love affair with porridge continues...

Porridge: a hearty morning repast!

Breakfast, my favorite meal time! The last 3 months have been full on in Mysore, India. With focus primarily on yogasana practice. To support that practice, a good sustaining breakfast in on order. As much as I love Indian breakfasts, it doesn't have the sustaining power of a good power porridge made at home.

Depending on where you are from, you might have certain ideas about porridge. In Asia, porridge is often a made out of rice and is a savory affair, often made with chicken stock. In Chinese cuisine, this is often referred to as congee. Around the world, there are cold porridges and warm porridges. Porridges made of different variety of oats and grains. Made plain or mixed with dry or fresh ingredients.  

Me? I like to mix and match. The only rule I really adhere to about food is that it tastes good and that it's good for you. So, my porridges have become more fusion, a fusion of what exactly, I'm not entirely sure. Last year, I was all about the raw blended porridge. Will fish out pics and post soon!

Because I'm nuts (which I also like to add into it) about porridge, I actually brought a bag each of some newly discovered breakfast grains: pin-eye oats and creamy buckwheat, which I mixed often with ordinary oats, raisins, other dried fruit. I also brought some special ingredients in my luggage: hemp hearts and goji berries. Most things I was able to source locally in India though: dried raisins, figs, and dates. Fresh fruit, even spirulina from Auroville is easy to find in Mysore. Sometimes, I go crazy and put just about every ingredient in there. 

Here are two kinds of easy-to-make staples that kept me happy and healthy during the past Mysore yoga season, amidst the serious demands of yogasana practice, yoga philosophy classes, self-study, and hanging out with friends and loved ones, most I see only once a year:

Half cooked/Half raw
Cooked pinhead oats
dried raisins
dried figs
chopped fresh bananas
chia seed rehydrated in soy milk
and soy milk.

This is a quick one, no cooking actually,
and what I was quickly making in between
my own practice and assisting in the shala.
It was light enough so I felt quite spry but also
felt quite sustained--I was assisting
for nearly 2 and a half hours.

Fresh chopped bananas,
ready prepared muesli
raw cashews
spirulina crunchy flakes
all on top of milk curd (yogurt)

Rawdyssey continues, Oh Mama Maia

Apologies...It's been a while since I've updated the food blog. So immersed I have been in crazy, beautiful, colorful Mama India (I will post on India soon!), that I didn't even post this continuation of my "rawdessy" in Palawan Island, Philippines. Here it is...

Edible greens steps away from the kitchen. The garden has kang-kong,
kamote tops, and alugbati as well as a herb garden at the center.

December 2012: 

I am at Maia Eco Village to be with friends during a time of shift and also to go on a personal retreat. For three weeks, I live in --mostly, barring a 3 short trips into town-- sacred simplicity. We live on solar power, create nearly zero waste by composting and thorough waste management, and eat mostly raw food.

The eco village is the heart-child of Pi Villarza, healer and inner dance facilitator, who pairs the healing modality with coconut diet or raw food. His vision for Maia as an intentional, self-sufficient coconut/raw-food community is still in the works with coconut tree planting and permaculture gardens underway.

Buko, or coconut, a staple food in Maia.

Some of those on retreat choose to be just on buko or coconut. The water and the meat can be very sustaining.

I choose to eat raw as well as have coconuts. Though I feel strongly that a hundred percent raw food diet is probably not for me, not with my active lifestyle and dynamic yoga practice. I feel that eating mostly raw for three weeks is still a very positive experience. Eating from the garden, I feel connected with the food in a very special way--such a different relationship we have from our food nowadays. We are so far from the source, from the land, from the people growing your food, more so if we are eating processed food.

Fresh picks from the garden.

I find that raw food preparation, which has the reputation of being overly complex once a Vitamex or a dehydrator is involved, very easy once I get into it, especially with the freshest seasonal veg and a few herbs and sauces to work with. It's all wash, chop, season. Finito! 

In all honesty, what helps, really, is having my friend Imee there. Trained in raw food preparation and also running her own raw food line in Manila, Imee showed me some simple things to make, which becomes my staple during my time in Maia.

Nick Brown, the local perma-culturist,
 showing off his find today: jackfruit.

Yoga, Inner Dance and Permaculture, Energy work and Healing Retreats are on-going. Contact Bahay Kalipay for more details.

http://www.bahaykalipay.com/

Here are some photos of the raw dishes Imee whipped up:

Papaya Salad-Papaya picked from the tree right outside the kitchen at Orange. 

Kang Kong (Water Spinach) and Kamote Tops Salad.

This meal I made! Left: Sprouted mong--bean bought in town but sprouted in Maia,
with tomato and cigarillas (star bean). Right: Coconut meat noodle with sesame oil and soy dressing.   

