Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Keen on Quinoa


Quinoa gets a lift from crisp summer veggies in this simple, satisfying salad. By Deborah Willoughby
The ideal summer meal is cool, light, tasty, and bursting with garden-fresh vegetables. A main-dish salad is a good option, but if it’s missing a high-quality protein, you’re likely to find yourself casting about for a snack in an hour or two. But build a salad around quinoa and you’ll have a dish with staying power that’s still light enough for a summer day.
With a fluffy texture and a nutty flavor, quinoa is often thought of as a grain because it cooks like one, but it’s actually the seed of a leafy plant native to the Andes. It was prized by the Incas for its stamina-boosting effects and because it’s easy to grow—the plant thrives in poor soil, requires little water, and coats its seeds with a bitter substance unpalatable to birds and other predators. In addition to supplying a high concentration of all nine essential amino acids—making it a complete vegetarian protein—quinoa is high in iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and riboflavin. On top of that, it’s naturally gluten-free and easy to digest.

A Yogi's Dessert


A Yogi's Dessert
Satisfy your sweet tooth with kheer—a creamy rice pudding delicately flavored with saffron, cardamom, and nuts.
By Jon Janaka

Ayurveda's Guide to Boundless Beauty: Food for your Body, Food for your Face


India’s inside-out approach to skincare lets you toss the toxic cosmetics, luxuriate in herbal treatments, and tap into the source of true beauty.


Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Top Ten Reasons to Go Vegetarian :-)



From GoVeg.com-visit the site and they'll walk you through it step by step :)

Many people's New Year's resolutions include losing weight, eating better, getting healthier, and doing more to make the world a better place. You can accomplish all these goals by switching to a vegetarian diet, and you'll enjoy delicious, satisfying meals as well. Here are our top 10 reasons to go vegetarian:


1. Slim Down While Feeling Good

Is shedding some extra pounds first on your list of goals for the new year? Vegetarians are, on average, up to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters. And unlike unhealthy fad diets, which leave you feeling tired (and gaining all the weight back eventually), going vegetarian is the healthy way to keep the excess fat off for good while feeling full of energy. 

2. It's the Best Way to Help Animals

Every vegetarian saves more than 100 animals a year from horrible abuse. There is simply no other way that you can easily help so many animals and prevent so much suffering than by choosing vegetarian foods over meat.

3. A Healthier, Happier You

A vegetarian diet is great for your health! According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians are less likely to develop heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or high blood pressure than meat-eaters. Vegetarians get all the nutrients they need to be healthy (e.g., plant protein, fiber, minerals, etc.) without all the nasty stuff in meat that slows you down and makes you sick, like cholesterol and saturated animal fat. 

4. Vegetarian Food Is Delicious

So you're worried that if you go vegetarian, you'll have to give up hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, and ice cream? You won't. As the demand for vegetarian food skyrockets, companies are coming out with more and more delicious meat and dairy product alternatives that taste like the real thing but are much healthier and don't hurt any animals. Plus, we have thousands of tasty kitchen-tested recipes to help you get started! 

5. Meat Is Gross

It's disgusting but true: Meat is often contaminated with feces, blood, and other bodily fluids, all of which make animal products the top source of food poisoning in the United States. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tested supermarket chicken flesh and found that 96 percent of Tyson chicken was contaminated with campylobacter, a dangerous bacteria that causes 2.4 million cases of food poisoning each year, resulting in diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever. Learn more. 

6. Help Feed the World

Eating meat doesn't just hurt animals; it hurts people too. It takes tons of crops and water to raise farmed animals-in fact, it takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal flesh! All that plant food could be used much more efficiently if it was fed to people directly. The more people who go vegetarian, the more we can feed the hungry. 

7. Save the Planet

Eating meat is one of the worst things that you can do for the Earth; it's wasteful, it causes enormous amounts of pollution, and the meat industry is one of the biggest causes of global warming. Adopting a vegetarian diet is more important than switching to a "greener" car in the fight against global warming. 

8. All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

The list of stars who shun animal flesh is basically a "who's who" of today's hottest celebs. Joaquin Phoenix, Natalie Portman, Tobey McGuire, Shania Twain, Alicia Silverstone, Anthony Kiedis, Casey Affleck, Kristen Bell, INXS lead singer J.D. Fortune, Benji Madden, Alyssa Milano, Common, Joss Stone, and Carrie Underwood are just a handful of the super-sexy vegetarians who regularly appear in People magazine. Check out our recent "World's Sexiest Vegetarians" poll for more hot, compassionate celebs. 

9. Look Sexy and Be Sexy

Vegetarians tend to be thinner than meat-eaters and have more energy, which is perfect for late-night romps with your special someone. (Guys: The cholesterol and saturated animal fat in meat, eggs, and dairy products don't just clog the arteries to your heart; over time, they impede blood flow to other vital organs as well.) Plus, what's sexier than someone who is not only mega-hot, but also compassionate? 

10. Pigs Are Smarter Than Your Dog

While most people are less familiar with pigs, chickens, fish, and cows than they are with dogs and cats, animals used for food are every bit as intelligent and able to suffer as the animals who share our homes are. Pigs can learn to play video games, and chickens are so smart that their intelligence has been compared by scientists to that of monkeys. Read more about these amazing animals.

Indoor Farming Year Round



Grow your own Farm inside your apartment!  The organization, windowfarms.org (grown in Brooklyn, New York) has begun a movement that is spreading into crowded cities all over the world! Check out the videos to learn more about how you can become a window farmer yourself and get fresh, organic vegetables year round in your very own apartment!   at 

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Super Shakti's Spanikopita

1 hour prep/ 40 min cooking/ 9X13'' caserold dish

1 1/2 lb Tofu, extra firm, crumbled

1 pkg Phyllo sheets, spelt variety

6C spinach, rinsed well

2C Onion, diced

2 tbl Olive oil

3/4 C Garbanzo beans, cooked, drained and mashed

3/4 C Tahini, roasted

1/2 C Kalamata olive, chopped

1/4 C Garlic, minced

1/4 C Nama shoyu, or to taste

2 Tbl Italian parsley, minced

2 Tbl Basil, minced

1 Tbl Nutritional yeast

1 1/2 tsp Oregano, minced

1 1/2 tsp Thyme, minced

1 tsp Rosemary, fresh minced

1/2 tsp Sea Salt, or to taste

1/2 tsp Black pepper, ground to taste

1/4 C Corn or olive oil for basting

Prep

1. Steam spinach lightly for 3-5 minutes 

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Palce 2 tbl oil in large pot on med high heat. Add onions and garlic, cook 5 minutes, stirring frequendly. Add the tofu and cook for 10 minutes, stirring requently. Add the reamining ingredients, except the phyllo dough and corn oil, cook an additional 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. 

3. Lightly oil a 9X13 casserold dish. Place 1/3 of the phyllo dough (7 sheets) on the bottom of the dish one sheet at a time, lightly oiling each sheet with olive oil using a small pastry brush. Place half of the tofu mixture on top of the phyllo dough. 

4. Repeat step 2 using 7 sheets of the phyllo dough and the remaining 1/2 tofu mixture. Top with the remaining phyllo dough, lightly brush with oil, and bake until phyllo is golden brown, approximately 20 minutes. Allow to cool 10-15 minutes before serving. 

From Vegan World Fusion Cuisine by Mark Reinfeld and Bo Rinaldi