Quarantine Food Diaries, Day 17, Sushi !

"The way you do anything is the way you everything"

Wake, meditate, practice, coffee, meal plan, eat, enjoy my company, or my partner's, write, take a bath, rest, watch a movie, indulge in something sweet and maybe some wine, sleep. Rinse, wash and repeat. It's been ok, somedays it's been soothing and satisfying to be out of routine of going out and allowing for the pleasure of staying in. But yesterday I couldn't settle into anything, I felt I had lost my muse, my inspiration, felt scattered and not particularly vibrant, and so I noticed that, accepted it and waited for it to pass, compassion for myself. Each day brings a gust that aims at teetering even the most practiced mind, invite it, welcome it. Teach your practice to be steadier.
Today my partner said....why not get dressed up today? Date night? That was it, the care and mindfulness we choose to take with anything we do, say or think is really the way we do, say or think everything, so let's pay attention. I meditated, walked the dog, took in the deep green hues the rains of spring are bringing forth, returned, showered and got dressed up!

There is no more mindful practice of cooking and plating than creating sushi, the decorative designs creating almost sacred geometric patterns with placement of each ingredient, it is much like the Tibetan sand mandalas.  I brushed my eyelid with a burnt umber shadow, the mirror revealed the contrast between the blue iris and brown umber lid, a plump coating of  black mascara and a swish of clear gloss and my face was defined differently. A pair of stilettos, white bodysuit and black gauchos, my french grey linen apron donned and my posture changed to reflect the  poise and elegance of show horse. I sauntered to the kitchen, he caught me off guard and I coquettishly raised a stilleto in the air like a classic pin up girl and flashed him a smile as he snapped a photo, forever memorializing this moment.  I think both about the absurdity of all of this and how my inner child loves the attention, mainly from him. 

 I examined the Albacore steak, let it sit to take the chill off and dry it before coating it with a generous brush stroke of a wasabi, mirin, and homemade mayonnaise paste. 

At each step of the process, opportunity for trying. I brought in a sweet cherry blossom and it found it's way into a small appetizer of the albacore sushi grade tuna with a mirin, ginger, and  amino acids ( gluten free soy sauce) . I could have stopped there, the seared wasabi crust balanced the cool raw albacore, the drizzle a fragrant trinity, undertones of orange, subtle sweetness and zing of freshly grated ginger.
Simplicity.

I laid out a sheet of Nori and began composing, rolling and slicing little round worlds of color,  land masses in greens and pinks surrounded by a sea of white contained within the thinnest sheet of deep green black. They did look like planets to me. I continued creating planet upon planet with, slow roasted beets, cucumber, avocado, and I even made a variation of a buffalo albacore roll with a hot sauce drizzle and crushed potato chips.. not sure I enjoyed that much fusion but it was fun.  Find the joy in everything, create a practice of discipline in all that you do.

Albacore Sushi Rolls

1 Sushi grade albacore loin ( Whole Foods) 

3 sheets Nori seasweed wraps

1 cup Nishiki rice

1 Avocado sliced in batons

1 Cucumber sliced into batons

( I had leftover beets too) 

wasabi paste

pickled ginger

black and white sesame seeds

2 tbsp amino acids or soy sauce

2 tbsp Mirin

freshly grated ginger

for the wasabi paste:

1 tsp wasabi paste

1 tbsp homemade or store bought maionnase

2 tsp Mirin

1 tsp freshly grated ginger

Put 1 cup of Nishiki rice and 1 1/2 cups water to boil, when boiling simmer and cover 10 min. Add a dash of Mirin when done and keep covered off the heat until you need it.
Make your wasabi paste, dry the tuna after letting it sit outside the fridge for 10 minutes. coat the tuna and sear, high heat 2 min each side careful not to burn.  Please don't cook all the way through, we are only trying to sear the outside surfaces and keep the tuna raw.
arrange your batons of veggies and even if you don't have a bamboo sushi roller, as I don't, no problem, just roll carefully pressing from the center to the edges as you go. Lay the rice in thin sheet in the center of the Nori extending to the edges, delicately build tuna, avocado, cucumber additional wasabi paste and sesame seeds, tuck and roll. Important to have a sharp knife and consistently clean it between slices. Don't worry about the wild ends, they are the abstract versions of your sushi rolls!!
Origato cos hai mas!!

Quarantine Food Diaries, Day 16, Enough!

Last year same time, Notre Dame near the Shakespeare and company bookstore with a golden milk latte, how things have changed, woah! When I think back on all the giant change I have seen in my lifetime I weep for the world. Hope that all the rub creates the most brilliant polished gold of who we can be and how we treat our planet and each other, enough! 

