Eat Healthy and Feel Good About It!

Speaking at the community centre

When I was invited to talk to kids and their families at the Dufferin-Perth Community Centre, I knew automatically that I would design my presentation in Keynote since I love using it and I love computers. I was a little bit nervous when I walked into the room and saw how many people were there, but as I set up my computer and projector, I realized that there was nothing to be worried about because all of these people really wanted to learn how to eat healthy, and how I eat healthy. Since I am more used to my friends and people being not interested, I was so happy when all of the kids and their parents listened on and asked questions, too. I hope you’ll flip through the slides that I posted, although, it’s much more fun in person! A real highlight of speaking to this group was having them ask me for my first autographs ever! I brought all of the kids a Yummy Earth Lollipop, and told them it was coloured with beet and carrot instead of fake chemicals, and they all loved them…of course! Hopefully, they are all still eating better now, and trying new things!

Although I wrote and designed this slideshow for my talk at the Dufferin-Perth Community Centre, I would like to share all of my tips about “Eating Healthy and Feeling Good About It” with you all. (link below!) It includes my favourite restaurants and stores in Toronto. I would also like to speak again if anyone has an opening.

Click to read through and see my slideshow. Click the arrow to make the slideshow play!

http://www.slideshare.net/rystorm/eat-healthy-and-feel-good-about-it

Live Restaurant

Unfortunately we cannot go to vegan restaurants with my sister, because almost all of them use nuts (except Loving Hut, which is nut free). We had tried to go to Live Food Bar a few times, but they never had a table for us when we got there – which I guess is good, because they are getting busy serving really good, real food.
We were the first ones in the restaurant on a weeknight, dining early before my talk at the Dufferin Peel Community centre, where I was so excited to speak to other kids and their parents about eating healthy and feeling good about it.
The only problem with the menu at Live, was that there were so many good things, that I couldn’t decide which to choose. The appetizers were a really big problem since I wanted them all. We finally settled on a jicama poutine, which was excellent – it’s a raw dish (which means nothing is cooked, sometimes it can be dehydrated), and it was chili seasoned jicama, miso gravy, macadamia cheddar cheese, and cashew sour cream. I’ve decided to have a battle of the jicama fries between Carol Belmonte (her cashew cheese is better than anything!) and the chef at Live. In the meantime, I suggest you try both! Next time, I am definitely going to try the chickpea fries and the layered Mexican dip as appetizers!
I also really enjoyed the Chia Lemonade, I had never had chia in my drink before. My mom had a blueberry kombucha that she really liked, if you want a bubbly drink that is fruity, I suggest ordering that.
We also had a kale Caesar salad, which was really large, in a good way. The flavour was really, really good, and I liked the smoky, bacon-like flavour of the eggplant “bacon”. The sprouted grain croutons were amazing and a really nice touch. The Dijon Caesar dressing was certainly not devoid of flavour and there was just the right amount on it.
My main course was the “Bacon Cheeseburger” (it’s cooked, not raw) and was very tasty. It’s a chickpea patty, macadamia cheddar cheese, eggplant bacon, sesame hemp mayo, BBQ sauce, tomatoes and arugula on a gluten free bun with pickles and veggie chips. I loved dipping the veggie chips into the hemp mayo – if I wasn’t so full, I would have asked for more!
The portions are so big (again, in a good way), that I had to take the leftover jicama fries home, but couldn’t take them to school for lunch because of a no nuts policy. And, I sadly forgot about them the next day and they went to waste. I will not make that mistake again!
The desserts looked amazing, but we were too full and in a rush, so we’ll have to go back again to try a selection of them.
Live is a great casual spot, and more like a café than a fancy restaurant, and they have lots of their stuff to takeout.

It’s Ramp Season!

I will be posting another restaurant review soon, but I got really excited about this, so wanted to share the local goodness with you!

It all started at dinner tonight with a slice of Monforte’s Waltzing Matilda cheese that I picked up at Brickworks on Saturday. I like combining foods, so I picked up a still-warm, sauteed ramp (thanks Meghan and Josh for sharing) and put it on top of the cheese and ate it – there was a party in my mouth!! My mom suggested that I wind the ramp around a thin slice of cheese and the party in my mouth grew a little bit in magnitude. THEN, I got inspired and decided to get really creative on my own and added a few drops of Vicki’s Veggies Smoked Hot Sauce and a drizzle of our homemade ramp, tomato and hemp dressing and placed it on top of a large bed of pink kale microgreens from Kind Organics and broccoli microgreens from the Big Carrot. Then, finally, I drizzled a little of our homemade roasted red pepper and hemp heart salad dressing around the outside and garnished it all with 5 croutons we make with sprouted Ezekiel Sha Sha Bread. By now, the party in my mouth turned into a full blown out fiesta! And miraculously, the entire Waltzing Matilda cheese disappeared quickly tonight!