Rawdyssey: Bahay Kalipay revisited

Cashew cheese, dehydrated caramelized onions on top of flax seed crackers.

Though raw food keeps on being prominent in this blog, I must clarify, that I am not a raw foodist. To date, I'm a food enthusiast, raw and cooked. Mostly cooked, based on my history. Very vata, I'm not the kind of person who would usually feel full on a green, leafy salad. So, my love affair with warm meals have been on-going. 

However, raw food keeps on popping up for me, wherever I travel, through the people I meet. All over, people are choosing to eat differently. And I am totally fascinated by this. 

BK Breakfast: fresh fruits with dehydrated
coconut meat, sprouted buckwheat, and goji berries,
topped with carob-coco milk.

My introduction to raw food began at Bahay Kalipay in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, March 2010, when my friends and I visited the energy healing center for the very first time. At that point, my contact with raw food seemed mostly through TV and print media, where the buzz about the seemingly extreme diet was tinged with some irony and humor. What I didn't know then was that this 5-day-long encounter with raw food and Inner Dance, the main purpose of our coming, would start a fascination with the raw food movement.

On Dec 3, 2012, I returned to Bahay Kalipay, my fourth trip to the retreat center, to teach for a couple of days before going to Maia, a raw-food and coconut intuitive community just an hour away from Bahay Kalipay. 

I always find these trips to Bahay Kalipay interesting. It brings up a lot of stuff for me. Before going, I get a little edgy about "going raw." I worry wether I can sustain a dynamic yoga practice while there. When I get there, I question whether I will feel full on what they are serving. It always looks so small in comparison to cooked fare. I'm always ok in the end, always getting to the point where I've had enough with plenty of food still on the table, always consuming so much less than what I'm used to. 

Daniw and her son, Sinag. 

I'm still a huge fan of putting my food to fire, but I have to say that Daniw's "cooking" and the food she serves in Bahay Kalipay really makes me question my ideas about food, it challenges me also, showing me that there is a million and one ways of eating raw food. They come in all shapes and all sizes, all textures and all flavors. 

There's also a certain mindfulness that kicks in when you are intentionally eating raw. I find I eat slower. I savor more. There's this sense that all of my parts, my mouth, my stomach and my mind, are really working together get the most out of the experience. 

There's definitely something to eating more raw foods. Without going to extremes, it makes sense to add into our diets more live foods that contain enzymes (which are killed in the cooking process) and that are high in nutrients. 

Thank you, Daniw, for another amazing raw food experience! Thank you Bahay Kalipay! 

http://www.daniwsconsciouskitchen.com

http://www.bahaykalipay.com/

This last trip, Bahay Kalipay, was actually the first step to a 3-week long stay. In Bahay Kalipay, I would enjoy the ingenuity of the raw kitchen, helped along with a dehydrator and a high powered blender. After just 3 days, I would be launched into Maia, where sacred simplicity amounts to eating coconuts or at the very most simply prepared hand-made raw food. More to follow on Maia, another food-altering experience...

Here are some of the amazing dishes at Bahay Kalipay this time around. One dish that I wish I had a photo of was with amazing kelp noodles:

Spaghetti anyone? Cucumber pasta with fresh tomatoes blended with garlic and spices. 

There's always desert at BK: chocolate mouse.

To left: fresh pineapple with paprika. Raw noodles
made of hicama, carots and sprouts.

Cabbage salad with seaweed pesto.

Curried veg on top of flax seed crackers.

Green Speckled Lentils

Though the lentils pictured above are not Puy Lentils, from the Le Puy region of France, they are still pretty darn tasty and peppery as their French counter-parts. For me, these legumes are in heavy rotation these days. I love them, making it pretty much in the same way, only varying the grains and steamed vegetables that I cook with them. I also sometimes add different seasonings. Though at times I forget completely, which is no problem with the vegetable stock giving it so much flavor already!

I'm not a nutritionist, but I feel fully sated when I have such a dish. There's plenty of protein in the lentils, fiber and over nutrients in the steamed veg, and carbs with the grain.

Method:
Green speckled lentils (if possible, Puy lentils), cooked in vegetable stock. Not a lot of stock, just enough to cover the lentils some. Season as desired. I like to add paprika, a couple of bay leafs, and ground cumin. You want the lentils to be served a little al dente. So add the vegetables on top to steam over lentils, just when they are starting to soften. Again, you can season the vegetables. I like to add dill and more paprika, along with a drizzle of olive oil.

I actually like crabs, so I like to have lentils and vegetables with a nice hearty brown rice or for a lighter nuttier mean, quinoa. In the photo above, lentils are covering a sustaining millet grain. Buckwheat groats is also another option.  

