Category Archives: nutrition

Picture of magnificent vegetables

Vegetables first

nutrition

What are your fillers?

Feeling stuffed quickly

Virtually all conditions of obesity, lack of energy or digestive problems are caused by a wrong choice of food products.
In general, everyone has one or more products that are used as “fillers”.
A filler is a food that is relatively easy to prepare, which quickly gives a “full feeling” when eating. After all, an empty stomach is quickly misinterpreted as hunger. However, having an empty stomach is no sign at all that your body is hungry at that moment.
In our society, the fillers are often bread, pasta, white potatoes or rice.

Low quality fuel

Consequently, meals are still traditionally composed on the basis of such a filler. A plate is often filled with potatoes or pasta, and then topped off with sauce, a limited amount of vegetables and a protein source. Think of something like spaghetti bolognaise, a sandwich this or that or french fries with xyz.
The problem is that these common filling products are very poor in real nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals. You can think of them as a form of low-quality fuel.
In fact, you can stuff yourself until you almost pass out into a food coma, and still your body is waiting in vain for real nutrients. This is one of the reasons why (real) hunger quickly rears its head again, which you might smother with the same fillers. And so the cycle continues.

Systematically inflated profile

Here you have the recipe for the fastest-growing phenomenon in the world of health. More and more overweight people with a lack of energy. Paradoxically enough, obesity is in most cases not the result of overnutrition but of systematic malnutrition. The body does not know what to do with all that nutrient-poor, calorie-rich food. It converts the excess into fat and/or water. The body has too many acid-forming toxins to process. And to remove them from the bloodstream in time, there are only two solutions. Store them either in fatty tissue or in extra water pushed between the body cells. And there we have the recipe for the systematically inflated profile of most Belgians and Europeans today. We learned it from the Americans, and it is now quickly making school in Asia.

Healthy eating style

The lesson is simple: build every meal around a large amount of vegetables. Prefer green (leafy) vegetables, cabbages and coloured vegetables supplemented with root vegetables according to the season. Preferably strive for a nice balance between raw and lightly steamed. Vegetables are typically low in calories, but score very high in nutrients.
It’s a bit of a godsend, but the adage proclaimed for decades that “eat more vegetables” is not a free option. It is no more or no less than the single foundation of a healthy eating style. Without that foundation, the house of your health slowly collapses over the years.

Prosperity and ignorance

We are not exactly helped either. We are subject to traditions and habits about eating and cooking, handed down from mother to daughter. Our typical Belgian plate of today is the direct heir to the eating practices that have taken off since industrialisation. The standard diet of the working class person was cheap, “empty” filler food. Like the almost archetypal brown bread and the daily “cooked potatoes with sauce”. And if one was lucky on Sunday, a piece of cheap meat of the worst kind. The rich indulged in refined flour products and large quantities of meat. Vegetables played a totally secondary role in either case.

Diseases of affluence: really ?

And on the sidelines, the food industry, with its refined technologies and social marketing and engineering strategies, is aiming for one thing only: to make you buy and eat even more than is healthy for you.
There is no such thing as “diseases of affluence”. This term makes it seem as if you have to take it or leave it: either you have prosperity and you have to take disease with it as part of the deal, or you have no prosperity. What comes closer to the truth is “diseases of ignorance”. Or “profit driven-lack of legislation-lobbying diseases”.

Create your menus around the vegetables
So from today, reorganize your plate wisely and start eating a large quantity of varied vegetables of the season at every meal.

Split pea soup ingredients

Easy split pea soup

nutrition, recipes, , ,

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

Anyone on a purely vegan diet would do well to keep a close eye on the proportion of protein. Peas and split peas are an excellent and very cheap source of high-quality plant protein with a rich and varied amino acid spectrum. They also contain a lot of complex carbohydrates and a good deal of valuable fibre.
Dream food, really!
What could be cozier and heartier than a good bowl of steaming hot pea soup in the cold season? And you can do that right from breakfast!

