Ramen

What I ate in August…

• 56 smoothies
• 15 servings of pasta
• 14 salads
• 7 bags of chips
• 6 bowls of popcorn
• 5 veggie burgers
• 2 orders of fries
• 2 pieces of banana bread
• 2 muffins
• 1 loaf of bread
• 1 bowl of instant ramen (pictured above)
• countless fruits including pears, strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, oranges, grapefruit, blackberries, peaches, plums, nectarines and cherries
• pounds of trail mix and corn nuts

I can’t recall what was my favorite thing – but I would have to assume it was the chocolate smoothie since I consumed almost two per day! Smoothies were probably a good thing because of the weather – it was hotter than normal in August.

I do know what the worst thing I ate – it was the instant noodles pictured above. I bought it because it was on sale for an unbelievable $0.88. I was also intrigued by the ingredients – even the beef, chicken and seafood flavours did not contain any animal products. However, they contained lots of ingredients that I could not identify or pronounce. After eating it, I felt a bit nauseous – it wasn’t tasteless, but I found most of the taste came from salt – a bit empty in terms of real taste and probably nutrition too. I won’t be eating this again too soon in the future. It was a one-meal stand.

Here’s the set of food that I ate in August. Click on the larger image to advance to the next image. If you’re on a mobile device, click here to go to my flickr set.

Drink

My main meals today were smoothies, a chocolate one for breakfast, blueberry for lunch and a green (kale) smoothie for dinner. In addition, I had some bananas, oranges, a nectarine and some trail mix. This is probably the best I’ve eaten in quite a while. Nutritious, but not as many calories as I probably need considering I went on six-hour hike today. I may supplement my diet with some potato chips (only half kidding).

Improved

Several people have asked me for the recipe of my chocolate smoothie and the nutrition of it. I was unsure of the nutrition because I’ve made several changes to it recently. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than the previous version. The new smoothie include less avocado, more hemp, less Vega and I also added some mango. According to Nutridiary, it’s about the same as before (685 calories now vs 660 before, 36g vs 39g fat and 79g vs 63g carbs). I updated it and the recipe and nutrition is below. It still tastes just as good, if not better and it might cause you to have your best day ever!

Ingredients

• 1 ripe pear
• handful of frozen strawberries
• handful of frozen mango
• handful of soaked almonds
• 1/2 frozen banana
• 1/6 avocado
• 3 raw cacao beans (grind in coffee grinder before)
• tsp raw cacao powder (optional)
• protein powder (I use hemp and chocolate Vega)
• water

Instructions

1. Blend fruit, almonds and avocado with water until a smooth consistency. Add water as needed or to desired consistency.
2. Gradually add cacao powder, ground cacao beans and protein powder. For a more chocolately flavour, add some raw cacao powder.

After adding water, it’s about 1.5 litres of smoothie! I usually have it all for breakfast, but most people can only drink half because it’s pretty filling. But it’s all good.

The previous smoothie recipe can be found here.

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…

Salad

I seem to be eating a lot more regular green salads with baby greens, spinach and similar greens; like the one above. Previously, I used to eat a lot of kale salads. However, living away from a large city presents some challenges with more uncommon vegetables and fruit. When I lived in a larger city, I would eat kale almost daily because it was readily available. When it is available, it is usually expensive, poor quality or both. Sadly, I haven’t eaten kale in over three weeks.

One of my favorite kale salads is a creamy kale salad, made with few ingredients, but the combination makes it taste amazing. Most people that I served it to, didn’t even realise they were eating raw kale. I think many had never eaten kale before I served it to them.

Pictured below, a creamy kale salad.

Recipe

Creamy Kale Salad

Ingredients

• One bunch lacinato kale (dinosaur kale)
• One ripe avocado
• One tomato; cut into small chunks or cubes
• Handful of sliced green onions
• Lemon juice (from half a lemon)
• Cayenne pepper
• Sea salt

Directions

1. Shred kale, dice avocado and place in a large bowl
2. Add lemon juice, cayenne pepper and sea salt to kale and avocado.
3. Combine above mixture with bare hands by massaging all ingredients together.
4. Add the tomato and green onions to the mixture; combine it with a large spoon.

For variety, I sometimes add other things like wild leeks, peppers, hemp seeds and dulse.

This salad is rich and filling enough to be a meal on its own.

39

The January smoothie collection

The first month of the year is done and the winner is the smoothie. I managed to consume more than one per day. Close behind was salad and then oranges was a distant third.

All I seemed to be doing in January was skiing, eating and sleeping – three very important events. I noticed that started craving(?) and eating pasta again because I felt hungrier than normal – probably attributed to the amount of skiing that I did.

The breakdown of what I ate:

• 39 smoothies (24 chocolate, 12 fruit, 3 green )
• 32 servings* of salad (mostly kale salads)
• 16 oranges
• 12 grapefruit
• 10 servings of pasta
• 6 bags of chips (2 bags of tortilla chips)
• 5 bowls of popcorn
• 4 visits to Corner Tandoori for Inidian
• 2 bowls of noodle and soup
• 2 burritos from Red Burrito
• 2 subs
• 2 energy bars
• 1 visit to a Malaysian/Thai restaurant
• 1 pizza
• 1 piece of birthday cake (Anf’s)
• lots of trail mix

…and surprisingly, no french fries!

Included in all of this also included countless bananas, strawberries, avocados and almonds.

The thing I enjoyed most was the chocolate smoothies and the least enjoyable thing was the barbecue and dill flavoured chips. Close behind was the iceberg/romaine lettuce salad at Boston Pizza. But at least the salad might have had some nutrition in it.

