In our family, there is clearly a blip in the genetic code. Somewhere on a DNA strand, there’s a G that should have been a C… or something. As a result, my sisters and I have always eaten *one food at a time* off our plates.

Anyone else, or is this weird?

My strategy was always to save the best for last… which meant veggies first when I was growing up. And if, god forbid, my mother served peas, I wanted to die. I used to take them like pills, swigging them down with milk and praying for it to end.

When I became more weight conscious, I realised that this strategy probably meant I was eating more than I needed to, because I might have been full already by the time I reached the main event… but I had earned it by then, and I was going to eat it NO MATTER WHAT.

It’s been a hard habit to break, even though I could see the draw-backs… until now, that is! For dinner tonight, I started with the protein. Truly odd for me: the pan-seared (sounds better than “fried”), soy-sauce-and-sesame-oil tofu (also LOVE!) came first… and *then* the main event was the veg.

And how this came to pass is this:

Two nights ago, I made BORSCHT! You might have heard me bleet about beet-hating before, and I sincerely do. But in Van, Tara and I were invited to her neighbours’ for dinner, and Natasha, our hostess, is Russian. She made Borscht, and she made me a believer.

I have never been this excited in my kitchen when I wasn’t baking… but there’s just something about preparing food that makes it look like you’ve done an autopsy in your kitchen! Not that I’m thrilled with autopsies, but I love cooking with extreme colours… beets + tomato base? Yeah, that was red with red and red.

I’ll share the recipe below, but know that Natasha was translating it from Russian off the back of a scrap of paper (this woman is a KINDRED SPIRIT!), and sometimes there was a 50% variance in ingredients (if it’s 1-2 beets, that’s going to make it a different beast if you choose just 1, or all 2, right?). So mine wasn’t exactly like hers in the end, I think her genetic code guided her a bit , but it’s still pretty darn tasty…

Tonight, I ate the red one last. It was veggie, it was VEGAN (until I threw a dollop of yogurt on top), and it was DIVINE. If yesterday was chili for those who hate chili, tonight is Borscht for beet-haters. Oh. Yeah.

Natasha’s Borscht

I wonder if Natasha didn’t blend hers… I didn’t. You might want to. Or, just be sure you slice your veg VERY thinly and chop VERY finely. More than I did… It just tastes better that way.

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, FINELY chopped
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, FINELY chopped
• 1-2 carrots, shredded
• 1-2 sweet peppers (red), THINLY sliced
• 1-2 beets, shredded (including the young leaves on the tops, which should be cut into 1/2 inch slices)
• 4-5 stalks celery, VERY THINLY sliced (Natasha’s note: “don’t overdo it“)
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1 x 1.36 L can tomato juice (or a can of tomato paste diluted in about 1.2 L water)
• 2 potatoes, in 1 cm³ squares
• “handful” of chopped cabbage
• 1/2 to 1 lemon
• 1 tbsp sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 full clove garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• fresh herbs to taste (I used fresh dill and then dried stuff—Natasha used a whack of stuff from her garden…)

How to:

• in a Dutch oven (which I clearly don’t own), heat oil and add onions, sautéeing until soft; add garlic, carrots, sweet peppers and celery, and cook for 2 minutes.
• add beets with their greens, and keep cooking. THIS WHOLE SAUTÉEING PHASE SHOULD TAKE ABOUT 10 MINUTES.
• when the beets are just about ready (which I took to mean “softened”), add the flour, stir it in, and then pour the tomato juice or diluted tomato paste / water mixture over the veg. If it’s not covered, add water until it is.
• add the potatoes and cabbage, and the juice of the lemon. DON’T DISCARD THE PEEL: throw that in, too, while it simmers.
• giggle maniacally at the macabre, autopsy-like look of what you’re cooking… aaaaaaaaand stop, because it will taste DELICIOUS.
• while adding the lemon, also stir in the sugar, salt and pepper to taste, the clove of garlic (intact) and the bay leaf.
• boil for 25 minutes, not too rapidly.
• at this point you can purée all or part of it if you want (I didn’t, but wish I’d done maybe 1/3 and returned it to the pot)
• simmer for another hour, and five minutes from the end, throw in a handful of whatever chopped fresh herbs you have on hand (fresh dill feels like a priority, though), and augment with dried if you want

Obviously, fish out the bay leaf, whole garlic clove (or not) and lemon peels before serving. This is vegan and spectacular as, is, but it’s also pretty rocking when served with a spoon of sour cream or plain yogurt…

I am *so* reformed.

