Circle of Stones: Interview with Suzanne of Enchanted Chameleon and The Green Smoothie Challenge

Suzanne is one of those women who I just know, if we sat down, kicked our feet up and poured ourselves a glass of wine (or a green smoothie), we would laugh for hours. Without ever having met her personally, I know she is a hoot, and incredibly passionate about life.

I can only imagine what kind of an actress Suzanne must be, because she is magnetic even in her writing. Her sense of freedom and imagination, and the fun that she ALWAYS seems to be having (she can make a terrible cold that she has sound hilarious), is addictive.

Of course, what Suzanne is most known for in our blogging community is her dedication to bringing awareness of the benefits of eating raw foods, especially green smoothies, through her Green Smoothie challenges. I have just joined her third challenge, which begins on Monday, and I am so glad to have her here today.

The Circle opens. Welcome Suzanne.

Tell us about your family

We are 3 big personalities living in one small apartment! The Green Thumb, The Director and The Dreamer. First there is my hubby Jeff. He loves to garden and is very passionate about the environment. He loves model railroads, fixing and building things, hockey and film. He has been working in film and television for over 10 years now and will hopefully be transitioning into eco-friendly landscape construction in the next year or so with the success of some of our other ventures. He writes the blog Turned Leaf – and produces the web series Drunken Handyman. Then there is Cillian who is 3, pronounced Killian. Cillian means ‘a small force’ and quite literally he has been since Day 1. Cillian loves anything with wheels. Trains, planes and automobiles! He also loves to fix and build things or create in the kitchen. He recently made his very first and quite delicious smoothie recipe – Macadamia Mango. Cillian loves camping, the farm, the snow, the beach, books, singing, Mama’s homemade popsicles and chocolate pudding, gardening, pretend, dress up and the Wizard of Oz. He attends the Waldorf Parent and Tot program and hopefully will attend their preschool in the fall. As for me, I love writing, raw foods, acting, singing, reading, photography, sewing, knitting and dabbling into other crafts. Lately my dream of us living on a farm is pretty strong but we all really love living in North Vancouver, British Columbia. It has everything. I’ve been slowly creating our very own handmade home, piece by piece, as well as delving more into seasonal routines and traditions that I’m learning from the Waldorf school. The things I most look forward to with my family are camping, Folk Fest, the beach and pool nights in the summer with our friends.

You have a background in acting, and you just completed a theater production. How does acting affect your life?

Basically acting supports me being a mom and being a mom has strongly supported me being an actor. And I don’t mean financially. It has been anything but that! Being a mom opened up a place in my heart that I didn’t even realize existed until I had Cillian. Being a mom also keeps me extremely honest in my work. I don’t have time to mess around so every moment of it must count, so I am always pushing myself outside my comfort zone and keeping myself vulnerable. It is great practice for parenting. If I’m not being true to my instincts in my craft then I’m censoring my work and it just isn’t worth my time away from my family. Most of all it’s just plain fun to play. I get the most out of it when I’m not trying to do it right, I’m just doing it. Cillian has been in it with me since his beginning. I studied up until he was born and he was in my belly when I had my first big break in the feature film Numb with Matt Perry. I do hope and believe that my career will continue to grow and I’d like to keep my family close as I do that. This year started off on a strong acting note with a few short films and the play, Dead Ends 666 at Spectral Theatre. It was the biggest project I’ve taken on since I had Cillian and still a relatively small project so a great learning experience for me in balancing work and family. The biggest challenge was sleep! After the play I usually went straight home but still needed time to unwind. I learned that I couldn’t take much else on during the 3 week run. I had a blast though! I look forward to having more time for acting once my other projects are up and running but I plan to go out in Jessica Tandy style and keep acting till the day that I leave this world.

You write a lot of your love on raw food, and how it has had a big effect on your health. How did you begin to figure out that raw foods would help you?