What you need for about 1 litre of freshly made soup:

  • 150 gr split peas
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 onion
  • eventually a piece of green celery
  • one to one and a half tablespoons of good olive oil
  • Herbs such as: cumin seed, savory, fennel seed …
  • pepper and salt to taste

You can also add vegetable stock cubes to give extra flavour to the soup, but I’m not a fan of that myself.
Picture of split pea soup with its ingredients

Step by step

  • Allow the split peas to soak in water for a few hours until they are swollen
  • Rinse them in a sieve under running water
  • Gently heat the olive oil on low fire, sprinkle in the herbs (cumin seed, savory, fennel, or others, according to personal taste …) and let them fry softly in the oil for a few moments allow them to release their flavour
  • Add the finely chopped onion and carrot and fry until they become a little glassy
  • Pour in the split peas, stir and briefly fry
  • Pour 1 litre of water over the vegetables, bring to the boil
  • The cooking time depends on the type of pan: approx. 35 minutes in an ordinary pan. If you use a pressure cooker, reduce the cooking time to about 15 to 20 minutes.

Extremely important

When cooking legumes, add the salt only after the cooking process.
This applies to sea salt, salted soy sauce as well as any salty stock cubes or stock in powder.
Finally, you might add some extra pepper to taste and finely mix the soup with a handheld mixer or in a blender.
Serve nice and hot!

Enjoy this delicious, simple, fortifying soup with its respectable protein content!
Nutritional values split peas

When is the best moment to eat protein?

Opinions differ.
Some people claim that you benefit more from protein in the morning and at noon than in the evening. They claim it would be best to go to bed “light” with a digestive system that has finished its day job so that all the energy can be put into recuperation at night.
On the other hand, the night is precisely the time when protein synthesis and muscle recovery and building also take place. So according to other authors, it is a good idea to include protein in your last meal so that it enters the bloodstream at night and is available for protein synthesis.
That seems to make good sense.

A sweet spicy dish with seitan

Sweet and spicy seitan

nutrition, recipes, ,

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

Thousand year old source of plant protein

Have you switched to a vegan lifestyle and feel nostalgic for something like “meat stew”?
Then you must consider seitan.
Seitan has been known in oriental and more specifically Japanese cuisine for centuries. It is made by subjecting wheat flour to a series of consecutive rinsing procedures. The starch washes out and what remains is the wheat protein. Some people also make it from gluten powder. Gluten is the protein found in wheat and in plenty of other cereals. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. It is simply a powerful plant based source of protein.
Today, it is available in many forms as a standard meat substitute in organic shops and increasingly in other shops as well. Pre-cut in slices, in pieces or minced.

“Stoverij” is a typical Belgian (Flemish) dish people traditionally prepare with beer.
Seitan lends itself very well to this. But you can really do anything with it.
Take a look at this example of an oriental style spicy-sweet preparation:

For about two servings of vegan stew:

  • 200 gr seitan “suprème” or ordinary seitan
  • 50 gr onion
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • 150 gr red and/or yellow bell pepper
  • 3 full tablespoons red madras curry paste (or any other curry paste of your choice)
  • a teaspoon of cumin seed
  • a teaspoon of mustard seeds
  • 2 tablespoons tamari, or sea salt to taste
  • 200 ml of water
  • One tablespoon of wheat flour or spelt to thicken the sauce. Corn starch (maizena) or kuzu will do the trick just as well.

Picture featuring a seitan dish and its ingredients

This is how to prepare:

Ready-to-use seitan does not require any pre-treatment. If it is a large piece of seitan, cut it into smaller pieces with a pair of scissors or a good knife.

  • Chop the onion and garlic and cut the sweet bell pepper into pieces.
  • Let a tablespoon of olive oil warm up in a pressure cooker or in an ordinary pan over a low heat.
  • First sprinkle the herbs in the warm oil. The oil absorbs the flavours.
  • Add onion and garlic and briefly fry.
  • Stir in the pieces of seitan and fry briefly.
  • Add the curry paste and the tamari and mix well.
  • Add the bell pepper and mix with the seitan.
  • Finally pour in the water, close the pan.

