Souper Sunday

Lately I’ve found myself too busy and tired in the evening to prepare a healthy lunch and too rushed in the morning as I race out the door to catch my 6:45 am train. My waistline and bank account are taking a beating because of all of the take-out lunches so I dedicated this afternoon to making some healthy soups. I prefer an all-in-one lunch dish like soup because of my 1.5 hour journey to work so soup in a mason jar is my saviour.

I was supposed to run the Toronto Goodlife Half Marathon today but a back injury completely derailed my running and all other forms of exercise about 7 weeks ago so I held a soup marathon in my kitchen instead. The first soup I made is a pureed squash and red lentil soup that I found online in the Edmonton Journal. I decided to get creative with the second and combine elements from some of my favourite soups – chicken, tomato and spaghetti squash – into a thick, hearty soup that eats like a stew.

 

Squash and lentil soup (back) and tomato chicken sans-noodle soup (front) ready to go.

 

Tomato Chicken Sans-Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon of organic butter
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 cups of low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1 can of diced tomatoes (no salt added)
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• approximately 2 cups of cooked spaghetti squash
• 1 bay leaf
• a few dashes each of dried oregano, dried basil and dried thyme
• black pepper to taste
• sea salt
• 1 tablespoon of organic turbinado sugar
• approximately 2 cups of white roasted chicken meat

Directions:

Sauté the butter,onion, garlic and a couple dashes of salt in a large saucepan until softened. Add diced tomatoes, tomato paste, vegetable broth, spaghetti squash and sucanat and stir well. Season with oregano, basil, thyme and black pepper to taste and add the bay leaf. Simmer for approximately 20 minutes to let flavours combine. Add chicken and simmer for another 5 – 10 mins.

 

Time for lunch!

 

 

Fall harvest whole wheat and honey pumpkin muffins

I was at the farmers’ market this morning and couldn’t resist all the beautiful fresh varieties of squash. I realized I’d never made anything with fresh pumpkin before so I came home on a mission to find the perfect pumpkin muffin recipe. Take advantage of the fall harvest by making your own pumpkin puree for these muffins!

Fresh from the farm!

Whole Wheat and Honey Pumpkin Muffins

Adapted from Pumpkin Wheat Honey Muffins on allrecipes.com.
Makes 12 muffins.

Yes, that's Winnie The Pooh on the muffin wrapper - the store was out of normal ones!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of fresh pumpkin puree (I used this method to make mine)
• 1/2 cup of raisins (soaked for a few minutes to plump them up)
• 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 cup of sucanat sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 cup of honey
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil

Fresh from the oven

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 C. Mix flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and sucanat sugar together in a bowl. Combine wet ingredients (pumpkin, honey, oil, eggs) in a well in the middle of the bowl and mix all of the ingredients into a batter. Add raisins. Pour batter into 12 muffin cups. Bake for 22 minutes or until muffin tops become golden brown and springy.

Topped with organic butter

Sorry for the poor quality photos but my DSLR is on the fritz!

Maple Peach Crisp

Adapted from an apple crisp recipe in Clean Food by Terry Walters.

Fruit mixture:

• 6-8 fresh peaches
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• ¼ cup of maple syrup
• 1 tbsp whole wheat flour

Topping:

• 1 cup rolled oats*
• ½ cup spelt flakes*
• ½ cup kamut flakes*
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• ¼ cup sucanat sugar
• ¼ cup slices almonds
• ¼ cup pure maple syrup
• ¼ cup of organic butter, softened

*Combine 2 cups of your favourite whole grain oats or stuck with traditional rolled oats.

Preheat oven to 350 C.

Peel and slice peaches. In a large bowl, toss with maple syrup until the fruit is coated. Sprinkle in cinnamon, flour and toss. Grease a baking dish 9×12 inch baking dish with butter. Spread the fruit evenly on the bottom.

Mix oats, flour, cinnamon, sucanat and almonds. Add softened butter and maple syrup and mix until the butter and syrup is evenly distributed and the topping becomes crumbly. Distribute the crumble evenly over the fruit mixture.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20 mins or until the crisp is golden brown.

