Getting back into shape sucks and peanut (!) peanut butter (jelly)

Note to self:

Getting back into shape sucks. Am I seriously the same person who would run 20 km every weekend? Plus cross-training, yoga and speed/hill repeats interspersed throughout the week? I'm having a hard enough time getting back to running 10 km ... cumulatively ... throughout the week :(

Anyway, I've discovered how to do something new and exciting... ok, it's new and exciting (to me)... making my own nut butter! It's SO easy. Why is this exciting? You can make your nut butters to taste! And you can avoid all of the nasty hydrogenated oils that are added to pre-made nut butters. I had thought that it was cheaper to make my own peanut butter, but once I factored the cost of the electricity to power the oven and food processor and the gas/time to obtain materials - I think it barely broke even. HOWEVER, homemade nut butter tastes SO much better!

The process:

Step one: Acquire nuts. I picked up raw peanuts from Bulk Barn, but any nut will do.

Step two: If nuts are not roasted, roast nuts by placing on some sort of oven safe tray, turn on oven (350F) and place tray inside oven and close door. Check nuts obsessively every 30 seconds to make sure they are not burning. Get distracted by re-run of How I Met Your Mother and start watching show. Realize at commercial break that nuts are in oven, proceed to panic, run over to oven and pull out tray.
Step three: Let nuts cool. Sample delicious freshly roasted nuts every 15 seconds. Burn mouth and fingers each time, complain about the burny pain and then continue sampling delicious freshly roasted nuts. Once nuts are cool, place nuts in food processor and turn on. Wait for magic to happen...


You can add a touch of oil to help the process along a bit. I added a drop of sunflower oil. Once it became buttery, I sweetened it up with some agave syrup. We're almost there...


Yay, done!! Can you tell which one is mine?

Ode to Kale!

O Kale, how I do love thee? Let me count the ways
I love thee to the depth due to your nutritional might
My eyes will search for thee, when you are hiding out of sight
Somewhere in the crisper drawer or maybe behind the soy.
I always search for thee, if I cannot find thee I will start to pester the boy

I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by smoothie or by chip
I love thee purely, when eating you I do not require dip;
I love thee freely, as does the boy he says

I love it when my blender is put to use
With kale and banana and yummy fruits about to be pulverized in a drink
Yet I also love thee dried in the oven with garlic powder and nutritional yeast I think
With all of your antioxidants and vitamin profile,
I do not mind the little green bits stuck in my beguiling smile
I shall but love thee better there is no denial

Yum, three cheers for kale! I've been on a big time kale kick lately.

There have been green smoothies:


This was a blueberry + banana + kale green smoothie: 1 glass of water, 1 banana, a generous handful of kale, splash of pineapple juice and a handful of blueberries. I left it on the counter while I was doing a few other things in the kitchen and it completely seperated! I probably didn't blend it for long enough. I stirred it up before drinking and it was yums. Kale is probably my favourite green for green smoothies. I just really like the flavour and texture it brings to the drink.

There have also been lots of kale chips. John and I ate an entire bunch of kale in less than 24 hours. Crappy picture of one of the batches, but it was major yummy time:


This was super easy to make. The only trick is to watch out for burning at the end, crispy kale is delicious, burned kale is not so much. To make yummy kale chips: I just ripped the kale leaves into pieces (no stems), washed + dried them. Put them onto a parchment covered baking sheet and tossed them with olive oil, lemon juice, salt + pepper, garlic powder, nutritional yeast and a bit of chili powder. Then baked them in the oven at 350F for 10 minutes, flipped them around and then continued baking for another 7-10 minutes. THEY WERE SO GOOD. I wish I was eating them right now!!!!

My running is slowly getting back on track. I've been doing more running just for the sake of running and it's been feeling pretty good. I'm starting to get the itch to go after another half-marathon. It might be kinda fun to travel somewhere and run half-marathon, as I've only ever run in local events. But we'll see...I am a creature of habit, so travelling somewhere and NOT being able to engage in my usual pre-race activities is a bit intimidating!

