with Meghan Telpner. I've known how to juice without a juicer for a while now, but sometimes you just need a little push or a little inspiration, and that's what Alexa's post did for me.

And in I dove, and now I'm hooked. Don't be scared, minimal equipment is required:

• blender
• nut milking sac
• bowl (I use a large 4+ cup liquid measuring cup – it's just easier to pour that way!) 

And very easy process (photos of step by step found here):

• Put veggies in blender
• Add 1 cup of water
• Blend, blend, blend, until everything is liquified (and then for a few more seconds)
• Pour into nut milk sac over bowl
• Milk it for all it's worth, and squeeze the juice out into the bowl (don't be scared of milking  beets... your hand may be red for a bit, but it goes away quickly after a couple washes)
• Pour into a glass and drink with glass straw (it tastes better that way... for real!)

I've made three different concoctions so far, depending on what I had around. And to be honest, the first time I did it on whim, I was pretty pleased at what I did happen to have on hand. It might have helped that my delivery from Ottawa Organics came the day before. Side note: love them, check them out. I now receive the medium-sized veggie/fruit box every second week. Delivered groceries... you can't beat it!

Spinach, swiss chard, cucumber, cilantro, lemon, ginger, apple, pear:

 

Kale, spinach, celery, cucumber, parsley, lemon, ginger, apple, pear:

 

Kale, spinach, beets, celery, parsley, lemon, ginger, pear:



Yummy in my tummy! Now run off, and get juicing!

Starting the new year off right

Now that the holidays are over, I'm trying to put little things back into my routine and nourish my body with lots of nutrients that I know were missing over the holidays -- but damn those M&M peanuts are good! Upward and onward to 2012!

Here's how I've started off the last two days:

First thing when I got up I downed a big glass of lemon water. This is super alkalizing for the body and detoxes the liver when drunk first thing in the morning.

Super simple to do. Squeeze half a lemon add it to a glass, fill the glass 2/3 to 3/4 with cold water and then top it off with with some boiling water to make the water warm. Drink it back with a glass straw -- really there isn't anything better and more fun than eco-friendly straws.

Once that's down, I got out my new blender (How I love! Thank you Mom & Dad), and whipped up a green monster, courtesy of Oh She Glows' Classic Green Monster recipe. I followed it more or less to a tee. I used my seed mix instead of only chia seeds, in one case I only used half a banana (and it wasn't frozen), and I did add my vegan vanilla protein powder from Genuine Health.

Simple, add stuff to a blender and blend.

And then pour and drink (again with glass straw).

Now I'm ready to be somewhat productive on my last day of vacation. It's still vacation after all... can't be too busy.

I won a giveaway!

I won my first blog giveaway! From one of my most favourite blogs!

A few weeks ago, Meghan Telpner from Making Love in the Kitchen held a giveaway for a great gift basket from Prana.

Prana is a fabulous little Canadian gem of a company, based in Montreal, that make great snacks (sweet and savory) from healthy and organic nuts, seeds and fruits.

I found out about the 'win' on a Monday, and by Tuesday my package had arrived. Now in my usual excitedness about getting packages in the mail, I tore it open before I even thought to take photos. I tried to stuff all my goodies back into the basket to take a photo but I couldn't do it justice; so just pretend everything is in the basket and it's all wrapped up in cellophane and some pretty ribbon. You'll also have to imagine I took nicer photos where I've taken care to make sure the background is clear of say Dyson vacuums. But at the time I didn't care about the quality of the photo, I wanted to EAT these goodies!

My loot!

Included were:

Sumsuma Sesame Squares
Ignore that the bag has already been
ripped opened in this photo

Chia Oil
.
.

White Mulberries
Brown Manuka Raisins
Raw Walnuts

Sundried Tomatoes
Dried Apple Rings
Dried Cherries
Pumpkin Seeds

They also included a lovely note and a coupon for 20% off an order from their online store.

 

What a lovely gift! Let's just say the sesame squares were gone by the next morning. So good, but full of sugar, which is not good for maintaining a steady blood sugar, which then leads to cravings... So these will only be a treat.