Enjoy!

A new normal

I can’t believe I haven’t even logged into WordPress in two months!

I’ve missed sharing my recipes and experiences but I’ve been incredibly busy this summer. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve barely been cooking at all! To be perfectly honest, I’ve been adjusting to a new lifestyle and it’s been a bit of a challenge to find my new sense of balance.

It’s not all bad, though. Actually, it’s quite the opposite! I’ve got an exciting new career, new goals and a new routine as a result. Blogging hasn’t exactly fit in for the past couple months but life is starting to calm down and I’m getting in the groove of my new lifestyle so I hope to start posting regularly again.

Stay tuned and thanks for coming by!

Don’t fear the detox!

When many of us hear the word “detox” our minds our inundated with images of expensive pills, magic teas, fasting, frequent trips to the bathroom and embarrassing side effects. Did you know that you can detoxify your body without splurging on commercial products and worrying about your proximity to the loo? In fact, if you’re a pretty clean eater you are well on your way!

On the advice of my nutritionist, Joy McCarthy, I did my first two-week detox in January and I was amazed at how simple it was! By making some minor changes in my diet and cutting out the “treats” for a couple weeks I was able to reduce my sugar cravings, feel light and energized, forget belly bloating and even drop about 7 lbs. I felt fantastic!

The main changes I made in my diet:

• No cow’s dairy – butter for cooking and goat cheese are okay
• No wheat – replace with 100% rye bread, sprouted grain breads, pasta made from ancient grains (like my fav kamut and quinoa from Eden Organic)
• Cut the sugar – sweeten with unprocessed sugars like maple syrup and unpasteurized honey if you need it. NO artificial sweeteners!!
• Ditch the booze – two weeks without beer, wine or spirits isn’t too hard
• Adding more liver-loving and detoxifying foods like leafy greens and beets

There were a few other tweaks and I can’t believe the different some small adjustments made! I had been making most of these changes and substitutions already so it was just a matter of being more diligent and cutting my unhealthy or processed snacks that I was still enjoying.

This time around I’m following the plan for 12 days because I’m attending a wedding on June 26. I know I won’t be able to control my food choices that day and I’ll want to enjoy a celebratory glass or two of wine with my friends so I don’t want to set unrealistic expectations. Over the next couple weeks I will share some of my favourite recipes and snacks that keep me going when I start missing about my guilty pleasures – chips (potato or brown rice, baked or fried, loaded with salt) and chocolate!

To learn more about the importance of detoxification and for detox recipes, see the links below from Joy:

• Why detox? Top 5 foods to eliminate
• Reasons to kick your sugar habit
• Four spring detox tips
• Recipe: Roasted beets with garlic and onions
• Recipe: Liver detox juice with beets
• Recipe: Colourful and joyful spring salad

Twelve Weeks!

Today is a big day! I’m beginning a 12-week training plan to prepare for a sprint triathlon. I’ve got two races on my calendar for September.

Earlier this week Angela told me she was considering a women’s-only sprint triathlon in September at the same venue we raced at last weekend. I was thrilled to hear she wanted to go back for more so I immediately – well, almost immediately, after I checked to make sure the dreaded Sixth Line hill isn’t on the route – told her to count me in!

Last September I completed my first sprint triathlon but the hardest part for me was sticking to a training plan. I had just moved into my new house and had weddings or wedding-related events nearly every weekend that summer. I skipped a lot of workouts and didn’t always eat the best fuel for my body. My fitness still improved but I wasn’t really prepared for my race.

The dreaded open water swim

I started the race in a really bad foot – or stroke, as the case may be. When I did my try-a-tri in June 2009 I completely surprised myself by being one of the stronger swimmers in the water and coming out towards the front of the pack. I went to the sprint race with less pool training (and no open water training) thinking I could do the same thing.

The Rocky theme is playing in my head as I strut to the swim start for my try-a-tri in June 2009.

