• The last of the watermelon that I got at my CSA two weeks ago (picked up another yesterday)

• 1/2 a freestone peach from the farmer’s market (mostly free, unlike the previous ones that weren’t really)

• 1 small yellow plum

• A handful of purple grapes that I got at the CSA yesterday (I chose mostly the ones that got smushed on the way home and leaked into my canvas bag). Antioxidant goodness!

• Handful of farmer’s market strawberries. Sadly, they’re conventionally grown and strawberries are #6 on the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list on their Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides.

• A couple of cherry (?) tomatoes that I got at a farmer’s market or the CSA weeks ago.

• Ginger

• A small bit of lemon

• Around 1/4 cup (didn’t measure) Liberte vanilla yogurt

• About a couple of tablespoons of Vega Antioxidant EFA blend

• 1/2 tablespoon matcha

• 1 tablespoon of Barlean’s Greens

• 1 scoop of hemp protein powder with sprouted flax and maca (brand website)

• A sprinkle of bee pollen

Nice, creamy, healthy goodness. As usual I made too much, enough for two. The remainder will be reblended with cocoa nibs and chia seeds (also see Top 10 Benefits of Chia Seeds) which I forgot I had.

I like my smoothies: Nutritious and hydrating. I also take supplements (vitamin B, Omega 3-6-9, multivitamin).

(Beside the blender is the watermelon that I picked up from my CSA yesterday.)

• Fortified Foods: How Healthy Are They? [Wall Street Journal] I have an idea: Instead of fortified foods, why don’t people eat a varied diet full of unprocessed food?  I’ve heard that vegetables aren’t as nutritious as they used to be but I’d still think that they’re better than frankenfoods.

• They needed new research to tell them what they already knew? Plant-Based, Low-Calorie Diet Lowers Heart Risks [Disease Proof]

• A study shows that boiled carrots retain more nutrients if you cook them whole. When you slice them more surface area is exposed, allowing nutrients to leach out.  [BBC] Or you could eat them raw.

• Pesky problems with multi-nutrient supplements [Marion Nestle/Food Politics]

• Vegetables and male health [Fooducate] A study conducted in Spain has found that men who regularly consume fruits and vegetables have improved semen quality.

• Cheeseburger in a can? WTF??

• *swoon* The Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowl Sundae [Michael Ruhlman]

• If you’re in the US don’t use Nestlé raw Toll House cookie dough for those bowls. The FDA has issued a recall.  [Marion Nestle/Food Politics]

• A primer on sour cherries [NPR]

Today’s was the same as yesterday’s but I forgot the EFA Oil, and added another half apple, a second tablespoon of Greens, the last of a Meyer lemon and some fresh mint leaves.

It filled me up more.

When I do a cleanse this should be the basis of it with some other fruit occasionally thrown in. I bet peaches would be good.

I’m thinking of visiting Lettuce Eatery for lunch, although the fact that they rebranded as Freshii leaves a bad taste in my mouth – no pun intended. Well, a little intended.

Problem is, I don’t have much fruit at home right now. It’s on my shopping list. What I do have, are apples that I bought in the fall and stored in Debbie Meyer Green Bags that I bought at Canadian Tire (most of the apples were still good months later), and frozen bananas.

This morning before work I made a fruit smoothie and drank a glass. It gave me lots of energy until hunger set in and I drank the second cup, brought to work in a Magic Bullet cup with lid. Smoothies are great. They’re easy and super-nutritious. Meghan had her Green Smoothie Cleanse last week, and my buddy SDM of In the Weeds has been blogging about his daily concoctions at work. I’m envious of his access to fruit, and the varieties of it.

Here is what I made this morning:

In my Magic Bullet (using the blender) I combined

• 1 apple, cored and chopped but mostly unpeeled.

• 1 frozen banana thawed a little bit because frozen bananas are solid (I know, one once attacked my foot and won).

• Half a lemon peeled but not juiced, as much pith removed as I could.

• 1 heaping tablespoon of Barleens Greens (also see product info – PDF)

• A couple tablespoons (or however much I poured in) of Vega Antioxidant EFA Oil Blend.

• Approx 1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds.

• Coconut water (bought in a tetra pack).

• Regular water.

• A squirt of hazelnut agave nectar.

The nuttiness of the agave provided great flavour. It was an awesome smoothie, one I’ll repeat until I buy more fruit. I correctly guessed that the coconut would taste good with apple and banana but I didn’t realize how much flavour the hazelnut would impart or how good it would be. I could use less next time.

I’m a fan of Vega products.  The Barleens Greens are new, bought  on Saturday after scrutinizing product labels. I tried drinking it in water on Monday and didn’t like it, so I’ll keep using it in smoothies. When I run out I might try the Berry version. I had a bottle of Barleens cinnamon-flavoured flax oil last year. While I found the taste too strong on its own, it was good on oatmeal with honey.

