Well that didn't work out too well

Not that I can blame Kris Carr or the Crazy Sexy Diet. I had my spinal tap 4 weeks ago when I was two weeks into the cleanse. I have to be honest with you I was struggling anyway. I wonder if the problem was tied to the weather for one thing. It was so very cold that all that raw food was not sitting well with me. I was freezing all the time and never feeling satisfied.

After the spinal tap I had the dreaded awful post-lumbar killer headache. Everytime I got up my head felt like a melon being split open. Not the most pleasant experience. It took two weeks to go away. Then I started back to work. I'm only doing 4 hour shifts at the moment but I'm coming home sore and exhausted.

Suffice it to say that the cleanse fell by the wayside :(

I simply must get back on track!!

The plan at the moment is to attempt the Crazy Sexy Diet cleanse again when it's summer. In the meantime I'll slowly revert back to a whole food diet. And on March 7, I'm doing the vegan whole food online course with Heather.

I'll just keep on keepin' on.

And keep on posting :)

Carolyn

Cookbook love

I absolutely LOVE cookbooks. Sometimes if I'm in the midst of madly cooking my way through a favourite, burning through the pages, it's like I'm having a passionate love affair or something :)

I actually have about 4 shelves of cookbooks, counting the books above. But with a few exceptions these are the ones I use time and time again. They have so many dog eared pages, sticky notes and bookmarks in them that it's laughable. I love them. If the house was on fire I would be very upset to leave them behind. But obviously I would since the kids and the husband and the cat come first...ahem.

So without further ado, from left to right:

~Ripe from around here by Jae Steele
~Get it Ripe by Jae Steele
By far my favourite vegan cookbooks!! I use both of these all the time. There has not been a recipe that I've tried that I didn't like. And she has tons of info at the beginning of both books.

~Vegan Cupcakes take over the World (read our previous post and you'll see why it's here!)

~Thirteen Moons by Louise Racine. From their Ontario Wellness Retreat for Women. Again every recipe I've tried is a keeper. It's organized by seasons, which I like. My pumpkin scones are from this cookbook :)

~Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Need I say more?!

~The Family Dinner by Laurie David. Not specifically vegan, although there is a meatless Monday chapter. Many of the other recipes are adaptable and it is an altogether beautiful book that will inspire you to make dinner an event!

~Babycakes Cookbook by Erin McKenna. Vegan, Gluten-free, some are also sugar free. Good stuff.

~The Kripalu Cookbook by Atma JoAnn Levitt. Aaah Kripalu, how do I love thee..... One of my dreams is to go to the center on a retreat. Someday! In the meantime I use this classic cookbook alot! More vegetarian than vegan, it's still worth having. The black forest cake is to die for! And the miso cauliflower..yum!

~Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates by The Moosewood Collective. Arranged by season and holidays this book is wonderful. Another of my dreams is to go to Ithica, NY for the weekend and eat all my meals at the Moosewood. I've been using their cookbooks for years.

~Simple Suppers by Moosewood Restaurant. Nothing more to add here.

~The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone. More macrobiotic than I want to be this is still a wonderful worthwhile book. Great recipes and awesome info. And I have a girl crush on Alicia :)

~Moosewood Restaurant's Cooking for Health. I bet your getting tired of seeing that name huh?

~Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. A great, never fail, got it all covered cookbook!

~Vegetarian Cookbook by The Green Door Restaurant. This one isn't pictured because my husband was using it at the time that I took the picture. This is my favourite Ottawa veg restaurant. If you have the cookbook you can make your own potatoes and kale! Do you hear me Mel?

So what's on your go to cookbook shelf? What are your favourites? Always looking for fresh inspiration here!

Peace and dream clouds
C xxoo

Vegan Cupcakes WILL Take Over the World!!!

Who needs eggs or milk to make good cupcakes? Hell, who needs butter to make a good buttercream frosting!

Apparently nobody, as I learned today. For christmas I bought my mom Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero...two women who really know how to bake vegan! So today, I thought I'd try a recipe.

