Yes, this week marks my official transition from unfulfilled television director with loads of emotional baggage, into full time yogi & raw food retreat facilitator carrying her life in her baggage....as I settle into my new home in Costa Rica. I am going to celebrate this feeling by making a batch of each of the following; two of my absolute fave raw vegan snacks.

Spring is the ultimate re-boot season. Now is the time to take stock, check in with our bodies, minds, and spirits and begin to set out on a new trajectory. So today I want to offer up a selection of my fave spring inspired recipes from the past year. Here, my top 5 for a fab, fresh, food fill NOW.

Is your extra-virgin olive oil really what you think it is? How can you get a quality product that you trust? Get to know an olive oil producer, like Theo Rallis from Windsor, Ontario. Theo's extra-virgin olive oil is made by cold-pressing organic Korneiki olives that are grown on family-owned groves in a small Greek village.

Superfoods are a category of foods found in nature; they are superior sources of essential, super-power nutrients -- nutrients we can't make ourselves. They are the most powerful foods on the planet, and are powerhouses for the transformation to a slender, healthier you. If you are what you eat, why not be super?

Afke Zonderland is the enthusiastic chef behind Foods Alive. She has a passion for gourmet vegetarian food and lives an abundant and healthy lifestyle in Okanagan, British Columbia. When she's not busy in the kitchen, you can find her biking the Rocky Mountain trails in the summer or skiing the same snow-covered trails in the winter. Foods Alive products are hand-made in a second kitchen in Afke's home on a small acreage in the North Okanagan.

While visiting my family, I created a fresh green pasta bowl, topped with some comfort-food-style "no-meat-balls" for added protein. I have been meaning to come up with a raw and vegan substitute for ground meat, and this was the perfect time to get to work on it, as there are often not a lot of protein choices available for me when I am not cooking in my own kitchen. What I came up with that evening, was a rustic Italian inspired dish that I know I will be making again and again.

Nowadays, I avoid gluten, most processed foods, and like to include as much green food as possible at every meal. One of my fave ways to use zucchini is to make it a noodle! The beauty of this veg's bounty is that you can enjoy it well into fall -- local zuchs will be available right through October, so you can enjoy this pesto zucchini pasta bowl all autumn.

For a true burst of flavour, pick up a jar of local raw honey gathered from local bee hives. Because bees don't travel very far from the hive, the honey tastes like everything that blooms in the area, rather than a single distinctive note. Raw honey is fresh from the comb. It's not heated excessively and therefore is brimming with nutrients and enzymes. It's these enzymes which make raw honey so digestible to humans. Here are some more benefits of honey.

I get up long before the crack of dawn for my full time gig working as studio floor manager with Global TV's The Morning Show. With my bizarre schedule and twisted body clock, I know that I need reliable sources of fuel to get me going before we go "live" at 6 a.m. I have found that a cold, tall glass of "green juice" and a few nutrient dense snacks do just the trick. Here's a recipe for my energizing Raw Lemon Bars.

For those interested in trying raw foods at home or those who are already practitioners and seeking new menu ideas, here are three recipes to try. The...

Cooking food boosts the amount of energy your body can get from it — and hence the weight you gain by eating it. That appli...