The Dollar Meal for Vegans ~ Where Have You Bean?

I was passing by a fast food joint.  I started to wonder about the economics of feeding oneself.  How does one beat the dollar burger?  It's filling.  It saves time.  It's yummy.  And if there are children involved, they don't mind.  But are there any vegan alternatives for the same price?

T. Campbell's The China Study does bring one to consider the merits of a plant food diet.  I suspect China's economy and way of life is changing so I wonder if the outcomes linked to geographical demographics in the study will be vastly different years from now.  Good reason to keep studying China.

I have, however, stopped thinking that a certain diet is a panacea.  Every one is different.  But I will say I am ever open to challenges with value.  And the value is to provide an alternative to vegans - or omnivores who wish for variety.

So this was my quest the past week:  To provide a vegan option to the dollar burger.

The solution came in the form of organic mung beans.  Yes, organic labels come with a premium on groceries.  However, consider eating less as organic groceries have higher nutritive value. [1]

With a higher nutritive value, there is the benefit of eating smaller quantities of food.  My grandmother who grew up under Japanese imperialism always spoke about eating 80% of maximum stomach capacity.  It has been my observation that Koreans eat way more than their Japanese counterparts.  Eating 80% of stomach capacity keeps the mind active and the body with more reserve in energy for other housekeeping matters than digesting food.

How does one gauge the effective point of satiety?  I suppose the threshold is reached when one thinks, "Gosh, I want another piece of that pie but I really shouldn't."

George Burns took the 80% rule further to 50%;  he only ate half of what was served on his plate.  He gave the Okinawans a run for their yen.

Of course longevity has other factors than diet.  Following one's dharma and cultivating meaningful connections are essential.  I have a feeling George Burns was doing what was in his seed - making people laugh.  He's the only centenarian I know who's puffed a lot of cigars. 

But back to the quest.  I take a cup of dry organic mung beans.  Price:  $1.00

The germination / sprouting charts make my head spin and I always forget information I can look up.  So I soak most things for 24-hours.  There is no harm in over-soaking.

Then I filter out the water and place the beans in a mesh cloth bag.  Hang it and water the bag morning and night.  If you tend to forget, place it in your shower.  You'll remember it in the morning.

Once the tail grows the same or twice the length of the bean, take it out and steam in a small pot for a couple of minutes.  Keep whatever green coat is left on the mung bean.  I steam for a minute or two in boiling water.  The green coats stay a vibrant green color.  If the green becomes a dull khaki, there are less enzymes - and it just doesn't taste as good.

Take the beans out and place in a bowl.  Sprinkle a little salt for taste.  It's so simple and satisfying.  There's warmth and texture.

And the nutritive value:
*  5 grams of protein.  This is complete protein, meaning all 9 essential amino acids are there.  What's more, the sprouting enhances proteolytic cleavage of protein. [2]   Digestion is less taxing and there are amino acids for maximal uptake into the body.  This is efficient protein. 

*  9 grams of fiber

*  One-third the daily recommended value of Vitamin C

*  Significant amounts of Iron, Folate (necessary for mental well-being), Copper and Manganese.

*  Polyphenols that help detoxify the body from pesticides and heavy metals


For a dollar a day, less than the price of hipster coffee, it is possible to grab a meal, stay mentally alert, and boost one's immunity.

Oh, and let's clear the air about flatulence and beans.  Sprouted legume seeds are not as farty so you (and your office mates) can breathe easy. [3,4]  Have a happy and healthy New Year! ~e

REFERENCES

1.  Marcin Baranski, Dominika Srednicka-Tober, Nikolaos Volankakis, et al., "Higher antioxidant and lower cadmium concentrations and lower incidence of pesticide residues in organically grown crops: a systemic literature review and meta-analysis,"  British Journal of Nutrition, 112, no. 5 (2014): 794-811.

