Hey everyone! Woke up this morning to a world blanketed by snow but the sun has been out since mid-morning and things are looking a little spring-like again. I'm feeling optimistic that winter will *eventually* end.  I took last week off from meal planning because I had originally planned to be away on a trip with my dad. That didn't end up happening (see gushy Instagram post for details) but I still cut myself some slack and took a couple days off seeing patients and writing. But I'm back! It feels good. Before I jump into food I wanted to let you guys know about the GOODBODYFEEL 30 day ..read more

Holding myself accountable to posting a meal plan each week has been a good tool for getting me to step outside our regular dinner habits. And because I have a computer open in front of me nearly all day while I'm seeing patients, I have really been craving recipes from old-fashioned books - I'm very thankful to the HPL because their cookbook collection is not half-bad.  This week in particular I ended up cooking three meals all from real life paper books. The downside is that I haven't been able to find the precise recipes I used online in order to post them here for you, and to be ..read more

TGIF! Last weekend was my beloved mum's birthday so we spent the weekend celebrating with my family at my parent's house. We got home on Sunday and did we take a moment to meal plan or grocery shop? No we did not. And no opportunity to do so really presented itself through the rest of the week. The end result was a bunch of meals chosen based on what we had in the fridge/freezer/pantry. It worked out pretty well (there was a minor argument about how long it took to decide on sides for the butternut squash navy bean mash [it took too long]) thanks to the delivery of our CSA box on Tuesday with ..read more

Happy Friday!  I had one of those rare + blissful mornings today where my toddler was content to putter around in our kitchen long enough for me to whip up a few things from ingredients we happened to have in our fridge. The first was a variation on these meatballs in tomato sauce (I used ground beef, smoked parmesan, and a spelt-based bread) and the second was Ottolenghi's incredible hummus from Jeruselum. Things fell apart by the time I was ready to get the hummus out of the food processor but fortunately she is a hummus fan so I managed the situation by giving her periodic fingerfuls ..read more

Guys. It's been a WEEK. I mean, it's literally been a week since I posted the last meal plan, but it's also been such a jam-packed week of work + family over here. It feels like a triumph that I'm even able to get to this post today - we'll see if I get it posted on time... [EDIT: I'm finishing this 5 hrs later thanks to a v. v. v. short nap by the toddler]. How many of you tried following last week's meal plan? I touched base with one person that did (ahem...it was my mom), and one piece of feedback she gave me was that the sweet potato curry was delicious but damn was there ever a lot ..read more

What are we talking about here? Bone broth, broths, and stocks have slightly different properties but are all built on the same foundation of water, bones or meat (or both), vegetables, and seasoning. Any type of bone will do to make this delicious, nutritious, soup/stew/sauce base though the flavours will of course vary - chicken, pork, beef, fish can all be made using similar principles to what I’ll describe below. I can't seem to resist taking a messy, blurry picture of my bone broth simmering it seems. Here is just one shot of many! Jenny from Nourished Kitchen describes the difference be ..read more

Here's our meal plan for the week, running Sunday to Thursday. You can visit my intro to meal planning post for more information on how this works for my family, how you can make it work for yours, and what priorities we try to stick for when planning out our food for the week. I recommend modifying the amounts you are making in order to make sure that every family member who needs it will have leftovers available to have for lunch the next day. Leftovers for lunch is an important way we are able to stick to our goal of having a mostly real-food, home-cooked diet and it's such a great habit t ..read more

This is an intro to a series of what will be regular meal plan posts! It started as something to help my family stay on track with our own goals around meals and our food budget but the more I've worked on it, the more it's seemed like this is something that would be useful for others as well. The recipes I'll include come from recipe developers, nutritionists, and cookbook reviewers that I love and in a lot of cases have been following on the internet for years. Many of the recipes are ones that have been in heavy rotation for us for awhile, and I'll include info around any modifications or ..read more

The postpartum period is filled with contradictions: no time to be alone while also experiencing the isolation of early parenthood Good morning! Today in honour of Bell Let's Talk I thought I'd write a post focusing on postpartum depression (PPD). The onset of PPD can be insidious and hard to distinguish from the so-called "baby blues" for a new parent, but the effects can be severe and frequently go untreated. Although the symptoms of fatigue, sadness, irritability, and disinterest in parenting can show up as early as 4 weeks, it's not uncommon for parents to not be diagnosed until 3 mo ..read more

The time between embracing a pregnancy ("I guess this is really happening?!") and having a baby is a strange one. Filled with what can be an overwhelming amount of information and decision-making, it can feel that each choice you make - midwife/obstetrician, home/hospital, get a doula/go it alone - will be the one that determines how the whole birthing process goes for you.  And as with a lot of decisions we make, it's true, the choices we make profoundly influence the outcome. I think the thing to examine when making decisions around childbirth is what exactly the outcome we are lo ..read more