Training to Live

cinnamon buns that is. jon is coming home this evening for something he has to be in the city for tomorrow, and since i have the day off work (more on that later), i thought i would get a really yummy breakfast ready. i love his occasional mid-week visits, and i feel like they should be celebrated because they are special.

my operation does not look quite like the above. i will only be making rolls for two people and maybe a few extra to share. they will fit on two cake pans. they will be just as yummy as how’s though! pictures to come. i’m off to watch some julie and julia while my dough rises.

nighty night!

a lot, that’s what.

(warning: very orangey post ahead. i got at least a week’s worth of beta caratene today)

this squash was twice as big as my head! it dwarfed the squash at the grocery store- they looked like miniature toy breeds. my squash was a manly man squash. i have two more, just like it!

it was $2 from the apple orchard we frequent in waterloo. my favourite farmer from my farmer’s market told me he plants squash in the rows between his fruit trees, so i imagine the martins do the same. it’s efficient use of the land. most of their squash go for a dollar each, but these were monster-size, so we paid two. still, what a deal!

first there was soup:

butternut-apple-pear soup. i decided to go with a veggie stock that i made last night instead of my usual chicken broth. i cubed half the squash and put it in a pot with 3-4 pears that were on their last legs and several glugs of apple cider and let it boil away. when everything was nice and tender, i went at it with my favourite immersion blender. for blended soups, there’s no comparison! it is quick, easy and the cleanup is a breeze (compared to a normal blender, which also sometimes is tricky when dealing with hot soup!). along with some crackers and mamapea chickpeas, we called it lunch! i still have half a gallon of soup left over!

with the second half of the squash, i decided to try something completely different. butternut squash crumble. what a novel idea! squash and some tomato instead of apples. parmesan cheese and parsley instead of sugar in the flour/butter crumble topping. brilliant! i won’t be able to report on the taste until tomorrow (jon’s parents are coming over), but it sure smells good and looks gorgeous! i’ll give it one thumb up so far. i found the recipe on twitter from @freerecipeguide which has so far been a pretty good source of interesting food tidbits for me lately. you should check it out.

i still have 3 cups of cubed (uncooked) squash left over – not sure what to do with that yet. maybe some squash butter? squash oats? we’ll seeeee.

i’m going to go do some dishes, throw in some laundry and try and squeeze in some yoga before bed. tomorrow is going to be a big day.

remember this from yesterday?

the interwebs lied! i came home with a splitting headache after a long long day of conference attending. why can’t our conferences be more fun-like. like blogher or the healthy living summit? i missed my bus stop coming home (am not used to taking the bus home in the pitch dark and just did not see my street) and had to walk an extra half mile. not cool.

only a piece of pie will do. (i know i know, this doesn’t really go with the principles for happiness from yesterday, but i probably would have had some pie regardless of how crappy i felt anyway, since i have pie, and it needs to be consumed before it goes bad!)

i am particularly proud of this pie. sure, it’s just another step on my journey to making better pies, but it was my first time doing a lattice top and i think it turned out pretty awesome. recipe from bella eats. the filling wound up ridiculously sweet, but i suspect this was my fault for straight substituting brown sugar for turbinado. silly me. i skipped the raisins (i don’t have that stupid raisins shirt for nothing!) and used dried craisins instead. aside from the supersweet (which i have discovered pairs very well with a scoop of plain greek yogurt. nice and tart), it was a good pie. i used tapioca flour instead of the quick cook tapioca, and used 50% more, as per my google search. in future, i will use a little more tapioca, because i had more liquid than i’d like after cooking. still, i was mostly thrilled with the results (and very happy with the appearance!) martha’s pâte brisée recipe pulled through, once again!

really. doesn’t this just scream holiday? so tasty

i should have submitted this for the BSI: dried fruit instead of the nothing that i actually submitted (it was on my google task list, too! i just didn’t get around to it. bugger). i still have about a quarter bushel of gala apples left in my cold store to use up before we buy another half bushel. i smell many more pies in my future. better stock up on butter!