The very first time I heard about raw foods I said to myself “never in a million years”. Well, never say never! A few years later I met someone that was eating a raw foods diet and it got me curious enough to purchase my first book. That book turned out to be a little too gourmet for a beginner but eventually I found the right starting tools and a year later I went 100% raw. It was the perfect diet – I could be skinny for acting and healthy all at once! However, I did learn with experience that raw foods can be done incorrectly like a junk food vegetarian. Once I figured that out (about 2 years) then I really experienced benefits from just including a high raw diet – I lost weight and kept it off and my eczema cleared up and had lots more energy. The biggest proof for me about raw foods and the nutrients that you get from not cooking was when I started drinking Green Smoothies everyday. Within a couple of months my nails stopped breaking and it was something that had been happening for at least a year and a half since I became pregnant with C. I had supplemented with calcium and alfalfa tablets but nothing worked except the Green Smoothies. I’m so glad that I continued to push forward and read more raw books and try more things out because it certainly paid off with my son. I really wanted to nurture Cillian’s natural instincts on food and felt that raw foods would best support that. I didn’t have enough experience raw to raise him raw and sometimes I feel regretful that I wasn’t a stronger example of a raw foodist but he does pretty great. I introduced Green Smoothies to him when he was about 9 months old and pretty much replaced baking with raw vegan desserts. It was the best decision I ever made. He couldn’t get enough of the Green Smoothies and now that boy is unafraid of any veggie! He even puts me to shame with how natural his eating instincts can be. He starts everyday with an apple and rarely if ever overeats.

How have you begun the process of incorporating the raw food lifestyle into your daily life?

One very important thing to know when transitioning to a raw foods diet is that only about 1 % of the population can go cold turkey and make it stick permanently. The rest of us are better off transitioning slowly to ensure that our changes can be sustained. I am one of those people. Although I have lived for periods 100% raw when I return to cooked foods, at least one change remains. Currently I am vegetarian, and I do not drink coffee or alcohol, I cook with whole foods and keep processed sugars to a minimum. As for my daily diet, the must have, can’t live without it staple to my diet whether I’m all raw or not is Green Smoothies. I drink at least one quart of Green Smoothie everyday. On an average day I’ll drink more, mixed with cooked foods and lots of fruit. Green Smoothies are 40% green leafy vegetable and 60% fruit and water. Without one first thing in the morning my day usually ends up off. They give me energy, they make me super regular, and they are the perfect lining in my belly before I eat anything else. My other big passion besides Green Smoothies is making raw food desserts. I grew up with some radically bad eating habits and I wanted to set a good example for my son so he didn’t eat anything processed for the first year and to this day we keep sugar to a bare minimum. Whenever there is a celebration or gathering I pull out all the stops with raw pies, puddings, cakes, ice cream, etc so that we never feel left out and usually people flock to what I make. Just this morning Cillian and I had raw banana cacao ice cream for breakfast! With raw foods and Green Smoothies in our tool belt we can get away with that, guilt free! On the flip side of things, eating 100% raw or even high raw can be a challenge with a non-raw husband. People wonder how I make it work and I still feel like I don’t. I think for us it is important to make what is enticing to us instead of just what is good for us. My hubby does eat my raw dishes and loves my raw apple pie. I found that the biggest success is to not force it on him. The stronger my example is the more open he is to it.

Do you have resources: websites, books, etc. that you would recommend?

An absolute must read for EVERYONE and I mean EVERYONE whether you are raw or ‘never in a million years’ is Green For Life by Victoria Boutenko. She has done research on green leafy vegetables that has never been covered until the past few years and therefore our daily food charts do not even include proper info on the proteins and nutrients found in green leafy vegetables. I completely and passionately believe that EVERYONE needs and abundance of greens in their diet and drinking Green Smoothies is the easiest way to do it. All the info you need to get started is in that book. If you are looking to try out some recipes, a great website to check out is The Sunny Raw Kitchen blog. Carmella has tried and tested many recipes and there is an excellent selection that is well categorized on her site. The best beginning to raw food book was Alissa Cohen’s Living on Live Food. Another really great website that has helped me over the years as well is by Storm and Jinjee. They are a raw vegan family of 7 and there is a lot of info and inspiration to be found there.

You are starting a new adventure with Juice Caboose. Tell us a little about this new project, and what you envision for it.

Juice Caboose is a mobile juice and smoothie bar that will be opening this Spring at the Vancouver Farmer’s Markets. I was originally inspired by little mobile juice bars on the back of Vespa trucks in the UK and realized there really wasn’t anything like that here, at least not any that were selling whole, raw foods. Currently we are in the makeover process of the small trailer I recently purchased, along with permits and inspections etc, but once these small entrepreneurial bumps are over I am really looking forward to being a part of Market life and getting to know all of my customers. I especially look forward to making Green Smoothie Challenges a city-wide event! There are also many local events that I would also like to get the Juice Caboose into – Children’s Festival, Folk Fest, and The Taste of Health. I really want to see more people trying Green Smoothies and plan to sample them a lot. I think it is especially important having a healthier option for their children when they are out and Juice Caboose is all that. We will be featuring fresh pressed, organic juices, smoothies and my favourite – raw vegan popsicles.

