Tag Archives: vegan

Picture of vegan brownies

Vegan chocolate brownie

nutrition, , ,

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based

Brownies without eggs or dairy products

Black beans are the secret protein source of this recipe. If you are working with dried black beans, soak them for 24 hours and then boil them soft. For this recipe, assume about 80 g of dry beans. Put the beans in a pan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Do not add salt to the cooking water.
Even better: use a pressure cooker, then they will be done in 25 minutes. In an ordinary saucepan, they need 45 to 60 minutes to cook. Add water now and again as it evaporates. But if you are a bit on the lazy side, you can also use canned black beans, which are soft, pre-cooked and ready to be eaten.

Why without eggs?

Who needs eggs? Eggs and egg powder are used abundantly in industrial pastry. Modern egg production is harmful and cruel to chickens, even if the eggs are supposedly from organic origin. Unless you care for your own chickens and entitle them to a dignified old age once they have stopped laying eggs, there are plenty of healthier and cheaper alternatives:

  • Like a simple banana.
  • Or apple sauce
  • Or a tablespoon of crushed flaxseed that you soak in two tablespoons of water.

The absence of eggs in this recipe means you can lick the leftover batter off your scraper without feeling guilty. There is no risk of salmonella infection, which can occur when you eat raw eggs.

With or without gluten?

You can also use a gluten-free type of flour in this recipe. Gluten-free flours such as millet, buckwheat, corn or soy are easier to digest for most of us. But you can also use a five-grain mix or whole-wheat spelt flour for a classic version with gluten. Many of today’s nutritionists say that modern, industrial wheat is best avoided. As far as pesticides are concerned, I agree with them. Personally, I think it is best to listen to your body’s reactions. Good wheat or spelt of organic origin (i.e. without pesticides) is OK in itself. Those grains also contain a lot of vegetable protein of good quality.

What you need for a small cake (approx. 350g):

  • One large, ripe banana. The riper, the better
  • Aproximately 120g rinsed black beans, soft boiled or canned. Aduki beans are also very good
  • 3 tablespoons of neutral-tasting vegetable oil that can withstand heating, e.g. high oleic sunflower oil
  • 1 teaspoon of ground vanilla (optional)
  • 6 soft mazafati or medjoul dates
  • 4 leveled tablespoons unsweetened pure cocoa
  • 2 teaspoons of baking powder
  • 40 to 45 g flour (buckwheat or millet flour for the gluten-free version of this brownie)
  • a pinch of sea salt.
  • 1/2 cup (about 40 g) coarsely chopped walnuts (other nuts will do too)
  • 1/2 cup (about 60 g) vegan black chocolate drops (optional)

It is always a good idea to soak the nuts in water overnight. The nuts revive, the bitterness disappears and they taste like they have just been picked fresh from the tree. They are also much more digestible. Discard the soaking water and rinse the nuts well.

It is done in a jiffy, really:

Preheat the oven to 180°C/340°F.

  • Place the beans, oil, dates and banana in a food processor and mix well, first slowly and then at higher speed.
  • Add the vanilla and then the cocoa. Puree everything well. The result is a rather liquid, moist glossy dark brown mixture.
  • Mix together the dry ingredients: the flour, the baking powder and the pinch of salt.
  • In the food processor, gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until the mixture becomes a little drier, but still creamy and moist.
  • Spoon the contents of your food processor into a mixing bowl.
  • Then add the chopped nuts and chocolate drops. Mix roughly.
  • Finally, transfer everything to a low rectangular, square or round cake tin or baking tray covered with kitchen paper.

Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes. The brownie tastes best when it is still slightly moist inside. (A larger cake needs to bake a little longer).
Enjoy! With healthy and respectful ingredients like these, chocolate cake becomes healthy food full of love for the whole planet!

Black Bean brownies / Approximate nutritional value per 100 g of product:

Energy Carbohydrates Sugars Fat Sat. fat Protein Fibre Salt
1098,40 kJ/262,35 kcal 34,12 g 14,56 g 13,55 g 2,60 g 7,21 g 7,44 0,09 g

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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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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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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 of green protein smoothie

Green protein bomb

powertraining, ,

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.
Macronutrients
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?