yoga two mornings in a row is awesome, but now my muscles are really feeling it from all the utkatasanas (chair pose) and twists. also. i am on day 4 of nablopomo and still at it.

it’s been a busy few weeks here, north of 44 (well. 43.39° really) let’s see:

i ran a half marathon the weekend before last. it was cold! we accidentally slept in 70 minutes, waking up just about an hour and a half before the race started. luckily the start was only a 25 minute drive from my house. there was a whole lot of scrambling going on! it was also my first race with the garmin (that i have named kenneth, after kenneth the page) which was pretty awesome. i am such a data nerd and being able to access so much information on the fly is pretty great. i managed to take off about 3-4 minutes from the half marathon i ran 3 weeks earlier. i’ll take it! running season is officially over, but since i’m having so much fun with my garmin (and i signed up for pile on the miles!), i’ll probably keep at it until the snow flies. i am hoping jack frost holds out until late november, though i am excited for snowshoeing season (not so excited for shovelling the driveway)!

left: right at the halfway point, where i switched bottles and handed off my gloves (which i immediately regretted when my hands got cold again) right: the end! sweaty, tired and ready for some POUTINE! (my post race treat)

i went to a conference put on by the ontario association of impact assessment. (environmental impact assessment is what i do at my job). there were a bunch of students from a nearby college (niagara) that has a pretty good diploma in environmental management (and also winery and viticulture studies!). the kids were told to network with the professionals. it was so weird being one of the professionals because it still really feels like i am a student. anyway, i talked to lots of them (many of them did the same undergrad program as me and went on to college after university to get a more hands on education) and told them what i do and how i ended up where i work, and then one of them told me she wanted to be just like me when she grew up. hahaha

.

i made a lot of pie. my pie crust has improved immensely! last year it was just kind of meh and this year i am actually getting compliments. i owe it all to martha stewart and alton brown. (and use real butter and bella eats, bien sûr). this weekend i will break out the cranberries for the cranapple pie i have been planning, where i will work on my lattice top and use tapioca flour. it’s exciting for sure. this is one of my rustic apple galettes. i accidentally forgot to add some flour to the sugar/butter/spice topping, so it was a little juice, but still extra delicious.

.

the boy went back to his parents’ farm last weekend for a quick visit (and a funeral ), and came home with a giant cooler filled with delicious grass fed free range beef from his uncle and bags and bags of veggies. i had to remove my ice cream maker bowls from the freezer to make room for all the cow! peppers got sliced and frozen into quart bags for later use in soups and stews, broccoli was turned into soup, beets were also turned into a soup i submitted for megan’s BSI: acorn squash, and carrots have been snacked on. i never forget how lucky i am to have such easy access to so much good, honest food. jon also brought home a quart of raspberries, which picked after the first frost. we had to eat them quickly!

.

the soups live on in my freezer and fridge. i seem to have no less than 3 different types of homemade soup on hand at a time life is good. the beet soup was awesome. i don’t like beets much much but i needed to use them and they are super good for you. my strategy for not getting the flu this season is 4 fold: 1) i will eat crazy well, all the vitamins and everything 2) i will exercise lots (but not too much to wear myself down) 3) i will dress properly when outside and 4) i will get enough sleep. i’m not messing around. skipping the flu shot this year and not getting the H1N1 vaccine either (i keep hearing terrible things about it!) so hopefully my game plan works. i have so far avoided the first round of bouts of sickness at my office.

this is one of my secrets. beets + squash cover a lot of vitamin bases and are fiberific. candied bacon makes everything better!

.

this past weekend, we finally got some nice weather (october has been cold, dreary and wet!) so we hit the trails and went for a hike. i love how the forest glows in the fall. we ventured off the trails for a bit, considered fording a small stream (the idea freezing cold water convinced us that this was not a good plan) and did a lot of climbing. sunshine and fresh air are so good for the soul.

