All posts by petersan

Polenta with seaweed and vegetables

August 13, 2020nutrition, recipescorn, polenta, veganpetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

A treasure of poor man’s kitchen

In the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century polenta must have been the most widespread “poor man’s dish” of the Italians in the countryside. Although the poorest layers of the population often ate in a very unbalanced way, the so called “poor man’s kitchen” is a very inspiring phenomenon in my opinion. Because these people worked with locally available plants and foods. That simplicity, and that low ecological footprint, that’s for sure something we can learn a lot from, today. A lot more charming and more sustainable than many of the so-called ”superfoods” that are flown in by airplane from tropical areas to be sold at exorbitantly high prices in exclusive stores. It can never have been the purpose of something as earthy and basic as our daily food.

What is Polenta?

Polenta is semolina made from corn. Unfortunately, most of the corn that is on our fields is destined to be used for livestock feeding. And why would you want to consume corn in a plant based diet?
Well, it has some interesting characteristics. It is free from gluten and it is easily digested. The recipe here below is excellent for people who decide to ditch meat and other animal products, and who feel an urge or some nostalgia for a fried egg or omelette at breakfast time. This polenta really comes close to it with regards to taste, colour and smell! Especially nice in the winter season.

What are the benefits of seaweed?

Seaweeds are rich in protein, iron and also iodine.
Where do fish get their protein and their renowned omega-3 content? They get it from seaweed!
All the more reason to leave fish alone and learn how to use these little-known vegetables.
People with thyroid disorders need to be careful. The high iodine content can influence their condition.
Are you in that case? Then check with your doctor.

Things you need for a polenta loaf of about 1 kg:

ca 900 ml of water
175 gr quick cook polenta of organic culture
one up to two full table spoons of finely chopped seaweed (e.g; fisherman’s salad)
a big carrot (or another vegetable), finely grated
1 to 2 teaspoons of sea salt, to taste
A cooking pan of about 2 litres – that provides some extra space
a rectangular cake tin of about 30 cms long and 10 cms wide

This is how you proceed:

Shred the carrot finely.
You can soak the seaweed briefly in some water, but the fine species can do perfectly without.
Bring the water to a boil in a pan.
Once the water is boiling, you can add the shredded carrot, the seaweed and the sea salt into the water, and bring it back to boiling temperature.
Then add the polenta to the mixture, whilst stirring.
Let the polenta simmer gently for two minutes, whilst you keep on stirring with a wooden spoon or a whisker.
The polenta quickly thickens and when it starts to detach at the sides from the border of the pan, it is time to pour the mixture into the previously moistened cake tin.
Let it solidify and cool, and then store it in the fridge in a box with a lid.

Once cooled, it will easily store in the fridge for one week.
In the morning you can cut off a couple of slices from the cake, grill them briefly in the oven or fry them in some olive oil or high oleic sunflower oil, on low heat.
Delicious with some fresh, raw vegetables!
This polenta is as tasty and fulfilling as an omelette, without the latter’s disadvantages.
Enjoy!

What exactly is gluten?

Apart from corn, millet and rice are two more examples of gluten free cereals. Gluten is part of the cereal’s grain. As such, it’s not bad, because it is plant protein. But it is rather hard to digest. Amongst all proteins, the gluten from modern wheat is the one featuring the longest amino acid chains. So it costs the body and the intestinal bacteria a lot of energy and time to cut these super long chains up into small bits during digestion. That is one of the reasons why you can feel quite sluggish after a meal with a lot of gluten rich cereals. People whose intestinal wall malfunctions or is damaged, will suffer even more. When the intestinal wall is weakened so much that it lets too large fragments of only partially digested protein through into the bloodstream, allergies may arise.
For people otherwise healthy the advantage of eating less gluten resides in the fact that digestion is lighter, so the body has more energy available for other activities and processes.

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Red bean spread with dried tomato and carrots

August 13, 2020nutrition, recipespetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

A protein-rich vegetable spread or side dish, with red kidney beans as a star ingredient.

Beans don’t have a sexy image. However, they are highly nutritious, rich in protein and fibre, and low in fat.
They fit well in a healthy and sports diet.
Moreover, they are a cheap source of vegetable protein.
You basically have the option to buy dry beans, or canned beans.
The canned beans are always pre-cooked, the dry beans you have to cook yourself.
A great advantage of dry beans is that you can buy them in bulk, so almost without packaging.
Canned beans give a lot of packaging waste. Moreover, it is a pure waste of metal.

Important!

Always cook beans until tender without adding salt. When you add the salt from the start, the beans will stay hard. Only add the salt after cooking.

