21 Monday May 2012
Posted in Uncategorized
So, as some of you might know, I am studying holistic nutrition at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. The exciting part for you , is that, as a student-practitioner, I am now accepting nutrition patients for FREE for a limited period of time. That’s right, absolutely no charge, no hidden costs and no obligations of any sort on your end.
17 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Holistic Living, Nutrition
Tags
40 days to personal revolution, Baron Baptiste, cleanse, coffee, digestive health, eating on the run, eating rushed, fast food, fasting, fried food, fruit fast, fruits, junk food, overeating, processed food, standard teenage diet, starvation, sugar, vegetables
If you had told me I was going to do a fruit-fast roughly 5 years ago, I probably would’ve laughed in your face. Knowing me, I probably would’ve been munching on chips at the same time.
The idea would’ve been so ridiculous for me because:
Having never fasted before in my life, I was recently inspired to do a fruit-fast when I read 40 Days to Personal Revolution by Baron Baptiste.
Baron talks about doing the 3-day fast, because that’s how you really get rid of all the toxins, but I thought I’d try out one day first to see how it goes – if it’s something that works for me, I may even consider doing it once a week or once a month. But let’s not get carried away just yet.
Now with me: I’m a wuss when it comes to hunger. Not exaggerating a bit, I’ve been brought to tears due to hunger. I get really sharp pains in my back (So much so, that I lose my appetite. Turns out, when I start eating again, the pain magically disappeared – it took me a while to figure out that connection. I’m guessing it’s telling me that I have sufficient hydrochloric acid in my stomach and without food, it starts eating away at me. Or I have low stomach mucous to protect against the acid. Both = scary things I’d like to research. I used to get really moody too, if I missed a meal. Not cool when I’d like to keep my friends.
So, I decided on the fruit fast – at least this way, I get something in my tummy. I chose to do it on a Sunday because it is my most relaxing day this week: so if I get a lot of toxic release, it’ll affect the least amount of people (I wonder if I was sabotaging this by eating fairly badly the day before: I had a chocolate cookie, some “whites” – flour, rice, bread, some fried stuff and I also had a bit of meat – something which I’ve been mindfully reducing/excluding from my daily diet. I’m thinking in retrospect that this was probably not a good idea. On the flip side, I also had fairly nutritious meals/snacks: quinoa, burdock root tea, banana, steamed yam, and water. I also successfully avoided the grocery-store people who give out samples of processed food – huzzah!
This is what happened
Here’s what I ate from 5 am – 6 pm
Other fruit I bought and planned to eat that day, but didn’t get the chance:
We still have plenty of fruit left, which surprised be because I eat a lot on a regular basis. I thought I would have needed wayyyyyy more fruit in order to keep me satiated.
For the next fast, I intend to:
13 Sunday May 2012
Posted in Nutrition
Tags
boiling egg, egg, egg salad, grey egg yolk, Julia Childs, Julie and Julia, mayo, seven minutes, shallot
I thought I was the only one and I kept it a secret for the longest time. I’m not sure how it came out in multiple conversations, but it did and I’m glad. Because this secret of mine is apparently much more common than I thought. And by getting it out, I feel like a weight has been lifted. Once it was out in the open, I was also able to tackle it head-on.
So here it is: Out of all my years of baking stuff, boiling stuff, roasting stuff, frying stuff, steaming stuff, etc, I didn’t know how to boil an egg.
Wait! Before you laugh, I was watching Julie & Julia and at one point in the movie, Julia Childs admitted that she didn’t know how to boil an egg. Now, I know movies don’t have to be exactly accurate, but I like to believe this tidbit was the truth 
.
My egg-boiling goal was to make the yolk just-cooked, such that it was no longer runny and super bright yellow. I had had so much difficulty with this, that I started to wonder whether my standards were too high.
In the old days, I boiled it far too long and got the yolk encased in the grey ring. (Insert barfy face here). In the more recent times, I wanted that perfect egg to be a part of my egg salad…and on multiple occasions, it came out with the yolk undone. Sometimes, the whites weren’t even solid! I was apparently really, really anti-grey. I still mixed it with egg-salad ingredients (mayo and shallot), but it just wasn’t the same.
I asked around. One of my friends had the same problem, called her mom and asked, “How the hellllll do you boil an egg?” To which her mother replied, “Seven minutes, dear”. This was confirmed by google.
