Search Results for: Smoky Greens

Sign up now for our Sacred & Delicious Blog

Receive our bonus gift: Sacred & Delicious food list!


  • Please select the plane
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Related Topics:

Start a Fresh New Year with Delicious Vegan Food—Even if You’re an Omnivore!

Have you been eating a lot of heavy foods throughout the holidays? It’s no surprise if you’ve been cooking traditional roasted meats, cheesy comfort foods, and artisanal breads for your family. Oh, and we haven’t even gotten to all those sugary cookies you ate while making batches of baked goods for colleagues, teachers, and friends! Even vegans and vegetarians may suffer after a long season of overeating favorite comfort foods.

If you’re feeling lethargic or bloated after New Year’s Eve, it’s no wonder! Your body is likely signaling it’s ready for a break. May I suggest that you make a fresh start on New Year’s Day with a lighter, yet totally satisfying, dish for your family—Hearty Lentil Stew.

Print
Read More

Black-Eyed Peas Fives Ways for a Lucky 2023

As we turn our attention from Christmas to welcoming the new year, it seems fitting to offer yet another recipe for lucky black-eyed peas. Drumroll please… for African Black-Eyed Pea Stew!

It’s the rich peanut butter and spices that make this African style of cooking black-eyed peas so delicious—though that doesn’t mean spicy hot, at least not when I make it.

Print
Read More

Dressing Up Humble Red Cabbage

I usually have a plan for dinner. After all, I’m a Virgo with four planets in Virgo. We tend to details. But I didn’t have a plan last night, and when I got home at 6 p.m., ready to hunker down for a Carolina ice storm, what I really wanted to do was work out before cooking. So I quickly wrapped up some sweet potatoes and put them in the oven to bake, postponing my thoughts about the rest of the menu. Thirty minutes later I was finally ready to cook, but my menu was still an empty page.

As resourceful (or sometimes desperate) cooks often do, I opened the refrigerator door looking for inspiration.  The red cabbage that had been ignored for a few days was calling my name. My first thought was to make a quick stir-fry, using cabbage as the focus since I

Print
Read More

Veggies in a Sweet and Savory Sauce

If you’ve ever enjoyed the subtly sweet and oh-so-mildly spiced Indian dish known as Malai Kofta, your tastebuds will experience a similar ecstasy when they meet this dish that I offer you today—Methi Malai. This sumptuous side dish, which is perfect for spring, can be served alone or over some basmati rice.

Print
Read More

An Elegant Vegan Christmas

If you’re a vegan or vegetarian cook who wants to dazzle your holiday guests with an exciting new dish, I have a couple of delicious options for you today: Savory Vegetable Rolls or their variation, Root Vegetable Casserole. I started experimenting last week to create something interesting for our first dinner guests since the beginning of the pandemic. We had all decided having dinner together was worth the small inconvenience of—oy vey!—taking rapid Covid tests. It was, and this entrée was a major hit!

Today’s recipe options demonstrate how you can play with a basic recipe and create a dish that suits your palate and time constraints. For example, you can also create this dish as a layered casserole, which will be easier and faster than making the rolls. The rolls are not difficult, but they do require extra steps.

Print
Read More

Make Your Own Stock, Please, for Exponentially More Delicious Soups!

Photo by Candice Stark

Nothing compares to the taste or healing power of a fresh soup stock created from pristine vegetables teeming with nutrients. If you thrill to the taste of fine food, then the boxed or canned stuff doesn’t quite cut it! I cannot tell you how many friends who have dined with us report that their rendition of my latest soup recipe didn’t measure up to what they tasted at our table. I always follow such a comment with the question, “did you make the soup stock or use a box?” Inevitably, to a person, they had skipped this vital step. This is my most unscientific research to emphasize that making fresh stock is always worth planning ahead and investing a few more minutes of your time!

This easy vegetable stock has a gentle flavor but it adds depth to any recipe. Please note that I specify Light Grey Celtic Sea Salt,

Print
Read More

Refreshing Summer Soups: Roasted Beet and Fennel

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.

Print
Read More

QUICK VEGAN MEALS: Introducing Mung Pasta

Whenever you need to make a quick vegan meal, pasta with vegetables is a good choice—and even better if you use a pasta that’s high in protein content. Today’s new recipe, Gluten-Free Pasta with Broccoli and Vegan Cream Sauce, features mung pasta so I can introduce readers to this healthy gluten-free option. Of course, if you don’t have mung pasta on hand, you can also use red lentil, chickpea, or your pasta of choice.

I know that mung pasta does not make for the prettiest photo, but as my readers know by now, Ayurveda is all about ease of digestion, and pasta made from mung bean flour fits the Ayurvedic way.

Print
Read More

Some Much-Needed Luck for 2021

Today I offer you a different twist on a must-have traditional dish for January 1: Curried Black-Eyed Peas. In the Southern United States, to eat black-eyed peas with greens on New Year’s Day is considered a culinary talisman to bring good luck and good fortune in the coming year. Sadly, the dish is thought to have been brought to the US from West Africa through the slave trade, but it survives today as a symbol of hoped-for fortune and abundance to come—and because it’s delicious.

Although my previous black-eyed pea recipes reflect Southern cooking, I decided to add a new twist to this celebratory dish and offer you a version that reflects traditional Ayurvedic cooking through a mélange of spices. You can decide whether the dish packs a hot punch or is simply flavorful with the artful use of spices.

Print
Read More