I was wrong. When the gun went off, a wave of panic came over me like I’ve never experienced. I was overwhelmed by how far the swim was (2x farther than the try-a-tri) and couldn’t get my breathing under control. You can’t swim very effectively unless you breathe evenly and put your face in the water. I eventually completed the swim unassisted but I was very slow. My transition from swim to bike took forever because I was feeling defeated and exhausted.

The rest of the race went okay and I felt great when I made it to the finish line. I came back after a rough start to finish in better form than I started but I knew I was capable of more.

My mom and I after the my sprint tri in September 2009.

Fast forward to June 14, 2010: Day 1 of my 12-week sprint triathlon training plan. I’m determined to show up on race day feeling strong and confident. I’m thankful that Angela is training for the race too because it will help keep me motivated and give me someone to commiserate with. I’m still plugging in the workout details but this is what the next few months look like:

I have based my plan off a training plan in Triathlon Training Basics by Gale Bernhardt and my 10K Running Room Clinic. I should be running 4+ days a week for the running clinic but I don’t think I’ll be able to squeeze them in with the other training. I’m trying to find balance covering all the disciplines and preparing for my first 10K race without burning out along the way.

To kick off my training, I’m following a two-week detox plan to cut out some of the bad eating habits that have been creeping back in lately and to get my body in top form. I’ll share more about that soon!

Nuttin’ Buttah French Toast

I woke up at the last minute for my 8K practice run with my running club this morning so I didn’t have much time to eat. Needless to say, when I got home I was starving! I decided it was a perfect morning for French toast and decided to jack it up. It might not be a perfectly balanced meal but it certainly hit the spot this morning! It was incredibly filling.

Nuttin' Buddah French Toast

My favourite bread: Woodstock from Kneadings Bread and Cafe in Newmarket, Ontario.

Ingredients:

• 4 slices of whole grain bread
• 2 eggs
• a splash of unsweetened plain almond milk
• almond butter
• 1 banana, sliced
• cinnamon
• a few drops of vanilla extract
• unpasteurized honey
• 1 tablespoon of butter

Spread almond butter on each slice of bread and top two of the slices with banana. Put them together so you’ve got two almond butter and banana sandwiches.

Almond butter + banana sandwiches

In a separate dish, combine eggs, almond butter and vanilla extract.  Add cinnamon to taste.

French toast egg mixture

Melt the butter in a frying pan. Dip each sandwich in the egg mixture making sure to coat all sides and edges. Fry the sandwiches, flipping once, so each side is golden brown. I made too much egg mixture (by using 3 eggs) so I cooked it up with the sandwiches.

Fry sandwiches until golden brown

Drizzle honey on top of the sandwiches and enjoy!

Bon appetit!

Simply sweet nut butter treats

I strive for balance in my life. I don’t follow trendy diets but I try to eat clean most of the time and indulge sometimes, too. For me, strict rules, deprivation and expecting perfect food choices leads to stress and self-sabotage. Today I want to share a couple treats that I enjoy without any guilt at all because they’re actually pretty good for you!

If you read Oh She Glows or Choosing Raw you probably already know about Banana Soft Serve. I’m an ice cream addict in the summer despite the fact that I don’t do well with dairy. It’s so hard to resist the ice cold treat and the flavour combinations are endless, especially when you live five minutes away from a Marble Slab Creamery. It was hot hot hot in Ontario last week so I decided it was time to freeze some bananas and give this recipe a whirl. Here’s my spin on banana soft serve. If you like peanut butter cup ice cream or peanut butter and banana sandwiches, you’ll love this!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Soft Serve

Adapted from Gena’s Banana Soft Serve recipe on Choosing Raw

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Soft Serve

Ingredients:

• about 2 bananas worth of chopped up frozen banana pieces
• a dollop of peanut butter
• about a tablespoon of cocoa powder (I use Cocoa Camino)

Put the everything in a food processor and mix until the bananas get smooth and creamy. You’ll probably have to stop from time to time and scrape the sides. It’s like magic the way the bananas turn into soft serve!