I
Tried
Seven
Minutes
It didn’t work (cries). It still came out with the yolk all runny. So then I asked my mom. She also said seven minutes but told me the secret: after boiling, turn off the heat, and don’t remove the egg until five minutes later. Then submerge in cold water to prevent the shell from sticking. Success!
Egg nutrition info:
Eat eggs whole! None of that eating-egg-whites-only-thing please!
03 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Holistic Living, Nutrition
Makes about 12 muffins
I admit, I’m not a fan of sugary foods. They hurt my teeth. Chocolate bars, baked goods, cookies, cakes – anything that I’ve every bought from the grocery store was too sweet for me. So, I create recipes to make them less sweet. If you’d like that bakery-style sugared snack, feel free to add sweetener – keep in mind though, there are two sources of sugar in this recipe: the turbinado sugar as well as the sweetened soy milk.
Considering substituting the all purpose flour for complete coconut flour? Watch out for:
24 Tuesday Apr 2012
Posted in Holistic Living
Tags
Eoin Finn, flexibility, forward splits, hahnemann, hanuman, hanumanasana, monkey god, Podcasts, side splits, splits, yoga
Success! I did the full Hanumanasana pose this morning, with the arms up and everything. 
I first became interested in attempting this pose when I heard its name. Don’t laugh, but “hanuman” sounded like “Hahnemann” (the man who created homeopathy) and I had to try it. Not the best justification for trying a pose, but it is what it is.
I’m not naturally flexible, so it took a while. As a kid, one my friends -Jean- used to go into the splits all the time with no difficulty at all. Her and her purple tights, matching headband, light purple-oversized sweater and white running shoes. I’ve since lost touch with her, but I remember she could do the forward splits as well as the side splits. My legs could do boomerang . So, I decided that the splits wasn’t for me and didn’t attempt it again until yoga.
But then I started doing Eoin Finn’s podcasts and he kept telling me to “show him the monkey”. It took maybe a month and a half (possibly longer) for me to arrive to where I am today – crotch on the floor and arms raised in the air like I just don’t care. It happened.
Moral of the story: you don’t necessarily lose flexibility in going from childhood to adulthood – it was the reverse for me You, do however, lose what you don’t use – so stay physically active to preserve your body and give your brain a workout to preserve your mental functioning.
Second moral of the story: being a monkey = awesome.
16 Monday Apr 2012
Posted in Holistic Living, Uncategorized
Tags
Occam's Razor, Practicing Detachment. Force shutdown. Reboot. Restart. Safe mode. Normal mode. Format. Freezing. System restore. Backup. Window's diagnosis tool. Yoga. Ame Wren. David Regelin. Troubleshooting. Dr. P
I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve been hanging around “too many” holistic people or if it’s something else, but the term “practicing detachment” keeps popping up everywhere I go. I think I’ve heard it so often, that I started to do it (yay!).
Now, despite how it sounds, “practicing detachment” isn’t about not caring or being cold, it’s about taking a step back from where you are, looking at a situation objectively and reacting in a way that is congruent with this.
For example, if you always get into the same arguments with family and you always end up angry and wound up in the exact same way, you’ll always get the same, equally angry response from them. Detachment means you think a bit before reacting, possibly saying something different – or saying what you’ve always been saying in a different way and getting a different response.
It sounds pretty logical, but I know that people are creatures of habit, so we go through our own little “Groundhog Days” over and over again without realizing.
So this is what happened: I decide to bring my laptop to the office, plug it in, plug in my mouse and it decides to stop working.
Lappy would turn on fine with no problem but then freeze on a black screen – it’s the “loading” screen right after the Vista logo disappears. It would continue to make sounds as if it were busy, but 5 minutes pass, then 10.
I decided to force shutdown and restart: this is usually my first line of defence when anything goes wrong with any computer.
Didn’t work.
I tried restarting in “safe mode”, which worked fine. Maybe I overloaded it before (from trying to start it up?) and I try “normal mode” again.
Didn’t work. Froze in the exact same place.
Back in “safe mode”, I did a system restore to one day before, the day that I had an update. Surely, this was the issue. I breathed a sign of relief when my background image loaded fine, nothing like David Regelin and Ame Wren doing arm balances to soothe the soul.
But then it froze again.
Diagnosis time in “safe mode”. Apparently, Windows thinks that nothing is wrong.
