Just around the bend...is that you, spring?

We Torontonians have been enjoying a brief reprieve from winter. As I (Joanna) write this, it’s a balmy 9 degrees outside. It’s enough to make me ditch my parka, and bust out in a wind-breaker. The warmth also signals my body to crave summer salads, instead of my go-to winter comfort foods (my mom’s mung bean and spinach, or thick butternut squash soup). But no. My palate wants something fresh, cool and light.

If you’re feelin’ the same...try this recipe, featuring one of my faves, the humble garbanzo.

Enjoy! (the weather...and the salad)

Couscous salad with chickpeas and tomatoes

Quick and easy to make, this salad keeps well and tastes best at room temperature--all of which make for an ideal weekday lunch. Pack it with cut-up fresh pineapple and biscotti.

Yield: 6 servings (serving size: 3/4 cup)

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons organic vegetable broth
• 6 tablespoons water
• 3/4 cup uncooked couscous
• 3/4 cup canned chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
• 1/3 cup chopped seeded plum tomato
• 6 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) feta cheese, crumbled (optional)
• 2 tablespoons chopped pitted kalamata olives (optional)
• 2 tablespoons minced red onion
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon extravirgin olive oil
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• Dash of freshly ground black pepper

Preparation

Bring vegetable broth and 6 tablespoons water to a boil in a medium saucepan; gradually stir in couscous. Remove from heat; cover and let stand for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

Combine cooked couscous and remaining ingredients in a large bowl.

Nutritional Information

Calories:

181 (31% from fat)

Fat: 6.2g (sat 1.7g,mono 3.5g,poly 0.7g)

Protein:5.5g

Carbohydrate: 25.8g

Fiber: 2.7g

Cholesterol: 6mg

Iron: 0.9mg

Sodium: 373mg

Calcium: 56mg

Recipe found on myrecipes.com (thanks!)

Brazilian Cheese Bread (Gluten Free)

What is it about the winter that makes me want to curl up by a big fire with a piping mug of tea and mouthwatering savoury scones?

Below is a great recipe for Gluten Free Cheese Bread by one of our students here at the studio. If you came out for our one year anniversary celebrations, you may have been lucky enough to snag one of her awesome vegan/gluten free mini cupcakes.

I've been hearing from a lot of our students that either they, or someone they know have developed an intolerance for gluten...so try this recipe...tell us what you think!

P.S. Thanks April!!

UPDATE: http://www.liveglutenfreely.com/ shared by our very own April. It's a blog about living gluten free.

Brazilian Cheese Bread (Gluten Free)

Ingredients

2 cups of whole milk ( sub. lactose free)

8 tablespoons of butter, melted

½ vegetable oil ( I used 4 tablespoons)

4 1/4 cups tapioca flour ( I used the whole pack of Bob’s red mill tapioca flour)

4 eggs

2 cups grated farmers cheese

¼ cup grated cheddar cheese (optional)

Salt to taste.

Preparation

Pre heat oven 350.

Mix milk salt, vegetable oil and butter in a pot and bring to a boil.

As soon as it boils, remove from heat.

Stir tapioca flour into the milk and butter mixture.

Stir in eggs and the cheese and mix well.

Let the mixture cool for 15- 30 minutes so that it will be easier to handle.

With floured(tapioca flour)hands, shape the dough into golf size balls and place them on a baking sheet

Bake rolls for 20 to 25 minutes, until they are puffed up and are golden. They will rise slowly and puff up most in the last 5 minutes.

Serve warm

Hey, get that gravy boat out of your nose!

Being a business owner, sometimes you may feel that you aren't allowed to get sick or take time off work if you've got the sniffles. False. First off, no one wants to be around you while you hack up a lung. Second, resting and taking time to get well, when you feel run-down is a smart business move since being out of commission while that nagging cough turns into full-blown pnumonia will only cost you more dough in the long term.

So for all you self-employed bosses out there, get plenty of rest, eat right and meet my secret weapon...the neti pot. Yogis of yore have been irrigating their nasal passages for a long time. Here's why it works:

• removes bacteria filled musus from your nasal passages, including the dirt and grime that accumulates from environmental toxins
• lubricates the sinus cavities which can become dry and raw from dry indoor air. This can leave us vulnerable to infections
• helps to eliminate or alleviate allergy symptoms (the neti pot helps to drain the sinus cavities)
• helps to flush the tear ducts – clarity of vision = clarity of mind

Mia describes it best when she shares her experience with the neti pot: She likens it to going swimming in a crisp salt-water ocean...coming out and feeling absolutely refreshed.

