If you’re anything like us, you really appreciate well-balanced, plant-based meals, and you love cooking and working with food. And also, carbs are amazing. Our trick is always to keep ourselves eating balanced meals, and not just, like, half a loaf of bread for dinner (but carbs are amaaaaaazing).
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DIY Holiday Body Care Gift Ideas
Who wouldn’t love handmade body care items this season? Here’s a round-up of great all natural gift ideas, and we’ve included a staff favourite paw butter recipe for preventing your doggo’s paws from cracking this winter! Plus find all of the ingredients you’ll need right here in our body care section.
Help Us Help The Stop CFC!
Image courtesy The Stop Community Food Center / Zoe Alexopoulos
If you’re not familiar with them, The Stop CFC (community food center) is a really interesting organization. They started in the early 1980’s as a food bank, but have since transformed into… well, into a community food center! They offer cooking classes, community gardens, they offer support groups and community advocacy, they teach perinatal nutrition and host movie nights… the list goes on and on, but the main point here is that after adding all these other services, they are still also a food bank.
The Stop strives to increase access to healthy food in a manner that maintains dignity, builds health and community, and challenges inequality.
Here at The Sweet Potato, we are big fans of The Stop. Their mandate is actually very similar to our own, and they do amazing work in our community – which is why we support them as much as we can.
This December, we are again running our annual Food Drive in Support of The Stop. We’ve got a bin set up inside the store for donations of dry goods, and we’re also matching all monetary donations dollar-for-dollar.
If you are able to give, they have provided us with a list of their most-requested items:
- Canned fish
- Peanut butter (or any sort of nut butter)
- Dried beans (or canned beans) – especially Kidney Beans
- Pasta
- Gluten-Free pasta
- Pasta sauce
- Brown Rice
Anything you are able to provide would be great; we think they do really great work, and we are eager to support them as much as we can. If you want to read more about them, you can visit their website, where you can sign up for an event, volunteer, or just learn about all the great stuff they do.
We hope you’ll help us help them make sure everyone has a warm, happy, and well-fed holiday season!
Cottage Cheese
One of the best parts of summer is cottage weekends – the lake, the company, and – of course – the food! (And if you’re city-bound, try these Cottage In The City spots to get the cottage experience without the travel time!). While we’re not saying that you should buy ALL the cheese for your cottage weekend, we put our heads together and came up with a few essentials that we would bring if we had cottages or weekends to spare or even (gasp) both!
FERMENTATION, PROBIOTICS, and YOU!
What is Fermentation?
Fermentation is a metabolic process wherein, in the absence of oxygen, sugar is consumed to produce chemical energy. This occurs in yeast and bacteria, and also in oxygen-starved muscle cells (as in the case of lactic acid fermentation). The organic acids made during fermentation give fermented foods their characteristic tang and provide a number of benefits to our digestive system and immune health – including the creation of probiotics. Continue reading “FERMENTATION, PROBIOTICS, and YOU!”
Buzz Off!
Bugs can be really annoying – that’s probably why they’re called bugs! While we all know the most effective way to avoid bugs (Stay inside! Use DEET!)… those are also either toxic, or just a pretty un-fun way to pass the summer. Luckily, there are a number of all-natural insect repellents and insect repellent products that we sell at The Sweet Potato, that will help you enjoy the summer un-bugged. Continue reading “Buzz Off!”
Our Recipes Have Moved!
Looking for one of our great recipes? We’ve moved them to a new dedicated section of the website! Surf on over to browse our ever growing collection of great recipes that will make you go, “Sweet!”
All About Sunscreen
We were almost stood up by summer… but it seems like the best (and shortest) of the Canadian seasons has finally arrived. And with it: glorious sun! Here’s a rundown of the safest slathers for bare-skinned basking – aka, our mineral sunscreen FAQ.
Continue reading “All About Sunscreen”
How Vine is (getting) Better than Dundas for the World!
Well, it’s been seven months since we moved into our swanky new digs at Vine Ave, and while it’s quite obvious how much prettier than our old location our new Vine Ave. location is,what may be less obvious is all the ways we’ve tried to make our Vine Ave location better for the world as part of our commitment to environmental stewardship.
Continue reading “How Vine is (getting) Better than Dundas for the World!”
Plant Some Romance
Whether you love plants, or the one you love is plant-based, this plant-forward feast wows with its flavours and textures.