Popcorn

I’ve just crowned popcorn as the undisputed champ of the snack world. I’ve made it a few times in the last week or two and it’s been a highlight of my food consumption recently. It’s fun to make, tastes great and is good for you!

If you’ve never made it on the stove-top before you must try it! In a 3 liter pot, add two tablespoons of oil, enough popcorn kernels to cover the bottom of the pot and heat on medium with the lid on. Wait for the first kernel to pop and then turn down heat to low-medium. Move the pot back and forth with the lid slightly ajar to let steam escape – but not too much or the kernels will escape. When the popping slows, turn heat off and continue to move the pot back and forth. When popping slows considerably, remove from heat – pour into a bowl and add toppings.

The above 3l pot has about 280 calories. Most of the calories (240) are from the olive oil and the rest from the popcorn. If you’re worried about fat – don’t. I use olive oil which is pretty good for you and you also need fat to absorb some of the vitamins in corn. Plus it’s much tastier than hot air popcorn; less greasy, chemicals and wasted packaging than microwave popcorn. It requires less than 5 minutes to make this. Not much more time than microwave popcorn. The ingredients cost only about 25 cents.

Making popcorn on the stove is like cooking – but more immediate gratification; add any topping you like – ever tried curry powder? It’s also relatively healthy! That’s why popcorn is the champ!

If you have a pot with a glass lid – you’re in for a treat! I made it recently in one and it was pretty cool. I’ll have to make it again and film it!

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!

Boycott

After getting psyched to try a vegan faux chicken sandwich after the Peta announcement in June, the nutrition information that I requested from KFC arrived today. It turns out that even after omitting the mayonnaise, the faux chicken sandwich is not vegan nor is it even vegetarian because it is cooked in the same oil that is used to cook the chicken. Even without chicken flesh, the sandwich is still a dirty bird sandwich. I’ll skip this meal.

Here are the nutrition facts and ingredients information that I obtained from the KFC holding company, Priszm.

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?

Cacao

The scientific name for cacao, Theobroma means “food of the gods”. Most know cacao in its processed form as chocolate. According to some marketing,

[Cacao is] a treasure of vitamins, minerals, beta-carotene, zinc, chromium and magnesium, raw chocolate is a delight for the senses and food for the mind. New research has shown cacao contains more antioxidant flavonoids than blueberries, red wine and green tea.

Raw chocolate is the new red wine.

The real benefit will come from raw cacao beans and not Coffee Crisp chocolate bars. I should know as I ate chocolate every day (it was part of my job!) for four months when I worked in a Nestle chocolate factory for a summer in my uni days.

I’ve been having raw chocolate smoothies for breakfast for the past year or so. The recipe, my own, was improvised from the contents of my fridge and cupboards.

Click on the link below to see the recipe.

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