The chia oil is lovely. Lighter in colour and taste than a flax oil, but both are very high in Omega 3 fatty acids (an essential fatty acid that the body does not produce on it's own). I used most of it in my morning smoothies, but I also made a salad dressing with it and it was lovely.

The rest of the loot (all the seeds, nuts and dried fruit) got poured into a big jar and shook up! Instant trail mix! I've been picking away at it for a few weeks. It nice when you get home from work and are hungry and need a little something to satisfy you while dinner is cooking. Due to the fact that there's a good blend of all three macronutrients (fat, protein and carbohydrate), it sustains and doesn't make you reach back for more and more. And plain and simple it's so darn good together. The different textures and flavours blend so wonderfully. One thing to watch for when purchasing dried fruits is that they are often loaded with sulfites to preserve them. Sulfites can trigger asthma and allergies in certain people. It's always best to eat the cleanest, most natural foods available. Prana delivers on this with all organic products.

I've been really impressed with the pumpkin seeds as well as the raisins and dried cherries. I think my discount coupon will be spent on stocking up on those.

Check them out and maybe order some items for yourself! Or find their products at a store near you.

Thank you Prana for your gift. I thoroughly enjoyed and am continuing to enjoy it!

Pumpkins aren't just for Halloween

Until this year, I'd never cooked a pumpkin. But so far this fall, I've cooked two! And my oh my they are one delicious vegetable. I picked up my latest one at the Ottawa Organic Farmers' Market on Saturday.

Cooking pumpkin or any kind of squash is so unbelievably simple:

• Cut in two with a large knife (be careful, they're hard!)
• Scoop out the "innards"
• Lay face down in a baking dish with a bit of water (1/4 to 1/2 inch)
• Bake at 350F for 45 minutes or so (depends on the size) until it's soft

Roasted pumpkin. Ready to peel.

• Let it cool for a quick bit and peel off the skin
• There you have it, amazing, delicious, nutrient-dense pumpkin!

Depending on what you're using it for, the instructions can change here. I like mine pureed, so I cut the peeled, roasted pumpkin up into large chunks, and tossed it in the food processor to puree.

Pureed pumpkin.
Keeps in the fridge for a few days, or freeze it for later use.

Pumpkin is a great source of fiber, very low in sugar, an amazing source of vitamin A due to it's rich colour and full of lots of other nutrients that are oh so good for the bod, including vitamin C, iron, and B vitamins.

So now what do you do with your pumpkin... Well a few ideas for you. Some tried and tested, some recipes to come this week, to use up that gorgeous bowl of orange goodness.

Here's how they look. They taste AMAZING.

Chia Pumpkin Muffins! Mmm tasty. A few changes to the recipe, as I have a slightly different paper version:

• I used 2 tablespoons of ground chia, instead of one.
• I used 1/2 cup brown rice flour and 1/2 cup of quinoa flour to make up the 1 cup of flour.
• I used arrowroot flour instead of tapioca and only 1/4 cup.
• I substituted the agave for raw honey, still at 1/2 cup.
• I lowered the amount of maple syrup to just 1/4 cup.

 
Other great ideas for pumpkin (that I have tried or will be trying):

• Pumpkin soup, this is on my meal plan list for this week.
• Pumpkin pie overnight oats, these are so easy to make the night before.
• Pumpkin pie oatmeal, amazing for cold mornings.
• Butternut squash brownies, these are SO GOOD, just sub the butternut squash for pumpkin (or any squash really!)

Have you any creative and good ideas for using the very stellar pumpkin?

"You made your own WHAT?"

I made my own body wash. Yes you heard me right. Is your next question "why"? Thought so. Well, I'll tell you why.

The stuff you do in the bathroom, including showering, brushing your teeth, putting on your makeup, washing your face can lead to putting an enormous amount of poison into your body each and everyday -- sometimes twice or more per day. To combat this, I'm trying to make small changes here and there to lessen my toxic load. In doing so, I consulted the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetics Database to check some of the products I use. And, well, I was somewhat shocked. What I thought was a more "natural" body wash, turned out to be just average for the money I was spending and had more bad things in it that I thought. I should have known better, but we all get fooled once in a while.