2.  Dongyan Tang, Yinma Dong, Hankun Ren, et al., "A review of phytochemistry, metabolite changes, and      medicinal uses of the common food mung bean and its sprouts (Vigna radiata)," Chemistry Central Journal, 8, no. 4 (2014). Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3899625

3.  Purintraphiban Sathithon and Xia Yan-bin, "Effect of sprouting the chemical and nutritional qualities and phenolic alkaloid content of lotus seeds," African Journal of Food Science, 6, no. 7 (2012): 204-211.

4.  Hugo C. Silva and B.S. Luh, "Changes in oligosaccharides and starch granules in germinating beans," Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology Journal, 12, no.3 (1979): 103-107.

Küchenkinder Potatoes

This piece first posted on October of last year.  Due to popular demand (friends have been asking for the kinder kartoffeln recipe), the article's been reposted. Whether it's for you or your tiny tots, enjoy!

With the first heat coming through last night, I looked forward to sleeping a full 8 hours and waking up to a white, warm, silent fuzziness with the occasional hissing from the radiators.  Instead, at 5 am,  I was alarmed by a clattering, explosive noise.

My first thought was that some pipe had burst and pieces of it had shattered to the floor.  Sensing it was pre-dawn I wondered what time would be appropriate to call the Super as I turned on the light.

Thankfully, it wasn't a pipe.  A porcelain teapot had fallen off the counter.  After sitting on the exact same spot for over a week without a complaint, the teapot decided to leap to the wooden floor.  If this was my old place in San Diego, I would have suspected an earthquake. 

It's a küchenkoller day, I thought.  Anna and Bernhard Blume captures this possessed kitchen phenom quite well in their gelatin silver prints like the one above. 

A great word - Küchenkoller.  It sounds nice to say, but it's a terrible thing.  It's when the furies of Vesta descend upon one's kitchen and wreaks havoc.

For example.  The pressure-cooker lid shoots up to the sky.  Or the evil fridge freezes all your greens.  And the blender somehow throws up the beets and splatters your cabinets with blood.

Or maybe everything is spinning around the salad-spinner except for the spinner.  Blame it on küchenkoller.

Küchen, I am sure means kitchen.  Koller means frenzy or tantrum.  Why koller would come to mean tantrum is interesting.  Maybe there was a man named Koller who often had meltdowns.

When I sense a full-blown küchenkoller episode coming on, I stay away from complicated dishes and approach the kitchen like a child at play.  I keep it very simple but fun.  I call this küchenkinder.  Not sure if this is a true German term or if I'd just made it up.

But I figure it appropriate as "kinder" means children.  Think Kinder Happy Hippo.  I frequently visited one grocer that had the only Kinder Happy Hippo with whole hazelnuts in each bump.

So today's dinner will be an easy kiddie dish that adults can enjoy.  I call it Küchenkinder Potatoes.  First, you will need to buy bite-sized potatoes.  I like the ones from Tasteful Selections that can be had at Whole Foods. 

Just to give you an idea of their size, these have been placed in a small ramekin for 1 serving.

Küchenkinder Potatoes Recipe   (1 serving)

 Ingredients
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of olive oil
1 ramekin-full of bite-sized potatoes
1 to 2 teaspoons of Sriracha

Instructions
Turn on oven to 450 degrees.  Meanwhile, cut each potato in half.  Coat the potato halves with the salt and oil by hand in a roomy bowl.

Put the glossy potato-halves onto a non-stick oven pan.  Place in the oven for 30 minutes.

Pull out pan, wearing a mitt.  Slide the potatoes onto a dish.

Squeeze out the Sriracha on the side for dipping.  You really don't need much as it is pretty strong.  1 to 2 teaspoons would be enough.  It's also a great condiment for dieting.  There's so much flavor,  satiety is reached pretty quickly.

If this is to feed real children, hold the Sriracha and substitute with a little ketchup.  If ketchup is not allowed,  then use mustard or Greek yogurt as alternatives.

It's a pretty assortment of red, yellow, and blue mini potatoes made with the least effort.  And the Sriracha on the side takes potatoes to another level.

A small cherry tomato has been placed on the plate to show how small these baby potatoes are.  Yes, they are wee little things.  And yet, these 'kinder' potatoes can really satisfy the 'erwachsene' for supper.