A short blog today, it’s just enough. Introspecting. Enjoy a Golden Milk Latte recipe on me.

•••••Golden Milk Latte•••••

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup turmeric 

1 tsp black pepper

1 tbsp coconut oil 

1 tsp fresh ginger grated 

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1 tsp ashwaganda

Heat the water until boiling add all ingredients and reduce to a paste, remove from heat and set aside.

Meanwhile warm 2 cups coconut milk add 1/2tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp coconut oil, 1 tbsp of newly made turmeric paste and honey to taste!

Quarantine Food Diaries, Day 15, Herbed Beluga Lentils and Seed Sounds

I have never met a lentil I didn't like, but Beluga lentils are a rare and beautiful thing, they keep there shape and have the most satisfying "pop" in your mouth like the famous caviar they are named after. Please don't waste these on soups, the more familiar Castelluccio lentils are the soup lentil as they break at perfect cooking time and have a potato like texture making them the right bean for the job.
Beluga lentils are the luxury lentil and need to be treated as such. They are boiled for just 30 min, an addition of an onion in the cooking water or broth is essential for even cooking and then can be dressed in a myriad of ways to highlight their refined bean stature.
This brings me to my generous peppering of philosophy talks during these days. Today we are talking about seed sounds used to literally vibrate your chakras back to harmony.  So lets back up for just a second, we agree that atoms organize into matter, how dense this matter is depends specifically on how fast they move, solid, liquid or gas. We know that all things are made up of atoms and each specific thing has a specific rate of movement of those atoms, or frequency, to remain in the state they are. For example if you speed up water atoms enough they turn to a gas...think water boiling.
Great so now take this and we can apply it further to sound, each tone has a specific hertz or sound frequency when we use our vocal chords to produce specific sounds these sounds vibrate specifically in the same frequency that align to our individual chakras. Not mysticism, science.  SO...we are all isolated, it's the perfect time to try out your shower singing on your chakras,  rebalancing your sense of security, Root Chakra, your creativity and libido, Sacral Chakra, your self confidence Solar Plexus Chakra, your compassion, Heart Chakra, find your voice, Throat Chakra, and trust in your own intuition, Third Eye Chakra.
And how exactly, you might ask? Repeat the seed sound at least ten times each, moving from root chakra to crown chakra, make your voice natural but feel your own vocal chords as you repeat each sound, they are subtle changes, we are working with subtle energy bodies.

Have fun, don't take yourself so seriously, and Bija (seed sound) away!

Meanwhile I'll be making my Beluga lentils for you.

Herbed Beluga Lentils 

1 1/2 Cups Beluga lentils

4 cups broth or water

1/2 white onion

olive oil

fresh herbs, dill, parsley, mint

red cabbage

lemon zest

sal and pepper

(indulgent- drizzle black truffle oil) 

Saute' minced onion in 2 tbsp olive oil until translucent, add lentils and thoroughly coat with oil before adding 4 cups of broth or water ( I used chicken broth) 

bring to a boil and cover, slow boil for 30 min. Every once and a while check, the lentil should "pop"in your mouth with a soft center, not crunch.

Once lentils are cook drain them of excess water or broth and dress. Add olive oil, salt and pepper, chopped fresh herbs, as many as you'd like, I like a lot. arrange on a plate and top with julienned red cabbage, grated lemon zest and voila! If you happen to have truffle oil , drizzle it on top and skip the lemon zest.

Quarantine Food Diaries, Day 14, Doshas , Root Vegetable Lasagna

Starting our third week of quarantine and I'm called to return to root veggies. Ayurvedic medicine will say that root veggies address balance in your root chakra, makes sense, right? So what resides in our root chakra, well it is what we are all feeling right now, our sense of fundamental security. Root chakra governs our feeling of stability in life, our basic needs of food, water, shelter and safety. If we are secure in our basic needs then generally our root chakra is balanced and we feel grounded. Because our very basic needs are being threatened almost daily, no matter who you are it will take some serious discipline working with those things that would help to balance our root chakra. Through diet this means root veggies, warm milks, porridges, grounding foods. Now might not be the time to do a juice cleanse, but rather to allow yourself the physical grounding of the aforementioned foods.
I've made various versions of veggie lasagnas in my day, not being able to eat eggplant is such a bummer as it makes for a perfect veggie lasagna, zucchini is a little watery for my tastes in a layered dish and they are not in season locally anyway. Remember, for so many reasons, eat seasonally and locally. Fruits and veggies that don't have to travel and are local are of a much higher vibration and therefore assimilated by the body better.
Root veggies like sweet potatoes, rutabagas and parsnips are high Vitamin A, K and C boosting immunity and are super anti oxidant.

