Soupasana

What can start the day off on the right foot?

Flavour of the day = Winter Carnival.

Today’s breakfast was very liquidy – main star = a huge smoothie.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of almond milk
• 1 ripe banana
• 1/2 mango
• 3-4 ice cubes

I feel weird saying this… but I missed the spinach in this smoothie! If you haven’t tried spinach in a smoothie yet, you must. Especially, if you have trouble eating all of your vegetables. It doesn’t really taste like anything in the actual smoothie, but takes away the sickly sweetness of all that ripe fruit. Next smoothie will definitely be more green.

Lots of liquids with the smoothie and the coffee (with the last of my rice milk), as well as 1/2 whole wheat pita with peanut butter, and fresh melon. Very breakfasty, indeed!

I managed to get some groceries before lunch – spinach is in da house!!! But guess what else?

Moroccan style hummus!!!! How could I resist a new flavour of hummus? This one had apricots, almonds, spices and a touch of honey.

The festivities that followed:

• 2 slices of All Stars Bakery multi-grain bread with hummus, canned pumpkin and sweet mustard, alfa alfa sprouts (not pictured), tomato and cucumber – all arranged in a beautiful sandwich!

No lunch is complete without a salad:

Ingredients:

• spinach
• leftover buckwheat
• black beans
• cucumber
• dressed with sunflower oil, salt pepper, salsa

And more melon for dessert!

I had another coffee with almond milk this time… Made a mistake of heating the almond milk in a microwave before pouring coffee in. What worked perfectly with rice milk turned into a curdled, separated mess. Ugh. It tasted fine when I stirred it really well, but, boy, did it look nasty! I will spare you the photo…

For the rest of the day, I was snacking on the run! I decided to take two yoga classes back to back today (totally miscalculating the time, and therefore, showing up late to my teacher training tonight… ).

The following was chowed down in the car on my way to the teacher training:

A banana-strawberry-melon fruit salad with some peanut butter granola on top! This tasted way better than it looked. I put the granola in before I left for yoga, and it got a little soggy – different texture, still amazing.

Slice of bread with peanut butter and Crofter’s jam. Can anyone tell the car I’m driving from the photo? And, no, I’m not driving.

Small handful of almonds:

The question is… what are you having for dinner?

Good morning!

Today I woke up and realized that this banana would not make it until tomorrow…

The solution?

Banana whipped oatmeal with toppings of fresh mango, peanut butter granola and more banana.

And, of course, coffee!

As I am working my way through the multitude of non-dairy milks on the market, rice beverages were next! I always start by purchasing the original unsweetened kind of each brand. These two were squaring off for first place:

Of these two, Rice Dream definitely came out on top for me. It was whiter, more creamy and overall more… milk like! It’s also so far the best milk I found for coffee! Yu Basmati Rice beverage was more brown in color, and actually had more of a rice aftertaste (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Today I was driving out 140km to proctor a final exam for an online course that I have been teaching all semester. The interesting part, of course, is that I got to meet all of my students for the first time face to face (even though we were in correspondence for the last 4 months!). The exam was taking place in a small town of Woodstock (30,000 people) and a group of the students were nice enough to organize a get-together lunch before the final!

We were meeting at East Side Mario’s, and it was going to be my first eating out experience. This was also going to be my first “I’m-a-food-geek-so-I’m-gonna-whip-out-my-photo-camera-during-dinner” experience. I checked out the menu online, and pizza looked like the most sure bet. I called ahead to make sure that their crust was vegan, and it was! I present to you pizza with spinach, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes black olives and fresh basil (and no cheese, of course). It was lovely, and didn’t give me that stuffy feeling you get after you devour a whole pizza to yourself.

House salad with balsamic dressing on the side (I picked off the croutons).

Here’s my amazing bunch of students!!! Check out the smiles. Thanks again for coming out, everyone. It was such a blast to catch up, and finally talk in person.

A couple of pictures of beautiful Woodstock…

The nursing home facility where the final exam was held.

A random car in the parking lot had this sticker.

Check out the background – don’t you get a sunny and peaceful vibe?

On my way back, I was starving, so I polished off my last OrganicNature bar in the car….

And at home, it was parsnip fries, take 2!!!! This time they were divine, just the way nature intended them. Ok, maybe nature never really intended parsnips to be dipped into peanut butter, but I say it was definitely a mistake on her part.