And so I began a search for a cleaner product. And by the magic of Pinterest, I found what I was looking for!

 

Source: proverbs2six.blogspot.com via Raeanne on Pinterest

I only needed three things: a "clean" bar of soap, vegetable glycerine and an essential oil (optional). I headed to Rainbow Natural Foods to find my loot and found it!

This soap, Kiss My Face's Pure Olive Oil Soap, gets a "0" from the Skin Deep database, because it's just that, pure olive oil. I also picked up some pure vegetable glycerine and some pure, organic tea tree oil.

The instructions are pretty simple: grate the soap, which made four cups of soap, and put it in 16 cups of water, over a low to medium heat and stir until all the soap melts. Add 4 tablespoons of the glycerine and at the end 20-30 drops of the essential oil.

This gave me four litres of body wash. I washed out my old body wash bottle to use in the shower and the rest got poured into large 1-litre mason jars (the colour is that green/yellow because again I used olive oil soap and therefore it's the colour of olive oil!)

Easy-peasy! And the verdict? It's a very different soap, but that's mostly because of my choice to use an oil-based soap. It's more liquid than a cream or a gel and like all soaps without sulfates, it won't lather that much. But that doesn't mean it doesn't feel lovely on my skin and makes me squeeky-clean.

So now the cost... well the soap was about $4, the vegetable glycerine was about $6 and the oil was $11. I used all the soap, half the glycerine and not much of the oil. I used to pay $10/litre. This one cost me about $9+tax for 4 litres. Yup, that's a bargain!

A weekend in the kitchen

I love to spend time in the kitchen because I absolutely love to bake and make things from scratch. This weekend I took some time from my day to try a few new things. All the recipes can be found in my Delicious bookmarks.

Here's a sample of my weekend in the kitchen (I know some of the photos are bad... my kitchen has terrible lighting...):

First thing I made were Oatmeal Spelt Peach Cookies: I  bought a basket of amazing, succulent Ontario peaches last week and they were ripening faster than I could eat them. Spelt is not a gluten-free grain, but it is wheat-free. I'll eat them in moderation as I react more to wheat, but still somewhat to other gluten grains.

Keeping with the peach theme and my absolute love for jam, I made Peach and Plum Jam Muffins. The recipe called for blackberry jam, but I had plum jam. I love peaches and plums, so I went with it. And it turned out great. I remember when I was a kid, my brother and I watched the Urban Peasant a lot, I'm not sure why, but the two things I remember from it was his love for sherry (he seemed to put a splash of sherry in everything!) and that he always preached that you should "use what you have". So I did.

Next up were Strawberry Mint Popsicles. Again, I screwed up the recipe, I misread. It was supposed to be strawberry basil (there was another recipe for Mint Lemonade on the same page). Again, I went with it... with good results!

And it didn't stop there. Just prior to dinner on Saturday, I whipped up my own homemade BBQ sauce. I'm not a big fan of store bought BBQ sauces. I usually read the label and then put it back on the shelf with disgust -- I can't stand the amount of sugar in it! I found a better option once when I visited Whole Foods, but given that I live 5 hours away from the nearest Whole Foods, it's not an easy thing to pick up when you run out. So I went with this one, which has no sugar at all! Bonus.

For dinner, I made this amazing kale salad. Our most recent produce delivery included a huge head of kale, so what to do but whip up a great salad. I served it with some fresh local made-in-store sausages I picked up the day before at The Piggy Market in Westboro. Nom nom nom. So good! The key to this salad is to let it sit for a while after you mix it up. The kale leaves will soften from the olive oil in the dressing making it much more palatable.

Sunday morning I tackled my most complicated recipe of the weekend -- blueberry scones (gluten-free)! I love scones and blueberry ones are a bonus. This recipe included a few ingredients I've never used before but are easily found at most natural foods stores, such as Rainbow Natural Foods, which is where I found my loot.

