Seasonal Food Workshops

I have two great seasonal foods workshops coming up. I hope you can join me!

Why seasonal workshops?

Well, pretty much because we are what we eat! What we put in our bodies every day has such a profound impact on everything that we do and feel. Come and discover the connections between how and why to eat in tune with the nature's cycles.

And we have such an abundance of local amazing foods at our disposal, this whole 100-mile-diet-locavore-thing has something to it. Really.

I will also be offering these workshops at Santropol Roulant on Sept. 7th and Oct. 6th,

please check out this great community organization to get on their mailing list and find our about my workshops and other great events!

Get Grounded!

Late Summer Grounding Foods Workshop

September 11th 10am-1pm $45 at ahimsa yoga

The Late Summer is our time to get earthy, to connect with the core of nature. It is not quite harvest time but the bounties are beginning to flow. The Earth Element is about this perfectly balanced time in between.

Come and learn about how to balance with grounding foods during this important transition time. What are grounding foods? What is Late Summer all about? How do we cook during this season? Learn the answers to these questions and more drawing upon the ancient wisdom of Chinese Medicine, Macrobiotics and Ayurveda. With all of our collective ingredients together we will make an Earth Balancing Creamy Squash Soup to share together

Handouts will be provided.

Please bring one of the following LOCAL ingredients & let me know what you are bringing:

(and your own container for leftovers!)

Garlic cloves

Squash (any late summer variety, butternut, buttercup, acorn, pumpkin… the more orange the better!)

Sweet potatoes

Carrots

Onion

Boost Your Immunity With Food!

Autumn Foods Workshop

September 25th 10am-1pm $45 at ahimsa yoga

As the days grow a bit colder we instinctively are drawn to the more compact, dense abundance that the Autumn harvest offers. Adding more root vegetables and squashes to our diets is suitable in Autumn, as well as cooking our food a bit longer and eating warmer more densely nourishing meals. Minimizing mucous producing foods during this season is encouraged as we can see the abundance of ‘back to school colds’ start to arise. How can we support our immune systems simply, while eating seasonally? It’s easy! Nature knows what we need even if we sometimes forget. We will remind ourselves by drawing upon the ancient wisdom of Chinese Medicine, Macrobiotics and Ayurveda, as well as the wisdom that abounds in our local harvests. With all of our collective ingredients together we will make some Lung Tonic Tea and a Roasted Roots Immune Boost to share together.

Handouts will be provided.Please bring one of the following LOCAL ingredients & let me know what you are bringing:Mullein leaves, onions, squash, garlic, ginger, beans, pumpkin, burdock root, carrots, leeks, kale, sweet potatoes, yams, cauliflower, collards, Brussels sprouts, winter squash, parsnips cabbage, apples, pears, figs, grapes, pomegranate, mushrooms, thyme, any local root vegetable!

Workshop Facilitator: Nadia Stevens has been a practitioner and student of qi gong, Chinese Medicine, Asian healing, herbalism and nutrition for over 15 years, and most currently a student of Ayurveda.

To Register: Please contact Nadia directly to secure your place: 514.445.8586 or sustainable.nadia@gmail.conm

Location: ahimsa yoga 5369 St. Laurent, Suite 240 Montreal, Quebec

Conversation

The need to question and contemplate and continually re-evaluate is where the change and enlightening revelation come from. Everyday.

Communication about how we feel, why we choose what we do and what it all means: this is the means to healing and changing the social, economic, environmental imbalances all around us. It all begins and ends with self-reflection and sharing, this is real community building.

I like this: communi-ty communi-cation. They both have the same Latin roots “com-mun” or “cum” meaning together or with each other, and “munus” meaning gift or offerings. Very cool.

"Resolution begins within the Self", or so Thich Nhat Hanh aptly reminds us. This begins with dialogue. With ourselves, with each other.

I focus on this type of dialogue when I work with clients. If you have ever had a session with me, this is the starting point: beginning the dialogue with yourself, what is your body communicating to you, right now? Take some time with your breath and LISTEN.