In Ayurveda one aspect of looking at wellness involves knowing your specific dosha or breakdown of doshic dominance. Translated literally,  the word dosha means, that which can cause imbalance, therefore we are clued into the fact that balancing our doshas is a lifelong journey. Each of the three doshas are comprised of a combination of each of the five elements ( ether, air, fire, water and earth)
Vata governs air and space, Pitta, fire and water and Kapha,  water and earth. So what does all this mean? The answer is, like so many answers in eastern medicine, "it depends".  All of us have each of the doshas within us, but primarily one and secondarily another.  Once you know which one is your primary and secondary you can really begin to holistically look at how you function based on this information. To find out take this free quiz. You will have to put in your email, sort of annoying but, it's a very well done test with a ton of information for your specific doshic distribution. 

Banyan Botanicals Dosha Quiz

I am mainly Vata mind / Pitta body, when I feel things spinning for me I do two things, I eat something grounding and I put on a hat, yes, a hat. There are doshic balancing postures in yoga too, this week at Balanced Planet Yoga I am teaching a Vata balancing gentle vinyasa...feel free to join me. Thursday morning at 9:30am. Follow the link below and set up your mind body account if you don't already have one. If you do, find Balanced Planet Yoga in Marlton and sign up for my class, an email will be sent to you on what to do next.

mind body log in

Have fun with your quiz and feel free to ask as many questions in my comments section as I love love talking specifically about balancing doshas and keeping them from derangement.

Root Veggie Lasagna

350F    

1 Japanese white sweet potato

1 sweet potato

1 rutabaga

1 turnip

2 potatoes

1 can peeled tomatoes

fresh basil

1 white onion

extra virgin olive oil

Vegan version ( silken tofu, soy milk, garlic, basil, salt, pepper)

dairy version ( goat cheese, parmiggiano, basil, parsley, salt and pepper)

I used my mandolin component to my cuisinart, it is key to slice your root veggies exactly the same widths so they cook evenly, attempting to thinly slice a raw rutabaga or sweet potato by hand is not easy.  Place sliced root veggies in water and put aside.

saute' 1/4 of the white onion chopped in a little olive oil in a small pot until translucent, add crushed peeled tomatoes, torn basil leaves to taste, salt, and pepper. Bring sauce to a boil and simmer 15 min longer. 

Meanwhile, if you are preparing the vegan version put in a blender about 3 oz. silken tofu, 1/2 cup of soy milk, 1 garlic clove, basil and salt and pepper) blend into a "cream sauce" put aside.

Otherwise once the sauce has simmered you are ready to layer, using one layer of goat cheese and parmiggiano in between alternating layers of sauce and veggie "pasta" sheets.

Layer until finished. If using the vegan cream sauce layer that in place of the goat cheese.

cook at 350F for 2 hours covered with foil. 

Take out and garnish with fresh herbs of your choice!!

Quarantine Food Diaries, Day 13, Resourcefulness

We are adaptable creatures, humans, and this global time out was what we had been screaming for actually. As a yoga teacher I can't tell you how many times I heard people silently screaming for down time. This forced down time has seen many faces, I revisited  a passage recently that I thought really talked about this well. Christopher Sartain in his book,  The Sacred Science of Yoga and the Five Koshas, poses this:
"It is imbalance, chaos, and disharmony that causes creation. It is the universe's ebb and flow and search for harmony and order out of chaos that allows all to exist and evolve. " 
Necessity is the mother of invention. Though this period seems outrageously oppressive and disconnected, literally isolating, it has also brought about creation in areas that may not have been explored by individuals looking to reach a new normal within this chaos.
I am watching and listening to those I know and love talk about deeper connections with family, making bread and milks at home, going inward and discovering that landscape. I love these aspects of this time. It is a rare and amazing, looking at this helps to balance the onslaught minute by minute news reports, I implore you to turn off your televisions and bake bread, make almond or cashew milk.
My daughter called me and excitedly shared she was making a variety of nut milks and wanted to share, have a tasting... like mother like daughter I suppose. She walked out to me, silver tray in hand, 5 crystal shot glasses filled with variations in sweetness, additions of espresso and a beautifully whipped espresso cream to add as the "crema" atop any of the 4 versions. I've made this the subject of today's recipe. I will say I preferred the cashew milk which surprised me. I was also amazingly surprised at the

Almond or Cashew Milk 

1cup raw nuts (almonds or cashews) 

4 cups filtered water

3 tbsp maple syrup

2 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

cheese cloth

blender

mason jar for storage

soak nuts overnight, or 6 hours in hot water if you're impatient

drain nuts, blend with 4 cups of filtered water blend on medium, add maple syrup, vanilla and salt, blend another minute. Strain through cheesecloth or nut milk bag and squeeze as much out as you can, you could double strain but she doesn't. 