Ok, I know enough, right? But one more. Blueberry grain-free pancakes for Sunday breakfast, made with almond flour. The recipe didn't call for blueberries, but I had some left over from the scones, so had to do it! Yum yum. Served with some chopped strawberries and pure maple syrup. 

So now you know what I did for a good part of the weekend. What did you do??

Everyone needs a 'me' day

I'm a big proponent of finding time to treat yourself. I last did this as part of my 30th birthday back in January. Since the summer months are winding down, I decided that I needed a little more me time and decided to take the final two Fridays in August off from work.

Last Friday, I treated myself really well. At noon, I met up with a friend at Play Food & Wine in the ByWard Market for a succulent lunch. They specialize in small plates and at lunch you can get any two plates for $20! Great deal and great food. Afterwards, I made my way over to this amazing 'new to me' spa called Daya Spa and I got pampered!

I treated myself to three services: the organic customized facial (using all Eminence products), followed by the cucumber mint sugar scrub manicure and pedicure. Heavenly! The facial was amazing and my fingers and toes look pretty good too! I left feeling rejuvenated and happy -- just what I wanted!

What a fantastic way to start the weekend! Now, what should I do this Friday? Any suggestions?

Holy Crap!

I'm a big fan of the show Dragons' Den on the good ole CBC. Last year the Dragons heard a pitch from a small company in British Columbia that sold a healthy breakfast cereal. The company = HapiFoods Group. The product = Holy Crap.

The Dragons loved it and bought into the company.

Recently my boss, another Dragon's fan, was talking about it at work. She had ordered some a while ago but recently ran out. So we decided to share an order. If you order 6 bags or more, the shipping is free – so we split and bought 3 each.

I had my first taste this morning. It tastes amazing! So delicious and chock full of goodness in the form of dried fruit, hemp hearts, chia seeds, buckwheat and cinnamon (that's it folks, that's all the ingredients!). The directions say to add one tablespoon to some yogurt or two tablespoons to some type of milk. I added it to my overnight oats and it added a wonderful sweet nutty flavour. So, so good. Tomorrow I'm going to try it on it's own.

Oh, and it's named Holy Crap for a reason... hemp hearts will make you regular... :)

You can order it via their site or recently I was in Rainbow Foods in Ottawa's west end and found it there in the granola/cereal aisle! By buying 6 bags directly from the company I paid $10.95 per bag. Rainbow's price, if I remember correctly, was $11 and change. However, to save from buying in bulk and waiting two weeks for it to arrive by post, it might be worth it to buy it at Rainbow.

P.S. Sorry about all the food posts lately, but that's what's on my mind!! Good, healthy, fresh food! Yum!

Organic groceries - Delivered!

For those of you in Ottawa, I found this little gem of a business quite a few months ago, but only started using it about 6-8 weeks ago. Ottawa Organics & Natural Food is a grocery delivery service that offers largely organic produce but they also carry organic dairy, baked good and some other grocery items.

I'm currently receiving the small fruit and vegetable box (a variety of fruits and vegetables), a dozen eggs, a litre of milk and a loaf of bread every two weeks. The quality is fantastic! They source local foods before importing and they let you know what is local (100 miles), regional (Ontario/Quebec outside the 100 miles), and imported from outside Ontario or Quebec (rest of Canada and other countries).

Receiving certain fruits and/or vegetables that you wouldn't normally buy on a regular basis has forced us to be creative with our meals, which has been great! A nice little touch is that they include a one-page newsletter-type flyer in each delivery. Included, among other things, are recipes for some of the produce included in the box. For example, last week we received a bag of Belgian endives. Instead of having to look up a recipe online or in my cookbooks, I looked no further than the flyer to find 3 different ways to prepare them.

The best thing is, I order from my computer and it's delivered to my door! Mind you, I still have to make trips to the grocery store for a few other items, but we really try and base our meals on what is included in the veggie box. The level of customer service has also been excellent. The owner, Matt, has also been very quick in responding to my requests.

We won't be receiving our box this week because we'll be away for the holidays and won't have a chance to eat all the goodies before they spoil, but I'll post a photo of our next box, which will arrive in the new year.

A great business success. Check it out!