saturday gots seoul!

started off with the usual cafeteria breakfast...













but then seoul! first stop? mmmg cafe/shop in myeongdong... watermelon juice with mint! (7000 won)
















loving hut, sinchon. not raw but it's vegan. (about 9000 won for the smoothie and salad)













i was grateful for the nori stick snack though!














i didn't end up getting to mind body seoul or huckleberry's, but i checked out the "eco friendly" produce section at shinsegae's food floor and came across many a sign for "natural", "slow food", and "organic" like this cafe that i got kiwi juice at: daylesford organic (9000 won! yikes!)













and then loving hut achasan (buffet) for dinner... again... not so raw but so vegan and i ate as much raw as i could (like the spicy roots and spinach! that was excitement!). it was amazing that i did feel the difference (stomach ache!) eating some cooked food! a friend on the bus home remarked "so that's like your junk food now, huh?" and i guess she's right! wow.

korean middle school cafeteria day 8

yay! bananas in the morning! glorious!!! first day off and i'm glad i didn't sleep through breakfast. i'm bummed my vegetable crackers went soft even when i first opened the bag! but oh well. still something to eat that isn't just the salad!













lunch... not particularly inspiring. well, inspiring to go finish all of my chocolate covered goji berries in my room afterwards. gah!













dinner... i ate something from the cafeteria beyond just the salad! there were marinated bean sprouts and cucumber... it was funny, i was trying to place the aftertaste for so long after. garlic! haven't had that in awhile... ooh and i had some flax crackers with coconut butter. oh man is that good. i've had crappy coconut butter before (that i just use for dry hands now!) and the artisana stuff is really good. actually tastes like coconut!
p.s. last nectarine... for now?















p.s.s. i'm drinking water that i've had dried purple corn soaking in. and getting excited to get home and to get on buying a dehydrator so i can make these.

eating organic in korea

eating raw in korea is challenging enough (ie the massive food suitcase) and i've had to just ignore the fact that my cafeteria vegetable and fruit intake is almost 100% positively not organic.
i emailed my nutritionist friend who is korean and works just outside of seoul and she was not concerned with pesticides as "they could be removed by washing well" and that it's a "more important thing to keep the environment clean, safe to grow crops well". and some people told me before i left for this trip that perhaps korea didn't use the labels of 'organic' but didn't have to use pesticides on their crops.
today, i happened to come across a blog post on seoul eats about organics in korea. read it here! it was written just one week ago and says korean farmers use 15 times the amount of pesticides as american farmers do! and koreans have a 25% cancer rate!? yah, stats can be interpreted (and compiled!) so many ways, but wow, it's so hard for me to consider how people think fooling and guiding nature is best... pesticides, hormones... totally destroying nature!
anyways... i get a day away from camp tomorrow and i'm mostly checking out art and drinking juices and eating at the loving hut buffet (not raw and probably not organic, but at least vegan and surely there will be raw options) but i hope to get to huckleberry farms (a nz organic market chain) if i can find it and it still exists. or perhaps i will have to check out the shinsegae food floor and some other nice stores to check out their selection of organics. and maybe if i happen to go to the foreigner-infested itaewon, i will check out mind body seoul, a "learning center/well being studio".
and maybe by the next time i come to korea, there will be an organic, living foods cafe!

korean middle school cafeteria day 7

breakfast today was especially amazing as my korean nutritionist friend's friend at the cafeteria brought me nectarines and grapes? YAY!!!! and that is after i had those plums! so much fresh fruit!













and then at lunch... something i have never seen in my 4 camps here... raw vegetables! carrots and cucumbers!? YES!!!!














dinner was not inspiring or helpful in any way and i'm still wondering what i should snack on at movie night... maybe some chocolate (cacao, of course!) covered goji berries? inca berries? one of the raw cookies i found in LA?














fast forward a few hours...

so i decided against the movie but decided on a cookie that was coconut deliciousness. i also tried some kale chips (salt and vinegar) which really were the worst i've ever had and it's pretty hard to screw up kale. not enough vinegar and they tasted old. i guess you gotta just make em yourself if you're going to eat them. kinda hard when you're travelling. but maybe next time i'll prepare my own in advance!

korean middle school cafeteria day 6

a great day for meals, it was!