… is actually a lot like black bean chili.

I don’t know what’s up with me, but I’ve slept 10+ hours EVERY night since I got home. Really, that’s not normal for me… and all summer, I’ve had this really cool thing going on where right after a workout, I’m ready to crawl into bed. 1 + 2 = hey dummy, you’re still burnt out.

Well, no rest for the wicked—I have go-mode scheduled for 7 September, when the hilarity and brutality ramps up again. So I’ll sleep while I can, and then I know that my hard-core ability to go till it hurts will kick in. Did I mention that I’m stressed? But to protect my time-strapped self from that time and ensure that I’ll eat right, even if I’m not sleeping enough, I’m going hard in the kitchen right now.

Tonight, it was my old friend, black bean chili. I call this “chili for people who don’t like chili”, of which I am one. Red kidney beans and soupy ground beef are a bit of a turn off, but this recipe is neither soupy nor features red kidneys, so… yay! I’d like to give credit for where it came from, but I’m just not sure. It’s written on the back of an envelope and included in my “best of” binder…

Black Bean Chili

Ingredients

• 3 540-ml cans of black beans (or about 6 cups, prepared)
• 1 398-ml can of diced tomatoes (unsalted!)
• 3 chipotle peppers plus the adobo sauce they come in
• 2 tbsp EVOO
• 1 lb (or so…) extra lean ground beef (organic!)
• kosher salt
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 2 red bell peppers, chopped in large-ish pieces
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 1/2 tbsp cumin
• juice of 1 lime
• avocado slices (or guac, if you’ve got some)

How to

• mix one can of beans (~2 cups) with the tomatoes, chipotle and adobo sauce in a medium bowl and blitz with a hand blender (or just do it in a blender or food processor). Whir it till it’s smooth, and set it aside.
• heat the oil in a Dutch oven or similarly heavy pot (or not, and risk burny spots like I do) over medium-high heat, adding the beef and 1/2 tsp salt to season it. Cook until it loses its raw colour (~3 minutes).
• transfer the beef to a plate using a slotted spoon.
• reduce the heat to medium and put the onion and red peppers into the remaining juices in the pot (add a splash more oil if it’s too dry); cook until the onion browns and begins to soften, and then add the chili powder and cumin and cook (stirring) for about 20 seconds.
• return the beef to the pot, adding the rest of the beans and the bean mixture and let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring often (which is less important if you have a pot that wasn’t bought for $18 at Safeway…).
• add the lime juice, salt and pepper to taste, and you’re ready to serve at this point. If you like a looser chili, add some water to thin it.

I like to serve it on top of a bed of spinach, and top it with avocado slices or guacamole. Mmmmmm! Who knew burn out could be this good?

I went to see an osteopath in Vancouver a few weeks ago. Not only has my neck been a pain in the… well… neck recently, but my low-low back has been something of a pain in the… ass?

I broke my tailbone when I was 16. Suffice to say, don’t ride the back of a GT Snowracer if it rains throughout the Christmas holidays, suddenly turns cold and drops a whole 4 cm of snow on top of the sheet of ice. My friend who was driving hit a bump, I flew off the back, piked in the air, and landed bum first. BRUTAL. My sacrum has never moved well since (if at all), and in fact, my tailbone has taken on a distinctly leftward twist. Some would tell you that the whole spine works as a system, and my neck issues could well stem from the unhappiness at the bottom. Heh. Punny.

That may well be—so when a Montreal friend in osteo school recommended I try it out, I mulled it over, I googled “how does Osteopathy work?”, and I made an appointment.

I’m not 100% sure what happened during the sessions, but some of it made sense… I filled in a 5-page history in advance, and when I got there, the osteopath (Suzanne Pineault at West Coast Clinic of Osteopathy), took one look at it, and examined me for about 3 seconds and said “so, stress is a problem for you.”

Oh, a little… everything in my history pointed to it, the fact that my body was apparently “vibrating” pointed to it, and the fact that I said, “I am extremely stressed out most of the time” pointed to it.