Out of ideas, I thought, “well, maybe it’s time to format” – I haven’t done it in a few years and have accumulated a LOT of junk so it’s a good time. I back up all my important stuff in “safe mode”, took a deep breath, and formatted. Mind you, that sentence sounds easy, but it took a good few hours.
Normal mode starts up fine again, starts installing Vista, no problems. Then it starts installing the extras that came with Lappy: the webcam, PowerDVD, etc…and it freezes.
That. Wasn’t. Supposed. To. Happen. That was pretty much my last resort.
At this point, several hours after this whole ordeal started, my usual reaction would’ve been to cry. Then cry to my brother, because, you know, guy who works in a bank in a position that has nothing to do with computers would definitely know how to troubleshoot my computer. And based on previous scripts, I believe that his reaction would have been, “I don’t know, have you tried restarting?” This would’ve been followed by more crying, a bit of anxiety and thoughts like, “what am I going to do?”
The decision? Detachment. Instead of the same emotional rerun all over again, I decide to take a break. Take a step back, away from the current situation, catch a breather – it might help me gain insight on the situation or, if not that, then at least help me keep my cool. I chose to read some Dr Phil during this break – might as well improve myself during the wait.
Several hours later, I take another deep breath and tried turning it on again. Freezes in the same place.
So, I force shut down. I wait about 2 minutes. I then decided, “well, I’m going to simplify everything as much as possible, because for whatever reason, Lappy seems to be overloaded”. Without really knowing how much more I could simplify (I did erase everything!), I unplug the mouse.
E.U.R.E.K.A! Like magic, my programs finish installing, no problem. I am able to copy my files back without it freezing. I can install my own programs and delete the extra ones that Lappy came with. I am able to access everything on my computer with no problems. I can access multiple programs at one time and hook up to the internet. Everything started working fine.
And thus, Occam’s Razor in all it’s glory. The simplest methods are always the best. It took me the whole weekend to restore my computer back to where it was because I was trying all those fancy, computer-savvy techniques. Apparently, all I really had to do was unplug the mouse.
Lesson. Learned.
08 Sunday Apr 2012
Posted in Gardening, Holistic Living, Nutrition
Tags
cheap health food, dandelion greens, dandelion leaves, dandelion root, dandelion tea, health food, mixed greens salad, non gmo greens, organic greens
My first experience with dandelions was with a childhood friend. Hanging out outside, dude said that eating dandelions were really good for you. I thought he just wanted to see if I would actually do it so that he could say, “Haha, Judy just ate weeds” in a sing-songy voice. He didn’t dare me (because that would obviously ruin his credibility) so I refused, seeing as he made no effort to eat it himself. In my childhood, I’ve been guilty of telling people (i.e. my brother) that something tastes awesome when it really wasn’t so that I could see his “grossed out face” after he took a bite. This was usually followed by a roar of laughter on my end. A mischievous child indeed, but it taught me what to look out for when other kids told me stuff.
But back to the dandelion story. When my friend rode away on his bike, I picked a nice yellowy one, looked at the possibly-healthy-whitish-ness that seeped out of the cut stem and became curious about it’s edibility. Since no one was looking, I took a lick. It was bitter and I threw it to the ground in disgust and knew that the guy was lying.
Fast forward to today, when I’m immersed in nutrition. Apparently, he was right; not going to tell him that, but dandelions are good for you. The roots make dandelion tea, which helps detox your liver. The leaves are commonly found in mixed green salads and contain vitamins A and C, zinc, potassium, iron, etc. It is useful in repairing skin conditions like eczema. They contain inulin which are food for your good bacteria in the gut.
So, one option is to buy dandelion leaves from the grocery store (often in those mixed green salads) or dried dandelion root at the health food store. You can also buy pre-packaged dandelion tea. But, it’s all pricey.
The other option, is to pick them from your yard – that’s where the “dirt-cheapness” comes from because they come from dirt . Since most people don’t use pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc on their yard, we’re safe from that. We don’t use chemical fertilizer at our place, so I’m safe from that – it comes highly recommended. And so, we obtain organic, non-gmo greens that grow like weeds. Huzzah!
The happy side effects of this process?
Here are my plans for them: (You can apparently use all parts of the dandelion once picked – the ultimate cheap).