Moral of the story: have lots of good foods in your fridge and get creative, it leads to total awesomeness. Beware that your tastebuds might get overloaded with flavour, in a good way!

The full blown out fiesta! photos by me

My trip to the Green Living Show

Doug McNish and I going to choose food at Farm Fresh Fare Court

I always love going to the Green Living Show because I like walking around and checking out the booths – seeing people and products I already know and finding new ones is really fun. The food is usually great too!! It’s late at night now, but I wanted to tell you all about the show, so you can get there and know what to expect.

Here are my notes:

Why is the Fahrenheit Grill still selling hot dogs and fries and coke at green living show? That’s disappointing and totally gross.  I saw people eating there even though right beside it there was awesome chef’s food!

I tried a new cheese at Monforte called Waltzing Matilda, a water buffalo cheese with an ash rind. It was really outstanding with the herbs, and had a great flavour. I plan on getting one at the market tomorrow! They are (like always!) beside Evelyn’s Crackers – all of their flavours of crackers are great!

I tried the organic hummus from Sunflower Kitchen that was pretty good for something in a container.

You must stop by the Organic Garage Booth! The people are very nice, and the highlight was obviously RawFoodz. (I even convinced Jacqui from Gone Shopping to buy 3!) You can also get Silver Hills sprouted bagels – try the Herb’s Garlic ones, they’re really really good.

jacqui from goneshopping.ca loves to shop

I should admit that I ate more than just one sample of Daiya Cheese, I think I had around twelve, I just couldn’t help myself! It’s so gooey when it’s melted. Have you ever tried vegan cheese? I really, really love cheese!

Daiya!

It was great to try Giddy YoYo‘s Xtra Dark Chocolate – absolutely awesome, but their mocha bar is still my favourite of theirs.

As far as chocolate goes, you must try the Cheeky Monkey Bar from ZaZu Bean – the real banana flavour in it was absolutely incredible!

Jacqui bought a lot of ZaZuBean Chocolate Bars

I signed the petition to stop the Mega Quarry – you really should too, it really doesn’t make sense what they are doing with that Mega Quarry! (and I forgot to pick up my sign on the way out, oops!) If they don’t sell out, you should get an organic Foodstock shirt – they are very very comfy.

The Mega Quarry is going to ruin our food and water! Please help stop it and sign the petition.

Loved the dude in the fair trade banana suit. I do NOT want that job when I grow up.

Mr. Fair Trade Banana

It’s always good to see and sample Neal Brothers Chips and Popcorn.

Explain to me also why the Organic Council of Ontario with ONFC is promoting organics and organic tomato sauce while serving it in a paper cup with conventional white bread. I asked them and they didn’t really understand or care. That’s really annoying to me.

Vida Grains was amazing and so nice. I loved their Savory Fiesta Meal Booster. The woman working there (I forget her name, oops!) was so nice and I gave her some advice to label her product nut-free to boost her sales.

Sodastream flavour mixers (syrups) are really gross, but I love the glass bottle machine they sell. I imagine myself carbonating a big green juice! (my mom wouldn’t buy one)

Dinner was fun as usual. Buy voucher tickets and you can go and speak to different chefs and choose to get their dishes (or not). Most dishes are very small so you can have many. My highlights included:  LPK’s sweet potato donuts, Jamie Kennedy’s recipe of Mushroom Barley Soup, Magic Oven‘s Spelt Flatbread (Tony from Magic Oven is SO nice), I also really enjoyed the  incredible grilled cheese with Monforte Cheese on De La Terre Bread (you can get their bread at Sorauren Farmers’ Market).

Farm Fresh Fare Meal Tray

After walking up and down lots of aisles, I treated myself to a Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich from LPK that you wouldn’t ever believe is vegan and gluten-free!