So a great place to start and, easy to say, but do we do it? Well of course not all the time! Human beings such as we are, but I want to try and I want to surround myself with folks who want this as well. Once we start getting to know ourselves so to speak, on a fairly regular basis, it becomes much easier to begin sharing, dialoguing with each other.

This is the sustainable platform from which we plunge deep into the choices we make everyday. Why sustainable? I think it is because we can not merely claim ourselves “holistic” “healthy” “eco-friendly” “green” “ethical” “yogic minded”. For me it has to run deeper than this.

Just choosing an action, an exercise, a lifestyle and latching on to it, without any personal inquiry into why or how this impacts our every moment actions, makes these motions merely that: a motion, without a deeply personal thread running through. All of these “labels” by their nature require us to be constantly self-reflective and to share with others our thoughts, experiences, doubts, revelations, and hopefully our willingness to evolve, to adapt.

Here are some folks who I feel are inspirations:

Yoga Community Toronto. It seems so simple, the idea, let’s just get together all the amazing people in our local community who are doing amazing work already. But yet! It’s almost revelatory because it’s just not happening all that much, yet….. Just this past weekend was the Yoga Festival Toronto and to be truthful I did contemplate going but I had to resist and continue working on projects here, right in my own city, my own community, my own home, and truthfully, in my own being. This felt right to me and I think that the beauty of what the organizers of the this festival are fostering is something that we can all learn from and transpose to our own local communities. I think we really can be inspired from a distance and then act wherever we actually are. Check out their manifesto, it's truly beautiful and inspiring.

University of the Streets Café. Have you been yet? These local events are happening all over the city, and the whole point is: yes! You guessed it: Conversation! Amazing, so simple, but yet so effective! From travel, to transition, to letting go, to storytelling, to education impact, to food issues, discussions focus on what's affecting our lives in our community around us. Get people talking, sharing about important, current, even trendy issues and boom! Things start happening. I love it. The new semester starts up sometime in September.

More inspirations to come! What are yours? What conversation do you want to have?

So here’s my mission: Be Brave! It’s not easy to converse about things that are "difficult” or “controversial”, just like it’s not “easy” to really feel what’s going on in my body all the time, sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but I care about myself, my body, my everything, and my community, so I take the time. In the end it’s worth it.

Market Week!

Ending off the summer is August 21-29th Quebec Week of Public Markets!

Just another great resource of all kinds of market happenings everywhere in Quebec, so that even if you are away having some last days of summer fun, you can still support the locals wherever you may be!

And the most fun market in Montreal, I think, happens next weekend August 28-29th, is the 18th Century Public Market at the PAC Museum in Old Montreal. Very fun. And it's great way to inspire the get-back-to-the-basics-simplify-your-life-ness that is increasingly all the rage these days, and just a good idea.

Good Work Inspirations

I just watched the Earth Keepers documentary last night, and I was blown away.

Not because this is the most amazing enviro-doc that I have ever seen, but because this is one guy wanting to connect with people to do good work, simply, and in our own backyard: he's from Trois-Pistoles.

It's a must watch to remind, ignite, encourage and inspire.

A reminder that communication with each other in our own communities is really the only thing that will change anything, whether it's food, politics, the environment, recycling, or simply the way we treat each other.

I love this movie!

Keepin' It Local

I went to Vermont this past weekend and, as always, had much food and much conversation and much conversation about food. Both of which seem to go hand in hand whenever we get together with our Vermont friends!

The topic came up about 'buying local', as this is really BIG in Vermont, everywhere you go there are signs and products encouraging you to support community with local purchasing. Yeah, it is here in Montreal, for sure, we see Quebec Vrai certifying home-grown products as organic, but the collective encouragement is definitely not as in-your-face. Vermont has always been this way in my lifetime of frequent border crossings as former Townshipper. Why? More rural living and agri-culture, giving rise to community that basically needed to support each other to survive,were some reasons that were put out.

