p.s. recipe for this super awesome juice is coming your way (and you don’t need a juicer)

I have had a ton of recent produce donations from generous friends sharing their garden harvest. One time, I was fortunate enough to receive far too many beets than I even knew what to do with. I decided to get a little crafty one hot summer day. I was craving a cool and refreshing drink so I took to my fridge and experimented with making a juice in my Vitamix blender.

I tried this two ways. First I blended all the ingredients together but it was a wee bit pulpy for my liking. The grittiness of the beverage wasn’t something I was going after. You may like it though, plus all that fibre is totally good for your health. The second time I placed the blended concoction through a nut milk bag and BOOM. I nailed it. The result is a cooling and slightly sweet beverage–perfect for a hot day and something different from the litres of water I tend to consume each day. Tip: if you don’t have a nut milk bag, I found using a sieve worked just as well!

Refreshing Beet, Cucumber and Apple juice

 

Print

Prep time

5 mins

Total time

5 mins

 

Serves: approx 3 cups

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 1 beet, washed, peeled and chopped into 1" pieces
• 4" piece cucumber, chopped into 1" pieces
• 1 small apple, chopped into 1" pieces
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1" knob of ginger

Instructions

1. Place everything in a high-powered blender. Depending on your blender you may have to use a low setting and gradually increase to a higher setting. Or, use an ice crusher setting to break apart the beet.
2. Blend until it is as smooth as possible.
3. Optional: strain out as much or as little of the pulp as you wish using a nutmilk bag or a sieve.
4. Cool and enjoy!

3.5.3208

Food photography done by the talented Ceone Dyck. To learn more about Ceone click here or follow her on Facebook.

Don’t forget to follow Carrots and Cake on Instagram to see tiny square snap shots of my life.

                 – With Love, Carrots and Cake,

So you’ve filled your fridge full of fresh groceries on the weekend and you’re feeling ready to crush the week. Fast-forward a couple days, you get home starving from a long day, open up the fridge and wish the meals could materialize themselves. Alright take-out, you win this time.

We’ve all been there – in a perfect world, we’d be able to whip up a delicious meal from scratch every day. But you and I both know that in reality, ain’t nobody got time for that!

If you’re the type of person who rolls with the punches, that’s totally cool! But if you’re wondering how you can improve your daily eating habits, and the words MEAL PREP freak you out a bit, don’t worry – we’ve got your back! Meal planning does take some time, but it’s not as daunting as you think. Our free printable below is a great way to help you visualize and plan out your meals and tasks for the week.

Here are some tips to help you get going:

Planning ahead makes CENTS

Save your hard earned dollars – look through flyers (print or online) for the best deals that week – then plan your meals around those ingredients. Some grocery stores now have apps that will show you their special offers for the week. Plan for one meatless meal a week (Check out this economical and tasty mac and cheese recipe.)

Stock Up

Keep your pantry and freezer stocked with basics that will allow you to whip up a quick meal when you’re in a time crunch. This can include whole-grain pasta, rice, lentils and beans, canned fish, and frozen fruit and vegetables.

Cook once, eat later

Make extra portions of the same ingredient that can transformed into something else later – for example, instead of cooking up one chicken breast for dinner, make a couple more and refrigerate for later in the week. It can easily be added to wraps or pasta. Cooked quinoa can be a side dish, tossed into a salad or stir fried. Making extra doesn’t necessarily add time to your prep, and it will save you time down the road.

The freezer is your friend

On that note, you can cook extra, but you don’t have to be eating leftovers all week. Freeze some extra portions, and you’ll thank yourself a couple months down the road when you’re tempted to call up your takeout spot. This hearty meat marinara freezes beautifully – just cook the pasta the day of! You can also portion a few meals individually for your own “microwave meals” to bring to work, or to heat up after a busy day.

Enlist Help

Don’t have much space in the freezer? Grab a friend and cook together! Sharing recipes help to keep things fresh. You can split the cost of groceries and the workload while enjoying each other’s company. This is also a great way to get the kids involved – have them help with washing and prepping produce, and measuring ingredients.

Let Your Appliances Do The Work

You don’t need to stand in front of the stove for hours. Take advantage of time-saving appliances such as a slow cooker, the oven, rice cooker or pressure cooker. Try baking chicken or fish instead of pan-frying – or try this slow cooker recipe for honey ginger chicken)!

Balance, balance, balance

Eat whatever you feel like – really. Don’t stress yourself out trying to plan an entire week’s worth of “clean eats” (What is that anyway? Food is food, people!). Just aim for each meal to consist of ½ veggies, ¼ whole grain or starchy vegetable, and ¼ protein. It’s all good.

Get organized

Figure out days that work best in your schedule for menu planning, grocery shopping, and meal prepping. Keep an ongoing list of recipes you’d like to try (hello pinterest!) and grocery list handy.

Alright, now that we’ve got the basics down pat – use this free printable to help you plan your meals and groceries for the week. Set aside a couple hours one day a week to prepare as much as you can ahead of time – chop up veggies for salads and cooked recipes once and divvy them up as needed. Soups and stews can be easily made ahead of time (and taste better the longer they sit!) You can also get breakfasts done for busy mornings – try these recipes for overnight oats or breakfast muffins.