Here are some other uses I found that I may or may not do:
Thanks, Mother Nature
23 Friday Mar 2012
Posted in Holistic Living
Tags
aging, anger, anxiety, charlie's angel mudra, digestion, elimination, frustration, hand flexibility, Ksepana Mudra, library, library strike, mudra, rheumatism, strong but vulnerable, surabhi mudra, tension, Wake me up before you go go, warrior three, Wham, yoga, yoga asanas, yoga on the go
It all started with a simple field trip to the library (a few months ago: they`re on strike now). Now the thing with me is that I’ve taken several long hiatuses from the library – the gaps in between visits were so long, that I’ve gotten a new library card every single time I went because their technology changed. On this most recent trip, the librarian asked me if I wanted to keep my “antique” card .
But alas, my bookshelf is overflowed and my bank account is…sort of not-yet-overflowed, so this nutrition action hero went off to the library: DASH! OPENS DOOR! GETS BOOKS!
Since I was already there, I took a look at their yoga section. As I was putting a book back, I couldn’t slide it in easily. CONFUSED! What could possibly be impeding on my book-sliding-innage? And dare I purposely mess up the Dewey decimal system in my quest for book-borrowing? MISCHIEVIOUS GRIN! Well, it turned out that a tiny book was “in the way” and I never would’ve seen it, if I hadn’t pulled out that other book. So, since the Universe was so great to me, I did the right thing and maintained the correct organization of these books (Yes, I probably would’ve done it anyway, I mean, what kind of a superhero would I be, had I messed up those books?)
HUZZAH! The tiny treasure I’m talking about is called “The Healing Power of Mudras: The Yoga of the Hands” by Rajender Menen and it was just what I needed. Since I spend a great deal of time commuting, I thought, “What better way to make use of the time, than to do hand-yoga on the bus or while I’m walking?”. Is it possible that jazzhands are out and yogahands are in? Orrr, have I just stopped caring about what other people think of me and started doing whatever the hell I want at all times? Hmm, I think this might be a sign of aging…
Anyways…EXCITED! The book details a whole bunch of mudras that I consider tiny poses for your hands that have the same sorts of magic as regular-full-body yoga. There’s stuff in there to improve digestion, anxiety and feelings of loneliness and despair, just to name a few.
Here are some of my favourites:
Charlie’s Angels Mudra
(Please try to ignore the gross bandaid…)
The official name of this one Ksepana Mudra but I like Charlie’s Angels better: It empowers me to feel like a super-pretty-girl-ready-to-kick-some-ass. KAPOW! Yoga-wise, it encourages elimination from the bowels, skin and lungs. It also relieves tension (which makes sense, I mean, if you’re letting go a bunch of stuff, it’s bound to relieve tension, no?) I like Charlie’s Angels mudra when I’m doing warrior three. I don’t know, just the combination makes me feel super strong…which is kind of funny because I’m sure if someone poked me from any angle, I would just tip over like a cow. I read in some books that a lot of the poses are strong but vulnerable at the same time. SHRUG!
Surabhi Mudra
(scanned from The Healing Power of Mudras: The Yoga of the Hands” by Rajender Menen)
It’s funny to say, but I’m not yet flexible enough to do this one yet. Also, my lefts, rights, unders and overs still get confused at times (Girl in yoga class always facing opposite of everyone else? Yeah, that’s me about 80% of the time. BLUSHING!) I would have never in a million years would have guessed that I had lost flexibility in my hands. But here I was, Mudra book in front of me, tongue sticking slightly out in concentration and having difficulty manoeuvring my fingers to look like the ones in the book. This pose benefits rheumatism, which I’m so glad I don’t have because my pinkies don’t want to touch my ring fingers and my index fingers don’t want to touch my middle fingers – and I believe it’s all mutual, too. But, like with all my other yoga poses, this mudra will reveal itself to me when it is time, “no anger or frustration, leave it behind” as one of my favourite yoga-instructor says.
And, for all those Wham fans out there, the title was for you .
13 Tuesday Mar 2012
Posted in Homeopathy, Uncategorized
Tags
boy bands, brandon brazier, britney, caesar salad dressing, christina, enthusiastic, garlic, health-food-store smell, homeopathic remedy picture, obsessive, onions, passionate, patchouli, renee's dressing, thrive diet, thrive fitness, yoga
I’m a little obsessive. And by “a little”, I mean “I’m pretty sure if I saw this characteristic in someone else, I’d say they’re crazy”. The nicer people say I’m “passionate” about the things I do or that I show “great enthusiasm”, annnnnnd as I’ve been told – it is really “refreshing”. But really, it all boils down to: “I’m kind of crazy”. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’m just telling it like it is.