.

i’m working on getting my life organized and on track. i live in a pretty large house, and even though i live by myself during the week, i somehow manage to easily make lots of messes that are not so easy for me to straighten out. living by myself also makes me accountable to no one: no one who will say anything if i leave my folded (or even unfolded!) clean laundry in the basked for a few extra days, or if the dishwasher remains unemptied. no one says anything when there are piles of paper on my desk. i’ve finally reached the point where i can’t really deal with it anymore though, and i am taking it one step at a time, with the help of nerd kerf. i organized my online life a few weeks ago (gmail) and am now working on using google tasks and my calendar to tackle the rest of my life.

because i hate cleaning and after a long day of work and a hard bike ride home, all i often want to do is curl up with some tv shows, i am working hard to keep things manageable. in addition to little day to day things that i have to do (like empty the dishwasher after i run it, or take out the garbage on garbage day, etc), i have scheduled one or two medium chores per day: laundry, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, floors, dusting, etc. so far it’s working quite well, but i am only on day two! this week i plan to take care of the cleaning and next week i will work on the clutter. (desk, closet, dresser, etc) i love the feeling of being neat and organized, but sometimes i let things fall to the wayside. google tasks has been excellent for keeping me on top of things. i’ll be sure to show you some after pictures (yes, i am too ashamed of before shots to share!)

i also plan to work on this regular posting thing. here’s to a november filled with blogging!

i made this almost two weeks ago and just never got around to posting. go me! i have since made many many awesome things and failed to photograph any of them for blogging. i promise to do better this weekend! monday is canadian thanksgiving. there will be at least one pie in the works (pumpkin) but maybe two (plum? apple/cranberry?) and the savour side that i am supposed to take to the family meal we are invited to.
this was my entry for week #4 in erin’s keep it local challenge. check out all the awesome other entries.
i had big plans for this week and somehow the timing just worked out all wrong. monday – friday was crazy busy as per usual and then i had a half marathon on sunday. that means no new foods on saturday. not even local ones. so i decided to wing something for a sunday supper, except that on sunday after i got home from the race, all i felt like doing was napping! this martha stewart recipe was a lot to attempt, even though i cut some (highly recommended!) corners to make things easier.

sweet potato lasagna: (as inspired by martha’s cannelloni @ http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/sweet-potato-cannelloni seen somewhere on a blog. i don’t remember exactly where. possibly from meghann?)
there is no map this week. some things (like the sweet potatoes) came from the “grown close to home” section at the grocery store, so i don’t know *exactly* where they came from.

• 3 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 pound each)
• 3/4 cup low-fat cottage cheese (all cow dairy here is fairly local but not exactly pin pointable, due to canadian dairy rules. you can’t go to a farm and buy cow milk or milk products, but you can pretty much guarantee that your dairy products come from smallish farms in and around the area where the dairy is, which is reasonably close to me)
• 3/4 cup diced Fuji apple (skin on) (i used Niagara pears instead, since we haven’t visited the apple farm yet for our first bushel)
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives – these were from my backyard!
• 1 piece (2 ounces) Parmesan cheese, half grated and half shaved (see above. i used a canadian variety, but this one probably came from quebec. they produce most of our hard cheeses)
• 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
• Freshly ground pepper, to taste
• Vegetable-oil cooking spray
• 1 tablespoon walnut oil (skipped)
• 1/3 cup chopped toasted walnuts (about 1 ounce) (skipped, walnuts are not even sort of local)

the recipe was for cannelloni, but rolling and stuffing slices of sweet potato was more than i could handle today after the run. as it were, it is really hard (impossible?) to slice sweet potatoes thin enough to roll without breaking! even with my mandolin, which had to be dismantled to sharpen with my knife sharpener. the lasagna seemed like a good idea. in the end, it worked out ok. it did not taste absolutely fabulous but it was different + very quintessentially autumnal (apples, pears and sweet potatoes are three of my fall favourites) so i’ll chalk it up as a minor success. it did the job restocking my glycogen stores with all the starch, and the cottage cheese provided some muscle recovery protein.

