Oh no - not the vegans!

Thanks to funding cuts to the Tri-Councils, fewer and fewer graduate students are able to secure funding in the basic sciences and must live on departmentally-determined stipends. Luckily, in Alberta, we get paid at least on par with the national average. At $23 000 per year (not including the cost of tuition), however, we're not exactly rolling in the dough. Even better, our funding is not spread out evenly over a given year. I made $500 more per month in September - December than I did January to April. Similarly, I will get paid $600 May - August than I did January - April. The result? Skinny summers.

Anticipating skinny summer this year, I have come up with a number of strategies to reduce my grocery costs while still maintaining high nutritional value in all of my foods. Let's not kid - even with significant pay cuts, I'm still dancing 11-15 hours per week and I'm still running 20-30 miles per week. This means that I have to keep my caloric and nutrient intake up while still maintaining a budget within my humble means.

Being a vegetarian, I don't spend any money on meat but I do spend ridiculous amounts on produce. I eat a ton of raw produce, so, on a dollar per weight value, I don't think my major budget suck sits in celery and red peppers. Rather, my largest expenditures seem to happen in the dairy area of my diet. I have well-established staples: soymilk, yogurt, eggs, and cheese. Soymilk is one of my only sources enriched with Vitamin D and Vitamin B12 aside from my daily multivitamin AND I'm unwilling to compromise on buying Silk. It's the only brand whose "Original" flavour doesn't taste like crap, so I just make sure to buy more than one when they're on sale. I have decided to compromise on my yogurt purchases and switch from my fairly expensive Activia favourite to Safeway's Eating Right brand, which also offers a wide selection of flavours but for a lot less money (per gram). Eggs are an important protein source and I don't eat them everyday so that only leaves cheese.

Dear god is cheese ever expensive. I love cheese - on toast, on pasta, by itself - but on a dollar per gram value scale, it just is not worth it. Plus, eating cheese is just a blatant denial of my developing lactose intolerance (a gift, I suppose, from my South Asian ancestors). So, I sought out some inexpensive but equally delicious cheese substitutes that did not compromise either the protein or the calcium content of my "cheese". In other words, I decided to go vegan.

If you walk into Planet Organic, you can find BAZILLIONS of cheese substitutes. Rice cheeses, soy cheeses, real cheeses with awesome flavouring ... but I really wanted something that cost less than brand name cheese. So I picked up some nutritional yeast, which is what I have come to understand is the vegan's ambrosia, then I set about the difficult task of browsing my iPhone apps for cheese recipes. Trial and error resulted in both exultation and revulsion but two winners have emerged from my week-and-a-half long toil in the kitchen. (It's a discovery process, so ... this will have to be a running list).

1. Whole Foods Tofu Ricotta - this is an amazing cheese substitute that is CHOCK-FULL of vitamins, provided by the tofu, low in fat, and easy to make at home. I have used red onions in place of the shallots and a white wine/rice vinegar mix in place of the miso and it tastes just as good. I even used this in salads and it worked beautifully. Carnivore Boyfriend was impressed that my veggie lasagna contained no cheese. "But ... it doesn't taste like sand. Are you sure it's not real ricotta?" Sounds like a win to me.

2. Vegan YumYum's baked Mac and Cheese - even baked mac and cheese with real cheese did not taste this good. Seriously, there is some magic combination of seasonings here that resulted in better cheese sauce than real cheese can produce. Sharp cheddar is expensive; yeast and tomato paste is not. I added only 1.5 cups of macaroni and substituted the last 1.5 cups with frozen broccoli and corn. Ridiculously good. (Oh, and I added turmeric to make the sauce yellow and deceive my unsuspecting boyfriend but the tofu ricotta from the week before tipped him off. Damn. Looks great though, no?)

Bag of parmesan: $6.99. 1 cup nutritional yeast: $0.72. No brainer.

Best of all? These cheeses lend themselves well to pastas and other carbohydrates which comprise 65% of my diet. Lower fat content, increased protein content, great taste = happy and healthy athlete here. I think it's important to note that these substitutes were very economical for me because I keep most of these ingredients on hand already - tofu, soymilk, tahini, etc. are all built into my budget and already reside in my cupboards. Literally, I only needed to buy yeast. For others, the switch might not save you any money. Worked for me!

Am I ready to make the switch to veganism? Well, not yet. Eggs are still important to and economical for me. Plus, if I'm going to make a big switch in nutrition, I would prefer to do it after my next race (May 1). But I will say that vegans can eat like royalty with a peasant's salary and just a little bit of creativity. And maybe some tahini.

Free training is the best kind of training!

I am well aware that you have to stretch everyday to get more flexible. Similarly, I am well aware that I will have to run more regularly to comfortably run my second half marathon in less time than my first. These things are obvious and make perfect sense, however, I am rather reluctant to embrace them because I am ridiculously lazy.