So, here is the list of stuff that I’ve obsessed about:
• Caesar Salad Dressing by Renee’s
“I put that #%! on everything!” – well, I used to, anyways. There was even a period of time, when I toasted a bagel and only put the dressing on. It was delicious and I would so do it again.
• Boy bands
I was born in the 80′s…It was unavoidable. Well, it was avoidable by some, but I’m really not a hater)
• Britney and Christina
Ditto the last excuse.
• Onions
Yup, I went through an “onion” phase”. They were cooked, so I still had friends
• Garlic
This is my current one. At the office, we were talking about how some people smell like “health-food store” (being the health-food-store/essential-oil fan, I believe it’s the smell of Patchouli that my co-worker despises). Having had a history of using eucalyptus essential oil regularly, I fearfully asked whether I ever smelled like “health food store”. “No”, they responded, “but you smell like garlic a lot”. This was followed by a lot of laughter. It was funny because it was true
• Yoga
This is also a current one. For whatever reason, I can’t get it out of my mind: I google poses, I attend classes, I practice daily and if I skip a day, I spend a lot of time thinking about doing it. I don’t know if that’s “healthy” or if it’s me being addicted to the endorphins released during exercise – I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s a real thing. Brandon Brazier mentions exercise-addiction in one of his Thrive books.
And the list can go on (I can probably go on for days). But the thing is, I blame my remedy picture. With homeopathy, we look at the entire individual: this includes physical symptoms, emotional symptoms and mental symptoms. When you read the indications for prescribing the remedy I’m on, it says, “Mind – fixed ideas”. Indeed. Actually, when you read the remedy description, it’s like reading passages about me, lol…that’s how you know it’s a well-selected remedy (Thank you, Homeopath, Emily) but that’s a story for another day. For this blogpost, it’s” obsessive thoughts” – It’s my “crazy”, it says so in books.
10 Saturday Mar 2012
Posted in Holistic Living, Nutrition
Tags
apples, baked chips, baked plantain chips, carrots, health, homemade chips, low GI, mandolin, mandoline, plantain, plantain chips, plantain recipe, potato peeler, taro
Everyone knows I love chips. They go into my 20% junk food because they’re so, so good. There used to be a store -I think it was called “The Chippery”- where they made potato chips right before your eyes. It was awesome.
I googled it, and apparently, it still exists (*phew* I haven’t had them in so long that I was beginning to wonder if I imagined the whole thing. I like it when I’m not crazy )
Today’s adventure involved me, a plantain and some chip-making. It was surprisingly easy.
Ingredients
• Green plantain(s)
• Olive oil
• Optional seasoning: (at the risk of sounding insanely bland with my love-of-water-and-all-things-vanilla, I really like my chips unseasoned) But, you can totally try things like:
○ Salt
○ Garlic powder
○ Paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cayenne
Directions
• Cut skin of plantain lengthwise, being careful not to cut into the plantain meat.
• Carefully peel off the skin, making more lengthwise cuts into the skin when needed (and it will be necessary, if you don’t want to mash the plantain)
• Slice plantain with a mandoline/mandolin. I went the somewhat ghetto route and used a potato peeler instead.
• Toss slices into bowl with a bit of oil and seasoning, if desired
• Arrange a single layer on parchment paper, on a cookie sheet
• Bake at 350F for about 10 minutes – watch carefully because the chips can turn from sunny yellow to burnt brown fairly quickly.
• Enjoy once cooled. Crispiness doesn’t last long.
What makes plantains so awesome:
• Looks like a banana, smells like a banana, tastes like a potato and has a texture similar to taro. What a crazy fruit
• Contains mostly carbohydrates
• Low glycemic index food – so it maintains more balanced blood sugar levels
• High in vitamin C, vitamin A
• Like bananas, high in potassium
• Contains magnesium, phosphate
• Good source of fibre
• Baking them yourself is better than store-bought because store-bought are deep fried
Next adventure, I’d love to substitute the plantain with some taro, that might turn out delicious…*gasp* or carrots, apples…
