Mail find, scape crazy, and lid-less blender!

Hello everyone!!

How are you doing this hump day? Wait!! What's that in the sky? NOTHING...but the sun:)

It is officially summer here in BC. Seriously, it's about time. It literally went from 17-20 degrees to 28-30 degrees overnight! It's crazy hot but I'm loving it! I love getting my tan on in the summer. Yet, Ontario is in a major heat wave right now so I feel for you guys. Hope you get relief soon:)

I was so lucky to receive a package in the mail the other day that was just so full of love!

I was one of the lucky winners of the giveaway from the gorgeous Nelly!! I've heard such great things about this book and so I'm super excited to try it all!! I've been reading it from the beginning because I don't want to miss anything. Let's face it, I'm a newbie and Ani's a super pro raw foodie, so she has a lot to teach me! Ry has already eyed the pancakes and I've eyed the quinoa pilaf..yet, every recipe sounds amazing. Maybe I should just start making the recipes in order?? I would be eating amazing raw food FOREVER!! Ahh..bliss! I've only read the intro section and it feels like she is talking to a friend. She speaks so humbly and with such gratitude that it really made me realize we are so lucky over here in the Americas.

Thank you Nelly:) PS she is having another amazing giveaway so check out her super blog!

This week my work had to harvest the garlic scapes in order to force the garlic to put more nutrients into the bulbs:) (PS we are trialing some organic soils so we have a huge veggie garden..I know its pretty amazing!) So, that meant I got to take a bunch home to play around with in the kitchie! I happen to know another lovely lady is scape crazy too! So, I took some inspiration from her and fried up the scapes

I had the quinoa already cooked so I just fried the scapes for a couple minutes in some coconut oil. Then I added some sea salt and pepper. They were super yummy! I want to try Angela's approach and chop up the skapes in a processor and add them to vegetable broth and cook it along with the quinoa. I loved Angela's scape photo's so I decided to join in and take a few of my own!

I call this the "scape"-tooth!!

I love this photo. I'm no pro photo taker so when a pictures turns out so clear it makes me want to know how I did it HAHA! Oh well, the experimentation continues!

Have you used garlic scapes before? What did you make? I find the flavor is a lot milder compared to the bulbs. So if you find garlic too powerful this may be just for you!

Lately for lunch I've been making a green smoothie. During the holiday last week I took my blender home and made smoothies over the weekend. Well, I was in a hurry on Monday and I put all the blender parts in a bag and rushed out the door. I got to work and discovered I missed a vital part of the whole smoothie equation - the lid! Now, because I only brought alone ingredients for a smoothie I was determined to make it work so I wouldn't have to skip lunch. I first thought putting just a simple lid across it would be alright but oh boy was I wrong. I splattered semi-processed spinach everywhere -the carpet, drawers, microwave. Not fun! Then my brain finally clicked in and put this contraption together:

A simple ziplock bag with some elastics.

A rather ugly looking contraption but it kept my smoothie IN the blender and that's all that mattered.

Have you had a lid-less blender experience? Do tell!

Have a wonderful day!! I'm going to check out my local farmer's market and hopefully I'll pick up some interesting goodies:)

Question of the Day

Do you spend a set amount of money at the market? Or do you take out $100 and see what happens? I would love to be the latter but I have other responsibilities besides food (bummer!) and so its $20 spending money for me!

I'm still here and Happy Birthday Mom!

Hey all,

Sorry for the lack of posting but I wanted to soak up my visiting time with my mutti (mom is Mennonite German). My mom is from Paraguay and she speaks a lower dialect of German which is cool! I can understand words but I can't speak back, unfortunately. Anyways, we are having a grand time hanging out and walking all around Nelson. We ate some fabulous food at my favorite restaurant here called The Full Circle. We also drank lots of dandelion tea (Mom had a dandelion latte with rice milk, YUM) and played many rounds of Skip-Bo. I also got a late Christmas present, a mini-trampoline! I'm so excited to bound away on it and give my lymphatic system a boost. I introduced mom to Cesar Millan and his show The Dog Whisperer. Ry and I are truly mesmerized by his abilities to calm down crazy dogs! We are trying to learn his ways so when we get our dog, eventually, we will be in a calm, submissive state! Also, as yesterday was Mom's birthday we stayed in and made dinner and dessert, and sipped on Organic wine. I started the feast off with raw tomato basil soup from Heathy and topped it with some cashew cream, YUM! Then mom was intent on making a recipe she brought from home , so we had a lovely, light pasta dish. We finished off the night with the raw raspberry ganache fudge cake from the lovely, Ani Phyo . All in all, a fabulous night of eating! I will do a more extensive post later with lots of pictures but I have to run now as we are meeting my good friend Synje for tea and I haven't finished my green smoothie yet!

Have a great day and I'll be back on Wednesday with the longest blog post ever!

Christmas dinner and thoughtful gifts

Hey all,

Hope you had an awesome, healthy Christmas surrounded by all the people you cherish in life. We ended up going to a good friend's house who decided to stick around the Kootenays. It was really nice and low-key with a lot of Christmas movie watching. Our friends cooked the traditional dinner and we brought some mashed yams and baked goodies. Good deal hey?

So, I made some traditional shortbread but using Earth Balance instead of butter. They were okay but I think I should have made them smaller in order to get the right consistency. The Snowballs were a recipe from the 12 Days of Christmas cookie recipes from Raw divas. Basically, they were dates, shredded coconut, a splash of orange juice, and vanilla. I really loved these and so did our friends. I also made some vegan chocolate chip cookies from a recipe on vegweb. Hubby ate way too many of these. So, that's a thumbs up I assume. The final recipe I tried were skinny figgy bars from fatfreevegan. These were good but I think I'll tweak the crust/topping to be a little more like a traditional date bar.

Since the Christmas day dinner was last minute, I had already bought everything to make dinner for us. So, Boxing day was my turn to cook. I decided on guacamole, veggie/vegan lasagna, and raw ganache fudge cake from Ani phyo made without the raspberries.

The lasagna was half veggie, half vegan and used the cashew ricotta and marinara sauce from Veganomicon. I used zucchini, spinach, peppers, and mushrooms for the veggies. It turned out AMAZING! The picture doesn't do it justice.

On to the finale, DESSERT! I have heard great things about Ani's dessert and so I splurged and bought the ingredients to make it, except for the raspberries which I forgot to buy. It was so rich and yummy even without the raspberries. We were devouring the cake and I nearly forgot to take a picture, although it is only the last two spoonfuls. I highly recommend making this cake as it takes only minutes and would impress any guest.

My hubby and I decided to buy each other gym passes as our Christmas gifts. So, we both agreed to not buy additional gifts for each other. Yet, while I was working on Christmas eve, he snuck out to healthy Santa's workshop (Co-op) for a few extra gifts. I guess I was a good girl , I mean wife, this year! I received a natural fibres skin brush, a soft face brush, and a glass straw for all my green smoothies. It just so happened that my husband read my post on dry skin brushing where I mentioned I did not have the ideal brushes yet. What a thoughtful guy!

Have a great week everyone and if you are feeling lethargic from all the Christmas goodies, blend up a green smoothie. Here's mine from Christmas morning made with collard greens, bananas, hemp protein, and cinnamon (plus my new glass straw).