If pop culture has taught me anything, it’s that “admitting you have a problem is only the first step.” But I have a hard time saying that except when I’m being flippant…

Have I mentioned that I love coffee? Because I do. And doesn’t that pic make it look like it loves me, too? I love it to the tune of 6-8 espressos per day sometimes, or maybe “just 4″. And some days none at all… which I can pull off because espresso tastes great, but I’m not affected by caffeine. I think. When I’m in a putrid mood coffee will always make me happy—even when not accompanied by 90% dark chocolate or happy little hearts in the macchiato foam—but I don’t get withdrawal headaches, and I can wake up without it (most of the time…).

And I love little more than the glory of a coffee date. Meeting friends for a daylight chat is never better than when something tall and dark is involved… it doesn’t even *have* to be the company!!

But Suzanne tells me that even if my body doesn’t seem to respond to caffeine, I’m accruing future health challenges from it, and likely exacerbating my stress-itude something serious from it.

Alas.

1 a day would be better… which would mean I’d finally make an honest cup out of my fave at-home mug, seen above. And if it could be decaf, that would be perfection. The rest of the time… I should try to make friends with this little beauty…

And so begins the era of my life I will call:

“in which she learns to love a limette pressé“.

A what?

If you hang out in Paris a little, which I did for work a few years ago, you might encounter the “citron pressé”, which some consider just french-ified lemonade—but it’s not exactly. Trust me. They’re served cold: ice water, the juice of a lemon, freshly squeezed, and some white sugar.

In my version, I have a bag of limes, so “salut citron, bonjour limette“. I am nixing the white sugar. And since it’s already fall in Hinterlandia, I’m actually nixing the ice water today in favour of a kick at the kettle…

It’s warm, it’s tart, and it’s possibly de-stressing me. I’m going to take some creative license and imagine it in the hand of something tall and dark, though—which should de-stress me even more.

Well, that took no time at all.

For the record, I got back on the scale. I’m down about 6 lbs for the summer, which is GREAT!… but also less than I hoped for. I realised something (a lot of somethings, actually… many posts to follow on the different realisations):

in December 2008, I was the tiniest I had ever been in my adult life. And it came at the expense of a lot of lean muscle mass.

I’ve always been a pretty strong person, mentally and physically—even compared to my sisters, I could weigh more but be smaller, because of all the muscle mass. And it served me well for years, so losing the muscle has had some real ramifications.

1. tennis elbow—without touching a racket. True story: April 2009, I was doing a hefty dose of editing, and sometimes (OK, often!) I would grip the pen in anger at various inanities on the draughts I was going over. And after weeks of this, I found I couldn’t even press a dish brush against a plate, it was too painful. Diagnosis: tennis elbow. Last time I played tennis: oh, probably the 80s.
2. the most staggering back-spasm of my life: I’m not new to these. I have a lot of tone and tightness (yet not necessarily strength, blast it all), and it’s caused me to be a weekly physio / massage patient for about 10 years… But through all the back and neck spasms in the past, some muscle relaxants and a massage or two later, and I was on the road to repair. In April 2010, I was doing some push-ups *from my knees* as I began to try to claw my way back to fitness… and there it went: something between my shoulder blade and my spine. I couldn’t move my right arm, or look down, move my neck, check my blindspot, take my top off… awesome. Ever since then, I can’t sleep on a pillow anymore because my neck can’t handle it. Is this a permanent change in my life? Can I reverse it?
3. much slower fat loss than in the past, given my activity level: I did quite a bit of cardio this summer, and sporadically some weights or resistance training… and even factoring in my diet pitfalls and indulgences, this is still way off the pace of my previous efforts… Hm.
   

So yesterday, I woke up, cooked breakfast, paid bills, and went right to the gym for some HIIT and weights. And today, I’m on my way back again. Gotta get the “bulk” back! This is a habit I’m happy to revive—and it made me think: I’ve got to re-define my goals. #1 is definitely: MORE WEIGHTS!

For now, though, I’m happy to be back in my kitchen (at least), cooking whenever and whatever. Yesterday morning, I had protein pancakes with blackberries, and for lunch it was Swiss Chard and red quinoa, served with a side of yogurt and protein powder (since I hadn’t finished doing groceries yet. Chard, YES! Yogurt/whey powder, NO!).

Spicy Swiss Chard

Ingredients