Irresistible

Preferably use a pressure cooker. This allows you to retain much more of the nutritional value. Also, the cooking process will take much less time and energy.
In a pressure cooker the whole thing is ready after about 15 minutes of simmering under steam pressure.
Count on 25 minutes for a classic pan.
Afterwards you can thicken the sauce by diluting the flour with some cooking liquid and then adding it to the preparation.
That’s it.
I guarantee you will be tempted to eat it all at once, it’s so tasty! The “suprème” version of seitan simply melts on the tongue.
Of course, nothing stops you from adding other vegetables or using other or additional herbs. Your taste is the norm.
Enjoy it fully !

Gluten or no gluten

Because more and more people are allergic to gluten, a phenomenon whose cause is exclusively attributed to gluten, eating wheat protein is more and more generally discouraged.

Personally, I think it is wrong. It is true that gluten, like other proteins, for example from animal origin, is relatively hard to digest. But if you are healthy and do not suffer from gluten intolerance, there is no reason to avoid it.

What is also true is that modern wheat has evolved genetically over the decades and is therefore no longer the same as the wheat that our ancestors knew. That may also have an impact on the digestibility of modern wheat. There are other cereals on sale in organic shops that are close to the structure and composition of the primeval wheat. Examples are kamut and spelt or emmer.

Thirdly, modern industrial bread is not as fair as the bread of yesteryear. For tasty, basic, fair bread you only need 4 ingredients:

  • flour (ground cereal)
  • water
  • yeast or leaven
  • (sea) salt

Modern industrial bread sometimes contains up to 20 different ingredients, mainly to make it leaven and ready to bake faster, and to influence its flavour and aroma.

Leaky gut

There is certainty that gluten, when it passes undigested or only partially undigested through the intestinal wall, cause damage further down the body, including allergic reactions.
On the other hand, there is no conclusive indication that the same gluten is also responsible for the deterioration and degeneration of the intestinal wall and the protective intestinal flora. For the latter may be due to other causes. Such as a diet that is too monotonous, with too many refined carbohydrates, too much added sugar, too many bad trans fats, too little fibre and, above all, industrially processed foods. The intestinal flora wears out, the intestinal wall slowly leaches out due to a lack of minerals and loses its protective effect: as a result too large openings appear. This is called “leaky gut” syndrome.

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Tomatoes basil garlic

Probiotic Tomatoes

nutrition, recipes,

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

Summer is pre-eminently the season of full-bodied, ripe, juicy and tasty tomatoes, which are abundant and cheaply available, even in our own country. However, we tend to consume tomatoes all year round because they are simply one of the most popular vegetables, both in the healthier kitchen and – yes – the fast food kitchen. But winter tomatoes are invariably imported from abroad. This brings along a higher ecological footprint, and also, they are much less tasty. That’s why many people process freshly harvested tomatoes in the summer to keep them for use in the cold season.

Tomato sauce

There are all kinds of options:

  • Preparing classic cooked tomato sauce and freezing it
  • Making and freezing raw tomato sauce
  • Sundrying or dehydrating the tomatoes

Each of the above operations consumes energy for cooking, drying and freezing them (sometimes for months). Drying in the sun is not really an option in our climate. And cooking the tomatoes obviously reduces their nutritional value.
We’re lucky that we have a natural and energy-efficient way of processing. This actually means that we can keep the tomato sauce at room temperature afterwards, for up to a year. We can do that by fermenting the tomatoes with some sea salt, garlic and herbs.

What you need for a jar of 1 kg or two jars of 500 gr:

    • 1 kg tomatoes, without skin and seeds
    • 10 gr sea salt
    • 2 garlic cloves
    • a bunch of fresh basil or fresh flat parsley
    • a 1 l glass jar or two 500 ml jars

.