Here's an instructional video I found.

Go forth neti-potters!

BTW...ceramic Neti Pots are now back in stock at GL!

Step into my office...baby

First off, I'm was so happy to read Mia's last blog. It was nice to tread down memory lane again, and remember the seedlings of our dreams.

I might add, had she not been a complete weasel, using inclement weather as an excuse to not go to work ("uhm...are YOU going to the office today? It's pretty bad out right? We should stay home right???") , who knows what could have happened? But let's not dwell on the past or ponder the future, let's stay present. Fast forward to a couple years later, this is now the office we bike, TTC and drive to, even on the worst of snow days.

(the northwest corner of our eco-store)

After I read her blog, I got to thinking about occupations in general. I've had several jobs, and two bonafide career paths, excluding the one I am now on.

They (jobs and careers) always start of with such a bang don't they? Such excitement and such potential on the upstart. But once the initial buzz wore off, and the new suits and outfits I've purchased for said jobs start fading and pilling from wash, I found myself wishing for a new start.

Someone once said to me..."You're not supposed to like your job". My thoughts on the statement: I'm torn. The idealist in me is completely abject to that statement (picture mouth agape). Yet, the realist side knows the validity in it. Most people HAVE to work (thanks capt. obvious). Not speaking for anyone else, but I always ended up being lukewarm about every single post I held...to me, that's worse than hating it.

I wanted to have passion and zeal for my 9-5. I wanted to love it THIS much (my baby cat Linxie loving her eco-friendly scratch pad).

Man, she loves that thing. She makes out with it, several times a day.

It is one thing to be a dreamer, and it's another to be a dreamer that's homeless and broke. Yes the decision to START GL was done shot-gun style, but the execution was not the least bit impulsive.

Mia and I were very very practical and pragmatic when planning Green Lavender, and the concept of the store and studio was ever-evolving and ever changing. In fact, the yoga studio idea came much, much later in the planning process. We met almost weekly to brainstorm and plan (thank you Williams coffee pub). We tried a crap-load of eco-products, did surveys, went to seminars, looked at spaces, talked to small business experts and small business owners...and the list goes on.

So, with our full time jobs, my yoga teaching gigs, planning GL and trying to have social lives on top of that, our plates, well...they runneth over. Not to be a martyr, but ya sacrifices were made. To quote small business expert Andrew Patricio "It takes a lot of effort to build a successful business. If you're not prepared to put in the effort, don't get into your own business". Hear hear Andrew...

If there is one thing that is still a constant, it's the hard work, and I don't harbour any delusions that it wont be, for a long, long time.

We've probably never worked harder in our lives (hey Mia, remember renovations??? Actually, I should say, hey Kostas...remember renovations???). But the payoff is priceless...see exibit A&B

This is my office and desk...

And this is my daily attire (I do not miss my starched button up, collar blouses)....

What I learned: Dream big, then put your back into it.

We're curious...do you love your job? What is your dream job?

How it all started....

So we're often asked, how did the two of you decide to do this? And the decision was much easier then one would expect......well lets go back to the beginning.

It all started one snowy morning a few winters back. I (Mia) woke up, looked outside and found that over the night there was a massive snow storm. It was one of those mornings where you just want to go tobogganing, or go for a walk in the winter wonderland, but then you realize that its the middle of the week and you need to get dressed and go to work!!! Well the thought of digging up my car from underneath 20cm of snow and then spending an hour and a half getting to work, when the trip should only take half an hour, made me ill. So I decided to opt out for the first option, to get my snow gear on and go enjoy the great outdoors. But then the guilt kicked in and so I called Joanna to see what she was going to do. Had she decided not to go in, it would have been fully justifiable for me not to go either. So I made the call to find out that Joanna was just getting ready to leave for work. Well much to my disappointment snow or no snow, she wasn't giving up on making the drive to the office. So after a couple of minutes of pondering my options I decided to stick to my guns about not driving, so I met Joanna at the subway station closest to her house and we went to work together, in her car:)

I still remember that ride which took close to two hours, although it didn't feel nearly as long. We sat in her car and talked about what it is that we really wanted to be doing in life. We had stable and challenging jobs. Jobs that would lead to lots of opportunities and growth down the road. But we dared to be one of those dreamers that believed that every morning you should wake up wanting to go to work......what a concept! So back to our drive, we were surrounded by a bunch of pissed off motorists, cutting each other off, impatiently trying to get to their final destination, but we were so immersed in our conversation that the chaos outside wasn't really effecting us at all. At one moment I turned around to her and said 'You know.....we should open up a business together, wanna do it?'. And after I blurted those words out in an almost knee jerk reaction sort of way, I realized that I just said it like it was no big deal, like I was asking her if she wanted milk or cream in her coffee. In an almost confused state I waited for her response. Very quickly with much enthusiasm she responded, 'What a great idea! Lets do it!'. Just like that I got my answer as if she was answering my milk vs cream question. At that moment life as we knew it was about to completely change, Green Lavender was born!