Another friend I'll pass along found a foolproof no knead bread recipe for those of you out there who are eating wheat products... looks good, keep up the kitchen love.

Artisanal Bread

I have stalled on this post for one reason, I recorded a good vigorous vinyasa flow of 1:15 minutes but I totally screwed up a posture name and decided I would cut it and be able to edit later... I'm stumped, no go, can't edit it out who knows, but excuse the blip and enjoy the class!!

Vigorous Vinyasa Flow

Quarantine Food Diaries, Day ?, An Apple a Day...

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?"

—Mary Oliver

I may have lost track of time, I know I've skipped a day of journaling online and making videos for classes and swinging wooden spoons in my kitchen, whirling fragrant spices and vibrant veggies into edible art, I know I have. Yesterday brought me to a screeching halt. I have been quarantined with my partner, as many of you have, I consider this a gift, our dance of the day is not tethered to expectation but rather has a beautiful flow of weaving in and out of each other's presence and honoring each other's independent rhythms as well. So yesterday as I laid out my mat to practice with one of the teachers from the yoga community I call home at Balanced Planet Yoga, he decided to take a run. The class felt good, often as a teacher following classes gives us the permission to turn off and turn inward, at least that is what happens for me and so I am a fan. I release all control of the sequence of shapes, of speaking and making words find the right amount of time to occupy with the right amount of meaning, I love releasing all of that and just absorbing and moving into the physical and breath filled practice designed by someone else. I am a forever student, what is hard is finding the teacher that opens the mind of the student, that is hard, but when you find the one or few that do, the studentship of life, or the yoga class, is blissful.  

The hour flew by, I was peacefully resting in shavasana when my dog, Chloe, decided it was time to go out, barking and jumping near me, duty called. It was still ok, I live on the edge of a golf course now all but closed, and so I roam the greens with her off leash once we get deep into the woods. These daily walks have been a walking meditation, forest bathing so it was all still ok, in fact it was perfect. I wondered where Justin was and decided to return to greet him with my sunbeam of feelings that I had absorbed from the last hour and a half of the morning. As I walked in with Chloe I noticed he had made a smoothie and I began drinking when he turned and said he was having difficulty speaking. He looked ok, he's young and lithe and one would never think he had anything, but his heart used to beat out of his chest when he was little, they discovered an arithmia and at 17 he was having heart surgery. It's been years and years since he has been checked, being a yoga teacher does not allow for health insurance in this country easily. We talk about it from time to time, he should get checked, he had felt  his heart do what it used to when he was a teenager, but it would resolve itself and we would move on with our day. 

I sat with him, had him try to repeat words to me, tried to decide what to do, his legs were twitching as if electrified too and I had no idea what that could mean. I laid his head in my lap and held him, did what I knew, was drawn to hold his head. You see issues in the heart, left intreated I learned, irregular beating over time can lead to stroke. Living in America, uninsured and in the middle of this pandemic made going to the ER a complicated decision for an unknown, bizarre set of symptoms. So you see, I wasn't cooking, or thinking about food yesterday, what I was thinking about was all of this. I unbelievably am friends with a neurologist, turned yoga instructor, we did our training together and have stayed in contact. I called both her and another friend and yoga student who is a nurse, they both answered almost immediately and if it weren't for them I'm quite sure the day would've looked completely different. The neurologist put Justin through a battery of tests over the phone, and I was buying health insurance pretending with the agent that it just occurred to me, given the virus looming that Justin should be insured, the other ear listening to Justin explain how words were feeling stuck in his mouth, how his brain knew the words but his mouth felt stuck.  

Today I know we made an ok decision, yesterday my thoughts swirled with doubt. I can't thank those two women enough for all the information and help they gave, we felt held by them. I remembered a day last year when, though they never met each other they shared a yoga class that I taught,  that day was shortly after the great modern poet Mary Oliver had passed on and I read one of her poems.  The world goes on, without our control and all we can do is return to love. The events of our life will bring us around and around again to this simple state of being, big openhearted, unconditional love. I could never have known that this poem was perfect to read. These two played such beautiful roles in our lives yesterday, their life's work of open hearted service and our lives of service as yoga teachers in this beautiful dance of giving with a full heart makes me even more committed to the belief that love is service and service is joy.  