i think apple would probably have been better. also, some bacon may have improved the taste profile. breadcrumb crust topping is always a nice touch on oven casseroles. the filling was pretty tasty; i would use it again with proper noodles. slices of sweet potato don’t really compare to pasta. i would have expected more awesome from a martha dish, which are usually much more stellar, but. i suppose you can’t win them all!

week three of erin’s keep it local challenge found me a little stressed. this week was crazy, and i was at an out of town meeting on the day of my local farmer’s market. in fact, i took the train back into the city + a subway north as fast as i can to get to the park where the farmers are 8 minutes before closing time! i stocked up on a few usuals (english cucumbers, niagara peaches, some concord grapes) but also one new find (edamame). nothing really that would be supper-like and i was out of ideas.

luckily i wasn’t on my own this weekend. everything is better when you have someone to share it with, even (especially?) stress! i asked jon what he felt like having and indicated that it had to be local. he mocked my within 200 miles of localness (this is the boy that grew up on a farm and could pretty much feed himself by stepping out into the field closest to the house. dessert? the raspberry bushes off the kitchen), but he did say that he felt like potatoes. this still didn’t really help me as i didn’t have much to go =with= the potatoes. (peaches and potatoes? yum). i opened up the freezer to see if we had any chicken for lunch yesterday when i saw the last package of sausages we got from tom the butcher last time we were back at the farm in brockville this summer. tom makes fantastic sausages, and it is super cool to get them right from the source (though it is a little smelly out back!). down the street from tom is the campbell farm, where you can get larger than extra large eggs! they are so big that they don’t even really fit in the cartons. i love country living. anyway, the discovery of the sausages was the solution to my problem: bangers and mash and mushy peas. (we had non-mushy edamames instead). on the side we enjoyed some icicle pickles that jon’s mother made (using slicers from their farm) and a scoop of jon’s grandmother’s mustard beans (which coincidentally don’t actually contain any mustard) also using yellow beans from the farm. i got a jar of the mustard beans in my christmas stocking last year. they were good companions to the flavourful bratwursts. the mash (super creamy with some ontario milk and butter!) was made of the last of my red brockville farm potatoes. i guess we’re due for another visit, eh?

this week’s meal was kind of the opposite of last week, in that it was sadly shared with no one. i tried to make it every bit as delicious though, even though i was just cooking for myself, as too often when it’s just me, i will supper on the random ingredients of what would be a meal without bothering to properly assemble anything onto a plate.

this ended up taking longer than i planned, but i didn’t have much else to do so i didn’t mind a time-intensive meal. i also made a whole pile of dirty dishes!! thank goodness for the dishwasher.

yikes.

the map: green pin on the right – Brockville (onions), dark blue pin – Markham (raspberries), turquoise pin – Richmond Hill (me! bell pepper), yellow pin – Guelph (eggs, zucchini), green pin on left – Innerkip (corn), purple pin – London (wheatberries), red pin – Jordan Station (heirloom tomatoes, peaches)

the raw materials:

red bell pepper, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, onion (with dirt from the field!), wheatberries, corn on the cob, another tomato

an “extra gros” (extra large, en français) brown free run egg, peach, raspberries that we picked last weekend

process: sautéed veggies (all except bell pepper) until soft and cooked, grilled corn and simmered wheatberries until satisfactorily chewy. shaved corn into pan of veggies, stirred in wheatberries.

dropped the hollowed out bell pepper into some boiling water for a few minutes until it was soft. preheated the oven (well. it was already on from another project), filled the pepper with the stuffing (and topped with some canadian “parmesan” cheese shavings) and put it into the oven to warm through and have the cheese melt.