Tomorrow is the last day of first semester and then next week I have two exams...eeek! I'm not stressing over my english exam, because english is one of my strong classes, but I'm kinda freaked about the geo exam. Geography doesn't really stick with me...honestly, I couldn't care less about stupid time zones and types of preciptitation. Nonetheless, I don't want to get below an 80% so I'll be studying all weekend...sigh.

Anyway, since tomorrow is the last day, my homeroom class is having a party and as per usual, everyone brings something in. Since I'm on the cleanse, I didn't want to not get any of the snacks so I figured I would bring something yummy and vegan in! I decided on classic vegan chocolate cupcakes with vegan chocolate buttercream frosting. I threw in some white chocolate chips and called it Triple Chocolate Vegan Cupcakes. They were really amazing and moist! So I made 36 cupcakes and put them in a box all ready to bring to school tomorrow :3

Honestly, if you haven't bought this book and you're into vegan baking BUY IT!!!!!! This is the second time I've ever baked vegan, the first time being last summer when I made cupcakes from the Babycakes cookbook. They were good, especially considering that they were gluten and sugar free, which these, unfortunately are not. However, they're REALLY good and since its a class party I made an exception.

Adios!

-Maddie

One of those days

Yesterday was a good day. I did yoga and skin brushing and meditating and dealt with the emotional rollercoaster that I've been on. I ate really, really well. Made my afternoon snack my leftover morning smoothie.

I kept my lunch heavy on the raw side. Tofu and veggies in rice paper wraps with a spicy dip, salad and leftover steamed greens.

I was surprisingly still hungry so I had some dessert. Apple slices and a couple of medjool dates (soooo good!) with a cup of peach ginger green tea. The tea was thankfully really warming because baby it was cold outside!

Dinner consisted of Costa Rican black bean soup. Nice and easy with no added fat in the soup. I diced some avocado and sprinkled it on top for added colour. We had our usual soup day side dishes with it, crudites, hummus, veg dip and flax/sesame crackers.

So all was well. Until I woke up during the night with ridiculous pain in my sides and lower back. I managed to get back to sleep but felt awful in the morning. I had a fever and kept dozing off. And the pain kept getting progressively worse. I finally took myself off to the walk in medical clinic. Result: kidney infection. Therefore, antibiotics. Ugh!



I'll up my dose of Vitamin C and take some probiotics. Hopefully that will help my body deal with the darn antibiotics. I'm sure I'll feel better soon!



I the meantime I'll keep on

and be back with more soon!



Love, peace and green juice

C xxoo

Looking for ideas

Before I get to the main point of this post. Let me assure you that I've gotten back on track. Thank goodness :)

Last night Maddie and I had Gardein's Chick'n Scallopini, sauteed potatoes, steamed kale and salad for dinner. The Scallopini was delicious. I will definitely buy it again. It's so hard to judge the faux meats. Some of them are horrendous.

Today started with green juice. Surprise!! We did add kale though and wow did that ever ramp up the green of it all! I hadn't added it so far because I was a little concerned that I would find it too strong. But it was still very tasty and drinkable.

I've been a sprouting fool since this started which is great; however, I discovered that sunflower sprouts are better sprouted in a tray rather than a jar. Trying to get all those little black shells out of the jar is a nightmare! I'll stick to alfalfa and crunchy bean mix sprouts until I get a tray. I'll just add these to juice.

For lunch I ate the salad leftover from dinner last night and GF toast with almond butter. A green juice snack this afternoon held me until dinner.

These portobello mushrooms are what Maddie and I had in our fajitas instead of steak. As good as they were I found it tough smelling the grilled beef. I had to keep reminding myself how horrible life was for those poor animals and how BAD eating their flesh is for me. I made sure to pile the veggies on my fajita and had two servings of salad.

Now for the main point of this post. I have to go for a spinal tap on Monday. I've been told that I may be laid up with a splitting headache for a couple of days. If this occurs I'll literally have to be flat on my back :)

I'm looking for ideas for vegan, GF meals that can be made ahead or are easy enough to put together. Any and all ideas are greatly appreciated!

Love and peace signs

xxoo C

Crazy Sexy cleanse...days six and seven...oh my!