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

—Mary Oliver

I did actually cook yesterday, in the evening I made one of my favorite salads, inspired by my Aunt, as part of being a conscious chef, aware of medicinal properties of live foods I threw the kitchen sink of them so to speak at our weakened physical and emotional states. Herbs. Fresh herbs have been used for their medicinal properties in many cultures, eastern and western alike for centuries, properties including anti oxidant, anti inflammatory, and anti bacterial to name a few. They are packed with polyphenols and have high contents of vitamin A, C and K, making them a perfect way to neutralize acidity in the body and protect it from free radicals. Pairing this with probiotic yogurt and cashews which are known heart helpers preventing the coagulation of blood. 

Herb Salad, An Apple a Day 

Ingredients:

Fresh organic or homegrown herbs:

1 handful each :Dill, Parsley, Cilantro, Mint, Basil

1 handful baby lettuces, spring mix 

1 handful blueberries

1 Pink Lady apple

1 tbsp plain yogurt or Skyr per plate

1 tbsp drizzled tahini per plate

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Himalayan pink salt, cracked pepper

Arrange a light fluffy swish of the yogurt on the side of your plate, fan out apple slices and mound lightly your greens atop both, place lightly toasted cashews and blueberries on top sprinkle salt, pepper and if you have it for contrasting color I sprinkled beet powder, lightly drizzle tahini and a few drops of olive oil and enjoy!

Notions on holistic  awareness and reading of Mary Oliver
Notions

the most beautiful songs in the world playlist

Quarantine Food Diaries, Day 9, Make it Matcha

In love with  the healing hue of Green and my thoughts turned to all things Matcha. It has phenomenal healing properties, super antioxidant, immunity building ,  free radical reducing, neuron firing stimulator, it's potent medicine and it's the focus of today's recipe. 

Vegan Matcha Cake with Coconut Milk Matcha Whip Cream

Way better, day two after being refrigerated.

• 3/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/2 cup coconut palm sugar (if you use cane sugar the color of your cake is outstanding green, you could substitute some stevia, NOT 1/2 cup, do it to taste)
• 1/2 package silken tofu (3.5 oz, it varies, but mine was about 7 oz.)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup almond flour
• 1 cup coconut flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tbsp Cooking Grade Matcha
• 3/4 cup almond milk

Matcha Coconut Milk Whip Cream

1 can full fat coconut milk

1 tbsp cooking grade Matcha

1 - 2 tsp stevia

black sesame seed garnish

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan and set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, cream together the coconut oil and cane sugar on medium until fairly smooth. Add the tofu and vanilla extract and continue to mix until tofu is incorporated. Add in the flour, salt, baking powder, and matcha green tea powder, mix until incorporated. Add in the almond milk and mix until batter looks smooth. Transfer batter to the greased loaf pan and bake for 45 mins to an hour. Check after 45 mins, if a knife comes out of the middle clean, it’s done!If not, keep going!

It's super sunny today,  I taught my first Zoom yoga class, my mom attended, it was super sweet! It's going on Day 10 today and I am really feeling the sense of others anxiety, friends and family affected. I worked on sending Reiki to all this afternoon, blanketing the fears of those I love with love and light. I am brought to the thought that our only control is our ability to measure our reactions and responses to things. Last night I couldn't sleep, I wasn't tired, was restless and so I turned to my phone which ended up filling my head with salacious words to really sell the story of what is happening. I watched and noticed the visceral effect this had on my body of feeling ungrounded, and fearful and I closed my phone and consciously took myself outside my thoughts, wrapped all those I love and myself in giant bubbles of white light. I used this visual from an animated movie I saw years ago depicting emotions as people called Inside Out. I made these emotions in me like little people, I know it sounds funny, this is a great visualization for kids so even if it doesn't work for you try a meditation like this for them. You ask them to imagine, embody their fear, happy, envy, anger and sad into actual people, what would they look like: One by one you ask them to let go of them and just be with who they are without each of these emotions taking up residence. So I did, just that and then surrounded myself in white light. I choose to have slow reactions, measured responses. My mom used to say to me, the dramatic child and young adult that I was, "not too high with the highs, not to low with the lows." I think about this simple statement now as the middle way.

Loving the new playlist I found, enjoy!

New Love