Pinterest Finds: Superfoods, Sun Tea and Nothing to Wear

By the time Friday comes along my brain usually wants to go for a run and then crash on the couch to veg for the evening with a big bag o' chips (hence my nick name "girl who eats whole bags of chips"). I'm normally completely burnt out. So to keep things light I have decided to start a new series called Pinterest Finds. For those of you that don't know, Pinterest is an online pin board. You can categorize your "pins" to keep them organized and you can also follow other people's boards and they can follow you.

I absolutely love this site. I'm always finding things online that I want to remember but hate having a ton of bookmarks. Pinterest allows me to keep track of all my random online finds in a way that makes sense to me.

So without further adieu, here are some of my Pinterest Finds this week.

1. Superfoods (original source) - Most of these I eat on a weekly basis, some daily. How many of these do you eat regularly? Avocado is my fav :)

2. Audrey Hepburn (original source) - I couldn't agree more. I get so much joy out of helping other people. It makes me feel alive and like I've been put on this Earth for a reason.

3. Nothing to wear (original source) - This is me every morning.

4. Balloons (original source) - This is such an awesome idea. I really want to try this when I have the space and take some self portraits!

5. Roasted zucchini (original source) - ....drooling... Oh how I miss cheese. Going to try making these with a vegan cheeze sauce though.

6. Wooden spoons (original source) - Just started my wooden spoon collection. In my new apartment I want my utensils to be made out of metal or wood, no plastic. This will be a great way to spice up my collection.

7. Sun tea (original source) - I wonder what this tastes like and if it will give me super powers or not.

8. Beach (original source) - Having sand between my toes is one of my favorite feelings in the entire world. pure.bliss.

Make sure to check out my Pinterest boards and follow any of the ones that interest you :)

Happy Friday!

Reason #2 For Becoming Vegetarian + Cupcake Recipe

"You are what you eat". I can't even count the amount of times I heard this as a kid. Growing up on bologna & cheese sandwiches and bologna & cheese omelets I never really thought about this saying. I mean, obviously I don't look like bologna & cheese so it can't be true right? But maybe there's something to this idiom.

My diet, just like almost everything else in my life, has gone through phases. Once I started to do yoga regularly I became more in touch with my body. I felt connected to it in a way I've never experienced before. So when my diet fluctuated from eating healthy to not eating healthy it was very obvious to me how it affected me. Junk food made me feel sluggish, slightly sick to my stomach and overall dreary. The more I started to increase my water intake and decrease my junk food intake the more fluid and strong my body started to feel.

In this post I talked about the main reason I became vegetarian. I'll be honest, it wasn't that hard of a switch for me since I didn't eat a ton of meat anyways. But once I cut meat out from my diet completely my body had an overwhelmingly positive reaction. I immediately had more energy. My body felt a lot stronger and more efficient. Overall, I just felt more healthy. And that's because eating meat isn't healthy for you. There are a ton of anti-meat and pro-meat articles all over the internet. I am not interested in getting into that debate here. I just wanted to share with you some of the health related facts I have found about not eating meat.

• "Dr. William Castelli, director of the Framingham Heart Study, says a low-fat plant-based diet would lower an individual's risk of heart attack by 85%." (The Kind Diet 2009, p.16)
• "Meat eating is also believed to exacerbate gout, contribute to rheumatoid arthritis, and to be a major factor in the formation of kidney stones." (The Kind Diet 2009, p.17)
• "A USDA report published in 2000 estimated that a staggering 89% of US beef ground into patties contained traces of deadly E.Coli." (The Kind Diet 2009, p.18)
• "Factory-farmed chicken is so unclean that Gerald Huester, former USDA microbiologist, says, 'the final product is no different than if you stuck it in the toilet and ate it'." (The Kind Diet 2009, p.19)

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Information is pretty easy to find online though so if this interests you I would suggest starting at The Kind Life site, Colin. T. Campbell's site and PETA's site.

Source: Chapters

Reason #2 for becoming vegetarian: better for my health. Even though I had been told many times that eating red meat was bad for you, it wasn't until I became vegetarian that I realized just how bad all meats are for your body. Combined with the environmental impacts eating meat has on our planet, my argument to be and stay a vegetarian became a lot stronger.

Again, I would like to stress that becoming vegetarian or vegan is a very personal decision. Although I know everyone can do it, I know it's not for everyone. Just remember that you can improve your health by eating less meat in general. Try a new vegetarian/vegan recipe weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. The less meat you eat the healthier you will be.

