What I've been cooking up

This blog has certainly taken many turns over the several years it's been around! It started off as a sewing blog and has quickly morphed into a cooking blog. I'm sure it will change again.

I thought I'd share some photos of what I've been cooking up over the past several weeks as part of my school work with the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. It's so tough when you get to eat your school work, right?

Knife Skills Salad - I had to practice cutting veggies!

I made my first whole BBQ sauce. So yummy.

Who knew curry powder was so easy to make?

Delicious veggie rice wraps with almond dipping sauce. My favourite so far.

Look at that colour!

Sunflower Power Spread. Yum!

Super delicious date balls - get the recipe on my IG account here: @lealoulemonade

I've been making loads more but forgot to take photos! It's been a busy course but so great to learn about all the foods that can keep us healthy. More to come!

Keeping track of what I eat (aka boring post but super interesting for me!)

My sad single-serving bowl of popcorn

3 servings of veg in this one!

Look at all that romaine!

Prepping veg for the week.

I've never been one to track what I eat when it comes to serving size. Over the past 15 or so years I've maintained my weight, so I never thought to consider keeping track, nor did it really interest me to do so. But as I may have mentioned, I'm doing a little fitness and health challenge over the course of 10 weeks and this week we've had to eat at least four servings of veggies so I need to keep track!

Now I eat a lot of veggies so I wasn't even going to do the challenge, but then I started wondering how much I really eat in a day. Do I actually get the recommended serving size of fruits and vegetables every day? I also thought I had four servings in the bag no problem and I was going to challenge myself with even more.

But in a matter of only a few days,  I've learned a lot that I didn't know about serving size:

1. Even though I eat a lot of vegetables a week, I don't actually think I was getting the recommended servings of a day. Also I don't eat a ton of fruit (I favour eating veggies over fruit most times). Most servings of vegetables (with the exception of greens which are a cup raw) come in half-cup increments so if you really think about it, it can be a lot of vegetables to eat in one day and you have to find time to eat them all (salads are a great way to get a lot of them in!). Now please note that the actual recommended daily serving suggestion size is 7-8 of fruit and veg for women my age. I felt like four servings took up most of my day not even leaving room for 3-4 more servings of fruit and veg that I should have been eating.

2. It's interesting to see what really is a serving. I decided to take a look at serving sizes of other things like pasta which is my ultimate downfall... I can eat a BIG bowl in one sitting and I thoroughly enjoy it, but I always know that I'm eating way too much. Today I had some leftover pasta for lunch so I checked to see what the serving size should be and it's half a cup.

Do you know how much that is? It's maybe eight penne noodles. 

I tipped it into my pasta bowl and promptly added another half cup to make myself feel better. But get this, I ate it with a cup of raw kale and some vegan parmesan and it totally filled me up. I bet that on average I typically would eat about five servings of pasta and the reality is that it's too much. We don't need to eat that much food in one sitting.

I had some popcorn later in the afternoon which I also thought would be fun to measure. I'm not sure why I thought this would be fun because I realized that one serving of popcorn is two cups which I thought would be more than enough. You see, when I eat popcorn it's in a big bowl, like BIG (is there a theme here??). So today I put a smaller amount of kernels in the popper and then used a smaller bowl. Then for fun I measured out two cups into another bowl and barely dented my first bowl. There was so much leftover. And that was a smaller bowl than what I usually have. I was probably having 10 servings of popcorn on a regular basis.

I know... I know. It's popcorn. Big deal but I think that overall we all eat way too much food for what we actually need for our bodies and we don't realize it (unless of course it's taking over our waistlines). It has been an interesting experiment to measure out my food. I don't want to become obsessed, but I think it will have an impact on my future eating habits. I already feel better physically from just four days of eating this way.

So that's my ramble post for the month. How about you? What do you know you eat too much of?

Want to know the recommended daily serving suggestions (come on you know you do!)

Canada's Food Guide
I think this is the site for the States although it's confusing to find a graph that gives actual figures

chickpea flatbread with onions and rosemary

I hearby introduce you to one of the easiest and yummiest flatbreads known to humankind. This recipe is from the book Food Matters, by Mark Bittman and I made some this morning for a little brunch I had with my sisters. I took the photo for my January 6th 365 project.

When I posted the photo, a couple of people wanted the recipe, so I hope Mr. Bittman doesn't mind that I relay it here (maybe it will help if I tell you all to buy the book because there are some yummy recipes in it!). You're going to laugh at how simple it is.

Chickpea Flatbread with Onion and Rosemary
(Or Easy Whole Grain Flatbread which is what it's called in the book)

• 1 cup of chickpea flour (also called garbanzo flour or besan)*
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 2 tablespoons or so of coconut oil
• 1/2 a large onion, thinly sliced (Mr. Bittman says this is optional, but I highly suggest you use it)
• 1 tablespoon of fresh rosemary leaves (also optional, but why would you leave it out?)

1. Put the flour in a bowl, add salt and slowly add 1.5 cups of water, whisking to eliminate lumps. Cover with a towel and let is sit while your oven heats, or for as long as 12 hours. The batter should be the consistency of thin pancake batter.

2. If you're making this right away, preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Add the oil, onions and rosemary to a cast iron (or oven proof) pan and put it in the oven to heat up until you start to smell the rosemary and onions. About 5-7 mins or so. Just keep an eye on it. Remove the pan (make sure you're wearing your oven mitt!) and set it on top of the stove until the oven is ready.

3. Once the oven is ready, add the batter to the pan and swish around the onions and rosemary for equal distribution in the batter. Then return the pan to the oven.

4. Bake for 30-40 mins depending on the size of your pan and the heat of your oven. Mine was done in about 35 mins (my pan is about 10 inches). The bread should be slightly browned, firm and crisp around the edges and will release easily from the pan when it's done. Let it rest for a few minutes and then cut it into wedges to devour.

You honestly don't need a dip or other accompaniment for this - it's delicious on its own - but I'm sure it would be yummy topped with roasted tomatoes or peppers. Oh how I wish I had some left!

The recipe also gives an option for using this as a pizza crust which I want to try soon, as well as one for a custardy type dish. Get the book to try them all out!

*You don't need to use chickpea flour for this recipe (you can also use whole wheat, cornmeal or buckwheat), but I think it truly adds to the flavour of the flatbread and it is an excellent source of protein since chickpeas are legumes and not a grain. Win-win in my book!

Try it and out and let me know if you liked it!