Well! I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip home to Montreal, which came at a truly horrendous time in terms of work, but was done in an effort to secure a future. And I think I’d like one of those, and so when the mountain beckoned, Mohammad went forth. What exactly was done is neither here nor there, ultimately, because it’s not related to healthy living, and this isn’t going to become a “what will I do when I grow up?” blog.

I’ve slept in 4 beds in the last 7 days (not like that!), one of which was at my dad’s lake house. The last time I was there, I wrote about how lovely it was to be without the internet… no pressure to answer pings and look stuff up… but this time, it was hellacious. I had a lot of work to do, but I was also home and having family dinners (which is my point, bear with me), which meant I would work until 3am and do the best I could to balance being a sociable visitor and trying to keep it all together. I have to say, NOT locking myself into the bathroom kept my stress WAY more manageable.

Family dinners gave me the chance to reflect on something… and since I live alone and am on my own about 97% of the time, I’m curious about what others’ approaches are on a particular point. We all develop our diets out of trial and error and what works for our bodies (if you’ll allow me to summarise on all our behalves in this little corner of the blogosphere)… but that’s not necessarily going to jive with our families. When I’m with my family, there is often pressure to “eat the same thing”. I know that’s what they prefer, and I don’t want to be difficult.

I REALLY didn’t want to be difficult, in fact, because I’m so fried overall that not having to generate thoughts about WHAT to eat at every meal was like a little piece of heaven. And: eating based on others’ desires did get me out of my “same old, same old”… but… but… but…

What do you do when you watch someone you love making some horrendous dietary decisions? Not just “that’s unideal” bad, but “this is going to shorten your life” bad—and trying to include you (so that it’s like we’re all in the same boat together)? Do you protest? Make kind suggestions? Sit silently and just let it go?

It’s a tough road to navigate. On the one hand, some little changes could make huge differences—and on the other hand, food is culture and there’s SURE to be resistance if one were to feel like he or she were being scrutinised and / or criticised. Well-meaning amounts to little when the defences go up!

So how do you approach the sticky topic of food and diets with family? Do you speak up, or stay silent?

Step 1: lose sleep. A lot of sleep. Because sleep is lame.

Step 2: lose your appetite so no possible nutrition works to your betterment.

Step 3: undertake an 8-hour drive to Calgary and rue the fact that you can’t work and drive at the same time. Cough. A lot. Enjoy that there’s no one there to judge your coughing.

Step 4: lose more sleep, getting up WAY early to fly across the country—and gird yourself for the impending doom of resentful stares by others when they hear your cough.

Check, check, check and check: and so, welcome to Day 10 of this stupid cold.

So I’m sitting here suddenly in Toronto… and I’m really proud of this:

It’s an out-of-focus iPhone pic, true enough, but it’s also healthy food: a spinach salad with mushrooms, edamame and tofu with a sprinkle of ground flax… and I carried it with me, first in a cooler on my drive yesterday, and then halfway across the country in my carry on. I’ve tried this before, but never been successful—till now! I didn’t even get my fork confiscated at security!

I find that portable protein can be a challenge: it’s not typically very durable, ofter perishable and needs refrigeration… but I cooked up a brick of tofu and am carrying it around in a Ziploc container. This seems to have solved the problem relatively easily. I may have just changed my life! But one thing I haven’t done is change my cold. Commitment is everything.

It’s true. While most people stash drinks in the consoles of their cars, I’ve got an empty mug… and my Benylin.

I actually haven’t taken cough syrup since I was a kid (I’ve sure never *bought* any); as an asthmatic, if I get a cough, I just accept it.

But this is stupid—I mentioned to you a WEEK ago that I had a cold. Well, in most respects, I feel fine right now… except for a croupy, hacking, fear-of-god-or-at-least-the-plague-inducing cough. People are afraid to be around me (and I don’t really blame them), but neither can I afford not to be running my errands and getting work done.

Hence, the Benylin. The pharmacist assured me that there was evidence that supports that it really does help suppress coughing… I’m still not sure. And I’m slightly choked that this might eat into my attempt to get abs of diamond from coughing so hard, but one must remain polite society, mustn’t one?