Now on to the yummy stuff! To go hand in hand with the chocolate frosting recipe from this post I figured I would pair it with the chocolate cup cake recipe from Kim Barnouin's Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook.

Ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes):

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt (I never add salt to my recipes)
1/2 cup almond milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup Earth Balance (butter), at room temp.
1 cup evaporated cane sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup orange juice (this added the most amazing flavour0
1 teaspoon grated orange peel (I was in a rush and didn't use this)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to  350 degrees F (180C). Line a 12-cup muffin pan with crimped paper liners.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour and the cocoa powder. Add the baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate small bowl mix together the milk and apple cider vinegar and let sit until lightly curdled.
In a separate large bowl, beat together the Earth Balance and the sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the vanilla and beat an additional 30 seconds. Pour the flour and milk mixtures into the sugar mixture and stir until well combined. Add the orange juice and orange peel and stir together but do not overmix. Pour the batter into the prepared muffin pan, filling each liner about two-thirds full. Bake about 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcakes comes out clean. Remove from the oven and set on a wire rack to cool completely. When cooled, top with your favorite frosting.

Enjoy :) And don't forget to lick the bowl clean!

I Care What You Think

I had a long conversation recently with someone important in my life about health and fitness. At one point in the conversation they said to me "I don't care what you think of me." This statement has been somersaulting in my head ever sense because I care what they think of me. I care about what a lot of people think of me. Not everyone but certainly the people I hold dearest and respect the most.

Our society has drilled it into our heads that in order to be confident, we have to not care about what other people think of us. I think this is wrong. When we don't care about what other people think of us we can royally fuck up or do nothing or be lazy and use the excuse of "well I don't care what you think of me" to hide behind our actions/inactions.

(Photo Source: Wikipedia)

Real confidence is about believing in yourself and trusting your gut instincts. And I would like to argue that we can do that and still care about what people think of us. We don't have to do what everyone else wants us to do, or act how they want us to act. But we should care enough about the people in our lives that we care about their opinions and take them to heart. If someone in my life goes out of their way to point out that I might be doing something wrong or acting inappropriately, etc, don't I at least owe it to them to take into consideration what they are telling me? In the end it is my decision as to whether or not I continue to act a certain way or do a certain thing, but I at least owe it to that person to take what they are saying to heart and contemplate what they are trying to tell me. I owe that to them because they cared enough about me to bring it to my attention.

Caring about what others think of us is not an all or nothing game. Of course we shouldn't pay attention to bullies or people we don't respect. But to our family members, friends, partners, I believe we should let go of our pride and pay attention to what they are telling us. It might surprise you how much these people actually know about you, care about you, and can help you along your way if you care enough to let them.

First Road "Race" of 2012 Recap

At the beginning of spring this year Matt convinced me to take up biking this summer. Ok, it wasn't that hard to convince me. I was in good physical shape because of my consistent yoga practice over the last year but I had really been neglecting any cardiovascular activity. So when he mentioned biking I was all "Yeah, why not?". Since I didn't have a bike my dad decided to let me use his (Thanks Dad!!). We got it tuned up at Sportwheels and had new clip-less pedals installed. Having never used clip-less pedals before I was really nervous about trying them out. But Matt kept reassuring me that I would get the hang of it in no time so I had a bit of faith.

My first few rides with the clip-less pedals were pretty nerve wracking. Being physically attached to your bike and having to think about moving your shoe to the side before getting off the bike can be a little stressful. I will admit that I did fall down. More than once. Surprisingly though it was never when I was actually biking, always when I had stopped, unclipped one foot, put that foot on the ground but accidentally transferred body weight into the foot that was still clipped in. And then TIMBER, I fell over. The first time I could not stop laughing once I was on the ground and had done a body check to make sure I was ok. Matt said my face was priceless, complete shock. Where is candid cameras when you need them?

Back to the story... I had to upgrade my biking seat to something with more cushion and then we started hitting the trails a lot more. Sooner than I would have ever expected, we were biking 10km and 15km distances. My body was reacting well to the biking and it was proving to be a lot of fun (except for the sore bum). So we decided to sign up for a race. Well a "race" I should say. We registered for the Valley Lifecycle 50km bike ride. It wasn't really a race, more of a "let's promote health and fitness and all ride our bikes" kind of event.