Magic!

It’s such a sweet treat that you don’t need very much to satisfy you!

My other sweet obsession is Sweet Almond Butter Rice Crisps created by Joy from Joyous Health and That’sfit.ca. Do you remember making Rice Krispie squares as a kid, before they came pre-packaged? These are even easier! One tip I learned: make sure you pack the rice crisps down well so they stay together.

Joy's Sweet Almond Butter Rice Crisps. (Photo courtesy of joyoushealth.ca)

Enjoy these treats! I’d love to hear your new flavour combinations for banana soft serve or rice crisps.

Post-race update: I’m pretty tired and ravenous today but I’m feeling decent. My back started bothering me before the race and over an hour on the bike made it worse so I’ll be looking for a chiropractor and booking a massage this week. I was supposed to do an 8K LSD run today to make up for missing it yesterday but my body decided it needed a 3-hour nap instead. Week 9 of Booty Camp started tonight so I went but took it easy to protect my back and recover a bit.

Conquering my fears

Milton Triathlon Relay Race Recap

Team Roadkill: Heather, Steph and Tom

You may have read that I did two triathlons last year (one try-a-tri and one sprint tri). This year I decided to kick of the summer race season with something new: a triathlon relay! I recruited two very talented friends to join my team and we entered the Milton triathlon with the Trisport Subaru Triathlon Series.

I’ve neglected cycling because I’ve been really focused on Booty Camp and my 10K training clinic with the Running Room. Also, as much as I love riding my road bike, it still terrifies me. I am scared of traffic, I’m scared of hills (going up and down) and I’m scared of riding alone (especially if no one is home for me to call if there’s a problem). I don’t really know anyone in my town to call for help let alone anyone to ride with so it’s pretty easy to skip workouts.

This morning that all came to a head while we drove through the pouring rain to the race site. Over the past couple weeks I’ve heard that this race course is very challenging, especially the cycling, because it’s situated in the Niagara Escarpment. The fear grew and I knew I was the weakest link on my team. I’m not naturally athletic and I’ve never really competed in anything until I started the running and triathlons last year. I don’t excel at any of the disciplines and my goal is always just to finish.

Exploding with nervous energy while waiting for the race to begin.

I’m proud to say that I faced my fears today! I climbed hills slowly but surely, cars passed me on the road and I did my most challenging ride to date all by myself. The infamous “Sixth Line Hill” was about 3 km into the race and definitely set me back mentally. It was a grueling 1.4 km climb. I made it halfway up but there was a big clump of riders  teetering, tottering and wobbling over the road (myself included) as they slowly chugged along. I didn’t feel safe so I hopped off and walked the last stretch. I felt okay about my decision because  a lot of others were walking too. I gathered my thoughts, took some deep breaths at the top and hopped back on where I stayed for the next 25 km!

I got to ride back down that same hill on the second half of the race and I reached my all-time top speed of 50 km/hr with my brakes on. It was a terrifying to go so fast but exhilarating at the same time!

Just heard Heather is out of the water and on her way to hand over the timing chip. More nervous energy turned into silliness!

What I learned:

• Even if I’m not fully prepared, I can still accomplish amazing things and feel extremely proud.
• I’m stronger than I think and I need to work on my mental strength so I can capitalize on that. I think it will come with more training and comfort on the bike.
• I may have been the weakest link on our team by coming 10th out of 10 cyclists in the relay but what matters is I showed up and I got the job done. Most people I know were still in bed, not ahead of me on the course. I had some stiff competition; most of these guys (mainly men) were serious cyclists who flew through the course at speeds I’m still afraid to dream of.
  

  Clipping in to get my 30 km ride started.

What got me through:

• Focusing on my cadence while I was climbing. Thanks to my friend Dean for this tip!
  • I kept repeating “cadence cadence cadence” in my head when I was losing it on the hills.
• “Ride hard. Ride Fast. Ride Strong.” and “I’ve seen you ride. You’ve got strength in spades.” from amazing indoor cycling instructor Chris. I tried to harness my spinning strength for the outdoors!
• Instead of looking to the top of the hill during the climbs I looked at the road just ahead of me so I couldn’t see the incline. One pedal stroke at a time.

