Until about a month ago I found a recipe by Kimberly Snyder which I thought I’d try. Here is what I did:

First soak the almonds. Overnight or overday (can you say that?), whatever works best for you

Then rinse them thoroughly

Put the almonds in the blender with a couple of cups of water

Blend the shit out of them

That's better

Filter the almond milk with a nut bag. You can also use an old piece of fabric, but make sure it's clean.

This is the almond pulp, keep it!

Put the almond milk back in the blender (after you rinsed it. The blender)

Add a tablespoon of soy lecithin (this is going to make your milk creamy)

Add a tablespoon of sweetener (I use date syrup)

Add a tablespoon of coconut oil

Add a pinch of salt

Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract (I didn't have any that day) and blend again

bottle your milk and put it in the fridge. Kimberly Snyder says it keeps for a week but in my experience, after 2 days it goes sour, Kimberly you are welcome to share your milk longevity secrets on here.

And now, on to tackle the pulp and make coco orbs

Put the almond pulp and a big handful of dates (I like to chop them beforehand) in the food processor. You can adjust the amount of dates after to find the right consistency.

Add a good tablespoon of cacao powder (I use the raw version, cause it's better for you)

Time to empty the cupboards, add whatever you have: goji berries, peanut butter, cacao nibs, sunflower seeds...

Process the whole thing until you get a sticky paste (if your food processor sucks as bad as mine, you might want to finish with your hands. And then lick them)

Form balls...

And roll them in dessicated coconut (or sesame seeds, or cacao powder...)

Et voila!

Full disclaimer: while I spend most of my procrastination time reading about food and nutrition, I am in no way an expert (my memory won’t let me) so please forgive me if I talk bullshit some times or if some of my descriptions are a bit vague.

Check out my blender. Not a Vitamix, just £20 from Argos

So I have been happily green smoothying for about 2/3 years now and I think I can safely say that I know now what works for me and what definitely doesn’t work. Here’s what you’ll find in my smoothie:

Fruit
Banana: I know some people don’t do/like bananas but to this day it is THE fruit that makes my smoothie creamy. When I do some forward planning (admittedly not so often) I slice a banana or two and freeze it in a tupperware the day before. This gives the smoothie the texture of a milkshake. Well kind of, I wouldn’t really know since I don’t consume dairy and I come from a country where we didn’t grow up on milkshakes anyway. I’m from France, we are raised on red wine yo.

Looks weird right?

Add filtered water and blend

Another fruit: in the last few months I’ve always had a bag of British frozen berries (that’s local for me since I am currently living in the United Kingdom), so I put a little handful of that in my smoothie. But lately I have discovered that an apple does the job nicely too (and makes the smoothie cheaper too, tadam!), but any fruit you like can go in: pear, mango, grapes, peach, melon, pineapple, whatever.

Add frozen red berries (if that's what you fancy)

I would advise to go easy on the fruit though. While fruit is a “healthy” sweet choice, it still contains sugar, and too much sugar will likely give you a sugar crash at some point, plus excess sugar might show around the muffin top too if you are not careful.

Greens
Any leafy green. Mine would be spinach, a massive handful of it. And I always have it organic because none organic is evil when it comes to leafy green (pesticides, chemicals etc) plus it won’t have all the nutrients you are after. You can also try chard or kale, I don’t do that anymore because you can really taste it. Oh and lately I discovered that mint is delicious too. And that’s green. Chlorophyll woop woop!

Like I said, a massive handful

Try it

Superfood and miscellaneous stuff
That’s where I go a bit  experimental. Like the day I started putting almond butter and discovered it was really yummie in the smoothie (but super expensive, bordel). So here is the list of superfoods I have used so far:
Maca (1 tbsp): better than caffeine without the bad stuff, plus awesome for libido I hear
Flax seed (1 big tbsp): omega 3s
Hemp seeds (1 small tbsp, that shit is expensive): proteins
Chia seeds (1 or 2 tbsp soaked in water for 10/15 minutes first, expensive too but well): good for lots of stuffs but can’t remember what exactly
Cacao nibs (1 tsp): lots of minerals, magnesium powerhouse, good for so many things I’m on my way to become a superhuman
Wheatgrass powder/spirulina/barley grass powder: I haven’t tried those yet but they are green right? And they are amazing for you everyone says.
coconut oil: so I love to put coconut oil in my smoothie but the problem when the smoothie is cold (cold water, frozen bananas, frozen berries…) is that it solidifies and you find little lumps in the smoothie. I personnally don’t mind but Jimmy kind of does, so I’m leaving it out for now.

Do not overdo it if you do not have someone to get intimate with... just sayin'

Ruined the pot last night. Bummer.

I might rename my blog "Almond butter and banana"

Omega 3

Chia seeds

Soak them

Put the chia seeds in the blender

Liquid
I put filtered water. If like me, you are using a Brita filter it’s a good idea to stop the blender before pouring the water straight from the Brita jar, because if the lid falls in the running blender, your green smoothie will have bit of plastic in it, which might or might not have happened to me.

Brita filter, the leed

At one point I was using coconut water instead of water, which was really good as you can probably imagine, but I had to stop because there is a bit of a credit crunch in my house and the coconut water was not helping.
Some people add milk (dairy or not) in their smoothie, I don’t because I don’t feel it’s necessary but if you want to try, by all means, knock yourself out.