My little malaise knocked me out too much to blog earlier this week (is it “feed a cold, starve a fever”? Oops.), so at long last, here’s my story.

I don’t like to lose. I like a fair fight, and I’ll lose graciously if I must, but I don’t like it.

I sometimes sign up for blog giveaways and think, “shur. Whatev.” But there was this one a while back, when I thought, “oh! Pick ME! YES, please!! ME ME ME!”

I didn’t win.

Well, so be it, but this time I wasn’t going to take defeat lying down… I took to my kitchen and began trying to cobble together my own version of the prize I had been teased with. All it took was a little internet searching and I was off to the races!

I’ve made this 4 times now. The first and third were absolutely the best—the second was bland and the last is too nutty, but I would have to say that this is like sex or chocolate (depending on who you are): even when it’s “bad”, it’s not BAD! In fact, it’s quite good! Yay!

I’d like to take credit for this… but the idea is from someone else, the ingredients are from someone else’s idea, and all I did was mix well and serve. I still play around with proportions, but, ladies, may I introduce you to a better (nut) butter spread?

hey look! It’s my first photo from my new camera!

Chocolate Almond Butter Spread

*Note: Depending on how sweet or how much you want to taste the almond butter, you might want to increase the sweetener or nut butter—those have turned out to be the biggest variables so far. Also, using the darkest, most decadent (yet unsweetened) cocoa powder is key. I like Bernard Callebaut, but whatever makes our heart sing works.

You need:

∞ 1 cup almond butter
∞ 1 cup plus 3 Tbsp pumpkin purée
∞ 1/2 cup cocoa powder
∞ 2 Tbsp maple syrup (I’ve also used honey… maple is better!)
∞ 1 tsp vegetable oil
∞ 70 g finely chopped dark chocolate

You must:

≈ put almond butter and 1 cup of pumpkin purée in a stand mixer and combine well.
≈ in another bowl, mix cocoa, maple syrup, pumpkin purée and oil, stirring to make a nice paste. If it’s a bit crumbly still, add another tablespoon of pumpkin to get a good, pasty consistency.
≈ add cocoa mixture to the stand mixer, and give it another good beating to incorporate all the ingredients well. I don’t think you can beat too long, and the more you beat, the smoother the end result.
≈ add chocolate bits to the mixer and mix to distribute evenly.

I portion this out into 3 containers, pop one in the fridge for immediate use and the others go in the freezer until it’s time. I think that’s just best, since I don’t seal them hermetically…

Why I love this spread: I have pumpkin protein pancakes for breakfast most days… and I like a little chocolate spread on top for some healthy fat to keep me full for, oh, five hours? Remember my cupboard full of Peanut Butter & Co products? Dark Chocolate Dreams is my fave, but at almost $6 per, I wasn’t loving the price. And it’s a bit more sugar than I wanted… my recipe lets me lower the caloric density (not that I’m counting, but I’ve also upped the fibre by adding the pumpkin: whee!) AND the sugar, AND the cost. So: win, win, WIN! I tried it side-by-side with the last bit of a Dark Chocolate Dreams jar this morning:

I only made it through about 1/3 of this (stupid cold!), but the one at 9 o’clock is the Peanut Butter & Co, and the others are my nut butter spread. I like the PB & chocolate combo taste of the PB&Co, when trying them side by side… but I think if I used PB instead of AB, I’d have that nailed.

So: try it, and let me know what you think!

PS: my oldest friend in the world is racing in her first Half Ironman tomorrow—the Ochsner Ironman in New Orleans. I’m SO EXCITED for her, so if you want to stream it (like I am!) and cheer her on remotely, she’s bib 603, she’s Tara, she’s AWESOME, and look for her to come out of the water fast… she’s also a former national swimmer. Go, T!

During my little hiatus, a very fun thing happened…

Do you ever read some blogs and think, “I bet if we sat down to coffee with each other, we wouldn’t get up for a week“?

