40 Day Yoga Challenge

I’ve done yoga for a few years now, but over the last couple of months I have really been getting into my practice. I’ve been averaging around four classes a week lately. So when my Hot Yoga Studio announced that they would be hosting a 40 day challenge I thought it could be really good for me.

I’ve noticed such a difference already, not only in my physical practice, but also in my breath and my mind and my heart. It also extends beyond the mat. I’m much calmer and more tolerant at work or in day to day life. I’m excited to see where it takes me over the next couple of months as I immerse myself in the yoga world.

Kicking off on October 12th, the challenge consists of any five yoga classes a week, it could be Yin, Hot, Vinyasa or any of the other classes there,  1 green smoothie a day and five minutes meditation a day. Many of the others will be doing the full challenge which also includes a health assessment before and after, a colonic and a massage. I’ve been on the raw vegan lifestyle for a couple of years now, vegan for many years before that and have my own awesome colon hydrotherapist Malia, so I’m just sticking to the simpler version.

There will be a lot of other yogis in the challenge that I’m sure will be able to offer me guidance in areas that I need help. So for a little bit of karma yoga I’ll be offering up my raw vegan learnings and experience, posting recipes, tips and resources here as I go.

If you’re keen to join in for some green smoothies and a bit of yoga you can contact Hot Yoga New Zealand in Wellington. Or maybe you’d like to set yourself your own 40 day challenge. Green Smoothies every day? Meditation every day? Think of a new habit you’d like to form.

Namaste my fellow yogis, namaste.

Lemon & Black Pepper Celeriac Risotto

It’s mid-winter here in New Zealand and the organic supermarket is full of celeriac and fennel, two vegetables that go well together in a kind of rustic French way. Celeriac is one of those underrated but highly versatile vegetables that often gets shunned for it’s rather unelegant apperance. It’s not the root of celery as it’s name suggests but kind of like a cousin, similar in flavour but a little more nutty. With the fennel, lemon and celeriac, this whole dish is very high in vitamin C. Mother Nature sure knows how to look after us by providing produce that’s high in flu-fighting properties during the winter. It’s also pretty high in magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin K. Make sure to use the zest of the lemon as well as the juice to give the risotto that wonderfully fragrant flavour. Yum.

Lemon & Black Pepper Celeriac Risotto

Serves one

Ingredients

1 medium celeriac root
juice and zest of 1 small lemon
1 tbsp finely chopped celery leaves
1/2 cup finely shaved fennel bulb
1 tsp unpasteurised miso
1/4 cup soaked sunflower seeds
1/4 cup pure water
1/2 tsp cracked black pepper
1/4  tsp sea salt

Preparation

Trim off the outer layer of the celeriac root to remove all the dirt filled crevices, dice into cubes and pulse in a high speed blender or food processor with the lemon juice until fine. It should be about the size of rice or a little smaller in order to release more of the flavoursome juices. Adding the lemon juice at this point prevents the celeriac from discolouring as it oxidises.

Set the celeriac aside and process the sunflower seeds, miso paste and water until fairly smooth but still with a little texture.

Combine the sunflower mixture with the celeriac and the remaining ingredients.

Season with extra black pepper, sea salt and a little cold pressed olive oil if desired.

Serve in a bowl garnished with chopped celery leaves and lemon zest,  scoop up with flax crackers or even wrap in romaine leaves with some fresh alfalfa sprouts and your favourite greens.

Get the facts on Nutrition Data

Ginger Mushrooms & Wilted Asian Greens

This is so like a cooked stirfry you could easily fool your cooked foodie friends. The mushrooms you need to do in advance, but you could get away with not dehydrating the greens if you let the dish sit and marinade for a half hour or so, or just eat them crunchy.

Ginger Mushrooms & Asian Greens

The Ginger Mushrooms
About 20 Button Mushrooms
1 Tsp Minced Ginger
1 Tsp Minced Garlic
1 Tbsp Tamari
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
1 Tbsp Cold Pressed Oil (flax, olive, sesame or similar)

Wash and slice the mushrooms about 5mm thick.
Throw all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix with your hands until the mushrooms are well coated.
Place onto mesh dehydrator trays and dehydrate for about 6 hours.

The Wilted Asian Greens
About 4 Cups of Chopped Bok Choy or Similar Asian Greens

Place on mesh dehydrator trays and dehydrate for 1 hour

The Sauce
1 Tbsp Tamari
2 Tbsp Cold Pressed Sesame or Olive Oil
1cm Piece of Ginger
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
2 Tbsp Water

Place in a blender and blend until well combined.
Strain to remove any large chunks of ginger.

Putting It All Together
The Ginger Mushrooms
The Wilted Asian Greens
The Sauce
3 Tbsp Sesame Seeds
1-2 Cups Mung Bean Sprouts

Combine all everything in a bowl and toss to combine.

