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Best Smoothie Recipe

27 Mar 2012 -
Ultimate Smoothie

Eat Your Greens!

 

I’m home and back in control of what I get to eat. This is a good thing as well as a not-so-good thing. The not-so-good part is that I’m also in charge of cleaning up my own mess.

There is something rather fabulous about hotels, filled with those lovely people that make my bed and pick up my towels every day, not to mention the beauty of pushing myself away from yet another ridiculously indulgent meal and having someone else clean up the dishes.

However. The good part is deciding exactly what I want to eat and how I want to feel.

So, this morning I celebrated with my usual smoothie. The picture shown above was taken just before I left for this past week of Mexican indulgences, so this morning’s smoothie was slightly different. That’s the beauty of these recipes…you can throw anything into that VitaMix blender and call it breakfast.

My usual basic recipe is to start with the toughest-to-grind ingredients;

Water or organic coconut milk (just enough to cover the blades)
Handful of raw almonds (good source or iron and protein)
One-inch cube of raw ginger (high anti-inflammatory properties)
One stick of celery
One apple
Couple of big leaves of organic kale
One or two medjool dates (pit those puppies!)

Swirl that until it looks quite Kermit-ish.

Then add a frozen or regular banana, yogurt and some blueberries or other dark-coloured fruit. The dark fruit covers up that frapped-frog colour and makes it all a tad more appetizing. If you need sweetener, toss in a drizzle of maple syrup.

Enjoy! And feel like you’re doing something good for your body…because that is exactly what you’re doing.

Category: Photos, recipes, Traveling  Tags: , , ,  4 Comments

Queen Elizabeth Cake

21 Apr 2011 -

Well, hello again.

It’s been almost one full week since I last worked on this blog.  This site has been hit by hackers more times than I want to think about. I’m starting to feel like one of those Holy-Grail-Seeking Monty Python knights; all my limbs have been whacked off, blood is spurting everywhere and I’m screaming, “It’s only a flesh wound! Come back and fight like a man!”

But yes, indeed, you can’t kill me that easily with your malware, spam and other malicious no-good evil-doing. I have the Queen of Bad Dog Design on my side and she used some major webbie voodoo to get things back, fixed and fortressed.

I would have been able to do a post yesterday, except I spent it with North Shore Tourism taking in some great sites. I’ll write more about that tomorrow but today I want to share a recipe for a wonderful cake.

Our group stopped in at Thistledown House B&B near the little village of Edgemont. The B&B is gorgeous without being too twee, the innkeepers gracious and warm, and the cake…did I mention the cake?

They couldn’t really tell us why it was called Queen Elizabeth Cake, but it is. They first made it at the request from a guest and it has since become a favourite of their many repeat clients. I know why. It’s pretty darned fabulous.I also know why they would have repeat clients. It makes perfect sense once you meet the innkeeping team of Rex, Ruth & Liz.

So, in honour of the pending Royal Nuptials and the Ye Olde style of the Thistledown B&B, Queen Elizabeth Cake.

I’m not making any cake for those nasty blog hacking bullies. Only nice people will get my cake. Those bad guys need to be sent to bed with no pudding.

Category: Hotels, Photos, recipes, Traveling  4 Comments

Chickens Can Type

07 Mar 2011 -

I remember a writer speaking at the Sechelt Writers Festival. I wish I could remember her name…Chris something? Anyway, she was from Northern British Columbia and had written her story about building her home herself in some place that was a zillion miles from nowhere. She had to be flown in to a lake and then hike in for four days…you get the picture. Far away.

And. She spent most of her time completely alone.

During the Q&A period, someone asked her how she could handle being alone so much? Didn’t she miss people?

And this woman said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You should be asking, how can I do this? How can I manage being surrounded by all you people, speaking here, and being so social? And my answer is, that it’s only possible because I spend so much time alone.”

At the time I remember being quite amazed by the reversed question. I’ve always enjoyed my alone time but that seemed like too much.

Until this weekend…when I was completely alone and I felt like an empty cup that couldn’t get enough of it. I read, I wrote, I puttered and I just wanted it to keep stretching into more and more. There have been so many times on my self-imposed Sunday techno-fast when I get restless and looking for connections…but this time…nope.