Happy Küchenkoller ~e

 

Arepas Americano

A friend came over and brought a gift.  She somehow knew about my ashram days and decided I needed a yogi-esque fabric to drape across a room.  We laughed our asanas off because it's quite cliché.

As beautiful as they are - and I get it - yogis want to create partitions in rooms with no doors, walls, to create temporary boundaries with a decorative touch.  But sometimes, you pass through these fabric-ated areas and you just want to swipe the material off and use it as a sarong for the beach.   Sarong and yet it feels so right.

It took me back to a trip I made in Colombia.  I could not have asked for a better accommodation.  For $25 U.S. dollars a night, I stayed with a yoga instructor (this was not planned at all on my part). She was generous and trusting.  If every innkeeper was like her and every guest was like me, it really wouldn't be such a lonely planet.

My first day, she fed me what seemed to be the national breakfast of warm cocoa and arepa de choclo. "De choclo" sounds like more chocolate, but it really means corn.  She turned on the range and poured some oil on the cast-iron pan.  Then she placed a thin corn pancake on the pan and melted some cheese.  I folded one side over like an omelette and ate with my hands.  Like this:

It sort of looks like a calorie nightmare for many women in the States.  But the women in Colombia were not overweight.  I wondered.  Perhaps Colombia's corn is not so engineered like ours?  There is no denying that Jeffrey Smith made his way into our consciousness. 

Perhaps the cows are not as stressed out as ours?  Perhaps the people of Colombia are not as stressed out as us.  Maybe it's because the country's closer to the equator?

These are many variables I really can't get into right now to enjoy an arepa de choclo or arepa con queso.  What I can manage are the type of products I use to make one.  That, and knowing it's not something to eat all the time.  It's also a fun meal for children, granted they don't have allergies to the ingredients below.

So here is how I make my version of arepas con queso...

Arepas Americano  (servings: 2)

 

You will need: 

2 soft yellow corn tortillas from La Tortilla Factory.  These are organic, nonGMO, glutenfree.

You can substitute with thin corn english muffins but I really haven't experimented with any that had fit my criteria: a) made with corn; b) organic, nonGMO, glutenfree; c) doesn't have overly processed stuff to compensate for glutenfree quality; d) tastes great.

Raw Goat Milk cheese (Mild Cheddar) from Mt. Sterling co-op creamery.  It's so mild, it tastes nothing like cheddar.  It tastes like Colombia.  I'm not a daily dairy consumer, but this is ideal on occasion for people who like to eat mostly raw foods and digest their food better.

Instructions:

1) Turn toaster oven or oven on to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2) Using a large cookie ring or the rim of a small bowl, press into the middle of each soft tortilla to make a smaller tortilla.  La Tortilla Factory does sell mini's but I'm not sure if they're organic + nonGMO corn + glutenfree.

3) Place them in toaster oven or oven.

4) In the meantime, cut the square block of raw cheese into 2 thin slices.  Cut each slice further in half to yield 4 rectangles in total.

5) Place 2 rectangles on each mini tortilla.  If the rectangles are much smaller than the diameter of your cut-up tortilla, then place them on one side of the hemisphere so that when you fold them later, there's some cheese to be seen at the edges.  Okay, very wordy here, and I'm sure this is what Youtube is for.

6) As every oven is different and everyone's idea of a thin slice varies, watch your arepas.  When you start to see the cheese has warmed and softened, somewhere between the spectrum of malleable and gooey, the arepas are ready.  We really don't want blistered and gooey.  Yes, burning the roofs of our mouths with pizza was fun way back then, but how many times do we need to go back there?


7) Pull the arepas out.  Fold them in half.  If it's an afterschool date with you and your little one, make some warm cacao or cocoa.

¡Buen apetito!

Asparagus Soup

It's Spring and there are gorgeous daffodils and tulips, but I never buy them.  They're beautiful to look at, and that's about it.  I like designs that have form and function. 

Hyacinths I'll take because they perfume the room.  Asparagus I'll take because it creates one of my favorite soups.  And it was all because of William Poll.

