Making Love in the Kitchen

What fun I had when Wilder Weir from Oh So Cosmo! (airing on Cosmo TV) came back to the kitchen for a visit. Remember the last time he was here? I flirted my heart out with him and it seemed he wanted to come back for more. On the menu were our kitchen fave veggie rice wraps with almond dipping sauce and our conversation quickly went off course. One moment we’re talking flaccid cucumber and the next we chatted ‘poo juice’ and how pooping makes us pretty. Watch my love sweet lovers. Watch, laugh and learn. I often have a tough time watching myself on TV- but this clip even had me giggling. The peeps at Cosmo did a superfantab job of this segment and now I will just wait by the phone to see if I get called for a magical third date with Wilder.

This time, we were talking detoxing.

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Yep- so here I am in St. Lucia, leading my 4th annual Nourish Your Soul Retreat (which, by the way, you might want to get on the wait list for next year), and I still have a tail to share from Hawaii. The story includes tofu pot stickers, of all things. Is there anyone out there that doesn’t love a good dumpling? Nope. I didn’t think so. Why is it that things seem to taste better when wrapped in bundles of dough/rice paper/pasta? I am afraid I don’t have an answer for you. When we were in Hawaii- after a long day of adventuring, we split the drive back to our abode up by stopping for dinner at a raved out veg place. On the menu- tofu potstickers and for some reason, I was all over them. I NEVER eat fried food. I never crave it, never like it and definitely don’t usually want it mixed with tofu. The mere idea s totally barftown. For some reason though- maybe a day in the sun, maybe by mass consumption of odd fruits, maybe the holiday spirit, but I ordered them and they were amazing. And then I kept talking about them to the man… until I had no choice, once home, but to make them.

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There are many snacks out there that claim to be healthy, but in reality they’re not as virtuous as they seem. What’s a health-conscious snacker to do? Eat roasted chickpeas, of course! These delicious nibblies are crunchy, flavourful and full of beneficial nutrients.

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I have weird collections. It used to be shoes. Now it’s foraged mushrooms, and sea weed. Everywhere I go, I check out the local sea vegetables. People now send me gifts of seaweed from their own fair shores too (feel free!). Nothing, however, has stolen my heart quite like Irish or Sea Moss (twin brothers from different mothers). This unsuspecting superfood has been my top of the charts seller since I started carrying it. Not an easy thing to find but an absolute smoothie essential, if you ask me. Also a top, top, top food to eat to help with all your daily detox efforts. Cleans up the thyroid, sheds radiation, strips the gut of excess mucous buildup and other fine jazz. Makes the drinks so silky smooth, keeps all the goods you throw in there in solution, and heals the gut and thyroid like nothing else. You have been asking for it and at long, long last- I have put together my how-to video for Irish Moss. Now, save your Q’s ’cause I now have your A’s answered. All in this video…

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If you have ever eaten at a raw restauarant and ordered a sandwich, is was likely served to you on this bread. It’s not overly exciting to look at but bow chica bow does it pack an awesome flavour.

What I’m talking about here is Raw Onion Bread. I’ll be the first to pass on anything that includes raw onion- but somehow, this goodness cooks, though at a low temperature, for long enough that the onions become sweet and mild. Be prepared though, you may have to don the old onion goggles to get this one prepped and ready.

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It all started with this gorgalicious ceramic dish with a lid that I picked up at my absolute favourite-if-it-didin’t-exist-I’d-be-naked-store Anthropologie. I saw it and immediately thought, TAGINE central. I don’t know why. Just something about being able to open that lid, have the steam burst out and my getting to announce a fine tah-dah to my dining companion.

The thing is, I am pretty sure I have never actually had a tagine before that I liked. They most often had lamb in them and I am just not that in to eating laaa-aaaa-aaamb. But when fall rolls in, something in the abundance of root veggies at the market, combined with my desire to eat cozy food and not have to work that hard for it, made this one bought adventure a must.

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You know those people who go on those re-donk-you-lus cleanses that essentially sound like they’re spending a week, crash course style living the way you’ve been living for the last five years, only to go back at the end of it and start eating like the slothy fatty McFatter standard North American processed diet full of wheat, cheese, booze and sugar?

Wait a second! You’re not one of them too are you?

Here’s the thing most people have to learn about detox. It’s not a diet. A detox should not be a crash anything. It’s not something you can do twice a year where for 1 week you drink epsom salts, consume only lemonade and enema your poopershnickle out the hooha. The best of the best way to detox is to make 80% of what most people would consider a cleanse, your everyday way of living. Make sense?

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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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A few weeks ago, we posed the question on Twitter asking what everyone’s fave comfort food was that they wish could be healthified. It sounded a lot like what I have created here for you.

Why do we all love mac and cheese? The answer is simple. We were raised on it. It was the go to convenience food of our childhood and likely landed itself as a staple in our cupboards when we first moved out on our own.

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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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How it makes my heart sing when I can go to a regular restaurant and order my lover of a food, tempeh. Now, when I say regular restaurant, I’m not talking about nonsense places with names like “Wings and Things”, or “Deep Fry It So You’ll Try It”. I mean restaurants where their overall values- eat organic, local, seasonal etc.- make sweet love with my own.

So wasn’t I over the rainbow excited to see a veg menu with tempeh on it. And this wasn’t the kind of tempeh you might find at most veg/vegan restaurants where it’s kind of just cooked to a crisp and served over a bowl of rice. This tempeh was prepared as if it were the leanest cut of gold labeled cow (do cows come with with gold labels?).

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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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Holy tempeh testicles, my fair weather lovers! How is August looking into its last sweet half? I don’t know about you (and feel free to tell me), but I feel like suddenly I have to summer it up to the tittles. And in that spirit, I’ve been spending as many minutes of the day outside as possible. I am not back and ready to rock it on my bicycle just yet (still in accident recovery mode), but walks are sweet, as are evenings on our porch, eating, laughing and just plain old loving the loveliness.

As we do spend many an evening on the porch, with the sites and smells of our neighbourhood wafting over, meat seems to be the scent of choice most often. Even as a non BBQ meat eater (hi cancer, you’re not invited to play with me), I do still get cravings.

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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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There are two common questions we get when summer time rolls around:

1. What’s the best camping food and trail mix?

2. What’s a great veg friendly summer BBQ recipe?

The camping/trail mix thing I’ll share with you next week, but the BBQ thing- I have an answer for you right here and now and wozers is it delicious.

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