meanwhile: i peeled and sliced up 6 peaches (no easy task!) and cooked them on the stove for about 10 minutes with some (non-local) sugar, water + some ginger for zing. puréed in the blender, chilled in an ice bath, and then threw into the ice cream maker to create some sorbet.

when you’re as much of an ice cream maker as i am, you often find yourself inundated with egg whites. there are only so many omelettes you can handle (though i may have to have one for an eat local meal!) and angel food cake is a fantastic way to use up a whole bunch (12) at once. only the eggs were local, but i figured since they comprised the biggest volume of the entire recipe, the cake could kind of count as a local dessert. i used this recipe. after the cake had cooled, i cut myself a piece, scooped some sorbet on the side, and sprinkled a few of my remaining unjammed, unfrozen freshly picked raspberries. what an end to my meal! (low fat to boot plus LOADED with protein. this makes up for the lack of protein in my main)

last weekend, in the midst of all our labour day relaxing (a much much needed weekend of rest from a summer’s worth of running around madly), we decided to have another mini farm adventure. we got up bright and early, stopped at our local chez cora’s for some breakfast waffles and hit the u pick farm as soon as it opened for picking (9am). on weekends, the picking rows tend to get really crowded and if you get there too late, you could be out of luck for finding good berries. plus you have to deal with lots of people in and out of your rows and this can sometimes make me cranky!

i tried to get a picture of my awesome picking getup, but apparently clearly failed (see top right). i had a rainbow belt on my (belt-loop-less pants) holding up a white 4L basket with two quart plastic ziploc containers inside the basket leaving both my hands free for picking. i was advised to do this by my expert picker (top left) who managed to get at least twice as many berries as me (hey, he has had more practice!). this is a fantastic trick and i highly recommend you try this out for any kind of berry picking that involves standing up (i’m not sure it would work so well for strawberries). i remembered my ipod, and rocked out to some feist and imogen heap while i piled my baskets full of fruit.

we got about 12 pounds of berries. i froze 5, made a raspberry pie, 7+ jars of jam (4 all raspberry, 3 raspberry/ginger/peach, inspired by bella eats) and kept a couple quarts out for eating (in smoothies, on yogurt, with granola, on top of angel food cake). yum! at $3.50 per pound, this was a whole lot cheaper than buying raspberries from the farmer’s market, where a pint (approximately half a pound) can go for $4-6 depending on the month. frozen raspberries and the jam will keep me happy through the winter until we can go pick again. it was the perfect way to spend a sunny morning.

up until a couple years ago, i never really gave much thought to my food mileage. it wasn’t until i read barbara kingsolver’s animal, vegetable, miracle (one of my all time favourite reads) that i stopped to consider how silly it was that my food was coming and going further than i was. i pledged to eat as locally as i could (i even gave up bananas and avocados for a while) and keep with the seasons. this meant no may strawberries, no matter how tempting those clamshell boxes of red jewels were, no asparagus after june, and no corn until august. it was difficult at first, but when i realized how much more delicious the things i was eating were when they were properly at their peak, it was all worth while. it made my favourite foods more special when i couldn’t have them just any old time i wanted.

sure i am always a little sad when raspberry season ends, but i know that big, juicy niagara peaches are right behind. and then there’s the sweet corn. and then the pumpkin and squash and the changing of the leaves. and then the snow comes, and i can go snowshoeing and sit by the fireplace and read books and snuggle under my down duvet. our society has conditioned us to lose all appreciation for the changing of the seasons- every imaginable fruit can be obtained any time of year, you can maintain your room temperature at a comfortable 24°C all year round (and wear shorts inside!) and fly away to sunny beaches in february. i am trying to go back. to return to the days of our grandparents and their grandparents. where every season was special in its own way. i can never say what i love the most anymore: summer, fall, winter or spring. my favourite season is the one we’re in now.

