Now is the time to start thinking about root and cold crop vegetables; they are the main staple of Atlantic Canadian diets and include the tried and true potatoes, turnip, carrots, parsnips, squash, cauliflower, onions, beets, and cabbage. Even the humble potato and cabbage are world renown in a variety of cuisines – say the word ‘cabbage roll’ or ‘fries’ to any nationality and they will most likely be familiar with this type of food. I’m rooting for veggies since they are great to store for winter use and have numerous cuisine options. Here is one recipe that was made at the request of my youngest son….since there was ‘nothing to eat’ in the house!

Rooting Recipe

This is the best soup ever Mom!

This soup was made on request from my youngest son with simple yet delicious and readily available local ingredients.

Serving Size: Note this recipe is for two normal people servings or one 19 year old! So double or triple for your crew.

Ingredients:

• 3 mushrooms sliced
• 1 medium onion diced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 cup carrots cut into small cubes
• 1 potato cut into small cubes
• 1 vegetable bouillon cube
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• salt to taste (I prefer people to do this at the table, as I don’t like much salt)

Saute mushrooms/onions/oil until browned (very important to brown the mushrooms/onions as they add to the flavour) about 5 minutes

Then add small cubes of carrots and one small potato.  Stir briefly to lightly coat the potatoes added.  Then add one vegetable bouillon cube, 1 tsp minced garlic and enough water to cover the vegetables, more or less depending on how much liquid you like in your soup. Then boil for about 5-10 minutes until vegetables are soft. Serve.

Tracey Allen is a professional writer, author, marketer and speaker with her own consulting firm T Allen Consulting www.traceyallenconsulting.com She is the author of The Sustainable Table – Take Back Your Plate (blog at www.simplifyandsave.ca ) Building a Passive Solar House, and Do it Yourself Press Releases. Her next two books are expected to be released this year; Gluten-free Lunches and Snacks: Quick, Easy and Frugal and The Sustainable Business: 5 R’s to Boost Business Profits.

My 13 year old took the creative approach to let me know I bought the wrong milk. We usually drink the vanilla flavoured milk, which is apparently far superior. I admire his creative spark, but I’m still not driving to multiple grocery stores to get everything everyone likes every week :)

Ottawa’s second Social Capital Conference has come and gone, and what a day it was! This year’s conference was bigger than last year and sold out yet again. They added some more streams so there was even more amazing content to chose from, yet the panels were all of an intimate size that encouraged discussion. (more…)

I vaguely told the kids they’d have to read and “updated your website or something” over the summer break, but they have this week totally off so I didn’t say much more than that. I came home from the grocery store today to find they had the first three episodes of their webseries “If Superheroes Were Real” in the can. Haden is all the superheros and Julian is The Bad Guy. They are hilariously wonderfully crazy kids. Check out Episode 1:

Every once in a while I give myself a little healthy living challenge, a small goal to work on in the short term when I feel I’m not doing as well as I could in some area of my life. It could be to limit my coffee intake when it starts to creep, or to eat more mindfully and slowly. My eating habits are normally quite good, and I truly love my veggies but I when started to really examine what I was eating lately I noticed something about my fruit and vegetable intake. Although I’m getting an appropriate amount of fresh produce, my most frequently consumed foods are: spinach, dark salad greens, asparagus, broccoli, brussel sprouts, zucchini, cucumber and avocado. Notice something they have in common? They’re all green. Now green foods are great, don’t get me wrong, but I know that I need to consume a variety of brightly coloured fruit and vegetables in order to get all the different vitamins and nutrients my body needs. So I set a little challenge for myself last week to include some more colours in my meals every day

I included some different coloured peppers in my lunch salads, made a spaghetti squash casserole for dinner one night, some pineapple popsicles for a snack and had half a mango. Ok, I don’t do well with fruit, but overall I definitely explored more of the rainbow of healthy produce!

I discovered a delicious and fun way to serve up a bunch of different vegetables in one meal is by making summer rolls. Summer rolls are a Vietnamese dish traditionally made with pork or prawns, but can be adapted to contain any kind of filling you like.  Ours include yellow and red pepper, shredded carrots, grated purple cabbage, cucumber, avocado and fresh basil. You could also add shrimp, mango and any other vegetables and fresh herbs your family enjoys. Since ours are vegetarian, I serve them with a quinoa side dish for protein. The kids love them, and like dipping them in peanut or tamari sauce.

My very first tattoo was sixteen years ago (oh dear, was it really that long ago? let’s just say i was 12 ok?) and although I don’t have any regrets, it was well overdue for a recolouring and some refreshing. Yellows and reds don’t last a lifetime and my little sun didn’t shine as brightly as it used to. And since tattoo shops and culture have changed a lot since then, I decided to take the opportunity to expand my little ‘off the wall’ piece into something designed just for me. (more…)