Happy Birthday, Jennifer

Friday was Jennifer's (SweetOnVeg) birthday, and she chose to celebrate with potatoes and cauliflower at the cozy, low-lit India Bistro on Davie.  It was my first time there, and I liked it.
I also had the Aloo Gobhi: "A unique combination of cauliflower & potatoes cooked in garlic, ginger, tomato & traditional Indian spices."  I did not take this photo, but I did take some of the restaurant's over-sized silverware.  Juuuuuuust kidding.  I thought about it.

  Last night I played scattergories (horribly) and snacked on Kim and Lori's generous spread of fruit and cheese.

For breakfast I had a big bowl of leftover red cabbage and avocado. Blogger's post formatting upgrade isn't doing it for me.

Red cabbage

A departure from my usual sweet potatoes 3X/day, I ate two of these wholesome sandwiches for brunch: plain wholewheat bread I scored from my roommate's recent trip to Costco, buttered with half an avocado, shaved red cabbage, kale, green leaf lettuce and sliced tomatoes.

I have two strawberries left for my smoothie.

A fun thing to do with red cabbage if you have a lot of extra time on your hands and you're chemically inclined:  Make a Red Cabbage pH indicator.  Going by the purple of my red cabbage, I'd guess its soil was of a neutral to acidic pH.

Root vegetables again

Today I made the root vegetables again but this time I cooked/steamed them on the stove with a bit of water and a lid.  No heated oil; the much cleaner and less carcinogenic option.  (Less carcinogenic except for the second batch which I forgot about and let burn into the bottom of the pot.  My apartment smells of burnt veggie flesh.)

The plot twists: the yams I thought I'd been eating, are actually sweet potatoes.  According to this fact sheet, sweet potatoes are even better for me, so I'm fine with it:

Unique Proteins with Potent Antioxidant Effects

Sweet potatoes contain unique root storage proteins that have been observed to have significant antioxidant capacities. In one study, these proteins had about one-third the antioxidant activity of glutathione-one of the body's most impressive internally produced antioxidants. Although future studies are needed in this area, count on these root proteins to help explain sweet potatoes' healing properties.

A Sweet Source of Good Nutrition

Our food ranking system also showed sweet potato to be a strong performer in terms of traditional nutrients. This root vegetable qualified as an excellent source of vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene), a very good source of vitamin C and manganese, and a good source of copper, dietary fiber, vitamin B6, potassium and iron. 

The intensity of the sweet potato's yellow or orange flesh color is directly correlated to its beta-carotene content. The beta-carotene in orange-fleshed sweet potato, which our bodies can use to produce vitamin A and is therefore called "Provitamin A," has been reported to be more bioavailable than that from dark green leafy vegetables. Purple-fleshed sweet potatoes, on the other hand, are a good source of anthocyanins and have the highest antioxidant activity among sweet potato varieties. In one study, the antioxidant activity in purple sweet potato was 3.2 times higher than that of a blueberry variety! Interestingly, the antioxidant activity in sweet potato skin, regardless of its color, is almost three times higher than in the rest of the tissue. 

 

Roasted Root Vegetables are Not Raw

I wrote most of this post a few days ago while I was high on raw carrot sugars.

Tonight (a few days ago) on my trip to Choices Market 15 minutes before it closed, lots of people were asking me for change (instead of to change, which was nice).

I filled my green grocery box thing with a rutabaga (a.k.a yellow turnip), parsnips, avocado, lemon, onion, garlic, olive oil, red and white potatoes, carrots and I think that's it.  Oh, I also scored the last container of rosemary!  It was shoved to the back of the herb shelf, waiting for me to reach over the fruit cups and dip my shirt into the pineapple juice for the win.

I oven-roasted root vegetables for the Thanksgiving potluck.

This is sort of what I did (depicted in the video), except I used finely chopped rosemary instead of thyme, I applied olive oil liberally to the mix, I didn't use my hands to mix everything together, I went easy on the sea salt, and the vegetables were sure as hell not spread out on parchment paper with spaces separating each perfectly cubed morsel.  Whatever.  I stirred the veggies twice and squeezed a lemon on top before drenching the left corner with too much balsamic vinegar... covered the tray of veggies with aluminum foil... 30 minutes later, I remembered to turn on the oven.  Preheated oven to 350, put in the tray... 30 minutes later and sha-bang.  I have to remember that other people like things to taste good, so I threw some sea salt and black pepper into the mix.  Then heated it some more, because I was on a roll.

Roasting root vegetables

Daily smoothies are still going strong.  (And the avocado was for my quinoa lunches, in case you were wondering... not for the roasted veggie dish.)

The delicious Michelle has been making delicious salads all week, so I've had no reason to update this blog.  Thanks, Michelle!  hahaaa.

Still eating my spinach smoothies every day.  For the record, there is nothing gross about a spinach smoothie!  Is it the thought of drinking spinach that turns some people off?  And how it looks?  And thinks?  

I threw a bunch of quinoa seed into a boiling pot of (Himalayan salted) water, added lid, turned off heat, sat down to read a book; returned in 20 minutes and dinner was ready.  For a moment I went crazy with the effort and topped my bland base of 2 lbs of quinoa with a few haphazard chunks of sweet red bell pepper and green avocado.  Green and red because xmas is near.  Joy to the world.  The three tastes and textures and temperatures combined in one dish made for some interesting internal dinner conversation. 

Vancouver!  Thank-you for tonight's autumnal sunset of deep violet + surprising pink + trademark orange hues.  I wouldn't have the balls to wear all those colours at once, but you pulled it off to an appreciative audience.  Nice and slow.  Let's do it again tomorrow night and the next night and every night forevermore.  Bedtime.

Guess who is simultaneously steering the momentum train and enjoying the ride?!  That guy on the left and also, Me! Yes!  I've finished all my exams as of... NOW.

I have the best friends in the world.  Yes.  And they live by their own rules -- their own inner code of just lawlessness.

Was up way too early again and sleepwalked through the eating of one tasteless white peach for breakfast.  After my exam I replenished my silo for mental fuel with some day-old quinoa and a spinach smoothie with strawberries and cacao.  (And a chocolate brownie cookie for dessert.)

While madly scribbling out answers today and rewriting the rules of logic, I flung my eraser behind me.  I didn't swear outloud, though.  I just sat there for a moment, too nervous to turn around to pick it up lest the supervisor suspect I was trying to cheat by looking at someone else's calculus exam.  (Yes, each of us were writing an exam for a different course, but I'm paranoid like that during exams -- I never look anywhere but at the front of the room or down at my paper.  My back is ready for a massage right about now.)  Anyway, a thoughtful girl noticed my eraser come flying at her so she retrieved it and placed it gently beside me.  I let out an appreciative, "Thanks!" to which she gave an automatic, "You're welcome."  And then we both got automatic zeros.

Kidding.  Hot action time!

Hi. I've been living on veggie burritos, frozen yogurt, spinach smoothies and fruit.  And adrenaline.

More later.

Finished my final stats unit today.  I feel relieved but concerned, as I don't recall the reasons for utilizing (I don't like that word) certain equations to calculate whatever solutions I judged to look like something that the answer should look like.  But the units = completed!  Now for the final exam.  

I didn't leave the house very much at all today, and thanks to bowls of life-sustaining quinoa seed, I maintained my course along Priority Route.  Not the scenic path, but it gets me places.  Somehow during this time of grindstoning it I managed to watch the Twilight movie and become obsessed.

I did not eat an apple.