barbara kingsolver taught me about canning, so i could preserve local bounty at it’s freshest myself, and continue keeping my food mileage low even in the cold months when nothing grows. i have my cold store of root vegetables and potatoes, a supply of squash and jars of jam and tomato sauce, fruits of my summer labours. the raspberries and strawberries i dried in my dehydrator brighten my granola and the “sun” dried tomatoes i made livens soup up. i always freeze the red bell peppers that my garden produces for quick pizzas, rice stews and soups in the cold months along with quarts of berries, picked from my favourite local u-pick. of course i’m not perfect. i usually cave and buy fresh pineapple, when i see it on sale. my banana-fast was hard (oatmeal is so much better with fluffy ‘naners) and i eat lots of citrus in the winter (it’s how i stay healthy), but i do try and make better choices when i can: florida oranges, instead of ones from south africa, for example. we just have to do the best we can.

in case you haven’t been following for too long, i am a farmer’s market addict. every thursday, on twitter, you can see what i’ve bought for the week, usually more than i can shove into my panniers and carry the 8 miles home on my bike, but i manage. all for the sake of good watermelon, freshly picked corn and peaches with integrity that don’t go mushy after a day. i love being able to see the person that planted my peas just after the last snow, the ones who painstakingly kept the weeds away, the people who dug up my carrots and potatoes. it makes the food i eat seem much more real, more honest. i once asked a bunch of kids i was teaching if they knew where their food came from, and all of them responded with “loblaws” (our local grocery chain). it made me sad that not one kid recognized that it is the farmers that feed cities. i hope things can change with our generation and the next one. i hope that i can pass along my love for the market, for farming and for delicious, fresh food.

(a summer of markets: brockville, boston, cambridge, north york)

when i met erin at the healthy living summit, i knew i had to take part in her keep it local challenge for september. i already eat almost entirely locally (as much as possible), but the challenge of making one meal per week of *entirely* local ingredients (excepting spices, condiments etc) was something i was up for! this is my map for week 1. (because i shop at the same market each week, my maps will probably be pretty similar throughout the month). not too shabby-

i decided to start the month off with a special meal. my sister and her boyfriend were visiting from california, so i cooked much more than i usually would for a weeknight meal. we had pork with a peach marinade, roasted potatoes and a raw pasta salad of zucchini, cucumber, and tomatoes (with spicy globe basil). to drink, i made a frozen watermelon slush, spiked with some fresh mint (and a glug of malibu rum, which was sadly not local). i apologize for the picture. my guests arrived much later than actual supper time, by which point the sun was long gone and i had to resort to flash. be assured, it was delicious.

(this post is meant to be funny. please do not be offended)

since the title of my blog is “training to live”, i have decided that i need to do more of the training and experiencing, primarily of lifestyles other than my own. first up is my migrant labour fantasy camp experience. to be clear, i did not have *the whole* experience, i just went for the starter camp. the full package includes waiting to get picked up in a home depot parking lot, then get taken somewhere where you proceeded to pick fruit and veggies/do construction to later. the final step is being raided by immigration. i did not experience that part, nor do i hope i ever do.

apparently, people pay good money for these experiences. case in point.

anyway, last year, i went on a super hippie trip with the toronto locavores to a winery in eastern ontario to help with their harvest. they fed us lunch (a slow food lunch, all locally sourced), let us drink lots of wine, and we picked buckets and buckets of grapes. i pretended i was an illegal. (sorry about the quality of the pictures. this is when my old camera started taking pictures in funky colours. ie: blue and green)

well, i enjoyed that experience so much that i decided to go for round #2. the boy’s parents have a farm (also in eastern ontario) and sometimes in the summer, we try and go visit and help out because there is always so much to be done on the farm. our efforts are rewarded with delicious food and all the veggies we can pack into the car. plus in between work, there are kittens to play with and horses to feed. idyllic, almost. most migrant labourers do not have it this good.