Happy meal planning!

Click here to download meal planning tools:

• Breakfast and Snack planner
• Lunch and Dinner planner
• Grocery shopping list

Photography done by Johanna Adriaansen.  To learn more about Johanna click here or follow her on Instagram.

Please note the content of this post was written by Christy Lai, BSc. Human Nutritional Sciences.

Don’t forget to follow Carrots and Cake on Instagram to see tiny square snap shots of my life.

                 – With Love, Carrots and Cake,

There has been so much on my mind over the last several months that I’ve been wanting to share. Unlike other posts, this one tugs a little deeper into my heart, because well, things have changed. I have changed. I’m Jaidev’s mom now, and that my friends is a game changer, kay?

While I don’t quite know where to start, I’m going to start with this bold and matter-of-fact statement:

breastfeeding is f*cking hard.

Wow, that felt liberating.

During my months of carrying a gorgeous belly I heard countless stories from women who shared their birthing experience with me. And then when it came down to show-time, I brought it on. My birth was beautiful, I felt powerful, strong and none of it ever felt impossible. I also heard a lot of comments about sleepless nights, babies that cry non-stop and bodies that were left broken post-delivery. I heard it all (and appreciated it). But during those nine months that I carried Jaidev no one ever spoke to me about how challenging breastfeeding was going to be.

I’m a Registered Dietitian by profession but also a high-achiever by nature. I set out with the intention of breastfeeding my baby but I always remained open to the idea of having to offer my babe formula if necessary. Because sometimes, breastfeeding just doesn’t work the way the textbook says it will.

When Jaidev was born, he was immediately placed on my chest. His cries were like music to my ears. I remember slowly motioning him towards my breast and I expected him to magically open his mouth nice and wide, clench and start sucking. That did not happen. Instead my tiny and tired baby cried at my breast and it took him a long, long, long time to latch. After three days in the hospital and two visits from a lactation consultant we were sent home with bottles of formula, instructions to offer finger feeds with pumped milk and/or formula and a suggestion to purchase a nipple shield. We did all of that.

This is what’s involved with finger feeding. I would pour pumped milk/formula into the syringe and then Jai would suck on my finger to retrieve his feeding. This taught Jaidev to “suck” but was a lot of work for mummy.

I remember being at home – pumping breastmilk to stimulate production, finger feeding formula to encourage Jaidev to suck and then having him on my breast using a nipple shield to maintain skin-to-skin contact. That was a lot to focus on and as the days progressed I was starting to worry that breastfeeding wasn’t going to be in my deck of cards. Thankfully, a visit from our local Public Health Nurse helped to calm my nerves and rebuild the confidence I needed to trust my body. My next instruction was to stop finger feeding, give the pumping a break and focus on Jaidev sucking on my breast using the nipple shield. I kept all of that in mind.

The next several days were a mixture of magic and pain. Jaidev did so well using the nipple shield, I was so proud of my little guy. But then the cluster feeding started. NO ONE EVER TOLD ME ABOUT CLUSTER FEEDING. If post-birth recovery wasn’t already challenging, cluster feeding really f*cked shit up. Cluster feeding is when newborns space feedings closer together at certain times of the day. It’s also known as “bunch feeding”. After being 5 days old, Jaidev cluster fed every. single. night. for two to three hours. This lasted for almost three month and during those hours he wasn’t a very happy baby.

Initially, I was convinced my child was missing his biological hunger/fullness cues. Those hours of cluster feeding would typically take place late at night when the rest of the house was asleep. That time with Jaidev was really memorable and very special for us; it was just me and him but it was also extremely challenging. I was exhausted, my back was in pain, my pelvic muscles were healing, my nipples were raw and sleep was non-existent.

During the cluster feeds my baby would cry and cry at my breast for milk. I didn’t get it. How could he be so calm at my chest one minute and then so upset? Was this going to last forever? How was I going to survive? It felt like I was in a tunnel with no end in sight. I worried he was somehow starving (he wasn’t) and would offer ad lib formula through a bottle. The bottles of formula would help settle Jaidev but I also knew that if I was going to offer top up every night, I was going to risk not giving my breasts an opportunity to build a proper supply.

My goal was to exclusively breastfeed my child. I decided that in order to stay motivated I needed to see the end from the beginning; if I wanted breastfeeding to work for us then I needed to give it a fair shot before deciding to throw in the towel. I worked on small goals – trying to get through day by day. And then week by week. And now month by month.

I relied heavily on my tribe of women for support. My sister, friends and colleagues were all sideline cheerleaders encouraging me to do what felt right. There were women who completely formula fed, others who exclusively pumped, exclusively breastfed and some who did a mixture of it all – each of them reminded me to stay strong, confident and to check-in with my own emotional and mental wellbeing.