Peanut Butter Parsnip Fries

[ further adapted from Oh She Glows ]

Ingredients:

• 1 parsnip (look for strange looking white carrots in your grocery store)
• 1 heaping spoon of peanut butter
• 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of Mrs. Dash garlic spice
• 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
• salt, pepper

Directions:

Slice the parsnip in shape of fries. (I didn’t peel mine). Add spices and peanut butter. Mix until you have a sticky mess on your hands (literally!). Spread evenly on a baking sheet, and bake for about 45 minutes at 400F. Crispy on the outside, soft inside.

Consume. Crying from joy is optional.

This serves one (or two, if the second person does not really like peanut butter… muahahaha).

I am soooo trying these with every single nut butter known to man (almond, cashew, hazelnut). Carrots and sweet potatoes should be also wonderful instead of parsnips. I don’t know if regular potatoes would work here – I think sweeter vegetables fit this recipe better.

Lovely salad – compliments of Vlad. This has tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms and broccoli.

Perfect pair.

Dessert! I think I wanted to dig my teeth into these as soon as possible, hence, the pictures are blurry.

Sliced banana with peanut butter granola and maple syrup.

I had an easy 5-second breakfast today – cereal!

This cereal is another winner in my books! A-mazing.

For lunch – I wanted to use up yesterday’s couscous paste leftovers and improvise just a little.

Buckwheat from yesterday, with some sunflower oil, spinach, and chickpeas, and some hot sauce!

New addition to the kitchen: sweet with heat mustard!

Last of couscous paste on a sandwich, with buckwheat on the side.

Last but not least…

Pear with peanut butter for dessert:

I did a hot yoga class in the evening…

Pre-hot yoga fuel:

For dinner, I wanted to try something really interesting that made a bit of a splash in the foodie blogosphere. Anyone know the name of the white carrot below?

Parsnips!!!

The dish that made a splash was parsnip fries! I had no idea what parsnips tasted like, but smeared in peanut butter, how bad could they be?

Seasonings (I improvised here): salt, pepper, garlic spice, brown sugar, cinnamon and olive oil.

Adding star player –> PEANUT BUTTER to the mix. I used a heaping tablespoon.

As I stuck the fries in the oven (400F, 45 minutes), I decided to sip on a carrot juice that was hanging out in my fridge for the past couple of days. I think it was on sale at Ambrosia (the local health food store), and I was lured in by a short list of ingredients (carrot juice, lactic acid).

Eeeeeek! YUCK! BLECH… I hope I made my point. This was disgusting. It tasted nothing like your regular run-of-the-mill carrot juice that I know and love. It was sour… (?). I had about half a glass. Kitchen fail #1.

After 45 minutes, the fries looked amazing, but were less crispy than I would have liked them to be. For some reason, I decided that to put them on broil would be a good idea. Oh, if only I had a dollar for each time I put something on broil, and burned it to coals as a result… I present to you kitchen fail #2.

I finished the plate anyway, throwing out the blackest ones… Sigh. Well, no worries – I am going to be back at it tomorrow. I WILL make these taste good if that’s the last thing I cook.

Slice of bread with hummus makes any dinner complete!

Chai tea with a splash of rice milk:

And few hours later – a beautiful dessert!

Off to bed!

The dinner was incredibly quick, as we had to go to a concert!

The box below is buckwheat - I buy it in a Russian grocery store, so it already comes in prepackaged baggies that you boil in a pot (it takes 15 minutes to cook). I bought buckwheat in bulk at a regular store few years ago, and it was stale and disgusting… I have never bought in bulk since… The boxes are incredibly convenient, but I think I will have to get over myself eventually, because it’s much more expensive this way.

Buckwheat with black beans, salsa and fresh cucumber – easy and delicious.

After inhaling the plate above, we were off to Gogol Bordello concert!!! It’s a gypsy punk band started by a few Russian immigrants. Check out one of their biggest hits here. They became quite popular after performing with Madonna at London Earth Concert in 2007.

What a crazy night that was!!! I actually did not realize what a high moshpit potential this band has. The nightclub at which they performed (Sound Academy) was packed, and the audience ranged from teenage punks to respectable couples in their forties. I guess we were in between.

