Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle: Who is Asking "Who Am I?"

Scrambled Tofu Tastes Exactly Like Scrambled Eggs!!!

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't tried it myself 2 days ago. It's absolutely unbelievable. I crumbled a cup of tofu into 1 tbsp of vegetable oil. Then added some spices, and let it cook till the water evaporated and the tofu got a little bit of colour on it. Then I stuck it in a wrap and I basically couldn't tell that I wasn't eating scrambled eggs in a wrap.

Basically blew my mind.

Ingredients:
1 cup firm tofu
1/4 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tortilla wrap

Method:
1. Heat the oil in a pan. Add the tofu and ginger. Cook uncovered on medium-low heat for 10 minutes. Stir once or twice.
2. Add the soy sauce, stir and cook another 2 minutes.
3. Place cooked tofu into a tortilla, add veggies of your choice and roll up.

The crazy (good) thing was that the tofu didn't soak up the oil, so when I scooped up the tofu from the pan, all the oil was left behind. WOW! Perfect breakfast dish.

Next time I'm going to try it with some crumbled bacon in the wrap. I'll replace the ginger and soy sauce with salt and pepper. Maybe some hot-sauce another day. I could also do curry powder or piri-piri powder. So many ways to do this. Zing!!

Tofu is low fat, high protein, has isoflavones (phytoestrogens) that mimic estrogen in your body. All Good Things!

Pineapple Cake with No Sugar, No Sweetner, No Honey, No Agave....

Be brave. Try out a truly no sugar cake.

Other than the fact that refined sugar is basically poison to humans, a cup of sugar has 773 calories!!!! Are you kidding? That's half of a person's daily caloric intake!! And most cake recipes call for 1.5 - 2 cups of sugar! Sure, you won't eat the whole cake in one day. But you will eat one slice, and then another. In an 8-slice cake, 2 slices would equal a quarter of your entire day's caloric intake - consumed in sugar alone!!! And we aren't even taking into account the calories in that cake from flour, eggs, oil and fruit. No wonder we're a nation of overweight people.

Artificial sweeteners did help me on my journey to lose 70lbs, but they have unknown long term side-effects so I stopped taking them also. Over the years I've realized that sugar is a privilege (not a right) and the tongue is very quick to acclimatize to low sugary-tasting foods.

Try this cake. It's good. It's sweet. It won't put you in a sugary diabetic coma. It'll just make you say, "Hmm... that's definitely a cake, pretty pineapple-y, pretty sweet, a little more like moist and delicately sweet pineapple-bread than pineapple-cake, but I'm feeling pretty satisfied!"


Ingredients:
1.5 cups unbleached plain flour
1 egg
1 can crushed pineapple and it's juce
1 cup milk
0.25 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla powder or essence
scant pinch of salt

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 deg.
2. Combine all the dry ingredients thoroughly with a whisk.
3. Combine all the wet ingredients and mix in the with the dry.
4. Grease a 9 inch baking pan. Pour cake batter in it.
5. Bake for 40 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

Serve with some natural sauce... like apple sauce or evaporated milk or soak the cake in natural pineapple juice. Fruits are INCREDIBLY sweet naturally.

Enjoy!

Grape Cake with No Sugar, No Sweetner, No Honey, No Agave...

Tired of cake recipes calling for cups and cups of sugar. And then I'm tired of no-sugar recipes using cups and cups of honey or agave or stevia or splenda... How about a naturally sweetened cake?

Here's one that's not as sweet as you would imagine cake to be, but it's still a DELICIOUS cake that's sweet enough to satisfy.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups unbleached plain flour
1 egg
1 cup (home-made, unsweetened) apple sauce
1.25 cups milk
0.25 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp baking soda
0.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla powder or essence
1 cup grapes (cut in half)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 350 deg. F
2. Mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly with a whisk.
3. Mix all the wet ingredients and combine with the dry ingredients. Fold in the grapes.
4. Grease a 9-inch round or square baking pan. Pour cake mix into pan.
5.  Bake for 35 minutes or until done (knife comes out clean).

As a sauce, I just soaked the cake in a quarter cup of evaporated milk (which is naturally sweet) and it gives the cake a creamy, soft texture.

Enjoy!

Vege-pate Wrap (Yeast-Free, Vegan)

This delicious pate wrapped in a yeast-free tortilla is the most Delicious, Wholesome and filling thing you'll ever have!! You will HAVE TO add this to you regular menu.

Ingredients:
- 1 can cannellini beans
- 1 tbsp tahini (organic, sugar-free)
- 2 tbsp finely diced red onion
- 1 small clove garlic, minced or paste
- (optional) 2 tbsp cooked oats
- salt, pepper to taste

Method for Pate:
1. Wash and drain the beans. Boil gently for 5 minutes and drain. (We want the beans to get super soft and mushy.)
2. In a bowl, mash the beans.
3. Combine beans, tahini, onion, garlic, oats, salt and pepper.

Your pate is ready.

Assembly of Wrap:
- 1 small handful alfalfa sprouts or lettuce or shredded carrots or tomatoes
- 1/4 cup of pate (made above)
- 1 tortilla (yeast-free, sugar-free)

Fill your tortilla with the above ingredients, roll up and serve.