Feijoa & Manuka Honey Icecream

Feijoa & Manuka Honey Icecream

This recipe combines two iconic New Zealand ingredients. Feijoas and Manuka Honey. Feijoas, also known as the pineapple guava, are in abundance at this time of year and are one of my all time favourite fruits. This icecream has a delicate clean flavour, a slight sweetness and it’s not too rich or heavy. Very cleansing on the palette. You could play around with the quantities to make it sweeter or substitue the honey for agave if you prefer.

2 Cups  Soaked Raw Cashews

6-8 Feijoas

1/4 Cup Raw Manuka Honey

1 Tbsp Soy Lecithin Granules (optional, for extra creaminess)

About 12 Large Ice Cubes

1 Cup Pure Water

Make sure your icecream maker bowl is sufficiently frozen. It will most likely need to have been in the freezer 18-22 hours.

Blend all ingredients in a high speed blender until smooth and creamy.

Pour the mixture into your icecream maker immediately and process according your your machines instructions.

Note: If you don’t have an icecream maker you can pour the mixture into a bowl and place it in the freezer. Then whisk with a fork every 30 minutes. Or you can freeze the mixture in icecube trays and once frozen, blend in a food processor.

What is a Feijoa?

Although originally from South America, some might say the feijoa is now even more kiwi than the kiwifruit. They come around once a year in the autumnal months and people tend to go a little crazy for them when they are about. Besides being overly delicious, feijoas are a good source of vitamin C, folate and fibre. and they are so low maintenance that at least one house on every block is likely to have a tree.

Golden Kumara Chips

This is what happens when you get the Raw Vegan to do the snacks for friday drinks at the the office.

Kumara is an iconic New Zealand vegetable and a staple of traditional Maori cooking. It’s also known as sweet potato in the northern hemisphere and comes in a variety of colours and flavours.  It’s rich in anti-oxidants and one of the top potassium rich foods.  Kumara is also high in vitamin A and C and full of fibre. You could really use any colour, the orange ones are just much sweeter than the red, white fleshed kumara.

Golden Kumara Chips

Ingredients

1 large Golden Kumara (Sweet Potato)

1-2 Tbsp Cold Pressed Olive Oil

1 tsp Himalayan or Sea Salt

Optional:  1 tsp Smoked Paprika

Method

Peel the whole kumara into thin slices with a potato peeler. I have found this works better than my mandoline, it gets the slices much thinner.

Cut or break the slices into smaller chip sized pieces and place in a large bowl.

Add olive oil, salt and paprika and massage with your hands.

Layout evenly onto mesh dehydrator trays and dehydrate at around 43degrees celcius/110 degrees farenheight for 12 hours or until cripsy.

Raw Potluck Pizza

These are the mini pizzas my flatmate and I made for the raw potluck movie night we went to this weekend.It was so fun, we made all kinds of raw ‘junk’ food. Snacks for watching movies and playing board games. There were kale chips, chocolate sunflower milk, mini pizzas, zucchini linguini, chocolate coconut truffles and these little fruity larabar tasting bliss balls. Everyone went all out, we had such a feast!

I didn’t write the whole recipe down for the pizzas this time. But they were really delicious so I will have to do them again with the full recipe. The round bases were a sprouted buckwheat and flax bread and the square bases were juice pulp, flax and other seeds. Then we made a sundried tomato paste and basil pesto to spread on the base. For toppings we had semi-dried mushrooms, onions and red capsicum and fresh green zebra and red tomatoes. To top it off we made a a cashew cheese sauce. Quite a lot of nuts in one go for me these days, but once in a while it’s ok.

Sesame & Fig Chai Milk

Today is the Autumn equinox. Summer really feels like it’s gone now and the air is beginning to feel fresh and crisp. I just feel like donning a pair of unattractive slippers and sitting on the couch. So today we were thinking of Chai Tea and how delicious and warming the spices are, but we wanted to make a sesame milk version. This recipe has all the traditional Chai spices but not the caffeine, sugar and dairy that Chai usually has and you shouldn’t. This is a drink that will go down well with friends who are not raw because it’s just so tasty and if you don’t have figs on hand you could also substitute with dates. It’s perfectly autumnal.

Sesame & Fig Chai Milk

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

2 Cups Sesame Seeds

4 Cups Filtered or Spring Water

6 Dried Figs

2cm Piece of Fresh Ginger Root

1 Tsp Cinnamon Powder

1/2 Tsp Grated Nutmeg

Seeds of 3 Cardamom Pods

1/2 tsp Ground Cloves

2 Tbsp Raw Manuka Honey

Method

Blend the sesame seeds, water, ginger and cardamom pods together in a high speed blender for at least a minute.

Strain and squeeze through a nut milk bag or piece of cheesecloth. Compost the sesame seed hulls and pour the milk back into the blender.

Add the remaining ingredients and blend for another minute. Feel free to adjust the spices to your personal taste.

Pour into short tumbler glasses and sprinkle with cinnamon. Serve with a cinnamon quill to use as a straw.