My favourite booth of the show was Rise Kombucha. They have just rebranded and you might remember them as Crudessence. They have four flavours, and my favourite is the Lemongrass (formerly known as Clarte).  It’s really a great fizzy drink. Stop by for a sample and tell them that I sent you!!

rise kombucha!

Overall, I highly recommend going and be sure to take an old appliance or gadget and you can properly recycle it AND get in for FREE!

Urban Herbivore

It pays to talk to people. When I went to the Patagonia Store, they asked me if I had tried any restaurants in Kensington Market and besides Hot Beans, I realized that I hadn’t. So, me and my mom decided to go to Urban Herbivore for lunch before going home.

It’s a cafe-like spot at the corner of Augusta and Oxford streets. There are no tables but lots of stools up along a bar along the windows, so you get a great view of what’s going on outside of the restaurant while you eat. Everything is vegan and mostly organic (which I didn’t know before going) and you can choose from sandwiches, salads, quinoa or rice bowls, soups, juices and incredible LARGE baked desserts.

I chose to have a BLT Sandwich (Bacon – but there isn’t any, Lettuce and Tomato) on whole grain focaccia, but I think it should really be called a LCTT since it’s Lettuce, Coconut, Tempeh, Tomato, doesn’t that make more sense? And while that seems like an odd combination, it really works and was absolutely amazing. I liked that they put it in a panini press before serving to us and that it was nice and toasty. I also had a salad – you get to choose your kind of lettuce and 6 ingredients from many in their display! Fun! I chose the lettuce and kale mix and topped with tempeh, marinated mushrooms, tofu and sundried tomato salad, carrots, lentils and yummy black bean salad. They had lots of dressings that sounded great, but I ended up choosing a lemon tahini one (and I added a little balsamic vinegar too, I like extra vinegar on top of my dressings). They tossed it all up, so it was mixed well and even though most people do takeout, they still had reusable bowls and cutlery, which obviously, I appreciated!

It was hard to choose from their desserts because they had such a very large selection of freshly baked goods. I ended up with 3 desserts – a muddy trail cookie, a mocha chocolate cookie and my mom tried an apple raspberry muffin. The cookies were absolutely astoundingly huge with chocolate chunks that were oozing from the centre. I loved the flavour of cinnamon in the muddy trail cookie, but beware if you have a nut allergy, because there are walnuts in it. I would advise sharing the cookies with others, because they are super large and way too big to finish by yourself, especially after a full meal.

Eat No Evil! Angell Organic Candy Bar

I don’t even remember how I found Angell Organic Candy Bars, or maybe they found me, but it was definitely through twitter. How cool is that? I was very excited when I found an organic chocolate bar that didn’t contain toxic ingredients in it. All of their chocolates are made from cocoa butter with no cheap substitutes. But then, I was disappointed to learn two things: one of them was that they didn’t ship their bars to Canada, and the other was that two of their bars had nuts in them, which meant that I couldn’t share the bars with my sister. After tweeting with them, they said that they would send me some free samples of their two nut-free bars, so, of course, I accepted!

A week or so later, I received a package from Angell Bars, with a really, really nice letter (see picture!), a bunch of stickers, a button and 2 chocolate bars. I still have the letter, stickers and button, but lo and behold, the two chocolate bars are long gone! It’s not that often that I find a milk chocolate or white chocolate that I can actually eat (since I’m used to dark chocolate), but as soon as I bit into these chocolate bars, it was total heaven.  I can’t wait to get more when I go to the US next, or maybe they will come to Canada before then! For all of you readers in the US, I suggest you go on your computers right now (oh wait, you are already on them if you are reading this!) and check them out. Who needs HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and fake stuff when you can eat real ingredients in a real chocolate bar?

Rawfoodz

Although we usually make our own salad dressings at home, sometimes we have the treat of having Rawfoodz dressings. They taste great and are also made with Superfoods! Their line has 7 types of dressings, Sea-zar Serenity, Purely Poppy, Glorious Greek, French Fusion, Italian Idol, Japanese Joy, and their newest, Ranch Revival (and I’ve memorized all of these off by heart).  My favourite (right now), is definitely the Ranch Revival, although we’ve only had one bottle of this (so far). In our family, we have a salad bar at least once a week, where we put out a lot of really good, different ingredients, like lettuces, spinach, pasta, corn (from Sosnicki Organics), tomatoes, chickpeas, chives, onions, sprouts, hemp seeds and kelp granules (plus lots and lots and lots more, depending what’s in season, and what’s in the fridge!). It’s always a treat to create my own combination of all of that goodness and then get to toss it with one of the best salad dressings in the whole world from Rawfoodz. I usually add a little vinegar to the salad as well, to kind of blend the dressing with all of the other ingredients.