We had started training for it about a month before the big day by doing shorter rides during the week (20-35km) and longer rides on the weekend (40-50km). Then last week we found out that the 50km ride was actually 62km. I will admit I felt pretty defeated at first. I've never been a cyclist and wasn't sure if I could do that distance as we had only trained for 50km. On top of that I had sore hamstrings from working out too hard earlier in the week and Matt was sore from getting back into badminton Friday night. We got up on Sunday and contemplated not going. Although I really wanted to race (especially since I had told so many people about it) I didn't want to injure myself since I was still sore and I didn't want Matt to injure himself since he was still sore as well. We decided to do a test ride around the neighbourhood and after a couple of laps we decided, what the hell, we're up and feeling ok so we might as well do it.

The experience was awesome. I was surprised with how many people were there and it was really cool to ride through Kentville's main roads and have it completely closed off for bikers. It took Matt and I about 5-10km to get into the groove of the ride but after that I found it almost easy. The scenery was so gorgeous that Matt and I want to drive the route next time we're in the area so we can take some photos. After about 1/3rd into the ride we became spaced out enough from other riders that we were pretty much alone for the rest. I prefer this way more than biking with a bunch of other people because we could be silly and make jokes and chat without people listening in. Most of the bikers tended to be pretty serious too so we probably would have only annoyed them.

We ended up finishing in just under 3 hours (I think, it wasn't timed so I don't have an exact time) which I am overly pleased with. I was guestimating it would take 3.5-3.75hr for us to finish. We only had a few problems on the route. My chain fell off twice and the second time I fell off my bike when I went to stop to put it back on. Thankfully I didn't hurt anything. The last 1/4 of the race was really hard on Matt's muscles since they were so sore to begin with. He has been so supportive of me when we were on some hard rides during training so I was really glad we stuck together for the whole ride and I could be supportive of him. I'm so used to going on bike rides with him now that I think it would be really weird, if not hard for me to ride alone.

All in all it was a super successful day. We went and stuffed our faces at Joe's Food Emporium in Wolfville after the race. The food was much needed as we probably burned between 2000 and 2500cal during the ride.

Started with some cocktails - I had a pina colada and Matt had a long island iced tea.

Appetizer was zatar fingers which is a Lebanese version of garlic fingers

This was delicious! It's called vegetarian m'nazalee and I HAVE to find out how to make it.

Now we're seriously considering doing either a metric century (100km) or a 75km race. Maybe if I have time for the training with my sprint triathlon training :)

Come Alive

Terrified. That moment's hesitation right before you grab hold of your dream and run with it. Shortness of breath. The fear of failing, or maybe, the fear of succeeding. That's what I'm feeling right now. If you know me or have read a good amount of my blog posts you'll know that I love having a goal. Something to work towards. I have so many lists in my journals it is actually kind of embarrassing. So is the amount of projects/goals I have started to work towards and have quit. Around 5 years ago I decided to stop attending university. Since then I have worked full time in good jobs but never jobs that fed my soul. I think this lack of feeding my soul has made me become indecisive about my career. Instead of pursuing something that means a lot to me, I've been doing whatever has "fallen" into my lap. What is comfortable and secure.

At the beginning of the year my dear friend Andrea and I went to have our tarot cards read. It was quiet the experience. I even have it all recorded on my phone for me to reflect back on (which I recommend for anyone that has their tarot cards read). Pierre told me a few things that really stuck out to me. He said that currently my career is in a position of non-choice. I have found my way into a job, a good job, but not the job for me. He said that the job I am in is not challenging me enough and is not feeding my creativity. From the cards I selected (I forget which ones) he said that I need to spend the near future researching areas that really inspire me and call out to me. Find a field that interests me on both a personal and professional level and then go back to school or train in that field to gain the knowledge I need to be successful. He ended that part of the reading with, "You are going to be miserable if you don't use your brain and challenge your intelligence."

That has been stuck to the back of my head for months now and I think I have finally found what I want to do. No, I have definitely found what I want to do. In my own life I have been so focused on being healthy, eating well and working out. After a lot of reflection I have realized that when I talk to people about my diet or fitness decisions I completely light up. I get so excited that someone has shown a bit of interest in my diet/fitness which I believe in turn reflects their interest in their own diet/fitness. No matter who the person is I always try to help them with recipe suggestions or types of yoga classes or work out routines, etc. So when the light bulb finally turned on a few weeks ago it didn't surprise me that this is the field that I really want to get into. I want to immerse myself in the field of health and fitness and not only use the knowledge to help myself but to teach others how to be healthy and fit as well.

For the first time in my life I feel like this is really it. This isn't some idea that is going to burn out in a few months or years. Tonight I take my first step down this road with my first night of personal trainer specialist classes. I have some really fun and creative ideas for where this career could potentially lead me and I can't wait to share the journey with you all (hello? does anyone read this?).



"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive" - Howard Thurman