What I Ate

What I Ate from Whistler Whatever on Vimeo.

I’ve been taking photos for many years, but usually of people, buildings or places I’ve traveled. However, I started taking photos of food a while back. I got inspired to take photos of what I eat. I managed to photography everything I ate for a full calendar year – 2009.

Initially, I wasn’t sure what to do with the photos – over 2000 of them. However, time lapse and some music make it bearable and give it some justification for my effort.

Bon appetit.

Kryptonite

I don’t have green smoothies that often as I prefer to eat my greens. After making my first one last year, they’ve grown on me and now I have them on a regular basis.

They aren’t always as bright as the one pictured above, sometimes they come out a murky green colour. The bright green one reminds me of kyrptonite – but it has the opposite effect! The colour is affected by the type of vegetable and other ingredients I use. Regardless of the colour they usually are pretty tasty (to me).

Here’s how I made the one listed above.

Ingredients

• 1 apple, cut into chunks (or other fruit)
• handful of frozen cranberries
• 1/2 bunch of green kale
• 2 tablespoons ground flax
• lemon juice
• cayenne pepper (another one of those secret ingredients)
• water

Instructions

1. Put everything but the flax in a blender and blend on the highest speed.
2. When well blended, add the flax.
3. Add more water to the desired consistency.

If you want your smoothie to be a bright green colour, substitute the flax with 1/6 of an avocado. I also sometimes add dulse too – this will change the colour to a muddy brown-green colour. Red kale does the same thing. If you want a bright green smoothie, don’t use these ingredients.

Edit [August 15, 2010]: Here is the nutritional information…

Prime

Old is new again. I’ve been thinking about getting a prime lens for my camera lately because the images from my zoom lens are not as sharp. I borrowed one from a friend for a week. Based on some images I’ve taken over the last few days, I’ve already made up my mind.

 

Here’s a sample on Flickr. Click on the larger image to advance to the next one.

Drive

I’m back on raw food this week after a week at Whistler where I was definitely not raw. I did have a raw breakfast but lunch and parts of dinner were not. It is possible, but it takes a bit more effort and costs much more. I generally purchase food in Vancouver to take to Whistler. Here’s my basket of fruit for the week from Eternal Abundance on Commercial Drive.

At Eternal Abundance, where I like to shop for my food on the Drive, they also have a raw cafe which I tried for the first time last week. I had a salad and a raw burrito – which were both fantastic!

My Flickr set of images from the Drive from the Saturday before I went up to Whistler last week. Click on the large image to advance to the next one.

Sprouts

New age, hippie and alfalfa come to mind to most when sprouts are mentioned. Sprouts are simply baby plants – the basis of what most of us eat. Sprouts are more nutritious than fully-grown plants and are one of the most, if not the most enzyme rich food around – enzymes are the good stuff to help you digest your food so you can absorb the nutrients correctly.

Toronto Sprouts at 720 Bathurst Street in Toronto, grows some of the best sprouts around. They also have a great space that is under-utilised; we’ve been having monthly raw food potlucks there since November 2007. They also have a cafe that serves mostly raw food that is relatively unknown. Today, I had the opportunity to drop by Toronto Sprouts and have lunch.

Images of my lunch and Toronto Sprouts. Click on the larger image to advance to the next one.

Food

Most of what I ate in my first week in April…

Caesar

I seem to have more energy lately; I’m not certain if it is the weather or my diet. Fittingly, today was a salad day for me, a literal idiom – if that make any sense, because I had two salads. The first, at lunch in a restaurant, left me wanting soon after I finished it; however, luckily the second satisfied my appetite.

Technically, I cheated on my 30-day raw challenge today. I went for lunch with Paul at Fran’s restaurant. The salad dressing probably was not raw and probably contained some chemicals and/or preservatives. I could have asked for lemon, however, iceberg lettuce isn’t the most appetizing vegetable. I don’t even consider lettuce a vegetable since it contains about 98% water and little else – but sometime it is refreshing to eat – like a cool glass of water!

The iceberg lettuce salad at Fran’s:

The real salad, sprouts on top of kale and other satisfying vegetables!

For breakfast, I had a repeat of the strawberry smoothie from yesterday; as well as the usually quantities of bananas and other fruit throughout the day – which I couldn’t be bothered to photograph.

Chauncey

It felt like spring this afternoon when I was walking home. This reminded me of the character from the film, Being There, Chance the Gardiner and his talk of the seasons,

First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again. …There will be growth in the spring!

Everyone seemed to be in a much better mood than usual. My walk home into the blinding sunlight looked like this:

On another note, I totally forgot to take photos of anything I ate today for the 30-Day Raw Challenge. Instead, I was obsessed with photographing the glassware and the soaking seeds. My breakfast was subsequently poured into and drunk from the Arcoroc glass seen below.

2

Sometimes it’s good to record what one eats. I generally try to eat one third each of carbs, fat and protein – today was a high fat day for me. I ate lots of nuts and seeds in addition to a whole avocado – which was hidden in the smoothie and salad. It was all very tasty though!

1

Today is the day I started the 30-day raw challenge. The goal is to go 30 days eating only raw food – plus I’m taking photos of everything I eat. Those who know me probably do not consider this a challenge as I already do both things most of the time anyway.

Here’s what I ate today; the photos do not necessarily represent the actual quantities. The breakfast cacao smoothie is about a pint and a bit in size and about 600 calories! I had basic foods today because my kitchen was undergoing renovations and I was tired because I only slept about 4 hours – I don’t eat much when I’m tired. Lately, I’ve been skipping lunch; I ate a few apples and a strawberry (from someone’s birthday cake) while at the office. Tonight, I had several (maybe 4) bananas and a green smoothie.