I feel like that about a number of my faves, not the least of which is the delightful Heather, from Heather Eats Almond Butter. Ever since I watched her video on making protein ice cream last July (in which she popped a cushion in front of her pregnant belly so the soon-to-be baby Summer wouldn’t go deaf from the noise of the VitaMix—still makes me laugh!), I’ve felt like we were kindred. HEAB had already been blogging for yonks when I found her and is totally FAAAAAmous in bloggieland, so I comment, like hundreds of others, and have always been happy just to interact there.

And then… on 28 March 2011, when I was having a bad blogging ‘tude, it happened. I got TAGGED! Heather awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award!!! Is this like being noticed by the main event when part of a crowd? Well, *that* has never happened to me, but I think it’s got to be similar, right? Like I’m suddenly Kate Middleton and the world cares about the house I grew up in…? OK, that’s a bit over the top. BUT: I am now looking into how to make fascinators part of my daily wardrobe—the one below is my fave—AND, more importantly, for the honour of this award, I’m meant to tell you 7 random things about me and then pass it on to up to 15 other bloggers. I feel like I’ve *arrived*!!!

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Behold, the fascinator!

And now, 7 things you might not know about moi:

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1) I have nightmares ALL the time.

Sometimes it’s just stress manifesting itself and I dream about daytime issues that I have yet to resolve, but the REAL recurring nightmares I’ve had over the last decade are always a variation on the same theme: I’m in a house with a murderer or a zombie, and I have to figure out how to defend myself… and I can’t. Why a zombie? I don’t know. But I’ve decided that in my soon-to-be “retirement”, I’m going to learn a martial art. Just call me the Wushu warrior… because whenever I solve the problem my dreams can’t, the dream goes away. Chicken or egg, bloggie friends? Chicken or EGG?

2) My dream job would be working in a museum…

… if I wasn’t worried about being able to retire someday. True story.

That pic is Te Papa museum in Wellington, NZ, where I spent 4 glorious days at a fabulous conference in December. Awesome place, awesome people, awesome gift shop. The behind-the-scenes tour of the Taonga (Maori treasures) was like being high for 3 hours.

Also a true story. Who would lie about such nerdiness?

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3) When I was little, my mom told me that my dad had bought “a globe”. I thought it meant “a crystal ball”, and I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I can’t see the future.

Strangely, I turned into someone with both a globe *and* a map fetish, but still: I’ve always felt like if I just *knew* things were going to work out, I could save a lot of worrying.

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4) When I was a teenager, I was frequently told I looked like Mindy Cohn from The Facts of Life. In my adulthood, I sometimes get Reese Witherspoon, but I think it’s just the chin.

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5) My absolute favourite drink is sparkling water.

I would rather drink Perrier than wine. I would rather drink San Pellegrino than scotch. I would rather drink Gerolsteiner than tequila. I would rather drink anything than milk.

I’m all about the bubbles.

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6) If I don’t live in a foreign country in my lifetime, I’ll feel like it was all a waste.

I’ve travelled to 6% of the world (according to Facebook), and, besides Canada I’ve “lived” in Germany and the US (for 8 months and 4 months, respectively)… but that’s not enough! I absolutely *love* it when even the most mundane activity (groceries, banking, visiting a doctor, meeting people) becomes challenging because of cultural and language differences. The language thing also terrifies me—unable to communicate? Then WHAT AM I?!— but now that I’m at a crossroads in my life, I just might try to make this one come true… stay tuned!

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7) I don’t like salt.

I pick the salt off my pretzels, in fact, and the only thing that I like to taste salt on are edamame. (Is edamame?) And, formerly movie theatre popcorn, until I learned that eating that stuff was like digging your grave with your own paws: cholesterol, bad fat, mega-calories… bleh. At least I still have edamame! (though I’m being cautious with my soy intake because my thyroid ain’t what it used to be…)

Well, that was fun, in a totally self-absorbed sort of way! Thanks, HEAB, happy to know you! And for those I am tagging… well—the usual suspects, if you haven’t already: Kath, Kristina, Alina, Kristen, Lindsay—you know, you guys who *noticed* I was gone? You guys are most definitely the One Loveliest Bloggers I know! Awards to all!