When I first came to the Upper East Side, I was distressed at how there were fewer food choices than in the West Village.  In the WV, one could roll out of bed and find multiple places to find food.

So wasn't I thrilled to explore the William Poll shop and see a variety of dishes already made.  My pick was a glass jar filled with asparagus soup - no heavy cream, no oily film - no nonsense.  Just pure heaven.

I felt the shop was old New York.  At the time, I had no idea Lew Wasserman's wife or Joan Crawford had been regulars.  There was a patina to the place that would be unparalleled.  This much I knew.

When I started asking questions, James Poll looked more than happy to go into everything in every fascinating minutiae.  At the end of the tour, he led me to a delicate woman in her 90s.

She got up from her chair to plant a kiss on my cheek.  Following his mother, James did the same.  At the time, I was a bit baffled and embarrassed.  I wanted to say, "Guys, it's just a jar of asparagus soup."

The nonagenarian was Christine Poll and I now consider myself blessed and proud to say I had been kissed by this amazing woman. 

You don't have to be a Hollywood starlet to have a jar shipped to your poolside.  You don't have to come from New York's bastion of old money to taste it.  On a cold, rainy April day, I stayed in and was inspired to create my own version.  And I think it comes very close to what I tasted years ago.

Asparagus Soup  (1-2 servings)

You will neeed:
1 bunch of asparagus 
100 mL of filtered water

¼  teaspoon of Himalayan pink salt

2 large garlic cloves, pressed

Instructions:
1)  Cut and discard the hard parts of each stalk.
2)  Boil water and steam the asparagus for 4 minutes (with the lid closed)
3)  Cut up the steamed asparagus to fit into a mini food processor (I use a small KitchenAid)
4)  Place the garlic, the salt, asparagus, and the water into the processor (or Vitamix, NutriBullet, etc)
5)  Whiz until you achieve a smooth consistency.  If you prefer a thicker, chunky soup,  whiz less.

The benefits of asparagus are many.  It's a great anti-inflammatory agent.  It regulates your blood sugar.  It's great for gut health.  It is a prebiotic.  Prebiotics feed your gut flora.  Lactobacillus and bifidobacterium need prebiotics to multiply.  The best benefit of all is that it's delicious.

April to May is peak season for asparagus, so get out there and grab a bunch for the last hurrah! ~e

Ujjayi

If you blindfolded me in a yoga studio just two months ago and told me to get my "Ujjayi" going, I'd probably attempt a straddle on the back and do some kegels.  (Something about the word makes me think of the urogenital system).

Now that I know better,  I will keep my legs closed and prepare for some deep, cleansing, calming pranayama.  

Consider how most harried urbanites breathe.  We take quick oxygen from the nostrils to barely the neck and shoulders.  It's expelled just as quickly.  Shallow and short, our daily breathing patterns are not beneficial for optimal health.

In contrast, Ujjayi, is a deep, murmuring breath gliding down the back of the throat, regulated by slow, even contractions of the diaphragm. 

Let's try this.  Pretend you're some creepy stalker.  Whisper to your captive: "Hallo Hahn." Make it creepier.  Draw out the "H" and whisper, "Hhhhhallo Hhhhhhahn."  (Like Hannibal Lecter has laryngitis in Hamburg while trying to intimidate FBI's German liason, Herr Hahn).

Lost?
Okay, watch me first:
Inhale (mouth open) with: "Hhhhhhhhhaaaahhhhh"
Exhale (mouth open) with: "Hhhhhhhhhhaaaahhhhh."
Your turn.

Next step.  Watch me first:
Inhale.  Mouth open, draw, "hhhhhhhaaaaaahhhh." Bring lips together before the exhale.
Exhale.  Mouth closed, whisper over the glottis.
Your turn.

If you find yourself frustrated on the simultaneous Exhale + Closed Mouth + Whisper, try to imitate someone who is in a deep sleep / pre-snore stage.

Now you're ready to Ujjayi like a true yogini.
Watch me keep the mouth closed all throughout.
Inhale (whisper).
Exhale (whisper).
Your turn.