If you think I'm making this sound like an experience you would have when you realize you're going to have a baby.....well you're not far off, it kind of is like that. Whereas a child takes 9 months to come, Green Lavender took about 18. Minor differences aside, just like with a child, when one decides to open up their own business they need to be prepared to invest a large part of their life to that endeavor. So you better pick something you're passionate about, cause otherwise its going to feel like a drag really quickly.

What I'm really trying to get at is this: sometimes the best decisions in life are the ones that take mere seconds to arrive at. The ones where you throw all caution to the wind, plug your nose and just dive in without a single thought of reason. So, our dear readers, ask yourself what you're willing to give up in order to live a life of reason and comfort.

What I learned: Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
--Gandhi

Guy. Don't be so cheap.

When I worked for Sobeys, I had the good fortune of working on the really cool categories. I worked on the Beverages, Salty Snacks, Tobacco (okay not so cool), Beauty and Baby categories. So, unlike Mia, who was in charge of useless things like garbage bags, jugs of bleach and generic brand bird food, I worked with glorious, high profile things like Chips, Soft Drinks, Shampoo and Tampons...you know, the essentials.

So, being on the Category Management team of a big retailer like Sobeys means that you get lots of samples of potential new items to carry as well as any new product launches. You normally get several samples to try...and it's pretty much yours, or you give it to a co-worker (someone you need to grease).

Perhaps, this is where I've been conditioned to think that providing samples of your product or service is a necessary evil read: expense, when trying to get someone's business.

Imma break it down...Mia came back from the Green Living show this year with a sour taste in her mouth. After she told me the story, I too needed a palate cleanse. Essentially, she found a pretty cool eco product, that we could potentially carry in our store. But with everything we stock in Green Lavender, we have to make sure that it works. Mia tells the lady at the booth that she owns an eco store in the Junction yadda yadda, we're interested in your product, it's seems cool, but does it work? So, blame it on our past training (as per above) Mia asks, do you have a small sample size, so that I can try it out? The lady's response, "Yeah...NO".

To make a long story short, we're going to hold off on carrying that product for now. The moral of the story: if you're a new brand trying to break into the market, and you're trying to get into retail locations...you might want to prepare a couple sample baggies.
This is why they have entire WALLS dedicated to colour swatches and paint chip samples at Rona. Also, think about Costco - why do you think they position a hair-net donning lady pushing bite-sized samples of whatever, at the end of every aisle?
Because FREE SAMPLING WORKS, and it's genius!

In her defence, she may gotten burned in the past by random jabronis trying to get free product from her, with no pay-off (kay, yes, on occasion, I've fed myself a dinner of free samples at Costco, and walked out, belly full, empty handed, no purchase made. Whatever, you've done it too.) . However, it would have cost her pennies to give Mia a sample, which could have potentially landed her brand on the shelf of our very awesome store...and into the hands and homes of you fantastic folks.

This also applies to you, fresh out of training yoga teachers. When I first started teaching, I hit the pavement HARD looking for studios and private clients to hire me....which meant doing sample classes, or sub classes sans pay. Studio owners, in turn will see your willingness and drive to really be part of their team and hire you. And even if they don't hire you, that's still another class taught and another notch under your belt...right?

Not to play out the point, but here's another example: I'm getting married in July, and though I generally hate taking pictures of myself, I've decided that I wouldn't be such a killjoy and get engagement photos done.

Cue, Neil. Neil, is a member at our studio, and the photographer I've hired to take said photos. He is super talented and has recently taken the plunge to take the photography thing to a professional level (he's booking wedding photos for summer by the by if you're looking for a photog). How did I come to know that Neil is a photograher? If you look on our website, he supplied the photos for these, and this. Nice right? If memory serves me right, he was still breaking into the biz at that time, building his portfolio, so he did these either free of charge, or at a minimal cost/barter.

So fast-forward to now...he's hired, he's my photogapher...and he's getting payed.

What I learned: Sample baggies folks...sample baggies.

Here's our sample baggie: Mention that you read this blog, and your first yoga class is on us! (Sorry, first timers only!)