started with apples with the morning cereal! hurrah! i was craving them like mad yesterday...














then for lunch, i had my remaining kelp noodles i had marinated last night in olive oil and sundried tomatoes... added nutritional yeast and crumbled didi's mac'n'cheese cracker (boxed cookie texture) on top and then wrapped up in lettuce or those perilla leaves that are fuzzy and i don't like the taste on their own... it was glorious! oh yah, and there was the white melon and then, later they brought out oranges! AMAZING!!!



































for dinner, there was spaghetti for everyone and i just had a salad but i wasn't even hungry after my awesome lunch. so hurrah!

korean middle school cafeteria day 5

well... today was the day... i tried my kelp noodles!

but before that... breakfast... chocolate chia cereal this time. i think it's 88% raw if you're concerned with such details.
















but check these out! i mixed up some sundried tomato pesto last night with kelp noodles and hid them in the staff fridge. the noodles softened up into noodley noodles (ie not the crunchy kelp they were to begin with) and the pesto was so nice! and i love how it looks like spaghetti.












so i had the same thing for dinner but it was still glorious! hurrah! (don't know why i can't rotate this photo?)

korean middle school cafeteria day 4

hmm is it bad that i'm bored of this blog already? i guess i don't see the point in taking photos of every meal if SALAD is always the highlight. tonight i will start marinating kelp noodles in the sundried tomato pesto i brought. and hope for the best.

well, anyways, here's today's goods:

got the chia cereal going and the expected salad. at least on the side. i don't even like tomatoes but at least there's some fruit.














hooray for watermelon! i've learned that you should always eat melons on their own as they combine with no food. so i tried eating some first and then waited a bit before eating my salad but then i couldn't resist getting more melon. so maybe i had a bit of a stomach ache but it wasn't memorable.














okay and dinner? not so inspiring but i do enjoy this salad with the croutons on top. if only i didn't eat it 3 times a day...

korean middle school cafeteria day 3

sunday, first day of classes, meals were not particularly inspiring or original but i plan tonight (monday) as i don't have night classes to do something with some kelp noodles for a few meals. so we'll see how that turns out. fingers crossed for AMAZING.

so breakfast was the last of my raw granola and some glorious pineapples and the hopefully usual salad though there are only so many ways to dress up iceberg lettuce.












lunch i ended up finishing a package of crackers as i was not feeling satisfied. it's funny, even when i was eating cooked food, i didn't feel satisfied eating in this cafeteria (this is my 4th english camp here) and stranger still is those who will eat anything comment that they don't feel satisfied after eating the food in this cafeteria. hopefully that's not the case universally as that's pretty sad. anyways...












for dinner i dressed the salad up real nice in the tamari, nutritional yeast and croutons. hurrah! wish i took a photo to show the stack and it looked quite nice. too bad it still tasted the same. i'm thinking today's meals will look exactly like these ones. fingers crossed they are different somehow?

korean middle school cafeteria day 2

there were bananas in the cafeteria this morning which were PERFECT for slicing on my apple cinnamon chia/buckwheat/etc. cereal












lunch's excitement was the yellow peppers in the salad (i added shelled hemp seed to this and tamari for dressing) and the frozen persimmon! it appears the cooks froze the persimmons as they were quite ripe (and on the verge of not so goodness) but really, persimmons have such a small window of perfect ripeness and i thought it was great! (and i went back and convinced the lady working the persimmon table to give me another) totally going to freeze them at home.













so then dinner... i was debating opening my pesto to make things interesting but i suppose i'll save it for later, like when camp actually starts (tomorrow is day 1). so... tonight i added dulse, tamari and nutritional yeast to the salad. and oranges were a treat!

korean middle school cafeteria day 1

breakfast! i was very excited to try this raw granola by didi's. i brought soy milk which isn't exactly something i normally have (soy? boo!) but i only have that one drink box and another coming up for this small pack of granola! anyways... it was super rad to have a nice salad and grapes along with this meal!












then... lunch! i brought dehydrated veg crackers from organic lives and balanced some salad on top with apple cider vinegar and olive oil (that i also brought from home). works for me!













and dinner... in effort to switch things up, i added some tamari to my oil/vinegar dressing and some sprouted almond croutons from, you guessed it, organic lives.