Fast forward five months: Jaidev and I have an amazing breastfeeding relationship. In my experience, we couldn’t have been successful at maintaining this relationship without the nipple shield. It was our saving grace. I worried Jaidev would always need the shield or that he wouldn’t reap the full benefits of breastfeeding with it, but I was wrong. Around the time he turned four months he was able to latch directly on my breast. I still remember that exact moment when he latched directly onto my nipple, my eyes welled up with tears, I whispered “we did it” and called my husband over to witness the magic. I was ecstatic that I wouldn’t have to rely on the nipple shield anymore.

It’s interesting how life works. I spent weeks feeling almost burdened by breastfeeding and now I’m saddened by the thought of him weaning. Apart from being able to supply my child with antibodies, anti-allergens, growth factors and anti-viruses via breastfeeding, I’m going mostly miss the way he holds my hand, his smiles when he takes a break f or the way he looks so peaceful in my arms. I’ll be sad when this happens, but I’ll let Jaidev take the lead and follow along.

What’s the point here? I wanted to communicate the challenges of breastfeeding that often get over shadowed by the enormous work of delivery. I want to share my experience in hopes that perhaps someone out there can be better prepared or perhaps someone else can relate. It comes as no surprise, I’m an advocate for breastfeeding, but always remember this:

Breastfeeding does not trump a mothers mental health.

If you’re feeling challenged by breastfeeding, need a confidence boost or even some support – go get it. And if it’s not working, then that is okay. There are other options available to help you nourish your baby so that you can work on being the super mama that you are.

Don’t forget to follow Carrots and Cake on Instagram to see tiny square snap shots of my life.

                 – With Love, Carrots and Cake,

Well, hello. You’re probably wondering, where has that Nita been? Trust me, some days I ask myself the same question. The truth is, I’ve been working on a little do-it-yourself project these days that finally came to fruition on January 20, 2017. On this date, we happily welcomed our first babe into the world, Jaidev Abbi Sharda. With a pregnancy that had me feeling beyond exhausted and sick I decided it was time to focus my energy on caring for myself during those nine months. And now that Jai is here, self-care is still top of mind but this special time with my newborn will be short lived so I’ve imersed myself in all the things that motherhood brings including cuddles, staring at my baby, preparing nourishing food and sneaking in naps when I can. You know, the heart work.

Luckily, I’ve got my hands on a stellar and oober ambitious nutrition student, Johanna, who was willing to put together some information on heart health. AND, this post couldn’t be shared at a better time because as we all know, February is heart month. And shit, well, today was my last opportunity to sneak in a post before we bid farewell to this month! *insert nervous laughter*

Your heart is an important organ. It works steadfast to help you do the things you love and despite all we know about wellness, cardio vascular disease (CVD) is the number one cause of death globally¹. That means that more people die from heart failure in some way shape or form than any other cause. Further, about 1.6 million Canadians are currently living with heart disease². And it’s not just the old people. It’s middle aged smokers, over-weight teens and those of us who don’t make physical activity a priority. I bet you can think of someone in your family who has heart disease or has had a stroke.

CVD affects everyone.

Food.

Unfortunately there is sometimes a myth that fat and sodium are the main culprits of heart disease and sugar get written off. Realistically overconsumption of any of these can contribute to heart disease but lets talk about sugar, specifically free sugar. Free sugar is basically sugars that are added to foods. Ones that didn’t pre-exist. This is where fruits, grains, vegetables etc. get off the hook, phew! On the other hand, free sugars look like this “maple syrup, honey, brown sugar, sugar, agave, molasses, coconut sugar”, and it’s incredibly important to moderate our intake of these because they are loaded with calories that don’t offer much in the way of nutrition. So, without becoming a MyFitnessPal addict a good rule of thumb is that if any free sugars fall within the first 3 ingredients of a food you should probably reconsider.

Intersted in a few heart healthy recipes? Scope out these ideas:

• Confetti Quinoa Salad
• Tropical Green Smoothie
• Tabbouleh
• Indian Chilli Tofu
• Overnight Oats

Lifestyle.

Omega-3s.

You’re probably sick of hearing of what you should stop doing at this point. Stop sitting around, stop eating processed foods. So what if we added something in instead? Consumption of Omega-3 fatty acids from fish has been associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease³. Those Mediterranean folks have really healthy hearts! All that means is that is it important to get in those 2-3 servings of fish weekly!* Even if you live smack dab in the middle of the prairies like me. Also, try a high quality fish oil supplement. *Flashbacks of Mom spooning cod oil into my mouth* #bleh. I’ll take a capsule thank-you very much.

The high numbers of heart disease do not have to predict your health, even if your Grandpa, Great Uncle and childhood cat have been affected. Prevention is the most powerful thing when it comes to noncommunicable diseases such as CVD. Take care of your body and it will love you back for many many many years to come.

* (Pregnant women should consult a doctor to help determine which fish is best for them). 

Hu FB, Bronner L, Willett WC, et al. Fish and Omega-3 Fatty Acid Intake and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Women. JAMA. 2002;287(14):1815-1821. doi:10.1001/jama.287.14.1815.