Last week I spent three days in Quebec City in Canada. If you’ve never been to that part of the world, Quebec City is a quaint little town with extraordinarily beautiful buildings, pretty streets and a lot of French (which embarrassingly I can’t speak a word of).
The city is currently celebrating its 400th anniversary so I shared my Quebec City weekend with a bunch of other tourists, most of them over the age of 70. It’s the perfect city for old people, because there’s not much else to do apart from wander around and eat food.
I had a lot of trouble finding places to eat because the city is so heavy on meat dishes. They had a lot of game meat too, like elk, boar and rabbit. I’m a vegetarian so finding a dish on the menu that didn’t contain meat was the tricky part. Most menus were in French too, so I often had to ask what was vegetarian (I’m getting good at saying “Vegetarian?” with a sad and confused look on my face). Actually, I felt really embarrassed that I didn’t at least have a French phrase book with me. A lesson learned for when I visit Europe.
In every restaurant that I wandered into, I found at least one token vegetarian meal on the menu. Although usually it was very rich in cheese and white pasta. So after the second day I’d overdosed on cheese and was craving a big salad, a lentil soup, or at least something that didn’t contain meat, cheese or refined grain. I’m used to eating a relatively healthy diet so eating a lot of refined foods and saturated fats is something I don’t do that often.
I thought I’d enjoy eating a lot of deluxe rich meals and not worrying about being healthy for a few days. But it played havoc on my digestive system. By the third day my guts were funny in a bad way and I felt bloated and had indigestion for the remainder of my trip through Montreal. My skin also lost a bit of its happy glow, and my face went a little blotchy. One thing eating healthy food does so well - even out skin tone. Continue reading →
We all know that refined and artificial sugars are one of the worst foods for our bodies, and especially for our skin, which is frustrating because sugar is in just about everything. And then of course if you’re a sugar addict like me, it takes a lot of willpower to try and ignore those sweet food cravings and eat something healthy instead.
I have a bit of a habit of reading the ingredients list on ‘treats’ in health food stores. It’s rare that I find a product that does not contain any refined, cane or artificial sugars, but I’m always hopeful. Keep in mind that just because you find a product in a health food store, it doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. Health food stores usually stock milk-free and gluten-free products as well, which are good for allergies but often still high in refined sugars.
I keep reading Maltitol in these ingredients lists …
Maltitol is an artificial sweetener which I’ve seen in just about every ’sugar-free’ chocolate, ice-cream and cookie in North America. While Maltitol is very rarely found in foods in Australia, it seems to be incredibly popular here in Canada and the U.S.
When I first saw maltitol listed in the ingredients on a food packet (I think it was chocolate), I memorized the spelling and did a quick Google search for it when I got home. I came up with fairly average results - I didn’t find any strong evidence that maltitol is bad for you, but I didn’t find any glowing health reports either. I also had a strong intuitive feeling that maltitol is not that great an ingredient for my body, so I avoided consuming it.
So, after months of continuously reading maltitol in sugar-free foods and avoiding them, I felt like it was about time that I got to the bottom of this. What exactly is maltitol, why is it so popular and is it a good or bad sweetener?
I’m in New York City!! I’m a self confessed shopaholic and a massive Sex and the City fan (yes, I do own the entire series and it did come in a stylish pink overnight bag), so Manhattan being the shopping capital of the world and the home of Sex and the City was a destination I’ve wanted to travel to for a long time.
On my second day here I walked past the Magnolia Bakery by accident. If you’re not a Sex and the City fan, then let me explain. The Magnolia Bakery sells gorgeous little cupcakes that two of the characters in the show, Miranda and Carrie, where eating in one of the episodes.
This scene put the Magnolia bakery on the map. I read online that you have to wait 1.5 hours in a line to get served, and they churn out around 10,000 cupcakes a week.
And since I stumbled past the bakery, of course I HAD to have one of these little cupcakes. And not just because I was passing one of the landmark Sex and the City sites either. There’s something about cupcakes that I absolutely love. They’re small, sweet and pretty. I love them.
Me at the Magnolia Bakery
I’ve since been into the bakery to buy a cupcake four times out of the six days that I’ve been in Manhattan. The longest I’ve had to wait in line is five minutes so I think the site claiming the 1.5 hour wait is a little exaggerated, but it has been surprisingly busy every time I’ve been in there.
I have a bad sugar addiction which I’m still working on. In the meantime, the one thing I have mastered is how to have a very healthy breakfast.
I’m sure you’ve already heard that a healthy breakfast is important for your brain and energy, “Yadda, yadda, yadda”. And this is all so true and so essential, but I’m guessing if you’re reading this blog then you’re also concerned about your skin. So you don’t want to eat anything that will aggravate your acne, cause a breakout, or contribute to premature aging.
To eat for our skin, we want to follow three simple rules -
Eat low Glycemic Index foods
Avoid refined sugars
Eat as many nutrients as possible
These three simple rules are all very easy to follow for each meal that you eat throughout the day. And breakfast is probably the easiest.
If you want to be ridiculously healthy, then you can follow a raw food diet and drink a powered up green smoothie, or you could make a savory grain ‘porridge’ out of something like amaranth or quinoa.
I’m not quite there yet myself, so I’ll give you my daily breakfast which tastes amazingly good, is exceptionally nutritious, and of course one of the best ways to start the day.
What I eat every day for breakfast
I love oatmeal. Now before you groan and click away, hear me out.
Oatmeal never used to be something that I loved. I liked how my mother used to make thick creamy oats in winter (that I used to cover in sugar), but when I grew up and tried to make it myself, it was always a bland disaster.
There is no fine art to making good oatmeal, but there are a few secrets that can turn your boring-bland-cardboard-tasting oatmeal into a meal that you’re going to go to bed at night dreaming about waking up to in the morning. And you don’t have to coat it in sugar to make it taste good.
I have even converted my travel buddy into an oatmeal-aholic. In the first few weeks of traveling together, he took one look at my oatmeal and opened a box of Cheerios or Wheatabix. And then one day he actually tasted my oatmeal. He’s since never gone a day without eating it!
This is a smoothie I threw together today with what I could find in the kitchen. It tasted so good that I had to post the recipe.
This is a very easy smoothie that you can make yourself at home. If you use a milk alternative (like almond or soy milk), then it’s a very healthy drink for your body and for your skin that you can even have for breakfast.
Chocolate banana smoothie
Serves 1
1 cup of milk or milk substitute (my favorite is almond or oat milk)
1 banana
a small handful of blueberries
1/2 teaspoon of raw honey
1/2 teaspoon of cacao powder
a large pinch of shelled hemp seeds
Put all the ingredients into the blender, then blend until smooth.
Last week I spent three days in Quebec City in Canada. If you’ve never been to that part of the world, Quebec City is a quaint little town with extraordinarily beautiful buildings, pretty streets and a lot of French (which embarrassingly I can’t speak a word of).
In every restaurant that I wandered into, I found at least one token vegetarian meal on the menu. Although usually it was very rich in cheese and white pasta. So after the second day I’d overdosed on cheese and was craving a big salad, a lentil soup, or at least something that didn’t contain meat, cheese or refined grain. I’m used to eating a relatively healthy diet so eating a lot of refined foods and saturated fats is something I don’t do that often.
We all know that refined and artificial sugars are one of the worst foods for our bodies, and especially for our skin, which is frustrating because sugar is in just about everything. And then of course if you’re a sugar addict like me, it takes a lot of willpower to try and ignore those sweet food cravings and eat something healthy instead.