living foods in LA...

so i've just arrived in korea and i have packed a mega huge "food" suitcase so i have basically all meals provided while i teach at this 3 week camp. i'm hoping there will be salad and fruit for me! otherwise everything i have is dehydrated! gah! i will start posting what i've managed to extract from the cafeteria when i get a chance!


anyways... so that my dreams are still vibrant, here are some places i went to and amazing food i ate while in LA:



first... sunpower natural cafe near universal city:

i had a bbq sunflower burger with the raw green bun with coleslaw.







i had 'dirty chai' raw vegan ice cream at kindkreme around the corner before lunch and then i had to go back afterwards for their soft serve vanilla with caramel sauce and cacao nibs! YES!















on my last day, i got to real food daily which many people recommended to me:




i had the living (collard greens) wrap and now i wish i had taken a photo at more of an angle so you can see in! but it was wonderful. they had great juices too (i had a "sweet green").



i was super excited to go to erewhon natural foods market and pick up snacks for my way home (and for the korea food suitcase!)

first i HAD to try dr. cow's cashew & brazil nut cheese as i hadn't before and i've been waiting years!


i LOVED it! and i'm excited to get a chance to have it again sometime. it was like a soft cheese and mild aged taste... perfect with the flax crackers i was happy to take with me here to korea as flax isn't anywhere!


i took these cookies onto the plane and i wish i had gotten a before photo as they are a mess in this one :( they were super cute with the chocolate chip in the middle! they tasted like a raw dough (yah, obviously everything is raw but you know, like a raw, not yet baked dough). so that was kinda fun.



then i tried these later. i definitely want to find them again. kinda reminded me of a quaker chocolate chip granola bar!





i'm still learning this layout stuff and sometimes korean is popping up so i find it even harder to know what i'm doing. but i'm trying.

cafeteria meals coming up!

how i survived 15 hours at disneyland as a vegan...

hurrah for buying snacks at whole foods the night before!
the "gone nuts" rosemary garlic sprouted pistachios and almonds were a garlic lovers's must-have, though i didn't like that there were a lot of clumps of garlic/spices - hard to eat without the pistachios and almonds underneath! the "rawk-n-roll cuisine" pizza flavoured kale went over well with others as well but i wish there was more! it seemed like there were just 5 clumps of it in the $10 bag! the "kookie karma" cherry cashew bar wasn't memorably different than a "larabar" if i remember correctly but i guess it was raw so that is a plus? and the "two moms in the raw" mango chia bar was quite nice and i'm definitely going to try making something like it when i get a dehydrator - hopefully at the end of summer. it was just a bunch of fruit and chia seeds, probably soaked for awhile in some juices and then dehydrated. simple and perfect! i drank my "amy and brian" coconut water before getting to the park as i expected to be dehydrated. i ended up filling my water bottle at fountains throughout the day despite being convinced my water smelled like bleach. gross! i am spoiled drinking kangen water at work! the "kevita" lemon ginger kefir drink was quite nice and i was grateful to have brought some fun drinks!

at first, i was cynical about the market stands in disneyland... i saw the chip bags and smirked at what should be produce. and then i noticed that they DID have produce! sadly, this one had watermelon and grapes and pineapple buried under the ice and it was nasty looking upon closer inspection. and the only organic thing they had was a dehydrated fruit leather type thing that wasn't straight-up fruit... but hey... these are steps in the right direction! these fruit stands were everywhere!
so, anyways... i was soooo grateful i could bring food into disneyland!

sherry strong! vancouver!

today at organic lives, sherry strong of australia gave an intro talk to everyone at the restaurant about her food philosophy and what her upcoming classes at the restaurant will be about.

i really enjoyed and related to what she had to say. she is so awesome! i wish i was going to be in town while she is teaching.

here are her 3 nutrition tips, at least how i understood them:

1. love - eat with love in mind. love for your body (ie don't treat it like some toxic waste dump) and love for the food and where it came from! i find a lot of raw/vegan food packages mention "love" as an ingredient and however cheesy it can be, it seems to mean something! preparing food for someone with love is definitely felt by the person eating it! and why not put all your love into what you eat? LOVE IT. this reminds me of how a teacher at my school commented to me at lunch time, "your body is your temple, isn't it?". well, shouldn't it be? i love feeling amazing so i can't help but want to keep eating and drinking things that taste and feel amazing!

