Making Love in the Kitchen

Friends and lovers. It’s that sweet, sweet time again.
That time where my dad comes over to the kitchen, we paint cat whiskers on our face as we dress up as Halloween Cats.

In the past, you have seen us as Cat Burglars, Cool Cats, and Jungle Cats. This year we went for a Mexican Cat theme makes almost no sense at all but since my dad and I have this ability to take an idea and run with it- we ran and no one caught up with us to tell us it made no sense. In fact, even my dad and I didn’t notice that it made no sense until we actually started filming- wondering what cats had to do with Mexico and what Mexico or cats had to do with brownies or pumpkin. Love us simply for our stream of consciousness and creativity.

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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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It was a 5 Star event in the mud, a gathering of Ontario’s best chefs, food and volunteers in the name of saving 2300 acres of prime farmland. It is estimated that over 20,000 people gathered in Melancthon Township at the aptly named Foodstock event to protest the proposed limestone mega quarry.

In a nutshell, an American-financed company, Highland Companies, has big plans for our prime potato farmland 85 km north of Toronto. Below the beautiful soil there is approximately 1 billion tonnes of limestone and Highland wants it all.

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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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Perhaps we’re too extreme? This article was rejected from The Huffington Post.

Is There Something Wrong With Government Regulated Food Guides?

Do you look down at your dinner and see 680 calories? Perhaps a healthy ratio of carbs to proteins to fats? Maybe you see some fibre, vitamin C, beta carotene and just the right amount of Omega 3’s.

This is weird right? Looking at a plate of food without actually seeing the food.

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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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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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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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It all started with my friend, Ashley. You could, in fact, call her my gluten-free muse! You see, Ashley follows a gluten-free and vegan lifestyle (which, as Meghan Telpner is fond of saying, has cured an incurable disease – Crohn’s). And when you are vegan and gluten-free, you can have some challenges around finding versions of your former favourite foods. One of these for Ashley, was bread. She could find breads she could eat at our amazing local health food stores, but they were often expensive. Or full of things like ‘potato starch’. And when you started out eating lovely unrefined whole grains, why would you want to switch over to white bread substitutes?

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