this time, in addition to our usual picking help, we also got to spend a day at market, helping to sell the fruits of a season’s worth of labour. i jumped at this opportunity, because as a farmer’s market-a-holic, (i seriously do have a problem. see thursday updates on twitter on how much i have to lug home) i always dig being on the other side of the table. i love talking to the farmers and oohing and ahhing over the beautiful peaches. i try and scope out other farmer’s markets when i travel (i found two in boston!) which is always fun.

of course, real migrant labourers do not take cameras out into the fields with them, so i don’t have any actual picking action shots to show. i did manage to get away from the stall at the farmer’s market, to photograph it and add to my collection of market pictures from all around. the day was fantastic. we had lovely (unseasonably dry and sunny!) weather. i loved seeing and talking to all the customers. there were only a few grumps that complained about prices being too high. i wanted to tell them to try picking beans on your hands and knees for an afternoon and charging less than $4/quart, and see how that feels, but i kept my mouth shut and just shrugged a “sorry”. if you want dirt cheap produce, you’ll have to go elsewhere. it was crazy busy at times but i loved it.

we got to snack on butter tarts, made by the lady a few stalls down (she makes killer pies!) and juice that jon’s grandma brought us. i’m sure most labourers do not get treated so well. we were lucky.

half of our double set of stalls. lettuce, potatoes, beans (yellow and green), snow and snap peas, and more potatoes

the other half: grandpa (and the van i sometimes get to drive) with the cauliflower, carrots, beets, onions, and various cukes (english and field and slicers).

an organic farmer (sadly my market does not carry anything officially organic) plus meat! also not available at my market.

live entertainment

i liked the berry stand the best.

jams! and salsas! and other canned things. looks like my cold store my labels are prettier. and my stuff is all local. this guy had some pineapple jam. what?

i signed up for erin’s keep it local challenge for september. this ties in perfectly with my addiction + my commitment to supporting local farmers (especially since i have seen first hand how hard it can be). i have decided that i am happy to up my grocery spending dollars if they will go towards the above and to organic dairy. i am working on other areas of improvement. i am always open to suggestions.

so there you have, episode 1 in my experience series. episode 2 should be especially entertaining. i am taking requests for future experience weekends. is there anything that i really must do? tell me!!

(apologies for the lack of pictures! i feel like i failed as a blogger this weekend, but then i figured that there would be zillions of the same pictures everywhere on the interweb so you can see everyone else’ here)

the morning of the summit went extremely smoothly. i haven’t been to that many conferences, but it seems like there are always glitches and people’s names not being on the proper lists, etc etc. i was there early to drop off my jam at the TNT bake sale table, so i was probably one of the first to check in. there were two lovely ladies working the desk when i got there. swag bags were all ready to go and they even knew what size shirt i wanted! that’s service. i wrote up a “hello my name is” sticker for my shirt and got right down to business: breakfast (it’s the most important meal of the day).

i am a yogurt addict. (yogurts anonymous? maybe i should go! i tried making my own last night and it failed, but i haven’t given up), so the stonyfield oikos + mix my granola bar was definitely one of the things i was most looking forward to! i prefer plain yogurt to the ones with fruit mixed in (though i hear strawberry oikos is fantastic….), so I decided to go with a honey, since i usually drizzle some honey on my yogurt and granola anyway. holy yum!!! after the first bite, i felt deeply sorry for myself and not being able to buy oikos here in canada. it was really that good. reminded me of the yogurt my grandmother made for me as a kid, but 0% fat. how is that possible? it’s so delightfully creamy and rich. i enjoyed it down to the last drop. the granola was pretty good too (think i got the goji berry one? it had gummy bears in it! how fun) but it wasn’t like crazy awesome stand out fantastic the way the yogurt was. stonyfield is a tough one to stand up next to

morning sessions were educational. first up, a registered dietitian, Janel Ovrut, spoke about healthy living and healthy eating (and moderation!). it was interesting. i was just diagnosed with crazy low iron stores and have to take pills for a while. since i do not eat a whole lot of meat products, i’ve considered that perhaps a dietitian could help me plan eating for optimum iron absorption better than my family doctor, who just handed me a pamphlet (for teen girls, no less!) put out by the national beef organization, which only lauded the iron benefits of red meat.