2. follow nature - think of what you are eating and how you would prepare it and eat it as if you actually did find it in nature. the easiest foods to eat, you can eat the most of! the ones that take some preparation or digging into or whatever, are meant perhaps to be eaten at a lesser volume. think of how food is produced. if you can't think of a way that the food came to your plate or how you would do it yourself, don't eat it! what i loved about this too, is she explained why we need to soak nuts to be able to reap the enzyme benefits of them: generally, we are buying nuts that have already been de-shelled. if we were gathering nuts from nature, we'd be cracking these shells open and the nut would be in that perfect, raw state that is of benefit to us. so soaking the raw nuts we buy from the store brings them back to that state. does that make sense?

3. move your body! don't be a lug. enjoy the sun. bike and walk and run and dance and jump. make sure your limbs are used while you can use them!

LA tomorrow morning!!! eek!

i want to write something about agave (so that i can remember why it's bad for you) but for now, i'm just gonna post some photos...

the last of my gorilla food curry bread... so fun to make sandwiches again! i forgot to put avocado on that one so i was kinda bummed but made for a good one later...

me and a friend grabbed salad bar at whole foods yesterday (after many deliberations on the best choice and me running back twice to the cashier later with cookies) and i LOVED the colours that appeared. something had some spice in it (possibly the almond milk avocado ranch dressing?) but it was great with blueberries!

then today i had a "clean out my fridge for the weekend getaway" salad which thankfully was inspired by many a good thing in the fridge. and again, such glorious colours!

i went to guu garden tonight but i was so full after opening the snacks i bought for my plane ride tomorrow (WF now has crackers from live in toronto! i LOVED that place! so i couldn't help it!!) but i can't really eat at guu anyways so i thought a fresh orange juice sounded nice!

last night at guilt & co i went for orange juice as well while the beers were being poured around me. they usually have freshly squeezed there but didn't then. them's the breaks!

so anyways, the waitress asked if it was okay that it was freshly squeezed. um, yes please! so, she brought out 2 orange halves and a juicer. i didn't realize it was to be freshly squeezed by me! brilliant! and the juice fit the glass perfectly. ha, i guess they've done this before.

radha, 2nd chance.

i went to radha for the first time for dinner just a few months ago... i was excited to eat somewhere with raw-friendly offerings on the menu and my friend had just got back from LA, experiencing a RAWvolution! we shared some raw nori rolls and cabbage rolls and a lime cheezecake for dessert. the most inspiring part of the meal was that i had a mother in my kombucha. it was a major bummer.

but i really believe you can't base an opinion on one experience and when the opportunity arose to catch up with a friend from almost a decade ago who is new to vancouver, we came to radha. it was wonderful!

she had panelle with tagine & ratatouille (the top plate in the photo) and i had the living/raw special which was a falafel with salad and there were so many familiar strong tastes but i am at a loss of words to try recall them all! i was so happy to have crunchy and soft, spicy and cool... it was a glorious balance. hurrah!

and then i had a raw white chocolate mousse with raspberries and strawberries. YES!

it reminds me that i tried a chocolate/mango parfait, new at organic lives in the afternoon which i've been excited to try. i think it should just be a mango parfait. the cacao mousse is not KAPOW enough. just sayin!

so anyways, i just watched, er, sort of listened to in the background while i'm typing, a thing about diet versus skin cancer. and it's been something i've been thinking about a lot lately. the sun has finally come out here and fairly intensely and i've been biking around a fair bit and i have not gotten burned. i'm amazed. and i have burned my skin in the past looking at a sun vacation brochure. i swear. and i'm not feeling invincible or anything - like mike adams says, i'm not going to go out and fry in the sun for 8 hours with confidence that i'm not doing damage (everything in moderation, yes???) but i do really believe more and more that sunscreen is a big scam (how terrible does it feel to put it on and how many people do you know have reactions to it? and goodness, thinking about putting this gross stuff on and letting it seep into my skin! GAH!) and that diet and general well-being play a huge role in getting cancer or not...