Take the Pulse Pledge for (IYP) International Year of Pulses

I went to a fantastic event last night called Pulse Feast that was held at the Design Exchange in Toronto. It was presented because 2016 was formally declared by the Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to be  the International Year of Pulses (IYP).

Chef Michael Smith

It was a room filled with growers from all over Canada and Chefs, Dieticians, Nutritionists, Food writers, bloggers and a whole lot of people interested in the Pulses Industry.

It was hosted by PEI Chef, Author, Business owner and Media personality Chef Michael Smith.

It was one of those events that you feel good about going to for so many reasons.

1.  Because it was just so much fun.
2.  Because it launched a great Pulses Program the Pulse Pledge
3.  Because it promoted a healthy product that is good for the world

But then there was also so much great food made with Pulses (beans, lentils, peas) that we sampled all evening.  There was so much that I missed trying a few things that I was told were really good but I just didn't have any more room to eat more.

Quiche, crabcakes, Chorizo and rapini with beans, lentil slider, donut, croquettes

A couple of my favourite dishes were surprises on how good they were and the fact that you couldn't tell what was in them.

Including:  

1. Sweet Polenta and beans
2.  Brownies with Passion fruit glaze
3. Cheddar Biscuits made with yellow peas.

I need these recipes.  I had 2 pieces of the brownies because they were just too good to resist. Rich chocolate flavour but a perfect balance of richness.

The polenta was sweet and flavourful.  The biscuits were flaky but held together and were still moist and again full of great flavour.

All of the food was prepared by Ivana Raca from Raca Cafe.  I need to get over there one of these days.  Ivana honed her skills working for Chef Mark McEwen and working to set up his first grocery store and countless catering events.  It seemed like the food was effortless since it was so good but I am sure a lot of busy bees contributed to making it all so great.

Ok so besides the food we were there for a reason.  Chef Michael Smith has been named the IYP Ambassador for  Canada.  It's kind of a big deal especially for Canada because there are over 22,000 pulse farmers in Canada.  It is exported to 150 countries and Canada exports most of the pulses in the World.   It contributes over $3 billion to Canada's economy.

Canadian Pulse growers

Share your love of pulses  #lovepulses #IYP2016 #pulsepledge and Follow @lovepulses

Thunderclap: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/35877-pulsefeast?locale=en

TAKE THE PULSE PLEDGE 

— Start your new year with a resolution that’s healthy for you and the planet:

Take the Pulse Pledge to eat pulses at least once a week for 10 weeks: www.pulsepledge.com (starting January 1) Tweet #pulsepledge

10 Great things about Pulses: Delicious, Nutritious, Sustainable
1. Pulses are a fantastic source of protein and fibre
2. Pulses have a low fat content and contain zero cholesterol. They are also gluten-free.
3. Pulses are rich in minerals (iron, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, zinc) and B-vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, B6, and folate)
4. Pulses have a low carbon footprint and use just one-tenth to half of the water of other proteins.
5. Pulses are affordable, drought tolerant and contribute to food security at all levels
6. Pulses are a versatile, easy to-prepare ingredient that can be used in entrees, salads, breads and desserts.
7. Pulses taste great: They can be prepared savoury or sweet and are like little flavour sponges. 
8. Eating Canadian pulses supports our farmers and the economy: Canada is the world’s largest producer and exporter of dry peas and lentils and a major supplier of pulses to over 150 countries around the world.
9. Pulses have been shown to reduce “bad” cholesterol and help control blood sugar levels, which help in the fight against heart disease and diabetes.
10. Pulses enrich the soil where they grow reducing the need for chemical fertilizers

Chef Michael Smith has a great recipe for Pulse Tacos if you would like to swap your meat for a healthier Taco that still tastes great.  Click here:  Pulse Taco recipe

This is a Global Initiative so do something good for the Globe and sign the #PulsePledge and start making some great recipes with food that's is a Good thing for both you and the World.