There were two opening bands before Gogol made it on stage, and by the time they did, we were squeezed, pushed and shoved from all the different directions. I impulsively decided to remove my jewelery, and oh, how right that decision actually way. By the time, the main band actually appeared, our only goal was to survive one song, and then get out. At that point, I spent about twenty minutes with my cheek tenderly shoved into someone’s shoulder blades, and Vlad was being hugged by about fifteen limbs belonging to different individuals.

When we finally let go (meaning, we momentarily stopped clutching feverishly at the individuals in front of us), we were immediately sucked further into the crowd. People were getting increasingly rowdy, and as the pushing increased, the crowd swayed from side to side. My biggest fear was to actually fall, because I was not sure I would be able to get up. As we were trying to get out, and could not do so right away, I, being slightly claustrophobic, had a couple of panicky moments… As we finally emerged from the heart of the moshpit, both Vlad and myself were absolutely drenched in sweat, my hair was tangled into a nightmare, and my BlackBerry was slightly cracked. Good times.

My younger brother (who is much more of a concert goer than I am) commented that while this was not the most violent moshpit he has ever been in, it was definitely the most dense. I am definitely glad to have participated, but lesson has been learned – next time I am wearing track pants, running shoes and no accessories to something like this.

As for food and beverages, it was definitely strange not to be drinking at a concert. I was especially craving a cold beer after nearly escaping death in the lethal group hug of a moshpit. Ah well, beer will still be there a month from now. I was thankful for a clear head in the morning.

Back from hot yoga! The good news that it seems my shoulder injury just needed some rest, and I’m back to my extremely-tight-in-the-shoulders-but-at-least-pain-free-self. Of course, with me a story can never just end on the good… Someone right beside me lifted up from Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide-Legged Forward Bend) into Sirsasana II (Tripod Headstand), and then lost balance and came crashing down in my direction. I got spooked, lost my balance as well and landed, hitting my shin against a block hard. That definitely put a damper on the rest of the practice, as I was in a lot of pain.

Yeah, yeah, I should have moved the block out of the way, but I never lift up into a pose I can’t maintain, so usually I’m not that concerned about the random objects around me. Lesson learned. Of course, I also would not dream about ever falling from a headstand into a backbend, simply because my back could not take it. As a yoga teacher in training, I try to read students’ bodies, and I see this happen all the time – we often compensate for lack of strength with flexibility, and for lack of flexibility with strength. I am definitely in the latter category, as I have more strength than flexibility.

For example, it is not uncommon to have a guy show up to a yoga class for the very first time, and muscle his way into a Crane pose, simply because he has the upper body strength. Eventually, you learn to engage your core, and the “cheating” in the beginning is really not that big of a deal, unless you hurt yourself (or others) in the process.

A huge bruise is already in the making, and I’m hoping it’s going to end there. Sporting my velcro refrigerated ice pack:

Sigh… As a rule I am doing such a wonderful job in injuring myself, that I think if other people will partake in the process, my good ol’ body just won’t be able to deal.

Ok, I’m done whining now… On to the food!

Grocery loot on my way home:

Of course, it’s when I go vegan, they FINALLY start selling Oikos yogurt in Canada (or at least in my end of Canada). I mean seriously??? According to the blogosphere, it’s supposed to be one of the best tasting Greek yogurts out there.  And if the internets say so, it must be true! So I may be running, not walking,  to the grocery store at the end of the trial.

Instead, I picked up 3 flavours of soy yogurt. I now have vanilla, strawberry, blueberry and peach in my fridge. I am a little freaked out to try them, because I heard that if there is one thing that should never be made from soy, it’s yogurt. I see yogurt sampling in my near future.

Also:

• whole wheat bread
• orange juice
• berry juice
• blackberries
• strawberries
• baby carrots
• Sabra hummus – best kind of hummus I tried to date
• grapes
• two kinds of mustard

Whoohoo – love that it’s April, and berries are finally on sale!!!

Lunch mission: use up yesterday’s couscous and 2 dying tomatoes and work on finishing the huge can of pumpkin. I also kinda felt like a sandwich… so the challenge was to make couscous sticky enough to stay on the pita.

Couscous with the binding ingredients:

• whole wheat couscous
• hummus
• 1/4 avocado
• 1/3 cup of canned pumpkin
• mustard

All mixed up:

Ok, maybe it does not look very appetizing, but it gets better, I promise!