What you need for approximately 730 gr of finished spread:

120 gr red beans, dry
40 gr dried tomatoes
150 gr onion
3 garlic cloves
100 gr carrot
2 tablespoons tamari, or sea salt to taste
5 cm kombu seaweed (optional)
15 gr fresh parsley
a tablespoon of savory
black pepper, to taste

This is how you prepare it:

Let the red kidney beans soak all night or even 24 hours. Discard that soaking water and rinse the beans under the tap.
You can also soak the dried tomato in a little water beforehand. But you can add this soaking water to the dish.
Finely chop all the vegetables.

Preferably use a pressure cooker. Because you retain much more of the nutritional value and the cooking process takes much less time and energy.

Cook the ingredients in a pressure cooker, in two stages:

Boil the beans first, without salt:
Bring them to the boil in plenty of water (4 volumes of water for 1 volume of beans) without lid.
You can remove any foam floating on top with a skimmer.
Add the piece of seaweed and the savory and then close the pressure cooker.
Let the steam pressure build up and leave to boil for 45 minutes.
Open the pressure cooker after 45 minutes.
If there is too much moisture, you can pour some of it away at this stage.
Add the rest of the ingredients, except the fresh parsley.
Let the pressure build up again and cook for another 10 minutes.

Let the mixture cool down a little, add the parsley, put everything in the food processor and mix until you get a smooth puree.

You can store it in glass jars.
Keep them hermetically sealed in the fridge for at least another 10 days.
You could also freeze the bean spread.

Enjoy it !

Cans

I personally think that tin cans are one of the biggest mistakes of modern consumer society. They are used at all times. Especially those beverages in cans are, if you think about it, a colossal skewing on a planetary scale. A gigantic pollution caused by the metal and packaging industry, just to pack a few sips of drink. And what’s more, you see them littered around all over the streets. Pure madness.

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Nut Milk

August 13, 2020nutrition, recipesmilk, nuts, veganpetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

Making your own plant based milk, it’s done in hardly more than the blink of an eye. Of course, many different kinds of plant based milk are for sale in classic supermarkets as well as in organic wholefood stores. That is really a good thing, but why would you have to put up with al that packaging waste? Every year, Earth Overshoot Day (*) shifts to yet another couple of days earlier on the year, and the making of all those packages is partly responsible for that.
Making your own, raw and unpasteurized organic vegan milk in the quantities that suit you, it doesn’t take any longer than fixing a cup of tea or a cup of coffee.

What you need for half a litre of plant based nut milk:

50 grs of nuts, preferably soaked
500 ml of water
a pinch of sea salt (optional)
a pinch of cinnamon (optional)
a blender or a mixer and its cup
a finely meshed nylon filter bag

Appropriate nuts for plant milk are almonds and cashew nuts. Preferably buy them organic.
Let the nuts soak in water and afterwards rinse them well in a strainer.
Almonds can be left soaking overnight, cashews will be ready after one and a half to three hours soaking.

here’s how you proceed:

Put the soaked nuts into the cup of the blender or mixer.
Add the other ingredients, pour the water over and blend thoroughly during about 30 seconds.
Pour the mixture through the filter bag into a wide enough recipient such as a measuring jug, then press out the nut pulp to extract most of the liquid.
Pour the nut drink into a glass bottle with a screw cap.

Done !
It will keep about three days in the refrigerator. Afterwards the milk will turn slightly acid as a result of fermentation.
Enjoy your plant milk!

What to do with the pulp ?

The pulp is made of the unsoluble fibres of the nuts. You can add that pulp to your morning muesli or porridge, or work it into cookie dough, whether or not you make raw cookies or traditional ones. This way, nothing gets lost.
(*)Earth Overshoot Day: The day of the year on which all resources that the Earth can produce in one year, are used up.

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Green protein bomb

August 13, 2020powertrainingpower training, protein, veganpetersan

The big issue for people considering switching to plant-based food is: will I get enough protein?
Meat, fish and eggs are “easy” sources of protein, which have a relatively high protein content.
But ethically speaking, they are very tricky.

A plant-based diet has everything to provide us with sufficient protein, and is respectful of animals, people and the planet.

Let’s cite a few good sources:

peas, including soya, peas, and the dozens of varieties of beans and lentils

nuts and seeds

cereals (such as wheat, oats, rice, rye, barley, millet, amaranth …)

pseudocereals (such as quinoa, buckwheat)

vegetables (yes! Every vegetable contains protein)

algae and cyanobacteria such as spirulina

vegetable protein powder (of soy, rice, hemp, pea, pumpkin seed, sunflower seed or combinations thereof)

Anyone who takes a balanced and sufficiently varied plant diet will under no circumstances suffer from a protein deficiency.