Cooks really easy. I like to make a large pot so I have enough for a meal for the following day. Keeps nicely.

Christmas Fruit Cake

"I'll be home for Christmas.." croons Bing Crosby as I wait for my 8pm yoga class here at Urban Ashram at Fort High Street. They have a pretty funky song list going on, Bing shares the sound-light with the likes of his contemporaries Sinatra along with a wild array of R&B songstresses and various pop acts, all in the yuletide spirit.

Mid-November and it's all about Christmas here in Manila. The lights are up. Christmas sales and bazaars are on all over the city. Manger scenes everywhere. In fairness, I got a head start this year. First inkling of the happy holidays started at the end of October when I learned to make traditionally English Christmas Fruit Cake, from Mr. Trevor Boag, a master of the craft, whose been making this holiday delight since 1974. He patiently took me through the cake-making process step-by-step, resulting in my first baked cake from scratch (no help from Betty Crocker here), pictured above. 

The cake, which traveled across England, over Europe, all the way to the Philippines in Southeast Asia, was iced in Manila at the start of December, and served on Christmas Eve with my family.

Again, food is what brings us together, across continents and oceans, crossing boundaries and cultures.                                            

Dec 28, 2012
In India now. Cake was cut Dec 24. My family loved it. It was a beautiful way to contribute to the Christmas festivities, sharing something made by hand, made with love. It also made me feel connected not only with my own family, but with the Boag family, who I'd spent so many wonderful times with over the summer, all the way in England. I knew they would be cutting into their cake too. Despite the distance, there was the spirit of cake and Christmas between us.


Here's a bit of the cake evolution:

Creaming the butter and adding brown sugar.

Brown sugar mixed in.

Eggs added and folded in.

Into the cake tin with all the dried fruit, candied cherries
and rum!

Out of the oven.

Iced with marzipan layer, topped with white fondant.

chocolate is love

Mini pans of homemade chocolate. Three varieties.
Right most: plain dark choco topped with toasted sesame seeds
and desiccated coconut.

I was just about to go home but still had my some ingredients from the Philippines: virgin coconut oil, cacao butter and raw cacao nips. Three and a half months I had put off my special project. Much inspired by the homemade chocolates given to me by my friend Clara, I had intended to spend some of my time visiting with friends exploring the union of two loves: cooking and chocolate (which mostly comprises of eating it).

So in my final days, I decided to make use of the perfect cool temperature for solidifying chocolate, do a bit of research and just get on with it--plus, I wanted to make sure I felt I'd made the best of my long-distance schlep.

Dark chocolate with hazelnuts, almonds and dried figs.

And the truth is I was feeling a lot of love. I felt so much gratitude for this amazingly peculiar journey. Making chocolate seemed to be the best way to express it!

In the end, I was amazed at how easy it all was and shocked at the quality of the chocolate. Why had I waited? Or had I simply left the best for last?

Real chocolate. No refined sugars. No preservatives.

I've a new appreciation for chocolate. Divine but so simply accessible. I wonder why we bother to buy super-market line chocolates at all!

Dark chocolate with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds,
desiccated coconut,  cacao nibs,  goji berries. Topped with
pumpkin seeds and desiccated coconut.

Melting the cocoa butter. Virgin coconut oil added.

Homemade Chocolate:

- 1/3 fair-trade cocoa
- 1/3 virgin coconut oil
- 1/3 cocoa butter
- sweetened with coconut nectar to taste

all melted together in a glass bowl surrounded by hot water (you can use agave nectar alternatively)

set in cool temperature. In the UK, that was room temp. in the Philippines, I think you'll have to put it in ref or freezer...

And now the cocoa powder...Nice dark chocolate.

Healthy Chocolate Snowballs

Up close: my second foray into making homemade chocolate meets energy balls.

As one of my final "projects" in England, I decided to make chocolate goodies. One of the treats I experimented with earlier this summer was making energy balls. This version uses homemade chocolate to bring all the energetic goodness together. Tried my best to use mostly raw ingredients. Rolled it by hand and then rolled the balls in desiccated coconut before it set into its chocolatey goodness! So easy to make, and turns out so tasty and healthy at the same time!

Ingredients:

Practically anything that was on hand in terms of nuts, seeds, and dried goodies...

* desiccated coconut

* flax seeds

* sunflower seeds

* pumpkin seeds

* goji berries

* 70% dark chocolate 

* raw cacao nibs

Binding it all together:

* homemade chocolate

- 1/3 fair-trade cocoa

- 1/3 virgin coconut oil

- 1/3 cocoa butter

all melted together in a glass bowl surrounded by hot water

- sweetened with coconut nectar to taste

(you can use agave nectar alternatively)