Post-vacation blues and you are what you eat

In August, John and I went on a 10-day road trip to the east coast of Canada. We stopped in Quebec City, Bay of Fundy (on the New Brunswick side) and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. It was amazing! There are so many interesting things to do and beautiful things to see. For example, the view from our tent at Cape Breton Island. We woke up to this every morning:


The Cabot Trail was beautiful. On the first morning, we went out for a drive and pulled off to the side of the road to snap a few pictures. The scenery was so pretty and we were a little hungry so we decided to have a mini-picnic for breakfast. It definitely beats my usual breakfast locale, which is my dreary grey cubicle at work.

Behold!
*sigh* why did I come back home again?

Anyway, I'm getting a bit off track. The point of this post is supposed to be about food. I had a grand old time on vacation. We spend about half of our time camping and eating camp food (i.e., burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, beer, beer, beer) and the other half of our time staying in hotels and eating restaurant food (i.e., a side of fries with everything!). In Quebec City, we definitely indulged in the locale cuisine ... mmm, poutine ... I had a salad once but it came with duck confit (mmm, duck braised in fat) which probably cancelled out the healthiness of the salad. Oh, and also it came in a tortilla bowl, with a side of bread (white) and butter (lots) and I washed it down with beer. When we came back, we were too tired to go grocery shopping right away so we ended up eating a lot of take-out and other convenience foods.

I felt terrible when I came back from vacation. Part of it was the post-vacation blues, coming back to the ugly concrete GTA after spending all so much time in beautiful nature and interacting with people who were actually nice and friendly was quite the shock. The other part was likely due to the lack of nutrients in my system. My hair was looking limp and lifeless, my face started breaking out and my skin was looking ashen and unhealthy. I felt awful, I had no energy at all...waking up and trying to get out of bed every morning was almost impossible. I was perpetually in a bad mood and was constantly struggling to get through the day. After a week of feeling like crap, I got myself to the grocery store and bulk food store and picked up the following feel-good supplies:
- lemons
- cranberries (frozen)
- hemp seeds
- cacao nibs
- chia seeds
- bananas
- walnuts
- spinach
- protein powder (chocolate flavoured)

With these items I made the following yummy things:
- water + lemon - ok, so its not very fancy. but I would drink it at work all day and at home all night.
- cranberry smoothies - with greek yogurt
- green smoothies!! made with spinach + varying combinations of bananas, cranberries, peaches, pineapples, pears and/or mangoes
- hemp milk - blended a couple of tbsps of seeds with a cup of water. Sometimes I mixed in cacao nibs, agave nectar and a pinch of salt to make it chocolate hemp milk and NO I did not get high off the hemp seeds. I don't think they sell anything containing THC in Bulk Barn.
- chia pudding - a couple of tbsps of chia seeds soaked in a cup of hemp milk or vanilla rice milk for about 15 minutes (stir every once in awhile). I'd also add varying combinations of dried cranberries, cacao nibs, walnuts and/or banana slices. Banana + walnut was my favourite. I learned that it's better to let the chia soak for a bit before adding the extras. When I mixed everything together first and then added the milk, I found the chia seeds tended to clump together.

I started cooking dinner again - with vegetables! quinoa! not deep-fried meat! legumes (beans/lentils)! And I started to hit the gym again. This is where the protein powder comes in, I found if I had a protein drink after a hard work-out, my recovery time was much quicker. Mmm, and the chocolate flavour tastes surprisingly inoffensive. The brand that I'm using right now is Whey Gourmet. I'll put this to the test when I start training for my next half-marathon.

I've been feeling much better this week. My energy levels are starting to perk back up again and I'm feeling a lot less like a dirty slob. I need to start setting my next set of goals. This little hiatus from doing things has been nice, but without a goal to work towards, I feel like I'm drifting around aimlessly :(