And what about active sports and power training ?

But if you’re a strength athlete, or like me, have stepped into a fat loss challenge, along with purebred meat eaters and omnivores ? A challenge that expects you to eat almost twice as much protein as normal ? Up to more than 150 grams a day ?
How about that ?
Can you do that?
Can you provide meals and snacks that contain much more protein and at the same time keep your fats and carbohydrates under control?

Yes, it’s possible.
Let’s be honest: you’ll also need an addition of vegetable protein powder.
But that’s the same for meat and fish eaters. They only use concentrated milk protein, also called whey.

Here is an example of a vegetable “protein bomb”, which I prepared as a separate meal. With lots of greens, so also rich in vitamins and minerals.

These are the ingredients for the smoothie:

200 gr peas

70 gr spinach

25 gr mixed vegetable protein powder of hemp, pumpkin and sunflower

3 gr spirulina (about 1 teaspoon)

3 gr chlorella (about 1 teaspoon)

about a tablespoon of peanut butter

150 ml of unsweetened calcium-fortified soy milk

This was for the topping:

70 gr fresh white or red currants

100 gr soybean cottage cheese alternative (Provamel or Alpro)

Energy and macros

This one nutritious and filling meal with a total of almost 600 kcal contains no less than 49 grams of vegetable protein.
That’s a bunch!
The vegetable protein powder accounts for 14.6 grams of that. The rest comes from the other ingredients.

You could also use the same combination in smaller quantities as a nutritious “post-workout” snack.

Plant Power

I was relieved.
Yes, this kind of special diet for sports or fat loss it is also feasible with only vegetable ingredients.

It’s time we built a society on the power of plants instead of the misery of animals. Don’t you think so?

Crumesan

August 11, 2020nutrition, recipescrumesan, parmesanpetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, vegan

Ditch Parmesan as of today

Because here’s something very easy, very simple and a lot healthier: Crumesan. And no cows or other farm animals have had to suffer for it.
Amongst people who make their first steps with plant based food, you can observe that they like to have something that resembles grated cheese, to sprinkle over pasta sauce or soups, and that has a bit the same dry, granular texture and a similar taste sensation as grated Parmesan cheese.

I found this simple recipe for “crumesan” in the rich works of David Côté and Mathieu Gallant. They are two inspiring canadian men that run a plant-based raw food company named “Crudessence”. Crudessence is not only about plant-based raw eating, they even consider the living plant-based raw kitchen as a philosophy of life with plenty of ramifications to several aspects of life, and even as a political act with a huge positive rebound for the environment. In Canada they have a couple of restaurants, a raw food academy and they also have several books on their name in the Crudessence series. In those books you can find a lot of raw vegan basics from which you can ignite your own creative spirit.
Absolutely worthwhile as a source of inspiration!
Here is the link: www.crudessence.com

This is what you need and their proportions:

About 140 grammes of Brazil nuts

A quarter teaspoon of sea salt or more, to your taste

A quarter, a half or a complete clove of garlic, to your taste

About 1/8 teaspoon of ground black pepper or a mixture of three peppers

This is how you proceed:

Brazil nuts need not be soaked overnight, in contrast to most other nuts.
Bring the Brazil nuts, the garlic clove and the sea salt with the pepper in a kitchen robot with an S-shaped blade. Pulsate a couple of times until you get the desired texture grain. Then scoop it all into a glass jar with a screwing lid. The crumesan will preserve happily in the fridge for two up to three weeks. If that isn’t easy!
Enjoy!

Cutting out diary

A lot of people start off their journey towards a plant-based life style by going through a vegetarian phase first. This allows the consumption of dairy such as milk, cheese, butter and also eggs. Dairy can in no way be considered as healthy food. The dairy cows are amongst the most miserable slaves of our modern day economy, which seems to be built entirely on animals and animal products. The food industry incorporates cheese in a large amount of foods, like a hidden serial poisoner, comparable to the ubiquitous refined sugar. Moreover, cheese is highly addictive.

The advantages of letting go

When you say goodbye to dairy forever, the health and according general well-being benefits , even in the short run, are ENORMOUS. The dairy industry is a rather recent phenomenon in the Western world, dating from right after the Second World War. It is in fact built on the incorrect assumption that milk from cows and other land mammals and their derivatives, are an essential part of a healthy food regimen. The myth has grown into a tough, governement endowed institutionalized lie, that luckily somehow starts to stagger.
It has been shown out by several serious studies on the matter, that dairy is unreliable as a source of calcium. Digesting dairy has a strong acidifying effect on the body’s tissues, it tends to erode calcium out of the bones rather than fortifying them.