All you have to do is consume 1/2 cup of any pulse at least once a week for 10 weeks.  I have already had hummus today which counts since hummus is made from chickpeas which are a pulse in case you didn't know that.   See it's easy but look for new and interesting ways to include more in your diet.  I am going to try and for sure I am going to make some Pulse Brownies very soon.

#LovePulses

#PulsePledge

#PulseFeast

Life, Food, Death

My mother and me serving cake. I think I was 7.. excuse the bad haircut.

I haven't been able to blog for the passed week because my mother passed away last week from of all things a lack of nutrition because of Dementia.

I never thought that my mother's life would end that way. My mother was a survivor of the Aushwitz concentration camps in Germany during the war and survived on eating very little while she was in the war and afterward but made a point to make sure we always had a fridge full of food and was always trying to offer food to friends and family. My mother was a little forgetful and then a lot more forgetful over the past 5 years and then last year we had to put her into a nursing home because she needed care 24/7 for her safety. I guess my first indication should have been the reduction of the things she would cook or bake. After my mother retired she would bake cookies when she was bored. Then she stopped baking cookies and switched to frying wontons and adding powdered sugar on them and would go to the neighbourhood bank, pharmacy and her doctors office and hand out wontons to whoever wanted them. Then it stopped. The only thing she would make was instant coffee and that started to become confusing. Freezer food would end up in the fridge and fridge food would end up in the freezer. I suppose that should have been clues to the progression of her illness. Before she went into the home she went to a day program where they supplied meals 3 times a day so all she would eat at home was snacks of bananas, yoghurts, mandarin oranges and any chocolates or treats I would leave on hand for her to grab. Everything had to be simplified for her to be able to maintain independence on what she chose to eat.

January of 2010 she was placed in a home where they provided the not so great meals. Myself and my mother's friend would bring her chocolate treats when we visited. Everything changed this past January though. She went into the Hospital for pneumonia and somewhere toward the end of her 2 week stay she started refusing food. They discharged her only to return to the home with a c-difficile virus which would further aggravate her condition. She became very week after her 2 week hospital stay and started eating less and less. She was so week that she fell a couple of times and went back and forth to the hospital for xrays. By the time she went back to the home after all of that she could no longer walk due to swelling of her ankles and then she had more difficulty swallowing and eating food. Thus began the decent. She became dehydrated and her blood pressure dropped and she still had the c-difficile infection so they had to send her back to the hospital. I insisted that she be sent to Sunnybrook Hospital this time. She spend 2 more weeks in the hospital and had the infection cleared up and was placed on an iv drip and rehydrated but the problem was that she refused food more and more until the only thing she would eat was pudding. The doctors told me that there was nothing they could do if she refused food and they had done all that they could do medically so they had to send her back to the home. My mother wasn't happy being in the hospital tied to a bed so I agreed to send her back. I knew that if she didn't eat that she wouldn't have long to live after that. She returned to the home and I would bring her strawberry applesauce and puddings just to get her to eat something. Until she even refused that. There was nothing anyone could do to force her to eat so she just wasted away until her body couldn't support her anymore. My mother was a survivor and fighter all her life but I think this time she stopped fighting and wanted to go on her terms with food being the only thing she could control in her life. It is heartbreaking to watch someone die that way because there is nothing you can do to help change it. So my mother ended her long life of survival at 88 years old. I hope wherever she is there is an abundance of food that she is enjoying again.

This experience made me realize that when we are born the first thing we do is eat to sustain life and we spend our whole life eating for pleasure, pain, nutrition, control and to help or hinder our health.

For a foodie like me it's unbelievable how much damage eating badly or forced starvation can do to your body. I know what foods are good for me but I don't always prefer to eat them. There is a whole mind/body/food connection that is very complex and I don't know if we will ever really just eat to support maximum nutrition for our bodies. There is always a lot more things going on in connection to food.

So my thoughts about this are that we are born, we eat, we live and then we die, so we might as well enjoy every bite of food while we can while not letting food take over our lives. We need to Eat to Live and not Live to Eat.