With alfa alfa sprouts on top:

Salad on the side – ingredients:

• spinach
• 2 dying tomatoes
• 1-2 tbsp of slivered almonds
• sesame seeds
• sesame oil, salt, pepper

And carrots with hummus for a punch of color.

It’s all in the presentation:

Another cuppa with rice milk in my favorite mug:

Mission accomplished! I couldn’t even finish one of the two sandwiches – will snack on it before dinner.

I finally mastered the art of eating before hot yoga recently… Up until recently, I could not have anything, but maybe a piece of fruit before the morning practice, which left me absolutely starving for lunch. Now that my body is used to the temperature, as long as I eat at least two hours before practice, I feel great.

Whole wheat toast:

Crofter’s jam and natural smooth peanut butter from Ambrosia, a local health food store (you buy an exactly same kind at Bulk Barn, where you can pour as much as you need from a huge bucket). All it is is ground peanuts! One of these days I will finally be a proud owner of a food processor, as this is incredibly easy to make at home.

Blueberry cinnamon cereal! Let’s be honest here, all this “good for you” cereal can taste like cardboard. I am happy to report that this is definitely an exception! Think of this as as adult version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Tada!

Coffee with rice milk. Not nearly as bad as the first day… I think it helps to actually heat up the milk, before pouring in the coffee. Nice foam helps too!

Off to sweat and stand on my head (hopefully)!

Starting the month off on a right foot with oatmeal… If you are at all familiar with the food blogosphere, you know that oatmeal holds a bit of a holy grail status. It is the ultimate breakfast powerhouse!

And no, those little instant baggies of oatmeal are not the same thing. Instant oatmeal is pre-cooked and then dried. Regular oatmeal has a much better nutritional profile than the instant stuff, similar to how whole wheat bread is nutritionally superior (and keeps you fuller longer) when compared to white bread.

The ingredient list is my favorite part:

1. Quaker Oats –> 100% rolled oats

2. Weight Control Quaker Oats (Cinnamon) –> whole grain rolled oats, maltodextrin, whey protein isolate, salt, natural and artificial flavours (contains barley gluten), oat flour, calcium carbonate, guar gum, cinnamon, caramel color, soy lecithin, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, niacinamide, vitamin A palmitate, reduced iron, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, folic acid.

What???? Let me see, I could have the periodic table of the elements above, or… I don’t know… put some cinnamon on my oatmeal?

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of whole grain oats (large flake)
• 1 cup of almond milk
• 1/4 cup of canned pumpkin
• dash of vanilla extract, and cinnamon!!!!

Cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes… Add vanilla and stir in pumpkin at the end.

Add some brown sugar on top, which will melt into brown deliciousness… and a dash of cinnamon. Along with a sad-looking cup of coffee with rice milk.

The oatmeal was fantastic – brown sugar really made it shine!

After a whole morning of marking papers, I had about 15 minutes for lunch:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of whole wheat couscous
• 1 cup of spinach
• leftovers of roasted vegetables from last night
• 1 tbsp of slivered almonds
• salsa

Top with 1/4 of avocado! Hola!

Pack an ultra quick lunch… or dinner? I managed to make this, while the lunch was getting warm in the microwave.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 cups spinach
• 1 tomato
• 1 small cucumber
• 1 mushroom
• 1 tbsp of sunflower seeds
• 2-3 tbsp of All-Bran cereal in a separate container for topping
• olive oil, red wine vinegar

Throw in some walnuts for a snack. Total prep time: 3 minutes!

I honestly can never understand when people say that they do not have time to prepare lunch at home, and that’s why they eat out. It would take me soooo much longer to actually figure out where to go, what to get, stand in line, pay for food… I seriously do not have time for that!

Snacking on my way from one class to another… a couple of disgustingly blurry photos of a bar that I had – Cranberry Crisp flavour. This definitely tied me over for a couple of hours.

Close-up of texture…

Finally, long awaited dinner (#2?):

Ingredients:

• 1 tomato
• 1 cup of chickpeas
• alfa alfa sprouts on top
• olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper

Half pita with avocado and cucumber, and the other with peanut butter along with some Earl Grey tea with a splash of rice milk.

My first vegan dinner was gorgeous, if I say so myself…

Veggies going into the oven – seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic spice, lemon juice, and olive oil.