And clearly I had enough time on my hands to film Courage, Confidence and Karma in their search for that elusive perfect word.

And at the risk of being very inconsiderate to the aforementioned girls I made myself a wonderful chicken dinner. One of my best. Seriously. Hands down.

Had a lovely glass of Viognier, added some sides of roasted organic carrots and red pepper along with some short-grain brown rice and voila. Heaven.

I have linked to Lidia Bastianich’s Pollo con Olive e Pignoli recipe here. I used organic chicken thighs, fresh bay leaves out of my garden and honestly…it was delicious.

 

Category: Photos, recipes, Video  Tags: , ,  6 Comments

Bread & Life

04 Mar 2011 -

Let there be Light

I feel like I’m ending this week on a bit of a whimper. My technical geekoid abilities are pretty weak at the best of times, but after spending the last two hours on something that I’m sure any semi-literate person could have done AND getting nowhere, I feel like the weekend has arrived just in time. It is time for a break from the screen. Time for a break altogether.
 

I am heading out to the library right now. I will be filling a bag with all and sundry and hunkering down in front of the fire for the weekend.
 

The wind has lessened from the past two days of crazy howling but the cold air off those dark waves moves through the bones, relentless and cold.

It definitely looks like a weekend for soup and fresh bread. On that note, I bring you a new-to-me website.

I found Take Back the Bread over on the Homemaker’s Bright Side Blog and plan on having that doughy link open this weekend.

Fresh bread. Life makes more sense when there is a warm loaf and some good butter waiting on the counter…I am already feeling more hopeful.

 

Category: Musings, recipes  Tags: ,  9 Comments

Almond Milk Recipe

18 Nov 2010 -

 

In doing a search for an almond milk recipe, I discovered Karen Knowler; judging by the number of hits her youtube video has received, I’m going to guess that she’s one of the gurus of the natural food world.

I didn’t have the nylon bag she suggested, so I just dumped it all through a mesh seive over a bowl and then squished the whole nutty mess with a spatula and my fingers until the milk was all out. I was going to use the leftover ground up nuts for cookies but fed it to the chickens instead. They were thrilled.

I blended the milk with the dates as she suggested and poured it over the homemade muesli that I saw on another one of her youtube videos. Absolutely delicious. What a great way to get tons of good food in your belly.

I have not become a nuts and seeds vegan or anything. In fact, Kevin is, at-this-very-minute, making braised beef short ribs with cocoa and red wine sauce from the Vancouver Cooks (Douglas McIntyre 2004) cookbook. Yes baby…

Instead, I’ve decided to practise a mostly raw and vegetarian diet for 70-80% of the day. I have my green smoothie or just a fruit smoothie breakfast with ground flax and/or hemp hearts, while lunch today was a homemade veggie soup stuffed full of blendered squash, onions and leeks. 

By the time I’ve finished our pre-dinner salad and we’re ready to tuck in to the main meal, I am focused more on tasting the meat and other foods, rather than my previous mode of hoovering everything in sight.

I admit I feel pretty righteous. And righteousness, my friends, is a huge need that is still in play from my uber-Mennonite upbringing.

I really do try to kick this need for the “R” word, but I fear it might be in my hardwiring at this point. I have managed to at least knock the “R” down to the point of not feeling the need to dump it on other people, so I think there is some progress. Baby steps, it’s all we can hope for.

I am sharing this information because I haven’t felt this good in some time. I really feel like the Fresh Start retreat got me pointed in the right direction.

My plan is to incorporate a full-on vegetarian lifestyle at least once a week. According to some sources, I am now to call myself a Vegawarian; someone who is aware of the benefits of limiting meat for planetary and personal considerations. There’s more on it in this NY Times article.

But I don’t think I want to commit to any name or food tribe at all. I like to eat. I like to eat well. I like to feel healthy. And I love to share the information about my experiences. So, please don’t throw me in a category. You can just call me Colleen. That’ll work.

Category: recipes, Video  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment
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