Kale Ribbon Salad with Sweet Potato

I want to share this yummy kale ribbon salad with warm sweet potato and hemp seed recipe that I made a few days ago. It is really tasty and light yet hearty.
Dice up a sweet potato (with skins!) and bake in oven at around 350F for 20 minutes or so (until soft).
Take several large leaves of kale, stack on top of eachother, roll and slice into ribbons. Put the sliced kale into a bowl, add olive oil and massage the hell out of it until the kale appears dark green and steamed-looking (this makes the kale much more palatable). Squeeze in some lemon juice or apple cider vinegar or your favourite vinegar, mix in the diced yam, sprinkle with salt and pepper and a couple spoonfuls of hemp seeds.

I love yams and this salad was an amazing combo - they go together perfectly with leafy greens.

I tend to keep the recipes that I put together fairly simplistic with only a few ingredients (depending on what foods I have on hand - usually I just throw stuff together) but this salad can certainly be modified by adding red onion, tomato or perhaps julienned zucchini. :-)

Avocados

I discovered recently how much I love to eat avocados with a spoon.
They are perfect because they're very satiating and they make me really happy.
I always had this notion that I should avoid eating too much of them because of their fat content. Which is true in that you don't want to go and eat five avocados at once.

But I learned they are beautiful and great just on their own and perfect for when you want something heavier yet nutritionally dense!

I had a halve today at lunch with some salt sprinkled on top and

it

was


AWESOME!

Walks and Talks

As always

walks in the rain are mandatory for the peace it brings,

except this time damp colourful leaves are everywhere.

I wish there was a way for me to meticulously describe my bike ride atop a cliff yesterday,

but there is not!

A couple weeks ago on my daily 40 minute drive to school I accidentally came across the best radio station that ever came to be (in Toronto it's 89.5fm, but it's worldwide). They host a one hour radio series from 9-10am that has a different episode every day ranging from all sorts of incredible topics from corporate America, globalization, today's environmental, food and health crises to science and spirituality and solutions to the absurdly and ridiculously frustrating distorted world we currently live in due to the powers that be. The radio series is called Bioneers (biological pioneers!) All of this is actually specifically what has been bothering me a lot lately. A lot.

At the introduction to the episodes there is a clip of a woman doing a lecture saying "...it's all connected, it's all intelligence, it's all relatives" while geese are sounding in the background and everytime it plays this clip I cry. Every morning I am literally crying on my way to school. It certainly puts a bit of a damper on my morning but I can't not listen - there is such an enormous amount of invaluable information to be heard and it is very significant for everybody to listen. Agh! Everything is just so messed up and everything is connected and I hate this apparent universal ignorance that has washed over humanity but I know people can awaken to it all and I hope so badly that things will change and all of the corporations that are in power over everything (like Monsanto, for one small example) will be shut down. Ultimately, I wish for that. I feel as though this is what a big part or meaning of my life is all about - changing the current world we inhabit, someway, somehow. I know it begins with the collective minds. Perspectives and attitudes must be adjusted into the direction of supporting and connecting with nature and ourselves, first. I feel like I know what so many of the answers are and everything that I would do if I could do it would make so much sense but the scope of the world is so large and I feel so small.

Anyways, do check out the radio series which I believe you can find and listen to on their website, or perhaps the conference itself from which it originates. www.bioneers.org.

Butternut Squash Soup!

This was heavenly.

Last week my class went on a field trip to an organic farm, which was very cool, and we were able to purchase some fresh organic produce before we left. I picked up some leafy greens, kale and a lovely butternut squash in which I have never before cooked with. The soup turned out so awesome and it's so easy and wonderful.

There are many different variations of this soup that include a whole array of fun ingredients but I kept mine simple tonight and it was delicious. I used one butternut squash, one large onion, a couple garlic cloves and two carrots all thrown into a pot and boiled with enough water (pure, of course) to cover all the ingredients. The recipes I read said it should boil/simmer for upwards of half an hour but I probably only did 15 minutes and then blended it all up in my blender. Added some (Himalayan) salt and stirred it around and it becomes so creamy and beautiful. The colour is so vibrant and warm. I could and would have liked to use some rice milk to make it have a heartier consistency but it didn't even need it - the squash is so thick and creamy already and has so much savory flavour so water was perfectly fine.

I wonder if I could make a raw version of this just by soaking the squash for a while instead of boiling it...

The Month of Amber & Dream Interpretation

It's October! The month of amber, gold, squash and pumpkin! I am really happy. I wanted to make a post yesterday for the first day of the new month but was not able to. Aside from the fact that every perpetually spinning and revolving day is the same thing mashed into One coupled with the illusion of time, I feel like each first day of a new month holds great significance. I sense something is going to happen this month though I do not know what it is.

Oh. I have been having very peculiar dreams over the past week. They are very particular and are directed at very specific people in my life like specifically one of my cats, one of my friends, my aunt, my manager. But they haven't just been typical dreams where you dream of someone or something, it has been so strange that when I am in my waking life associating with my dreambeings, I get this eerie wave of feeling as though I am connected to them on a different plane of reality. It is rather unreal and I don't know how to explain it. It is similar to deja vu except much deeper and bewitching.

A lot of people don't often remember their dreams but I actually recall my dreams nearly every night and with pretty clear recollection. I have a dream journal though I have not recorded them for a long time. There have been times when I have had very vivid dreams of very specific locations and in my waking life have gone there, just to connect with what I dreamed of. It's pretty surreal and in fact I would like to do this more often. I have dreamt multiple times of nearby fields and pathways in my town that I used to walk through when I was a child and actually now that I think of it, I have wanted to go to those spots just to be there. Because, and just in light of my dreams of specific people, I know that there can be an importance to connect with that which you dreamed.

I love dream interpreting and I know it is very important to analyze them and get an understanding of what they mean, because it is your subconscious mind sifting and sorting through waking thoughts and experiences via bizarre mental movies and they have a lot to say and much to teach about yourself and how you are really feeling. They provide a wonderful doorway into knowing and understanding YOU at very deep levels!!! Perhaps some people are fearful of facing this Truth that lies within our dreams. Either that or they are just not aware of the information they contain...