And it's true, I have seen this when I lived in rural Nova Scotia for a while. It was easy to buy local, we went to the market every Saturday and bought everything for our week of eating, veggies, fruits, cheese, butter, meats, tofu, cleaning and body products. ALL made from people who's farms we had visited! This is a bit harder to do when living in Montreal, but worth the effort for seeing where your 'organic' veggies really lived before they habited your fridge. You begin to feel more connected to what you are eating. Really. Well, at least I do, and if you can not remember the last time you felt really connected with everything on your plate, then it's at least worth a try. Visit your farmer's markets, join a CSA, visit the farms where your food is grown and processed. If you eat meat, see where and how these animals lived before they were killed, find out how they were killed. Get connected.

We have an array of city markets available now, from the large markets of Jean-Talon and Atwater, to the local marches des quartiers, and some newer local markets, which are more and more bringing in organic and unsprayed non-herbicided, non-pesticided produce. Buying local, healthy products close to wherever you live in the city is easier now than ever.

So head out and don't forget to get some cash out before you go!

But why buy local and pay with cash? (another great gem from our many Vermont-discussions) Well, apart from building community and making us feel more connected with each other and the earth, it also keeps the goods in your back pocket so to speak. If all of our money, time, effort are going right back into the people in our community, stability is encouraged in our local economic system, which in times of late, seems like a good idea, with words like recession bouncing around. I am certainly no economist, but I have read enough to get the gist and also experienced this reality work!

When we pay with credit and debit cards the person that we are paying for a good or service DOES NOT get all of the money that we are paying them. It is soooo easy to forget this when we are busy collecting airmiles for trips to foreign lands or for movie passes. The credit card company, who certainly is not in need, is getting some of the money that should ALL be going back to the fellow who planted your organic local really yummy cucumbers. Sometimes you can not get around using plastic, but when we buy local it seems like completing the cycle to have all the money go back directly to the source of the product or service. Credit cards and debit are just like drugs, so remember: JUST SAY NO!

And the bonus of this cash friendly action: we are more discerning about what we buy, what we really need.

Because, while, ya it's great to support the local community, it's also great to tone down the longtime cultural pattern of just buying way too much stuff!

Another reminder that being more sustainable is all about self vigilance and inquiry. Why do I want this? What purpose does it serve the big big big picture?

Good Work Inspirations

Every now and then, but most likely every day! in lieu of or in addition to a regular posting here will be a link to folks who are doing good work in some way.

Mostly they will be folks in our own town, sometimes good work happens elsewhere and is tremendously inspiring! Sometimes it's the people, sometimes it's the work itself, sometimes it's just one aspect that I haven't seen before and really want to share.

Like today: I do not know these folks but I really appreciate their commitment to how they run their yoga classes. I am not sure how well it really works because I haven't tried it out, yet, but I really like the small-class-tracking-concept! Meanwhile, until I make it to Japan, thanks for keepin' it real Yoga Garden.

Made With Love Restaurant!

AND: I can not believe I forgot:

Chantal's Kitchen at Equilibrium Yoga!

Made With Love

There are restaurant lists for "the best vegetarians restaurants in Montreal", "top 5 vegan places to eat in Montreal", "best burger", "best indian" etc..........

What I want to know is: "Where in Montreal is the food that's Made With Love?"

How do you even determine such a thing?! For me, being a self proclaimed super sensitive foodie, it's based on how I feel at the end of the meal. Can I feel the love? Being organic, local, vegan, living, raw, are not the most important things for me. I want to feel happy, sated, fulfilled, digestively balanced and energized. As if I had made the meal myself or someone who loves me had made it for me. It is about what kind of energy, thoughts and feelings that were put into the food while it was being harvested, cleaned and transformed into what will eventually become me.

So here they are! Some of the restaurants where I have had the "Made With Love" experience.

It is not always consistent, as we are all human and not machines pumping out the same thing each time! But I have had at least a couple of love-filled meals at each place below.

Where was the last place in Montreal you ate a love-filled meal?

Top 10 Montreal Restaurants Made With Love:

1. Gryphon D'Or

2. La Faim du Monde

3. Hiko Sun

4. My Antidote

5. Burrittoville

6. TribuTerre

7. La Lumiere du Mile-End

8. Crudessence

9. Rumi

10. La Panthere Verte