I will try to take some pictures tomorrow to make this a respectable food blog post but I might get totally lazy so don’t hold your breath… Done!

Blend it

You might have noticed, it's not green, it's the berries fault, but it's green in spirit, you saw all the spinach right?

How do you like to start your day? If you are already a (green) smoothier, what do you have in yours?

While eating that cake from Blissfully Vegan.

Happy monday everyone!

Lonley surf at beautiful Wategoes from Rest Your Eyes on Vimeo.

If you are not sure what dedication and creativity means, here is a pretty good definition

Karim Rejeb (who is French by the way) took 3 months to do it. He used his kid’s legos and mostly worked by himself on a 15 frames by seconds base. Anyhoo, you can read more here

So, first I feel I should give some news following all the drama. Our flights back to the UK are booked for Feb 26th which is good cause it means we are still in Vancouver for the Olympics. Talking about the Olympics, apart from being in the right time zone, could someone explain to me what’s the advantage of living in the city where the Olympics are held? I mean, obviously I don’t have tickets, so I am not attending any of the games… so what else am I supposed to do?

Ok now one good thing that happened last week is that Jimmy won a 2 nights at the Fairmont hotel in Whistler with $100 per day to spend on mountain fun. Maybe there is some sort of luck bank in the universe and we were in serious debit so this is the Universe giving us a little bit of credit. So that’s good because once we are back in Europe we are done with the snow season.

As it happens, I also won something in a draw last week! I won 2 tickets to the ‘Grassroot wedding’ on Vancouverisawesome.com. But I turned them down. First because I thought I was going to Whistler that day (but then we looked at the finances and decided not to) and also because I am not getting married anytime soon (thought I am actually engaged, just so you know I am not one of those freaks who have their whole wedding figured out without even having someone to marry) and finally, it is now quite unlikely that I will ever get married in Vancouver (or Tofino). But all that to say that it might be time to buy tickets for the lottery, don’t you think?

The day after I got back, Jimmy and I drove to the border to get a border agent to approve my new employer on my visa. Don’t ask. My visa is some sort of administrative arsehole. So we got there I presented all the paperwork to a young and ugly border agent who, I noticed straight away, was sporting a nice ‘trainee’ badge.  She took a quick look and asked me to go and sit down.

We saw her look through the papers again and then her fat and even uglier supervisor went over and started looking through as well. Moments later, I saw them getting on the phone, and then hanging up and bursting into laughs. The trainee called me over “You know that lying to a border agent is a serious offense that could jeopardize any future work permit or permanent residency application right?”, me “Absolutely”, her “So why did you say you haven’t started working for this company, I just called them and Alyson told me you’ve been working for them for weeks?”, me ” Sorry there must be a misunderstanding, I don’t know who Alyson is, I haven’t met her yet because I have not yet started working there, she probably misunderstood your question. Please ask to speak to Rebecca or Callie, they are the ones who hired me”, her “So you are saying that the person I spoke to on the phone was lying?” me “No… I just think she misunderstood your question”, her “I don’t believe you, I’m going to ask you to give me your bag, your wallet and your phones (Jimmy’s as well), go and sit down”. Naturally, when this kind of stuff happens I instantly switch to guilt mode even if I have no reasons to. I swear if I had to go through a lie detector I’d fail even if I was telling the truth.

So anyway, I went back to my seat.I saw her give another couple of phone calls. I guess she spoke to Alyson again and cleared the misunderstanding cause she didn’t mention anything again. Then she called Jimmy over and asked for his passport. She wanted to see his visa. She took the passport and asked him to go back and sit down. And so on for the next couple of hours, she kept calling us back to the desk, asked us random questions, to which we tried to respond in the best and simplest way possible, and then we’d get asked to go back and sit.

In the end she called me again and told me she was not going to validate this employer and this job on my visa. It didn’t really come as a surprise, by then I knew things were jinxed. Then she looked at Jimmy’s work visa and said she needed to take it away. I tried to explain to her (in the least patronizing way possible) that he was entitled to that visa, being my common-law partner and all that… She seemed to agree… but then took a quick glance at her ugly supervisor and asked me to go back and sit again. Her fat and ugly supervisor, who had missed nothing from the conversation, called her over. And there again I saw them going through paperwork and all that.

Half an hour later she called us back again and announced that she was taking Jimmy’s work visa away. She got into some really convoluted explanation as for how she got to the conclusion that she could do that. I tried to argue it, in the most respectful and calm way possible but she totally lost it. So I surrendered. We took our stuffs back and before we left she said “I realize this puts you in a difficult position but I had no choice, if my supervisor hadn’t pointed it out I wouldn’t have known”. No kidding ugly bitch!

So there you go, we left the border with a useless work visa for me and a ‘visitors’ visa for Jimmy. How about that?

Even though we know we could fight it, it didn’t take us long to decide to leave it at that and go back home for a while. Wherever home is (somewhere between France and Paris).

It’s unexpected and sad but sometimes you’ve got to go with the flow not against it, right? Things have been so difficult in the last few months for us that I was starting to think that the Universe might be trying to send us a message. Maybe something incredible is waiting for us in Europe… I heard someone say (I think it was in the documentary ‘Home’, if you haven’t seen it here you can watch it for free) “Don’t cry about what you’ve lost, think about what you still have”. And this is exactly what I am going to do!