Step by step

  • Peel the tomatoes. The easiest way to do this is by immersing them briefly in boiling water. The skin bursts and when you remove the tomatoes from the water and rinse them off, you can peel off the skin very easily.
  • Remove the seeds from the tomatoes and cut them into small pieces.
  • Finely chop the garlic cloves as well as the fresh garden herbs.
  • Mix everything in a bowl with the sea salt.
  • Pour everything into the jars and seal them hermetically.
  • Leave to ferment for about 15 days in total. The first 5 to 7 days at summer room temperature, then slightly cooler (between 15 to 20 °C).

The pickled and fermented tomato sauce keeps for a full year without extra cooling.
They make up a wonderful side dish or add-on to rice, pasta or can be used on pizza.

Picture of a tofu dish

Spicy Tofu

nutrition, recipes,

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

I would like to invite you to revisit the basics of meat substitutes. One of the foremothers of meat substitutes is simple white tofu. Known for centuries in the oriental kitchen. Soy milk is being curdled using nigari, a calcium salt, and the solid result of this curdling is pressed into blocks. It’s a little bit like making cheese, but plant-based.
The easiest digestible tofu is the fermented version. It has a pleasant, slightly acid taste. Non-fermented, white tofu is tasteless. That is why a marinade is very welcome, before frying or roasting the tofu.

Here’s an easy example of an oriental style marinade for tofu.

For a block of organic white tofu of 400 grs you need:

  • 3 tablespoons of tamari or shoyu, that’s the dark soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or white rice vinegar (mirin)
  • Half a tablespoon of rice or agave syrup
  • A nice piece of fresh ginger, cut finely
  • Oriental spices of your choice

An example of a fiery spice mixture:

  • 2 teaspoons of an Indonesian spice mixture
  • A quarter teaspoon of ground chili powder
  • A quarter teaspoon of ground black pepper

The spice mixture can be the object of your experimentation. Salt is not necessary, the soy sauce takes care of that.

This is how you proceed:

  • It may be useful to press some of the excess liquid out of the tofu if it’s very wet inside and not too solid. Press the tofu between two hard surfaces to do so.
  • Put the liquid and dry ingredients for the marinade in a small bowl and stir well.
  • Cut the tofu into slices and dispose them in a big bowl.
  • Pour the marinade on top of them and hussle the slices a little bit so as to drench all surfaces with the spicy mixture.
  • Cover the bowl.
  • Let it rest for at least an hour, or overnight in the refrigerator. You may occasionally re-hussle the tofu slices.

Then your tofu will be ready to be fried or grilled in the oven.
Simply delicious with vegetable and cereal dishes.
Enjoy this valuable calcium and iron rich meat-free protein source!

Modern meat substitutes

Since the last few years, more or less as from 2017, the food industry must have been smelling money with regards to the ever increasing demand for vegetarian and vegan food products. In our supermarkets a great number of different new meat substitutes are making their appearance. As such it is a positive evolution from the animals’ point of view. Because every human who skips a meal with meat from time to time on a regular basis, means that less animals that will have to go to the slaughterhouse. At least, that’s what we all hope for.

However there seems to be more chaff than wheat. A lot of those new meat substitutes are no champions with regards to their health value. For instance, there is a lot of stuff covered in breadcrumbs to be found, and believe me, anything edible dressed in a colourful jacket of breadcrumbs sure has something to hide regarding its composition.

A polenta cake

Polenta with seaweed and vegetables

nutrition, recipes, ,

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

Picture of polenta

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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Vegan red bean spread

Red bean spread with dried tomato and carrots

nutrition, recipes

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

Ingredients for the spread

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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Picture of a bottle of nut milk

Nut Milk

nutrition, recipes, ,

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

Picture of nuts and tools to make nut milk
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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Picture showing crumesan

Crumesan

nutrition, recipes,

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
Picture showing Crumesan and its ingredients

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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Vegan oat cookies with tea

Banana raisin oat cookies

nutrition, recipes

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:

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.
  2. Prepare flax ‘egg’ and let soak for a few minutes in small bowl.
  3. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl except the lemon juice.
  4. 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.
  5. 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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