For a Chocolate Chai Milk simply add 1 -2 Tbsp of Raw Cacao Powder.

Making Seed and Nut Milks

Seed and Nut Milks are so easy to make. They are a great base for smoothies in place of dairy or soy. There are a number of videos on YouTube showing how to make the milk. This is a great demonstration by Karen Knowler. She uses almonds in this recipe which also make a delicious milk, I just use sesame seeds quite often as they are less expensive.

Not Milk

There are just so many health problems associated with dairy products. If you think about it we are the only species to drink milk as adults and we are the only species to drink the milk of another animal. It’s infant formula for cows, do you really think it’s going to be good for a human to drink? Cow’s are usually pumped so full of hormones and antibiotics which end up in their milk and eventually into the person who drinks it.  Check out this interview with Robert Cohen, author of ‘Milk, The Deadly Poison’ about the dangers of dairy.

Zucchini Linguine with Basil Pesto

I made this dish for a raw potluck this weekend. There are plenty of cheap organic zucchini and tomatoes at the Victoria Street farmers market in Wellington now that it’s near the end of summer.  I also picked up the basil there for the pesto. All the classic italian flavours are there which makes this a favourite for friends and family who are not raw. You can make a big batch of pesto up to keep for the week and just do the zucchini on the night.

Basil Pesto

2 Cups Tightly Packed Basil

1/2 Cup Pine Nuts

1/4 Cup Pumpkin Seeds

1 Tbsp Lemon Juice

1 Clove Garlic

1/2 Tsp Himalayan or Celtic Sea Salt

1/4 Cup Cold Pressed Olive Oil

Spring or Filtered Water

Method

Soak the pinenuts and pumpkin seeds for at least 4 hours. Drain and rinse.

Place all ingredients apart from the water into a food processor and process until almost smooth. You still want a little texture to it. Add a little water at a time if it seems too dry.

Store in a glass jar in the fridge for up to a week.

Zucchini Linguini

3 Large Zucchini

2 Medium Tomatoes

8-10 Dried Olives

1/2 Red Capsicum

2 Tbsp Pine Nuts

1/2 Cup Basil Pesto

Method

Use a julienne peeler to slice the zucchini lengthways into long noodles and place in a large bowl. You could also use a spiralizer.

Chop the tomatoes and capsicum, destone and chop the olives and add these with the pine nuts to the zucchini.

Add the pesto and mix thoroughly to combine.

Leave to sit for 1hour before serving if you would like the noodles to soften a bit.

Tomato Basil Soup

This is something like an Energy Soup. Or you might call it a savoury green smoothie. I just call it it delicious and eat it all the time.  Don’t worry too much about the amounts, I never measure, I just chop it up and blend. The capsicum and basil really make it, so make sure you don’t skip those. Serve with some herby flax crackers for extra crunch.

Ingredients

1 Cup Cubed Cucumber

1/2 Zucchini

1/2 Red, Orange or Yellow Capsicum

1/2 Avocado

2 Tomatoes

1 Cup Tightly Packed Spinach

1/2 Cup Fresh Basil

2 Tsp Unpasteurised Miso

1 Tsp Tamari

Juice of 1 Lemon

1-2 Cups Water

Himalayan or Celtic Sea Salt and Freshly Cracked Pepper to Taste

Method

Place everything in the blender starting with the cucumber and peppers and blend until smooth.

Serve cold with extra chunks of tomato, cucumber and avocado.

Cauliflower Rice

We’ve been getting a lot of Cauliflower in our organic vege box recently. It’s the poor cousin to broccoli who always gets picked first. So we have to come up with creative ways to let that cauli-wall-flower shine through. This cauliflower salad is reminiscent of stir fried rice. You basically just need a base of cauliflower and the sesame oil and tamari dressing, then you’re free to change up the other vegetables in this dish to make your own variations. Here’s the combination I whipped up the other night.

Ingredients

1 small head cauliflower

2 carrots

1 large stalk celery

1 stalk spring onion

1 red bell pepper

1/2 cup sprouted sunflower seeds

1 tbsp tamari

2 tbsp cold-pressed sesame oil

juice of 1 lemon

Method:

Chop the cauliflower into florets and place a few at a time into the food processor or blender. Pulse until it looks about the size of grains of rice and place in a large bowl.

Chop the carrots and do the same as with the cauliflower.

Dice the bell pepper, celery and spring onion and combine with the remaining ingredients in the bowl.

This should keep for a few days in the fridge.

Cauliflower is a member of club cruciferous, just like Kale, Broccoli and Cabbage. These types of vegetables promote liver detoxification and help to prevent cancer. The phytonutrients contained in Cauliflower tell your genes to make more of the enzymes that are involved in detoxification which is why cruciferous vegetables are shown to be more effective in fighting cancer. If that wasn’t enough, Cauliflower is also very high in Vitamin C, it has more than oranges. These facts, figures and more are available over at World’s Healthiest Foods.