FOOD | HEALTH | SPIRITUALITY - Page 9 of 13

Recipes Tags: Glutlen-Free, vegan, Veggie Burgers

By Lisa, May 21, 2019 Posted in Gluten-Free Recipes, Legumes, Vegan Recipes, Vegetarian Entrees

Best Veggie Burgers!

If you like a good veggie burger, I’m betting you’ll love this fresh Vegan Black Bean & Sweet Potato Patties recipe for Memorial Day festivities! It’s easy, it’s delicious (of course!) and it’s perfect for casual entertaining during these summer months.

I haven’t had a real hamburger in about thirty years, and I’ve never truly missed them. However, I do occasionally crave that classic American experience of biting into a bun with a mound of protein, mustard and ketchup! A freshly made veggie burger will more than suffice.

Today’s recipe was inspired by delicious burgers Tom and I ate at The Present Moment Café in St. Augustine, Florida during an anniversary weekend. The chef may not be familiar with Ayurvedic cuisine, but it was nonetheless brilliant to pair hard-to-digest black beans with soft and grounding sweet potatoes. I’ve added garlic powder, gluten-free asafetida, and cumin to aid digestion.

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Recipes Tags: Asparagus, Shiitakes, Vegan Side Dishes

By Lisa, April 22, 2019 Posted in Asparagus, Easy Recipes, Gluten-Free Recipes, Side Dishes, Vegan Recipes, Vegetarian

Spring Side Dishes

As fresh organic asparagus come streaming into our Carolina markets during March and April, they often awaken my creativity, sparking a quest to develop a new recipe for these divine green spears. Today, let me introduce Asparagus with Leeks and Shiitake Mushrooms.

This is a simple dish of steamed asparagus with sautéed leeks and shiitakes. I added the shiitakes because they’re delicious—and also because they’re known to improve immunity.This year our pollen levels have hit record levels, and many people have succumbed to head colds because their immune systems were weakened by allergy season. So, in years to come, I’ll remind readers to pull out this recipe at the beginning of spring!

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Recipes Tags: Detox Foods, Yummy Sides

By Lisa, March 19, 2019 Posted in Greens, Side Dishes, Vegan Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes

Spring Cleaning with Vegan Collards

When spring marches in, we naturally want to throw open the windows of our home and clean out all the dust and cobwebs. In the same way, Ayurveda recommends that we give our bodies an annual spring cleaning! Once the autumn chill descends, and all the way through the cold winter, we tend to eat heavier foods. This way we can put on a little fat to stay warm. Spring invites us to help the body transition to the new season by eating lighter foods.

I always recommend a mung soup fast along with light vegetables for a few days or a week at the beginning of spring. This helps to detoxify the colon, liver, kidneys. Cooked greens of any kind are a great side dish to support a spring detox, and today I’d like to generate some enthusiasm for collard greens. Collards belong to the dignified family of Southern “soul food,” brought to

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Recipes Tags: Gluten-Free, Hot Drinks for a Cold Day

By Lisa, March 1, 2019 Posted in My Favorite Things

My Favorite Things: Capomo

Today I’m introducing a new section of the Sacred & Delicious Blog called My Favorite Things, and I’m launching it with a yummy coffee alternative called Capomo! If you love the taste of coffee but have given it up for any number of excellent reasons, which I enumerate later, you’re in for a treat!

Capomo is the name Tattva’s Herbs gives this coffee alternative made from the maya nut, which they claim is one of “nature’s premier antioxidants.” That may be, but I love this drink just for its divine flavor! Want some “bliss in every cup”? Try Capomo!