then it was the awesome (and canadian!) zesty for blogging 101. although i’ve been blogging in bits and pieces here and there since 2001, i learned a whole bunch of useful tips. 1) get your own domain 2) host yourself 3) be careful with your ads/sponsorships/etc. as you can see, i’ve already started to take his advice.

lunch was a build your own sandwich bar that featured a variety of breads, turkey (or chicken?), cheeses and loads of veggies. the highlight for me was definitely the caprese salad (best mozzarella i’ve had in ages!) and the roasted peppers/zucchini.  

the afternoon was definitely the best part of the day. the keynote speaker from stonyfield, Regina Beidler, an organic dairy farmer was absolutely amazing. my boyfriend’s family has a similarly sized small farm, and it is one of my favorite places to go and just be. over the past few years, i have become quite taken (obsessed?) with the idea of small family farms and do my best to support them at my local markets as much as i can. i’ve always been curious about dairy farming and quotas and all the high tech stuff that comes with dairy farming. it was wonderful to hear regina talk about her family, their days at the farm, and what being organic means to them and why they went that way. her farm in vermont was picturesque and the stories she shared were heartwarming. her daughter who came with her was so cute! i have officially switched to getting my milk from a canadian dairy company called organic meadow. they operate on a similar coop system and get their supply from small farms around the southern part of the province. it makes me feel good to be supporting this, not to mention that the milk tastes awesome.

the other big part of the afternoon was caitlin’s operation beautiful presentation. OB is such an amazing idea and has grown into this amazing viral guerilla marketing end to negative self-thoughts/fat talk. i’ve been leaving little notes for people here and there and noticing a change in both the way i feel about myself AND the way i am starting to look at other people. it’s an awesome thing. (plus! this week there is an operation beautiful charity necklace drive going on this week that you should definitely check out for two great causes in one plus a gorgeous necklace). caitlin inspires me in so many ways! anyway, at the end of the presentation, we were given notecards to write two things that we love about ourselves to be entered in a big prize draw.

my card read: things i love about myself

-inside: the ability to become emotionally invested in people/things (this could seems like not a good thing. i’m always told that i should distance my emotions from stuff, but i *like* to feel)

-outside: my smile (the other day at the farmer’s market, one of the farmers i frequent told me how nice it is to see me smiling so much all the time. i always remember this and am thankful for all the wonderful things i have to smile about)

the grand prize was a $300 gift card for athleta (a fitness gear store, operated by the GAP) and there were two second prizes of Amy’s soup gift packs. the draw was really cool because we got to hear some of the things that other people loved about themselves. general positivity all around!

i was lucky enough to have my card picked for the athleta prize, which is crazy since i never ever win draws. i am convinced that the random integer generator doesn’t like me but kath’s hand picked me!! soooo exciting. thanks athleta!

(picture stolen from Meghann)

As it were, I was planning a shopping excursion to the mall for Sunday, so this couldn’t have been more perfect timing! SPREE. More on that in a bit.

The TNT bake sale went really well! I was very excited that lots of people bid on my jam. A HangryPants sister won the set.

The afternoon events wrapped up with a talk on fitness for everyone by the bloggers and a group photo, taken by hangry mark! i challenge someone to tag all the faces. that would be awesome. i can be spotted near the middle. kath is in green jacket. meghan is in a dark turquoise shirt to her left (your right). there is someone in a black shirt further left (right) and i am directly behind. maybe you can see the purple of the shirt i was wearing, but probably not. anyway. that is all of the lovely ladies (and 2 gentlemen)