I did bring oatmeal to work today but didn’t eat it. I drank the first smoothie around 8:15am, the second in mid-morning (10? 10:30?) by 11:30 I got hungry. I don’t get hungry at noon like other people because I graze on my oatmeal all morning and the slow release carbs get me going. However, it’s almost 12:30 and I’m ready for a salad.

Smoothies are definitely a way to help stay hydrated and keep things easy on the digestive system, which I taxed on Tuesday evening with breaded tofu fingers (like chicken wings) and a grain-based veggie burger that was more dense than expected. By making little changes to what we eat and drink, even if they don’t become habitual, we can change our health. Going back to the Raw Food Diet, and I’ll get more into this another time, I’d like to try eating all raw until dinner time or mostly raw, with salads topped with sprouted grains or eggs and/or cheese (but not grains and one of the others because they’re poor combinations for digestion, while vegetables can combine with anything). I think I could do quinoa on my salads even though it’s technically cooked.

Lunch today is what remained in a box of salad (a box of Earthbound Farms salad appears to yield 4 meals worth of salad), the last of my cucumbes and baby carrots from the fridge at work and the last of the can of sliced beets that I opened yesterday. I figured that if I was using up the salad I may as well use up everything that goes on it and on Fridays I like to eat out so I’ll stock the fridge again on Monday. As per my usual this week, the dressing is a squeeze of lemon (used that up too and there wasn’t much left) and a drizzle of walnut oil.

On Wednesdays the Toronto Star’s food section appears. Here are two stories from this week:

• Eating a pig from head to tail. Apparently Montreal restaurant Au Pied de Cochon makes a foie gras that’s better than sex. I may be off meat but even I’d admit that you can’t say that about tofu.
• Attuned to fiddleheads. I already decided to try them this year. I’ve started to see them in stores.

Taste T.O takes the Great Gelato Taste Test.

Ed Levine on mangosteens. I almost bought one once. The inside sort of looks like a brain, or flesh-coloured orange (the fruit) sections.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s new legislation on food labeling in Canada. Food items labeled as a product of Canada or made in Canada will now have to ensure that nearly all of their contents are Canadian in origin and processed in this country.

This is gross but I have to: Milk chocolate covered bacon. Thank you, Marisa. It almost disturbs me as much as the link to the chocolate anus (that’s not a typo) that Chris posted yesterday, which could have been a follow up to – but wasn’t – Rob’s comment on Sunday that particular chocolates resembled a female body part. I still don’t see it.

The Appetizer’s Gadget of the Week: Oxo’s Mango Slicer. Turns out The Kitchn reviewed this gadget in 2006. Looks useful if you eat a lot of mangoes and have the space, and if you don’t mind spending a few bucks on such things. I have trouble slicing mangos, and yet I rarely buy them and I don’t believe in using gadgets for tasks that should be easy. My small kitchen can only hold so many useless or single-use gadgets. My microplane and tongs hang on a wall. As I’ve said before the microplane is my favourite. I rarely find use for tongs or remember to use them but they’re good to have for tonging tossing things. I don’t slice mangos with grace, but I do it gadget-free. I’ve tried the technique that involves scoring the fruit into cubes but in the end I just slice around the pit. The Appetizer’s article reminded me of Michael Ruhlman’s blog post from April about his favourite kitchen gadgets. He too mentions the microplane. I don’t own most of that stuff and some of which I do I rarely use. I do keep a Sharpie – and adhesive labels – in my kitchen. I need a really good knife set.

Burger King U.K. brings the “party sized pizza” idea to burgers. Read about it here. At first glance I thought that they were trying to replicate White Castle’s sliders. (*Which reminds me, if any of you have my Harold and Kumar DVD please identify yourself.)
Links to posts/stories that aren’t directly food-related:

• A Truck That Runs on Coffee Grounds – I know some people who go through enough coffee to fuel a truck.
• Today, Canadian Geographic will release an issue printed on paper made from wheat. Wheat is food. I think that this is a great idea. “The magazine says adding agricultural waste to pulp from trees could offer farmers a new source of revenue and cut the demand for pulp from the continent’s boreal forests.” Rock on.

And one that’s not related to food at all, but CBC radio’s been running it all day:

CBC reports that Canada’s top court is expected to rule Thursday on the case of a man suing a company for psychological damages he says he suffered after finding a dead fly in his water bottle. The man claims that the discovery of a fly in the water bottle triggered depression, phobia and anxiety that affected his work and his sex life. If a dead fly triggered all that, I’d guess that he had some underlying anxieties and phobias to begin with. Update: It was thrown out of court.