So day six was definitely my hump day. I had a lot of personal, emotional stuff smack me upside the head and was feeling physically really heavy and dead. On top of all that there was a nice little snow dump happening outside. Instead of doing the right thing, ie: feel the feelings, be good to myself, then let it all go I ate a pile of reindeer cookies and boxed macaroni and cheese. Sigh.
Did I feel better after? Honestly no. The thing I felt was nothing...numb. Just to make sure that numb feeling didn't run away anytime soon I took an ativan.

I could have done a long yoga session, walked in the swirling snow, painted something angry, had a hot epsom salt bath, got my friend to do some reiki on me. But I didn't.

Really and truly I have to let it go. Because if I don't then I'll really be in big trouble.

So this morning when I woke up, I meditated. After hot water and lemon, I had a green tea then made a huge bunch of green juice. I turned up the volume by adding broccoli stems and parsley to my usual mix.

I kept to the green juice all day, except for a GF toast with almond butter when I couldn't take it anymore :)

The afternoon was spent painting a new picture. The opposite of my previous painting titled "Oppression". 


I made a heavy-on-the-veggies dinner. Total atonement for my sins of yesterday. Raw carrot and beet salad, steamed purple cabbage, roasted squash and arame seaweed, fried marinated tofu and udon noodles with red and green pepper, muchrooms, broccoli, baby bok choy, crunchy sprouts topped with Gomasio. Delish!

Time to go and kick back folks...here's hoping that we all have the sweetest of sweet dreams!
C xxoo

Meditation and casseroles

I had a strange experience when I was meditating this morning. I've been extremely disciplined about hitting the pillow first thing every morning and I've managed to actually increase my time from 10 minutes to 15. I'm much less antsy and find that my mind is wandering less. However, this morning as I was settling into the meditation I felt this overwhelming wave of grief. It was the oddest thing. I have never before experienced anything like it before. At the same time as the tears started pouring down my cheeks I had a sensation of sitting outside of myself watching this display with compassion. I found myself wondering why I was feeling these emotions. Why was I so overwhelmed with grief? As I watched myself silently cry, it came to me that I was grieving for the self that I could have become.

People say that it's never too late. Actually that's not true. Sometimes it is too late. I'm 43 years old. For me to become a doctor at this point and work with Doctors without Borders is not possible. All the time I wasted! The wrong choices I made. Of course I know there are other things that I can do that are somewhat similar and could provide a sense of accomplishment but it's not the same is it?

The amazing thing is that I came out of the meditation with a sense of quiet acceptance. I felt okay with the choices I had made and the paths I had chosen. Consciously or not. I wasn't angry or sad. I wiped the tears from my face and got on with my day with adetermination that fromthis day forward I would be sure to actively CHOOSE, as much as possible, to fulfill my dreams and goals. To finally become the person I am meant to be.

The past two days have been good. I am still extremely tired and needing to nap. I figure it's the lack of caffeine and sugar. I don't know how long it's going to last but hopefully it ends soon. It's been really cold out so I've been doing yoga for my exercise. Not exactly shaking my ass, more like slowly moving it :)

But at least it's moving! I'm getting better with the neti pot but more about that at a later date. The green juices and smoothies are going strong and I am keeping to the food aspects of the cleanse. Yesterday I made a delicious vegan split pea soup for dinner.


Usually on soup night (wednesday's) I make homemade artisan bread with all purpose wheat flour to go with our soup. Obviously that's not possible at the moment!

So instead of bread I served carrots, broccoli and sugar snap peas with a tofu dill dip. As well, we had some hummus and great flax-sesame crackers. It did the trick everyone was nicely full after.


Tonight I made a ratatouille casserole with a vegan parmesan topping. I filled about a third of my plate with it. It was delicious! The other 2/3 of the plate was filled with lightly steamed swiss chard and beet greens and a raw carrot and beet salad that had a lemon vinaigrette and a sprinkle of gomasio. Again it was more than filling. I'm enjoying expanding my food repertoire even more!

So as tired as I am, I'm going to say adieu :)
Sleep well everyone!

C xxoo