Making Love in the Kitchen

Sugar, my sweet coconut lovers, is a drug. A delicious one, but a drug all the same. We get hooked as kinder and we stay on the substance all the live long day- only until we grow old enough to add caffeine to the mix. Getting off processed or even natural sweeteners is one sweet challenge and those playing the Fab Uplift Detox are gonna win that game! With a little help of course.

Some argue that refined white sugar is the most addictive substance on this planet. You might even admit this yourself. You have a little, you want a little more and than you find yourself needing your daily fix, whether it be in your coffee or tea, soft drink, muffin, breakfast cereal, bread, pasta sauce, salad dressing, fruit juice or after dinner cookie. Sugar is in everything and we are consuming more than we think.

The average person now consumes roughly 135 pounds of sugar per year. Holy moly! A person’s weight in sugar? Hello obesity epidemic and hello cancer! Sugar is the number one fuel for those pesky cancer cells.

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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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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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Oh the joy. The fun. The writing I will be doing with a whole weekend free. Sort of. In my imagination, I booked this weekend off so that, I would have it free and easy to travel the globe, leading up to my 32nd birthday coming on Tuesday (yep, the 25th). I was going to go to New York, or LA, or Fiji (in my dreams anyway)… And then decided that instead I would check in with reality because this mamasita has a book to write. And write like the wind I will.

Another great week over here in the nutrition front. We ran five classes in eight days which made this kitchen a mad, mad house.

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Well hello there October. I love your beautiful colours and crunchy leaves. Where have you been hiding? I was walking to the Raw Food Power workshop last Saturday and there was a little chill in the air, the leaves were really crispy, and I felt that this was the very first day of Fall. No more swealtering Indian Summer weather going on over here. It’s officially sweater and hot smoothie latte time. In this kitchen we sure are getting into the Autumn spirit with everything from Alexa’s cozy cookies to orange coloured ice-cream. Sounds pretty good right?

It really is the best time of year in my opinion. Just taking a walk in your neighbourhood exposes you to all the goodness of the season. Here are some fun Fall facts:

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You would think this would be totally sick-ass disgusting. A couple weeks ago, I was kicking it at Dufferin Grove with my delightful intern Alexa when she told me that kale chip inspiration had been dropped on her. She said her idea was so good that she actually had to turn her light on while in bed at night and write it down.

Her brainwave: Kale Chips!

I instantly imagined a head of kale shaped light bulb go on over her head, and then it went over the both of us. I thought this was brilliant. We ran off to get our heads of kale and bunches of dill. We were inspired.

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We work our patooties off around here- as you may have noticed, but we also cook a little here and there, and do our best to laugh until we cry once in a while. It’s part of our creed really. Up there I am rocking the awesome onion goggles Alexa introduced to our kitchen. Speaking of Alexa, I am pretty sure she never wants to look at cauliflower again.

And Jill, she is so over squash.

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In his own words, Ron Telpner, my dad, shares his story and experience with prostate cancer. His series, The Four Unwanted Words chronicles his experience from diagnosis to the best health of his life.
Read Part 1: Four Unwanted Words

You are what you eat.

When I was told “You have prostate cancer,” I thought my business career might be over. It was only after doing my homework that I realized that prostate cancer, when caught in its early stages, is not a death sentence. It is more of a condition. Just the same, I was scared.

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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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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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For those of you have joined our 21 Days To Health Challenge, no matter where you are at in it, you likely skipped ahead and noticed the bit where you’re supposed to cut out caffeine.

Now, before you start asking all kinds of questions about whether caffeine is really so bad for you, I will say Yes, yes it is.

Caffeine, unless taken up the bum (yes, that’s what I said), will work against each and every one of your physical, and emotional goals. You can read all about it here, but to summarize:

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What a week it has been. I have been doing my very, very best to abide the rules I wrote myself with my 21 Days To Health, program. My most favourite challenge of course is on day 3 when we must get ourselves to bed early. There are three things I love to bits that help me sleep like a baby.

Sleep mask to block out the light.
Lavender essential oil sprinkled on my pillow
3 capsules of Peaceful Spirit- my most fave bed time supplement in the whole wide world (more on that next week)
I have been loving these things even more as I spent just three nights last weekend on the other side of the country, 3 time zones away in Vancouver and then came back right in the swing of things. And you know what? No jet lag! Not even for one night. It was amazing.
I digress, as today I sit in the audience at TedX Toronto, invited to participate as a delegate, I wanted my brain powered up and ready to rock. And you know what does it? A green juice breakfast and a smoothie brunch.

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My name is Jen and I do not condone the use or consumption of packaged foods.

This is not because I have the “nutritionist” moniker associated with my name. It is just my food philosophy. I believe in eating whole unprocessed foods because I really want to be healthy and quite honestly, packaged foods are gross. The were made in some far off factory from strange ingredients and taste more like the cardboard box they come in than real food (I know this because I was once a university student and managed to somehow get by on lean cuisines and frozen burritos for dinner. I’ve since moved on).

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After the Vegetarian Food Festival last weekend, I was all soyed out. Seriously! Soy was served up in every little shape and size they could dream up. From icing on cupcakes, to dried out beans covered in sugar and cinnamon, they could almost change the name of the event to the Soy Food Festival.

What did I eat the weekend of the event? I kicked it BYOS- Bring Your Own Salad/Smoothie. Now it’s not that I hate soy… Okay, I do. I do hate it and all the ways it functions like plasticine- getting moulded and blended and cooked and baked into all kinds of things. Soy on it’s own, in it’s whole organic form is a-okay though. I will actually eat it, love it and feel okay after.

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