Twenty minutes later (with a bit of shuffling half way through)…

Utilizing leftovers: whole wheat pasta with parsley. I used those little frozen cubes of parsley you can buy and store in the freezer. They are perfect for cooking, because the high temperature melts them fast, and they are chopped so finely that they cover pasta like pesto!

Dinner without bread? What’s the point???

Gorgeousness with a huge and handsome hunk… of hummus!

Beverage of the night = herbal lemon blueberry tea.

I may have sneaked in an extra slice of bread as a delivery method for the below…

There was a little bit left at the bottom of my jar, so I polished it off! I found this peanut butter at Sobey’s, but haven’t seen it anywhere else… Skip it if you are not a fan of raisins though – as much as I loved the taste, I actually found the raisins annoying as they are hard, and just sit there… I prefer my raisins soft and chewy – like they get in oatmeal.

So at this point, the nose cleanse, stomach cleanse and intestinal cleanse are all done. I’m not really getting into details here, but if you are interested, all three cleanses are described here.

Now on to the dietary changes… No breakfast today in preparation for the cleanse. However, we were supposed to have two bowls of kitchiri immediately after the intestinal cleanse (around 9am). One of our fellow teachers made kitchiri all by herself for all of us (thanks so much!).

Here’s a recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup of long grain rice
1/4 – 1/2 cup split mung beans with shell intact (they must be green in color)
soak the beans for an hour before cooking, then rinse and cook together with rice
add 1/2 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp tumeric

The consistency must be mushy and somewhat sticky. Add ghee (clarified butter) and enjoy.

*Note that because ghee is a form of butter, and is therefore, an animal product, my official day 1 of vegan diet will begin tomorrow.

Kitchiri was quite filling. All I wanted when I got home was coffee.  I decided not to cut out caffeine for this 30-day trial, because I have already done caffeine-free trials in the past. Thus, I wanted to experience the vegan diet without mixing in the effects of removing caffeine also.

Vegan diet = no animal milk in your coffee. Star player this morning:

I usually buy Almond Breeze, but I have not tried this almond milk before. This milk was being sold in the fridge section, while Almond Breeze is just kept on shelves, so I had high hopes for this guy…

Sorry to say animal milk this was not… Definitely not the same. While the milk smelled amazing, the texture was just off. Muddy and watery. The coffee was darker and tasted very different. While I love almond milk in pretty much everything else, I missed the regular skim milk I usually use for coffee. Maybe I’ll try foaming it, like they do for lattes?

I was not really sold on the ingredients list either:

Ingredients:

filtered water, cane sugar, almonds, natural flavours, tricalcium phosphate, locust bean gum, canola lecithin, sea salt, sodium bicarbonate, zinc gluconate, riboflavin, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D2, vitamin B12

So while this is obviously fortified with vitamins (1 cup of this has 30% of daily intake of calcium, 45% of vitamin D, and 50% of vitamin B12), I like my ingredient lists way WAY shorter. And sugar as the second ingredient? I’ll have to compare this to Almond Breeze.

Ah well, this is what the trial is about – live and learn. I still have to work my way through at least a dozen of different non-animal milks out there, so I am hopeful. There is a vanilla version of this almond milk, which should be sweeter. Rice and hemp milks are next on the list.

The recommendation is to stay away from fruit and heavy foods for the first little while after the cleanse, so I’ll have to think of something vegetable-based for dinner!

We finished the teacher training early today, and I was excited to have lunch before fasting for at least 12 hours (as we are doing the full intestinal cleanse tomorrow morning). Soup sounded like a great idea.

The ingredients I started with below.

• chicken broth (I think this is the last time I am eating an animal product for a while. )
• canned pumpkin (I bought this at Bulk Barn)
• avocado
• leftover quinoa

The soup looked a little bland, colors wise. Nothing like spinach to give your food a boost of color:

Topped with salsa and 1/2 of avocado. This was to die for!

This was officially the last food I had for the day. I had this around 6pm. Given that we are doing the cleanse at 6am tomorrow, this gives 12 hours of fasting on the dot.

Later on the agenda was Marianna’s birthday party!

Looking spiffy!

Looking even more spiffy! (love this shirt)

Team Kate! You know you are having fun when your teeth are the most predominant part of the photo.

Looking good!

The whole gang along with the birthday girl in the middle! I think it’s amusing how I am consistently the palest person in any picture.