You can make Capomo in a coffee pot, drip coffee maker, or with a Melita. I gave all of those kitchen gadgets up when I swore off

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Recipes Tags: Cakes, Chocolate, Special Occasions Rule, vegan

By Lisa, February 11, 2019 Posted in Chocolate, Desserts, Gluten-Free Desserts, Vegan Recipes

All Things Chocolate for Valentine’s Day

Today, dear friends and fellow chocolate enthusiasts, I offer you an incredibly delicious gluten-free and vegan chocolate cake with which to tempt your sweetheart on the occasion of Valentine’s Day. When Sacred & Delicious was first published in October 2018, Biblio Reviews wrote this: “The vegan Dark Chocolate Layer Cake was the best vegan cake I have ever made!”

I’ve adapted the book’s large sheet cake recipe to create a smaller cake you can bake in a heart-shaped pan or as a traditional 9-inch layer cake. Yes! A gluten-free and vegan cake that is moist, not overly sweet, and still delicious enough to make having seconds hard to resist. Just ask my husband!

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By Lisa, January 21, 2019 Posted in Legumes, Soups

Introducing Kokum with a Vegan White Bean Soup

It’s bitter cold in North Carolina and across much of the country as I write this blog—a perfect time for a wintry Vegan White Bean Soup. I’ve seasoned it with kokum as a way to introduce this fruit that is unfamiliar to most Americans, although it has been used in Ayurvedic cooking for millennia.

Dried kokum (also known as whole garcinia fruit or mangostein) is used in Indian cooking because of its sour taste. What makes kokum unusual is that, unlike other sour foods—lemon, lime, vinegar, tomato—kokum does not increase pitta’s fiery nature. If you have pitta problems and eat too much of these other sour foods, you can set yourself up for a lot of pitta maladies. These include acid indigestion and acid reflux as well as skin problems, headaches, and

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Recipes Tags: Ayurvedic Lifestyle

By Lisa, December 30, 2018 Posted in Articles, Ayurveda

Resolution 2019: Seek Balance

Ayurveda teaches that all of nature, including our bodies, is always in search of balance. When our physical doshas are out of balance, they invite various forms of illness and disease into our bodies. Whenever our lifestyle is out of balance for too long—all work and no play, or vice-versa—we can easily spiral downward into fatigue, burnout, anxiety, and depression. For all these reasons I’m proclaiming my resolution right here and now with each of you as my witnesses:

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Recipes Tags: Pumpkin, Vegetarian or Vegan, Winter Soups

By Lisa, December 15, 2018 Posted in Holiday Recipes, Soups

All Things Pumpkin… Continued!

Have I told you that I love fresh pumpkin (see Spiced Pumpkin Pound Cake)? As the holiday season moves toward its peak, what can be better than a fresh Puréed Pumpkin Soup. The markets are still filled with sugar pumpkins, the sweet edible pumpkins used for pumpkin pies and all things pumpkin.

Pumpkin, like squash, is one of the favored foods of Ayurveda because it is so easy to digest. It’s ideal for vata and pitta. For watery kapha, it’s still fine if balanced with warming spices. I’ve chosen cinnamon, cardamom, allspice and fresh ginger—

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Recipes Tags: Holiday Planning Tips, Special Dietary Needs

By Lisa, December 12, 2018 Posted in Recipes

Holiday Cooking Tips for Modern Lifestyles

As often described in articles about holiday entertaining, it can be challenging because emotional expectations are often so high—both your own and your guests. You may be trying to create a picture-perfect event that is a dream come true for your family. When entertaining friends, you may hope to out-do your last kitchen performance. Expectations aside, holiday preparation is particularly daunting for people who work forty-plus hours a week. Double that for working parents. And of course, entertaining is the most stressful for perfectionists, who want their house to be impeccable, their food to be amazing, and who want to look stress-free and gorgeous, even when they’re totally frazzled.

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By Lisa, November 12, 2018 Posted in Desserts, Gluten-Free Desserts, Gluten-Free Recipes, Holiday Recipes, Thanksgiving Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes

All Things Pumpkin

I love this Spiced Pumpkin Pound Cake. It’s a way to enjoy the holidays without getting a sugar high that’s followed by the inevitable sugar crash! This cake is wonderfully moist but not overly sweet, and it’s won rave reviews wherever I take it.

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