In an effort to jumpstart my training, I have been on the hunt for something new to boost my morale and to keep me accountable to staying consistent with my workouts. My boyfriend, whose cute little retired parents teach classes at the William Lutsky YMCA, automatically suggested Zumba. If you don't know what Zumba is, click here.

If you know me, you know that Zumba is what I do while working on my computer or at my lab bench. My friend David suggested I start marathon training, which sounds terrible considering that my half-marathon training is pretty darn half-assed. Like I told the associates at my favourite Running Room store, I firmly believe that I need the time and the cause to commit to running a full marathon because I want to do it right. Now is not the time.

Then, like a beacon of light out of the shadows of laziness, came the voice of one of my fellow dancers. Kelsie is taking yoga teacher training with Lion's Breath Downtown and suggested that I try some free yoga on Friday nights.

Say WHAT?!

She said FREE yoga, yo. From 5:45pm to midnight, Lion's Breath lets you sample everything from flow yoga to acro-yoga (acrobatic yoga) to movement. How long will this free yoga streak last? Nobody knows. Best to get in on a great deal when its available, right? Free yoga will:
1. Help increase my flexibility and help me get in my daily stretch on a day during which I would rather be drunk.
2. Ease me back into activity that I enjoy and can feel the immediate benefits of right after class.
Sometimes, we just need a little help to see the rewards of our activity to motivate us to continue. Some people look for the loss of inches or pounds, some people shave minutes off of their personal bests, and then I just want to feel like I did something productive and useful for my body as both a dancer and a runner.

On one hand, this spring rut has me discouraged because I haven't been doing as much running and/or dancing as I know I should be doing. On the other hand, motivational ruts like these also help me discover activities to love!! If you have any other suggestions to help me breakout of the winterspring hybrid blues, fire them my way!

As a side note, my modern instructor, Jodie Vandekerkhove is offering a nearly-free drop-in class at Mile Zero on Monday nights in May and June. She is super high-energy and trains her dancers like athletes (which is why I love her) AND the "final performance" is going to be AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME! If you're interested, let me know and I'll refer you to Miss Jodie!

The rise of the recreational dancer

I dance with a passionate group of people at the University of Alberta who are collectively named Orchesis. The dancers who are part of this group are talented and dedicated to learning and performing modern and jazz movement. Our group varies in age, from high school students to undergraduate and graduate students to adults in the community and U of A alumni who want to continue their dance training after leaving the institution.

Hardly any of the dancers in Orchesis are aspiring dance professionals and that, I think, is what makes this group so unique and impressive. Most of the dancers lead dual lives, as teachers and lawyers and accountants and consultants by day, then they train and they rehearse and they perform by night. Though dance is not their career and they do not get paid to perform to the best of their abilities, they continue to show up for classes and rehearsals and devote their time and energy to performance.

Interestingly, since the advent of television shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, America's Best Dance Crew, and movies like Black Swan, dance has become much more popularized and, perhaps as a result, more accessible to the general public. Audiences are becoming more open to watching and trying dance, from contemporary to ballroom to hip hop. Hence, there is a new generation of adult dancers who have already decided on careers other than dance but still want to participate in performance. I'm happy to see that there are more and more studios and institutions that are offering adult recreational dance classes in addition to their regular professional classes.

The recreational dancer must face unique challenges as compared to the aspiring professional. Professional dancers often train from a young age, developing the flexibility, stability, strength, endurance, and stamina to train for hours a day. Recreational dancers often come to dance later in life or return to dance after a long period away from dance, which means they must develop new muscles to support a new range of movement or they must rehabilitate long apathetic muscles. Professional dancers are accustomed to dancing through injury and their injuries are not related to improper technique as often as are the injuries sustained by recreational dancers. Perhaps the most daunting idea for the recreational dancer is trying something new. Walking into a modern class with a new instructor, working with a new choreographer, choreographing for the first time: these are things both dancers must face but the recreational dancer often feels far less prepared to confront.

I recently returned to dance after a long period away. The very first class I took in modern dance left me feeling discouraged and very clumsy. I actually thought I would not return but one classmate convinced me that the class would become easier over time: the best part about classes is that developing good technique requires repetition. She was absolutely right and I am overjoyed that she convinced me to stay. I performed in Orchesis annual Dance Motif that January. In the summer, I performed in my first "independent" dance show with the no/w/here project at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival. This year, I am working on creating original choreography for myself and for others in various theatres across the city.

The Heisenberg Principle, choreographed by Celine Cattoen-Gilbert for Dance Motif 2011. Photo by Centree Photography.

I feel very privileged to be a recreational dancer and I feel very lucky to be in a city that affords me so many opportunities to perform as such. If I could offer advice to the aspiring recreational dancer, I would say that you should not rest on your laurels and wait for opportunity to come to you. Seek out classes that will challenge you, work with new and emerging choreographers, watch as much dance as you can, and, of course, find groups like Orchesis that will let you perform annually. Nike says it best: Just do it!