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Banana raisin oat cookies

August 9, 2020nutrition, recipespetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

Nowadays, the world’s most succesfull body-builders and athletes are recognizing the benefits of a plant-based diet. Sometimes their switch from omnivore to plant-based is a true lifestyle transformation! They manage to get even better performance results without the discomforts of animal sourced foods. And they feel morally better now that no more animals need to suffer or die for their appetite and sports diet.

A perfect plant-based alternative

One of these athletes and nutritional advisors is Canadian Derek Simnett. You can always check out his videos and enjoy his good-humoured, warm-hearted and honest contributions. I think I may have found the base for the following recipe for healthy oat cookies on one of his webpages or in one of his videos. But I made some adaptations to make them even more healthy.
These cookies, without any added sugar, are an excellent alternative for the industrial sugar loaded cookies that are sold in supermarkets as “Breakfast cookies”. They fit perfectly into a strategy to lower the sugar content in your foods.
colate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

What you need for about 12 to 16 cookies:

75 grs (1.5 cups) rolled oats, ground up into oat flour

50 grs (1 cup) rolled oats (not ground)

3 ripe bananas, mashed

30 grs (1/4 cup) sunflower seeds

30 grs (1/4 cup) pumpkin seeds

70 grs (2/3 – 1/2 cup) raisins, soaked overnight

30 grs (2/3 cup) unsweetened shredded coconut

1 flax ‘egg’ (2 tbsp. ground flax seeds mixed with
3 tbsp water)

2 tsp baking soda

Juice of 1 lemon (add just before baking)

This is how you make them a success:

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.

Prepare flax ‘egg’ and let soak for a few minutes in small bowl.

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl except the lemon juice.

When all the ingredients are mixed together, add lemon juice and gently mix. Spoon mixture
out onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 15 – 20 mins depending on cookie size.

Take the cookies out of the oven off the baking sheet and let cool on a wired rack.

You can store these cookies in the refrigerator for 3-4 days in an airtight container, but I am sure you will want to finish them a lot earlier …
Enjoy!

High nutritional density

We can consider cookies like these as food with a considerably high nutritional density: relatively rich in calories and with an average moist content. The nutritional density of food can be calculated as the amount of calories per 100 grs of product. In healthy nutrition, it’s advisable to consume a lot of foods with a low nutritional density. Good examples of those are: vegetables and fruits. So we better consume these cookies with moderation.

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The eight weeks fat loss challenge

August 9, 2020powertrainingpetersan

There you go. I left on August 3, 2020 for eight weeks.
Not on vacation! But still on a voyage of discovery. I made a commitment to an 8-week fat-loss challenge.
Now you might want to take a look at the attached photo that looks like a robot photo of someone condemned to jail for a decade. And then you might think, “That’s not so bad, is it, that fat?

Attaining results

The truth is, for over a decade, I’ve been thinking I’m eating totally healthy. And apart from that, I’m mildly to moderately physically active. The lack of periods of illness and doctor’s visits (none!) the last 7 years, point to say I am in the right direction.

If I wouldn’t do anything at all for my dear body, I would become “skinny fat”,. I call it myself: a fat skeleton. Not so much meat on the bones and the tendency to accumulate fat deposits in all the classic body areas. I do like physical activity, I’ve practiced sports for years, but only following a very irregular pattern.
I am one of those persons who eagerly longs for visible results with sport, but never manages to obtain real results.

And so I made the wise decision to descend from the realm of fantasy and supposition to the world of objectively measurable reality. The figures, measurement results and progress tables of the challenge bring me straight to the tangible experience, of what it means to work systematically and with great consistency towards a result.

Photographs are part of this. The classic “before” and “after” selfies. Because the image the photo shows provides more objective information than your own glance at yourself in a mirror. Because you view and judge yourself, depending on the mental filters through which you look, often too positively or too negatively.

An objective view

Those pictures also help me to accept myself. There I am, a person of 58 years old in underwear, with all the dents and flaws and imperfections that belong to that body. I see things that I can’t change much. Like that spine, which is very assymetric. Or those deformed feet. I also see things I can handle. Like the fact that my legs can be a lot more muscular, or the back of my body that is clearly less muscular than the front side of it.
We’ll get to work on that.