* When I say servings, it is generally two or more because I tend to eat more than most people. Unless I am in a restaurant, I will generally eat more than one serving of whatever I’m eating. The 32 servings was probably consumed in 16 or less meals.

Here’s the flickr set of what I ate in January. To see all of the photos at once, click through to the set by clicking here. Otherwise you can click on the large image below to advance to the next image.

Religious

My first meal of 2009; a chocolate smoothie.

I’ve been eating food all of my life – and I’ve been eating a lot of it. Probably a combination of my high metabolism and the amount of physical activity that I do. When I was younger, I didn’t take any notice what kind of food I was eating – as long as it contained calories and was edible – sometimes these were not even factors. I often thought that eating this much and what I ate could not sustain me indefinitely.

When I was in university, I started paying more attention to my diet because of articles that I read and people that I spoke to. At this point, I drastically reduced and then stopped consuming refined sugar and caffeine. I even made an attempt at vegetarianism, but I think it lasted about a week because of the lack of information that I had.

Fast foward to the early part of the 21st century, I read the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Even before I completed the book, I stopped consuming meat because of what I read. I proceeded to read more books that collaborated with the findings in Schlosser’s book. I became vegetarian.

As time went on, I consumed (pun intended) as many books on the topic as I could get my hands on. I also attended a great deal of vegetarian events and potlucks. One of the potlucks provided me with the information to stop eating animal products altogether; this was early in 2005.

At some point in 2005, I met two people, Jeff Rogers and Brendan Brazier, that provided me with some interesting information about a raw food diet. When Jeff first told me about what he ate, I laughed. In the fall of 2005, I attend a raw food potluck. I had such a good experience at that potluck that I started the raw food diet as a test. A day turned into a weekend that turned into months that turned into years. It has been over three years and has worked out well for me. To date, I’ve eaten primarily raw food for over three years.

If I hadn’t tried these things, I wouldn’t probably have changed and my life would have continued down its narrow path. To many, it is not considered a diet, but a lifestyle where the diet is only a part of the whole package. Not only has my diet changed, my outlook on life has also changed in a positive way where I am living in a way that I think I should be living. A religious experience of sorts. Because of these positive changes, I’ve taken it upon myself to promote the diet and lifestyle. I’ve been doing this in Toronto since early 2006.

When I left Toronto in 2008, I wanted to continue the promotion of the lifestyle but wasn’t sure how. I didn’t have the time to do it the same way; nor did I want to do it all over again. That’s when I got the ideal to capture (in images) what I ate for a year (maybe longer) and blog about it. Doing it this way provides for easier access; reaches a greater audience and allows for feedback and interaction among viewers/readers.

With this, I present you with my new pages as listed above, What I Eat and the corresponding Recipes pages. The images are stored on my flickr photo page where you can see higher resolution images. The recipes pages will have links to blog posts where I will include the recipes.

It’s only been a week and a half and I haven’t eaten anything that has been too unhealthy – except for maybe some potato chips. I haven’t had any french fries yet, but that will come – wait for it!

Natto

I always like to try new things. Tonight it was some natto. I actually have had it in my freezer for several months, but I finally made the time to try it.

The first thing that I noticed when I unpacked it from its single portion container was the gooey stuff on the beans that resembled cheese. When I dug the fork into the natto – the gooey stuff was very stringy – like cheese. It actually was fun to eat. I didn’t eat it with anything. Apparently, it’s eaten with rice, soy sauce, mustard or even a raw quail egg.

Afterward, I discovered that it is high in nutrients and vitamins. It’s also supposed to have a strong smell. However, I didn’t notice the smell – because I like most fermented foods or perhaps I was eating it too fast. It was gooey but good!

Pie

For World Vegetarian Day, the Toronto Vegetarian Association held a baking contest – the Totally Fabulous Vegan Bake-off in Grange park in downtown Toronto.

Some of my friends suggested that I enter one of my chocolate cakes or pies in the contest. However, I’m not big on contests or being judged so I didn’t really think about it much at first. However, when I thought more about it, I thought that a pumpkin pie would be good for the time of year. And so I decided to enter a raw pumpkin pie into the contest. I still had my doubts about the contest though. I didn’t decide to go through with it until three days before the event.

I’m still not sure why I entered it – maybe I just wanted strangers to try my creations to see if they liked it – and find out if my friends were telling the truth or just being polite.

The contest was judged by some vegan cooks from Toronto. They were judging on taste, texture, creativity and presentation. When I showed up at the event, I was pretty sure I was going to fail miserably. All of the other desserts looked – fabulous. My pie looks very plain. There was but five pumpkin seeds on top of the pie. I was left with taste, texture and creativity.

Miraculously, my pie was the first runner-up in the pie category. Here’s a slice of a pumpkin pie – but not the pie I entered into the contest. I actually did not take a picture of my pie – but they all look the same.

Here is a selection of the desserts at the Totally Fabulous Vegan Bake-off from my flickr. Click on the large image to advance to the next one.

Lassi

Someone posted a request on the vegan couchsurfing forum for a vegan mango lassi recipe. I’ve never made one because I don’t like diary nor do I like mango lassi – well, the only one I had was in little India in the east end of Toronto about 10 years ago and I hated it.

On my way home tonight, I picked up a mango; the rest of the ingredients, almonds (already soaking), avocado and cardamon I already had at home. I threw it all into my blender and the result was very tasty. It was thicker than I remember and definitely more palatable than I remember too. A nice little experiment. I wonder if she has any more drink ideas?