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If you love sweet potatoes, I have good news for you, along with an 
easy and oh-so-delicious Southern-style recipe!
In case you’ve been following my blog and wonder why I cook with so many sweet potatoes, here’s one reason why: according to Ayurveda, sweet potatoes are one of the best foods for grounding vata — that light, airy, buzzing energy that you feel when life is moving just a little too fast.
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Happy 2017, dear readers!
As we step into another Sacred & Delicious year together, I invite you to join me in a resolution to help those who aren’t sure where they will find their next meal.
Today I’m sharing links to several charities that focus on fighting hunger. I encourage you to post links here to your favorite charities as well. I’m interested in organizations that have a good reputation for feeding others or teaching skills that help people to feed themselves. If you’re already a leader in giving, please lead us to other charities that you know are making a difference.
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that anyone reading food blogs has plenty to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every day. We have so much to eat, it can be easy to forget that in 2015 more than 42 million Americans lived in food insecure households, according to Feeding America. This number includes 29.1 million adults and 13.1 million children. And that’s just the hunger picture in the USA.
You may be surprised, as I was, to find North Carolina listed among twelve states that exhibited statistically significantly higher household food-insecurity rates than the U.S. national average 2013-2015 (13.7%). The USDA defines food insecurity as a state in which “consistent access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money and other resources at times during the year.” There is poverty in every state, but in these twelve, more people are going to bed hungry at night.
So here are a few links:
FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL & EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA
As you make your resolutions for the New Year, I hope you’ll consider joining in the fight against hunger in 2017. Each of us can offer our blessings in many ways: we can volunteer at a local food bank or food kitchen. We can donate food and funds. And we can offer our blessings to those who are struggling: May everyone, everywhere have enough food to eat. This is my prayer. And the world’s leading organizations that fight hunger say this is a goal within reach. With our help.
Make it so!
If you want to plan an intensely flavorful vegetarian menu for Thanksgiving, look no 
further! Today I’m sharing a recipe for Gluten-Free Millet Dressing. I’ll also point you to my sumptuous versions of traditional American holiday side dishes, which will fill your family with joy and gratitude!
Why millet? Millet is a good source of vegetarian protein. One cup of cooked millet offers 6 grams of vegetarian, gluten-free protein, which equals the protein in one egg. It’s also filling, grounding and easy to make.
Now for the rest of the menu. My famous Holiday Sweet Potatoes, topped with a pound and a half of pecans, are the eagerly awaited crown jewel of our holiday table. For a dash of freshness and color I offer this cranberry salad, a squeaky clean, upscale version of the canned stuff that used to be served when we were growing up!
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This curry leaf and cilantro chutney recipe comes from Vaidya Smita Naram. She whipped up this lovely sauce in our Vitamix in about 5 minutes while recently staying in our home. My husband, Tom, and I happily poured it over mung bean “burgers” I had made for dinner. A few days later I prepared another cup of the chutney, which we used to top off savory chickpea pancakes that Dr. Smita showed me how to make a half-hour before we drove her to the airport for her flight home to Mumbai, India.
Chutneys are relishes or sauces that are staples in Indian cuisine. They are also used in Ayurvedic cooking when freshly made. There are innumerable kinds of chutneys — some chunky, others that are more like a paste, and liquid sauces. Chutneys have a reputation for being amazingly hot to the tongue because most Indian cooks spike their chutneys with chilies. Not so with this recipe! Authentic Ayurvedic cuisine avoids the use of chilies except for people who are predominantly kapha types. Nonetheless, this chutney is guaranteed to add a bolt of flavor to any dish along with potent healing power.
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When my husband and I recently hosted Vaidya Smita Naram in our home, she taught me to make a classic yet simple and intensely delicious Ayurvedic dish: chickpea pancakes with curry leaf chutney.
Dr. Naram is a world-renowned pulse master and Ayurvedic physician, a pharmaceutical herbalist and nutritionist — and she also happens to be a marvelous cook. She has a successful restaurant in her panchakarma clinic in Malad, India (outside Mumbai), so I couldn’t have been more excited about spending some time in the kitchen with her. And we did have fun! Not a meal went by that one or the other of us wasn’t saying “wow!” I was thrilled that she loved my American approach to Ayurvedic cooking, and I loved learning to make this traditional dish that I’m sharing with you today.
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If you suffer from any kind of chronic pain or illness, it’s invaluable to understand what kind of energetic imbalances may be at the root of your health problems. A skilled Ayurvedic practitioner can “read” your pulse and get an instant picture of your doshas, a Sanksrit word that refers to the energetic organizing principles of all life. When the practitioner takes your pulse, he is feeling the state of balance or imbalance in the doshas.
When you meet a pulse master, he or she will greet you and then place their fingers on your wrist for a few or several seconds. Then the practitioner will
PrintFirst things first: Welcome! Welcome to you and welcome to Sacred & Delicious: Food • Health • Spirituality.
Food. Health. Spirituality. These are my passions, and they come together in my life like ingredients being mixed in any good recipe—interdependent and interconnected. I find that life loses its luster without delicious food, good health and time every day—even just a few minutes—for the body and spirit to rest and rejuvenate.
PrintHere’s an easy-to-make, completely satisfying vegan Black-Eyed Pea Salad. Quick, delicious and healthy to boot.
Black-eyed peas are especially appreciated by vegan and vegetarian cooks because the peas will be tender after boiling in about 30 minutes, unlike harder beans such as black beans and chick peas that take an hour or more to cook in a regular pot. With black-eyed peas you’ll have a protein-rich main dish that you can build a summer meal around with very little labor—a gift to the cook on a hot summer night.
If you’re too hungry to wait for the black-eyed peas to cool, no problem! This quintessential Southern food is equally appealing when eaten warm after it’s just been cooked. Once the salad is chilled, it’s an ideal dish to serve at your 4th of July picnic.
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It’s summer—at least it feels like it after a week of 88 to 90 degree weather here in Raleigh, North Carolina—so bring on the cool specialties like this Roasted Beet and Fennel Soup. Cool soups are a perfect way to refresh yourself when you’re over-heated.
Did you notice that I said “cool” rather than “chilled”? Let’s zoom in on that thought.
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Need a quick side dish to finish off a meal with perfection? Enter sautéed asparagus, my favorite side to accompany almost any menu. It comes in especially handy when you’re making a complex main dish that is time-consuming and you need an easy recipe to complete the meal.
With organic asparagus still in abundance around much of the country, I’m offering this recipe as a follow-up to last month’s asparagus soup. Asparagus complement many menu centerpieces, from legumes, vegetable entrées and casseroles to more omnivorous fare. You can add asparagus to a salad for panache. Surprise your beloved with asparagus in a goat-cheese or all-veggie sandwich.
I call this recipe a seven-minute side,* but if you buy pencil-thin asparagus they will cook in three minutes! If you buy the extra-thick stalks, the dish could take as long as 10 minutes, but that’s prep to plate.
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