You also have the third Green Smoothie Challenge up and going right now. What is the challenge all about, and how can people get involved?

Green Smoothie Challenge #3 is up and running and ready for you all to join. Basically the goal is to drink a Green Smoothie everyday for 2 weeks. This is my 3rd Challenge that I am hosting which is free to join. I provide support to all the participants by emailing them everyday with recipes, inspirational quotes and important health and diet information to help them reach their 2 week goal. My hope for each participant is that they begin to see for themselves, the benefits of drinking Green Smoothies. Many participants have seen changes in less than a week and many others have continued to drink Green Smoothies daily since their first Challenge. If you are interested in joining you can email me directly at suzanneserwatuk@hotmail.com or go to my blog to see all the details on Green Smoothies or go straight to the Facebook invite where you can RSVP. Registration ends Sunday April 18th at 3 pm PST.

How has the blogging community impacted you?

I heart the blogging community. I first learned about the blogging community when I picked up Amanda Blake Soule’s book The Creative Family. I started to follow her and was just so enchanted by her lifestyle and her photography. I didn’t realize what I was missing out on as far as raising a family and finding purpose as a mother until I discovered her. After that I started back into knitting and sewing, two things I had always wanted more time for but never made the time for. Now I can’t imagine life without them. At the time I had just started a personal blog on Facebook as I documented going 100% raw for 3 months. My blog quickly branched out into everything parenting, homeschooling, crafting, knitting, sewing, decorating, photography and I took the blog public at Enchanted Chameleon. I don’t think I would know of or do half the things that I do at home with Cillian and my husband if I didn’t find it on a blog somewhere. There are just so very many incredibly inspiring people out there and they all have so much to offer. I feel honoured to have connected with that community through the Vintage Swap and Creative Book Swap and to be a real contributing part of it.

What motivates you to come to your blog daily and write?

#1 – My passion to write. #2 – My passion to share. #3 – My passion to connect. My blog is like a canvas and I take as much pride in writing it and taking photos for it as I have in painting a picture, maybe more. It is my therapy. I read The Artist’s Way a few years ago and really got into writing morning pages. Eventually that just shifted into my blog. It’s therapy! It truly is a part of my purpose in writing it everyday. I absolutely love it!

What makes you the happiest in your life?

My sons laugh. Date nights with my hubby. Sunshine. Knitting. But most, most, most of all the feeling of pure connection to everything and everyone around me and the comfort and content that comes with it. If I could draw a picture of what it looks like, it would be a grandmother that sits back in her rocker knowing that she has no other place to be than exactly where she is watching her grandchildren. It’s the feeling of having already lived a complete life and having no need to be anywhere, do anything or be anything more than who I already am. That feeling is sometimes fleeting for me, but when it comes it is so sweet. In the meantime, I draw happiness from my blog, my home, my creations, my family and my future. I really feel I have a lot to live for and in the grand scheme of things I am always still just at the beginning of what my life has in store for me.

Suzanne has been generous enough to share a few of her recipes for some very yummy raw treats, and she has so many more recipes and tips on her blog

Soft Serve Banana Breakfast Ice Cream!
• 4 peeled, frozen bananas
• 1 T raw cacao powder
• 1 T agave

Break the bananas into quarters with hands and put into a food processor. Pulse the bananas until they are into smaller bits. Add the agave and cacao and blend until smooth like creamy ice cream.

My Favourite Green Smoothie
• ½ bunch of spinach
• 1 C fresh squeezed orange juice
• 1 C water
• 1 C frozen blueberries
• 1 mango

Blend the greens with the water and orange juice until liquefied. Add the fruit in and blend until smooth. Enjoy!

Thank you so much to Suzanne for being here with us today. She has given us a ton to think about and learn. Suzanne is an amazing presence in this community, and I am amazed by all that she gives.

To learn more about Suzanne, please visit her blog.

I really hope that you will all join us for the third Green Smoothie Challenge. I have recently gotten away from drinking a green smoothie every day, and I am so excited to get back into it, learn from so many amazing people, and just enjoy a fun time.

I have been away from Sunday Serenity for a few weeks now, and it feels good to bring it back this week to enjoy some yoga, tea, and a bit of reading. See you then.