Manifesting the best version of myself

These are some of the reasons for my participation to the challenge:

The motivations are:

I want to develop a strength training and maintain enough muscle tissue, good posture and mobility, now and in later life.

Less fat and more muscles, I find that aesthetically more beautiful. And it’s healthier.

Create the best physical version of myself, depending on my genetics, history and age.

Develop the mental discipline by adhering as strictly as possible to a well thought-out, planned and achievable practice schedule for sports and nutrition.

Learn from my own personal experience how the interaction between eating and being physically active actually works out.

Experience what works and what doesn’t for me in terms of nutrition

Get, once and for all, clarity about the protein story.

The challenges are:

To lose 500 grams of fat per week for 8 to 12 weeks

For 8 to 12 weeks, to track all the food I eat in a food tracking app

To do progressive strength training 4 days a week

To gain the know-how from this experience in order to sustainably maintain the result after the challenge.

No more guessing and supposing and fantasizing! I love my chaotic mind with its dominant right half, but that alone won’t get me there.

Oh yes. Almost forgot to mention, I’m doing it all vegan !

How is your relation with your body and its health ?
Are you entirely satisfied ?

Would you like to know from time to time how it goes with the challenge and would you like to benefit from the useful experiences ? Subscribe to the newsletter or follow me on Facebook and Instagram.

Oats and chia

August 6, 2020nutrition, recipesbreakfast, chia, oatspetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, vegan

Now here’s a really healthy and complete breakfast for lazy people. One of its advantages is that all ingredients are raw. No need to heat or cook anything. Just mix some things together the evening before, and then cut some fruit in the morning. That’s all.

What you need for one serving:

ca 50 grs of rolled oats

one and a half tablespoon of chia seeds

ca 200 ml of plant based milk

fruit of your choice

Ready in no time:

Pour the rolled oats and the chia seeds in a bowl, or, even better, in a glass jar that you can close.

Pour the plant milk over the oats and mingle well. The oats will swell as they absorb the liquid, so make sure they are well submerged.

Close the jar or cover the bowl and put in the refrigerator to soak for the whole night.

In the morning you can stir again and add some extra plant milk if the mixture looks too dry.

Cut up the fruit of your choice to pieces and mix in. You can top with some nuts of your choice, preferably soaked.

There you are.
This breakfast does not contain any added sugar, has a velvety soft texture and a fairly neutral taste, which enhances the flavour of the chosen fruit.
It will give you a satisfied feeling that will last for hours.
Enjoy it!

Even more protein

Do you practice power training or an intense sporting activity? Then consider this:

Three tablespoons of chia.

Soy milk for higher protein intake.

a generous serving of soy yogurt on top.

You can choose whatever plant based drink, like soy milk or a nut-based milk.
Nut milk can be easily home made, in the quantities that suit you. Click here for the recipe.
Are rolled oats “raw” in the strict meaning of the word? Not really. Rolled oats are oat grains that have been squashed between the rollers of a machine, hence “rolled oats”. In the process, some heat is generated. Still, it can’t be compared to boiling.
Chia seeds, are the tiny, black and white seeds of the plant with the latin name Salvia hispanica. When you soak them in water they swell by forming a jelly like layer on their outside. That’s why people sometimes use them in vegan recipes as a substitute for eggs. They are immensely popular as “superfood”.
But what’s so “super” about them? Well, they contain a lot of plant protein of very good quality, and fairly easy to digest. Furthermore, they contain a lot of fibre, a lot of omega-3 fatty acids and minerals such as calcium, phosphor, magnesium en the micronutrient copper. And also vitamins, such as B1, B3 and a remarkable lot of vitamin E.

Product Energy Carbohydrates Fats Protein Fibre

Chia seeds, per 100 grs 1832 kJ 4,9 grs 31,4 grs 21,2 grs 33,7 grs

Breakfast or no breakfast?

With breakfast I mean your first meal of the day. One can discuss whether to take a breakfast early in the morning or later that day. A lot depends on your daily activities and schedule. I had a tendency to start eating almost right after getting out of bed in the morning, but nowadays I sometimes have my first meal at 10, or 11 am, or even later. It is important to regularly grant your intestines a rest, at least 8 hours or even better 16 hours a day. That way your body is able to correctly assimilate the food and eliminate the waste. A lot of problems with overeating and overweight find their cause in the questionable habit to stuff ourselves with food, almost non-stop from the morning till the evening. Advertising and marketing constantly try to seduce us to do so. To alleviate one’s hunger is something completely different than getting addicted to the feeling of a constantly filled stomach.

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