They say the whisper sounds like the ocean.  I don't know.  To me it sounds like a Sleestak.  If you were born after the 80's, google Sleestak and Youtube.  Then tune into the shortest clip.  Listen carefully.

So why Ujjayi?  Well, for starters, Ujjayi is known as the "victorious breath" because it moves you from one asana to another.  Off the mat, it's said to be great for lowering the heart rate and blood pressure as it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system.

I put my Ujjayi to the test at the airport security line.  This is one place that induces some anxiety and impatience for me.  I was more than willing to be my own guinea pig for this real-life trial.  Conclusion:  just focusing on my Ujjayi breathing put me in a mellow state.  And I moved with less struggle from one action to another until I was free to go to my gate. 

So the next time you're on a crowded supermarket line, at the DMV, or airport security, turn on your Ujjayi breath.  At the very least, the person behind you might find it odd and give you some space.

Namaste ~e

Kapalabhati

Rise and shine ~ with a shiny skull!  NY pharmacist sharing her love for yoga here at 4:30am pacific standard time. 

Doing my kapalabhati, I wonder why it's called shining skull.... 

Inhale through the nose for a full deep breath. 
Pumping out on the exhale through the nose for 50 fast, furious breaths from the lower belly. 
Short abdominal contractions to exhale out a gnat in one's nostrils. 
50 short ones for one minute. 

Of course the pharmacist in me had to understand the mechanism of action in which this pranayama causes skull brightening.  Turns out, it shines the skull because cranial sinuses are facilitated during the exercise.  These canals that run through the dura transport blood and the CSF (cerebrospinal fluid)
away from the brain. 

Daily toxins leave the nooks and crannies of our noggins.  Leaving us with whiter, brighter skulls.

Namaste

Seeing Forrest

6 months ago, I thought Forrest Yoga was a movement born from the hippy-dippy tree hugging culture, possibly involving a lot of tree poses.  I got turned onto this style thanks to my German-born instructor, Anke.  (I even thought it could have been a type of yoga started out in the Black Forrest).

Well, thanks to Google and Anke's amazing teaching, I finally took my interest one step further and explored it on the web.  Alright, it was named after the creatrix herself  - Ana Forrest.

I read her book - Fierce Medicine - and was completely blown away.  Being a pharmacist, anything with the word "medicine" holds my ADD-riddled "modern" mind.  Being a new yorker and of a certain temperament, the word "fierce" preceding "medicine" will definitely seal the deal.

What is Ana like?  My initial impression after barely a week with her is a mixed bag - and so it should be with dynamic personalities.  She is not boring.  Yet, she is not flighty or flaky.

There are times I find myself wondering how the heck I'm finding pleasure (pleasure was yesterday's morning lesson) waking up before dawn to take a yoga intensive from 6 to 9am every flipping day - weekends included.  And then she'll say something so off-kilter, I'll find my pleasure howling with laughter.

Let me illustrate her sense of humor.  There's an exercise in which students are identified and grouped according to numbers.  The instruction was something like this, "As we go around the room, say your number from one to three."

Well, the way the students were spouting off numbers was just horrible in tone, pitch, etc... I'm one of those ultra - sensitive types that can't stand horrible voices.  A man would be better off bald and fat than have a bad voice.

And what is really a turnoff is a yoga instructor who walks in and starts talking with flat affect in her own voice.  We have one at the gym who has such a lame voice,  I stopped going to her class.  "Is she happy to be here?" I 'd wonder.  "Maybe her true calling is to be a postal worker?.."  If I no longer attend a yoga class, it's mostly because I can't stand the voice.

So we trainees are spouting off "1, 2, 3..." etc.  The noises that were being uttered would make the lowings of a cow sound like Mozart.  Ana interrupts and starts to go into a well-served tirade about being responsible for our own voices - especially those of teachers.  (I remember slipping out of a professor's class during 7am Pharmacology.  I will buy the notes that will be sold after the class, I thought.  There is no way I want to hear her grating voice 7 in the morning).

Ana explains how she is weary of these low vibrations in our voices.  Her final word on the matter:  "Just stop putting that sh*t out into the world."  I died laughing.