Making Love in the Kitchen

That’s right homegirls (and boy or two). I made an ice cream float. I haven’t a clue why, in the middle of winter, I suddenly declared that it was ice cream float season. I’m thinking it likely has something to do with all the excitement over my upcoming Gluten + Dairy Free Treats class (yep, a week today!). Or, maybe I was just longing from yonder years when I used to have slumber parties at my grandma and grandpa’s house and ice cream floats were the dessert of choice (that or frozen grape bubble gum??? things I will never understand).

The floats would be served up in these little black and white cups (and if you come to my kitchen, you might just spot it here). We usually had vanilla ice cream and our float liquid of choice was, of course, root beer. The magic of the float was that you would scoop in your ice cream, pour the soda pop over top and the whole thing would turn into a frothy mug of heaven, topped off with a bendy red and white straw. As I will be sweetly demonstrating in my class next week, eating for amazing health does not mean you have to do away with the treats of yesteryear

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Like the sound of an indulgent delights workshop? Of course you do, sweetie! Join us on February 13th for our Gluten + Dairy Free Treats workshop! Beautify from the outside in (and eat it up, too) at our Edible Beauty Care workshop! This weekend is all about snacks. Protein powered, sweet and savoury. Let me know what you [...]

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Calling all lovers of the good life! Live my creed – ya know, flirting with farmers, crunching on carrots, riding bicycles covered in flowers – then why haven’t you entered this yet?

Don’t know what to make this weekend? Three great dishes to get you through the week and have fun making them now. And of course- dessert comes first. Enjoy!

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It’s my birthday today. Oh me, oh my. As of today I am a whopping 32 years old. Yep. I always thought by the time I was 32 I’d be all grown up, with a grown up job, maybe running my own little biz, travelling the world, have a sweet man-panion by my side and enjoying other such lovely indulgences as coffee-like dairy-free ice cream, and hopefully not looking a day over 30… maybe even 28.

And by golly gee me, I think I have done it. The abundance is sweetness. And to celebrate my birthday, my besties over at Hamilton Beach Canada are helping me, help you celebrate. We’re giving away an ice cream maker!

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Oh my, oh my was this homemade ice cream the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. Or in the top 10 for sure.

My bestest friends over at Hamilton Beach Canada sent me the sweetest of gifts and the latest was their 1½ Quart Ice Cream & Frozen Yogurt Maker. All this time I thought ice cream made in a blender was as good as anything else, but let me tell you- that machine did some magic to our blend of magic.

I was also surprised that there was really not much of a process involved. We blended the goods together in our blender, poured it into our ice cream maker and shazaam alakazaam, a half hour later we were ooing and aahing over the amazing ice creamy creation we had collectively created.

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A few weeks ago, the team here participated in an event called Soupalicious. The preparation for this involved us cooking up 20 litres of soup. By the end of that weekend we were totally souped out. And then soome. Now, weeks later, we are still haunted by it for 3 reasons.

1) We still have 14 liters of soup in the fridge.

2) It still smells like curry in the kitchen.

3) We still have a box of juice monkey onions, 2 fart-worthy cauliflowers, one lonely old leek, and a big ol’ bag of carrots with no place to go. After giving most of it away at a workshop…and frankly to anyone on the streets who would take it, I decided to take a couple carrots home and turn them into something magical. And ooooh boy that I did.

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I was offered a task. It’s one of those tasks that make me want to cartwheel over the kind of tasks that have become part of my job.

My long lost lover, fellow nutritionista, long distance pen pal, around the world adventurer, and momma friend Gabriela, the wordstress and recipe mistress behind the blog The Picky Foodie, emailed me asking if I would play in her cookie games.

Her desire was to for 10 of her food loving/ baking friends from around the fair globe to take her basic cookie recipe and make it our own.

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Everyone loves home baked cookies. And they really don’t take much time at all.

You mix the dry. Chop a little chocolate. Throw a couple blobs of cookie dough on a parchment lined cookie sheet. And just like that, fresh home baked cookies are served!

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How are you enjoying your last day off before we go back to school?

Wait a second? Are you going back to school?

I am, my own school and my face will likely still be smudged with chocolate from today’s cooking demo at Toronto Harbourfront’s Hot and Spicy Food Festival.

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When I took the bus to school in high school, I had to pass through the Yonge/Eglinton Subway station. Inside was a Cinnabon. For those of you who live outside the 30 countries where thay are now located, or managed to avoid shopping malls your whole life (and for that I would envy you), Cinnabon is the sweetest smelling cinnamon bun bakery there ever was. They are steamy hot, oooey, gooey, chewy and dripping in the sweetest icing.

And passing through the building, smelling these at 3:30pm on a daily basis was torture. To my cravings and to my bum size. According to online sources, one Cinnabon contains 800 calories.

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One of my favourite things to do in my free time it to take on kitchen projects. This can range from re-filling spice jars, brewing some kombucha, plotting and planning to create the best gluten-free pie crust there ever was, or this little ditty here.

Summer is a time of fun, sweet fun, but as Jen has been enlightening all of us, it also does not need to be a time for consuming poison, gross poison (dressed up as ‘summer favourites’). Hence her breakdown yesterday of the Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake, or what I am now referring to as the “Toxic Hydrogenated Oil and High Fructose Corn Syrup Cake-Shaped Frozen Food Processing By-Product”. Not for consuming my fair ladies, gents, moms and kiddies. A treat is not a treat if every ingredient in it lends itself to killing you softly. You with me here?

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Oh my love sweet lovers. I can only go so long without sharing some sweet, sweet chocolate love.

I created this gem for the attendees at my Raw Food Power workshop a couple weeks ago. I always have a challenge when I do the same workshops over and over again.

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Carob is a funny thing. I find that people either love it or hate it. I personally love it and find myself defending the poor thing a lot. Meghan is not such a fan of it and whenever I mention the stuff she gives me an “ew” look. I was introduced to carob really early on since my grandmother used to bake with it. Since chocolate kept her up at night, she used carob in its place in a lot of cakes and cookies. I don’t think carob tastes like chocolate, but it is sweet and brown so I suppose it can stand in as chocolate when necessary. I prefer to think of carob as its own unique flavour. I can’t really describe it -malty, molasses, sweet with a little bitterness at the same time. Something along those lines. I do appreciate that it is naturally sweet on its own and is so versatile. It can be added to smoothies, baked goods, and even savoury dishes to balance out the flavour and add a certain complexity.

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Guest post by Marie Poulin

I first met Meghan in the fall of 2009. In the summer, I had been looking for vegetarian cooking classes as a birthday gift idea, and I landed on Meghan’s website. Back then it was a little more “homemade”, and I had difficulty finding what I was looking for. I didn’t have the patience to dig (I am a web designer after all), so I left her site, and ended up going with wine tasting classes instead.

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I know, I know… you’ve seen this pic before because you never miss a day of my blog. Well you know what, I’m over it! Hopefully tomorrow I can share with you what’s been vampiring my time. In the meantime so as not to leave you blogless today, I thought I’d share with you a little something I wrote for Metro News last week. They wanted a little something on Superfoods and whether they’re really as jazzed up as the health mags would make us think. So I decided to put together my list of top five fave superfoods. Now if this is old hat to you, it might be a great way to introduce some superfood love to the skeptics in your life. I know we all have some!

Enjoy!!!

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