The women who own Rawfoodz are very nice and I had the privilege of meeting them last fall at the CHFA show, where they launched their new product called Zen Budda, which is a great spread on toast that gives you a lot of energy and tastes great. We keep the garlic variety in the fridge, but there is also plain. I also like they are in glass jars instead of plastic containers. All of their products use the best ingredients and are raw, vegan and nut free. If you keep kosher, the dressings all fit into that category.

Finding your bliss

Finding MY Bliss!

While shopping at The Big Carrot yesterday (this post was scheduled by me, I’m not online at school), I always take my time checking out all of the shelves, fridge and freezer. You never know what you’re going to find. So, anyway, I was strolling past the ice creams, where we don’t buy much, and suddenly something caught my eye! It was Mocha Maca Crunch, Coconut Bliss Ice Cream and it was the LAST ONE! What a miracle! The last I looked, and I do often, this flavour was only available in the US. I was ecstatic (see how happy I look in the picture??) and even more enthusiastic when my mom said we needed to buy it. Now hopefully she doesn’t eat it all when I’m sleeping!

For those of you who don’t know, Luna and Larry’s Coconut Bliss is a vegan ice cream made with coconut milk and has no soy. And for the record, it’s the best ice cream ever. Now I hope you all go to your neighbourhood’s health store and try at least one flavour. The faster we all buy some, the faster Mint Galactica (my other favourite flavour) will come to us in Canada!!

Stush in the Bush – Jamaica

Microgreen Heaven!

Some of the food we bring with us from home

The Amazing SITB Banana Cake!

My family and I were lucky enough to go to Jamaica on vacation this year. Because of the way we eat, we take all of our own food, except produce, of course. This year, my mom found an organic farm called Zionites Farm in Free Hill, St. Ann, Jamaica (no website yet) who was happily able to deliver to us. And, they didn’t just grow organic produce, they also baked their own cakes, breads and jarred condiments. Nut free! All vegan! And many of the ingredients used were organic from their own farm! Score!

Hot Sauce!!

The delivery arrived packed perfectly in a box with no plastic wrapping, but they used their banana and palm leaf scraps! We got lots of greens and some of the best microgreens I’ve ever had. I know we’ll be getting a lot more of what they have to offer next time!

We tried their chocolate cake with fresh mint pressed into the top as a garnish, but the mint also tasted great! We also ordered a banana coconut cake which was so delectable that I cannot describe it well enough to give it the credit it deserves. We needed to order another one for our plane ride home it was so good! They baked us a multigrain bread that was one of the best breads I’ve ever had as well. Their jarred condiments are all packaged in glass jars which is amazing. Their hot sauce we tried is called “Blow Fyah” (pronounced “blow fire) and it was so super spicy that even my parents could only take a little bit at a time, and we like spicy! You have to imagine how good their banana preserves are too, it was the best thing I’ve spread on to my toast since I discovered Sunbutter. By the way, if you combine the Stush in the Bush Banana Preserves with the Sunbutter, it tastes incredibly, amazingly awesome! I am even considering importing the preserves into Canada, is anybody interested?

The main reason we got a second delivery was because my sister was pestering my mother for fresh sugar cane and they had some from their farm. Plus, we wanted more cacao pods. Even thought the inside of them look like a giant worm, it tastes so sweet and was fun to eat, plus you can’t get those in Toronto, although I’m going to ask Chocosol now that I think of it. I also realize that with our big sugar cane delivery, I never even ate any of it, my sister devoured it! I guess I’ll need to go back!!

Also, you should know that the farmers drove two hours to deliver the second order to us, and they were SO nice and we were all glad to meet them. It’s crazy what we all are willing to do to connect over real food. I hope if you are going to Jamaica, you will support them by placing an order from them, so we can keep them in business and keep enjoying their wonderful products. Next year, if I’m lucky enough to go back, we are going to have a tour of their farm for sure.

WORMS! (April Fools! It's actually where all of your real chocolate comes from!)

Look at my ears (it's sugar cane!)

And presenting...CACAO POD!

The SITB Team (minus Lisa Binns)