Cruising to the finish 30 km later. I DID IT!

How we did:

• 7th out of 10 teams!
  • 3rd in swimming
  • 10th in cycling
  • 1st in running

Finished! Poor Tom had just crossed the finish line following his epic run.

I also had the pleasure of meeting and cheering on Angela (Oh She Glows) and her husband Eric because they were in the try-a-tri before our race. I’m SO proud of them for completing their first tri and having big smiles on their faces when they finished. They deserve major props because it was cold, raining and the water was choppy. Not an ideal day for your first race! Check out Angela’s race recap here. She’s every bit as sweet and adorable in person as she is on her blog.

Thanks to everyone for your encouragement!

PS – Sorry for the lack of posts! I’m in the middle of a major transition but I’ve got lots of recipes to share in the coming days and weeks.

Saturday in the City

The Institute of Holistic Nutrition in Toronto hosted an open house with free lectures for the public and prospective students. My good friend and fellow nutrition junkie Shelby decided to join me and we particularly enjoyed the first lecture of the day about adrenal fatigue. Josh Gitalis, who teaches symptomatology at IHN, spoke at length about the condition and strategies for healing. Josh had a fabulous way of explaining things using analogies that everyone can relate to (like relating symptoms like a headache to the “check engine” light on your car’s dashboard) that make you seriously reconsider the way we ignore “small” indications about our health until they become bigger issues.

Between the sessions I chatted briefly with Meghan Telpner of Making Love in the Kitchen and she is just as vibrant and sweet in person as she is on her blog. By the way, Meghan is running a series of total health webinars right now. I attended the first one on whole foods last week and it was fabulous. This Tuesday she’ll be speaking about immune health and food sensitivities. Check her site for more information and registration.

The second lecture was given by Murat Vardar on the topic of optimizing memory and retention. I could tell from this one session that Murat is extremely knowledgeable about the human body and I’ve love to take more of his classes. He spoke about the importance of all macronutrients for the brain (not to mention the rest of the body); forget low-carb and low-fat diets, people!

After we filled our brains and notebooks with wisdom from Josh and Murat, Shelby and I headed downtown to fill our stomachs at Fresh on Spadina.

Shelby with her shot of E3Live

Fresh now offers shots of E3Live on their menu so they were giving away free samples while we were there. According to their websive, E3Live is an algae with 64 vitamins, minerals and enzymes and loads of chlorophyll to support the body’s immune, endocrine, nervous, gastro-intestinal and cardio-vascular systems. I’ve seen other bloggers and nutritionists mention the product so I jumped at the chance to sample it. The shot tasted pretty much as you would expect algae to taste; it wasn’t delicious but I could stomach a shot of it. I’d prefer to mix in in a smoothie or fresh juice to try to mask the flavour.

This was Shelby’s first visit to Fresh and after examining the menu for about 15 minutes she decided on the same order as me – the grilled veggie and pesto burrito with goat cheese and some slaw and sweet potato fries on the side.

I’ve never managed to finish this entire meal but it’s absolutely delicious! We left Fresh stuffed and thirsty for some tea.

Our next stop was David’s Tea to digest our meals and stock up our cupboards with loose leaf tea. It’s always tough to decide whether or not I replace my supply of one of my favourite teas or try something new but yesterday I decided the try some new tea. I picked The Skinny which is  a blend of oolong and pu’ehr which claims to speed up metabolism and block fat absorption after a heavy meal. For my new green tea I chose Spring Break. With green tea leaves and coconut, this is exactly what I’d want my vacation to taste like if I could brew it into a tea. I also bought a cup of Citron Oolong to enjoy on the patio while we took in the sights and sounds of Queen West.

Do you have a favourite tea?

Have you tried E3Live?