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.

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.

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.

Super

‘Veggie Love’: PETA’s Banned Super Bowl Ad

According to the mission statement on the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) website,

PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.

What this means is that they produce materials and campaigns that get people, companies and organizations to take note, talk and write about what they are doing.

A recent example is the ‘banned’ Super Bowl commercial, (video above). I don’t think they meant or wanted to have that aired during the Super Bowl. If it did happen, it would have cost PeTA $3 million; or roughly 10% of their operating budget. Not the best use of money as the viewers are likely not their target audience. However, by getting the spot banned, it caused countless news organizations, bloggers and other media types to write about it as well as creating a general hubbub around the spot.

PETA is one of the world’s best marketing organizations and knew exactly what it was doing when they submitted the spot to NBC. They’ve done this before and none of spots have been aired. However, because of the interest, they’ve been viewed millions of times – far more effective than spending $3 million.

The target audience of PETA is actually quite small because when people realize the connection between the treatment of animals and their dinner plate; many cannot deal with that and become quite defensive or are in denial about their food choices. Many never get beyond this point.

Regardless, the PETA campaigns are meant to shock – so they are quite effective. They are probably more effective than mainstream advertising because the effects of their campaigns last in the (emotional) minds of people for years. PETA does piss a lot of people off, including vegetarians, but I don’t know of any vegetarian that would start treating animals poorly or revert to eating animals again because of it. PETA takes the bad with the good.

The good is that they have made someone notice – that’s their first goal. Their second goal is to get people beyond that point. Most will never get beyond the campaign; however, a small percentage will and read further. The third goal is to get people to provide support (money) to carry out their campaigns.

Mainstream marketers can only wish they could have this kind of impact.

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!

Baguette

I recently went to a Vietnamese restaurant, Au Petit Cafe, with some Couchsurfers. Before I arrived, I knew there was nothing vegetarian on the menu, but I knew it was easy enough to make something vegetarian by omitting the animal products.

What I received was a vegetable banh mi, a Vietnamese baguette sandwich (see above photo above). The vegetables were pedestrian enough, however, the bread was fantastic. It was the best French baguette that I’ve had outside of France. What makes the bread so good is that it is baked on premises at Au Petit – the way it should be done – just like all the neighbourhood bakeries in France.

The sandwich brought me back to the time I spent in Nice, France eating the pan bagnat – a sandwich loosely based on the salade Niçoise. For years afterward, I used to make these sandwiches myself but the bread was always lacking. Unfortunately, the pan bagnat is not vegetarian; however, I may try to create my own vegetarian version with some of these amazing baguettes.