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Gosh! I cannot tell you how DELICIOUS this is and how your body will love you for feeding it this heavenly, protein-packed, fibrous goodness!

Why Yeast Free?

I'm starting to live a yeast-free (or at least yeast-reduced) life from now on. I've realized that a proliferation of yeast can cause a whole gamut of health issues. And excess yeast in the body doesn't always show up as a yeast-infection. The latter is just the "last stages" of a yeast over-abundance. As a matter of fact, most people in North America probably have too much yeast in the body because we are constantly taking anti-biotics, all food is injected with sugar, we are constantly stressed out and we drink copiously to deal with our stress.

A healthy amount of yeast in the body is a good thing, it's only when there's too much of it that it's a problem.

How do we know if we have too much? Well, your doctor can do a test to confirm. But if you can say 'yes' to the points below, chances are you have too much yeast:
Have you had/have:(1) taken Antibiotics often (or as a child)
(2) eat a High-Sugar diet (people from North America and the Indian Sub-continent especially)
(3) consume Alcohol fairly regularly (12 servings per Year or more)
(4) experience lots of Stress/Anxiety

If those things above are happening, then the "good bacteria" in the body gets killed off, leaving you as a petri-dish for yeast growth. There are many good sites on Candida Albicans, so please read up.

Blow-Your-Mind-Away Golubtsy голубцы

The secret to a phenomenal Golubtsy that is much, much more than plain Cabbage Roll is:

Mixing butter with the cooked rice.


Ingredients:
1 head of cabbage, frozen then thawed
500 g minced lean beef
500 g minced lean pork
1 cup cooked rice
2 tbsp salted butter
1/2 onion diced, sauteed in 1 tsp oil
salt, pepper

2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp flour
1 cup water

Method:
1.  Mix beef, pork, rice, butter, salt and pepper and set aside.
2. Separate the cabbage leaves.
3.

Vegan Spinach Potato Curry/ Shaakh Alu/ Aloo Palak Recipe (no onions or garlic)

I woke up this morning, and wanted a Sattvic meal. I wanted that Mandir (Hindu Temple) food taste without going to the temple.

The key to achieving that was skipping the onion and garlic. Then the rest of the ingredients were vegan. And the spices are a mixture of sweet-smelling and earthy. And voila.

A beautifully aromatic dish, perfectly vegan, pure, holistic and absolutely delicious. I ate this with home-made Rotis. But I only made the rotis because I ran out of pita bread, so feel free to eat this with rice or bread or anything that tickles your fancy. It would go really well with quinoa or couscous.

Ingredients for 1 serving:
1 tbsp canola oil
2 tsp fennel seeds (this adds that sweet-smelling aroma)
1/2 tsp grated ginger or ginger powder
2 tsp coriander powder (earthy flavour)
1 tsp cumin powder (another wonderfully earthy spice)
1 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 cup tomatoes, chopped
1/3 cup boiled potatoes, chopped
2 cups spinach, shredded or torn to smaller pieces

Method:
1. Heat the oil in a frying pan on medium heat.
2. When the oil has warmed up, add the fennel seeds and 30 seconds later, add the ginger. Saute for 1 minute. We don't want the ginger to brown. We just want to release the lovely ginger smell.
3. Add the coriander powder, cumin powder and turmeric powder. Stir for 10 seconds and add 2-3 tbsp of water to prevent the spices from burning. Cook for 2 minutes. The beautiful aroma of the spices will be wafting through the room.
4. Add the tomatoes, stir around and cook for 3-5 minutes. Add the potatoes and stir.
5. Add the spinach, stir till it wilts and stir in the salt.
6. Cover the pan and cook for 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Breakfast Scramble: Easy, Delicious, Healthy

Last Sunday I boiled two Russet potatoes in their skin to use in a recipe. I never got to making the dish so I covered the potatoes in plastic wrap and saved them in the fridge not knowing what to do with them.
On Tuesday morning, after my workout, I suddenly realized my fridge was full of things I could put into a frying pan and something interesting might materialize. So here is what materialized:

Ingredients:
1 egg or 3 egg whites
1/3 potatoes, boiled, peeled and chopped or crumbled
1 cup of spinach, ripped into smaller pieces
1/3 tomato, chopped
1-2 tbsp onion, chopped
2 tsp butter
salt

Method:
1. In a medium heat frying pan, melt the butter and throw in the onions for 2 minutes.
2. When onions are soft and aromatic, add tomatoes. Cook 2 minutes.
3. Add the spinach and stir till it wilts. Add salt to taste.

Your vegetables are cooked. All you need to do is cook the egg.

4. Crack the egg or egg whites (use egg whites for a protein boost) over the vegetables, stir into the vegetables and cook for 1 minute. The eggs will still be undercooked. Turn off the heat and cover your frying pan to cook the eggs in the residual heat of your electric heating element or the heat from the vegetables.

This is a phenomenally tasty dish. A treat first thing in the morning. It took me 6 minutes to prepare from start to finish because I cut up the onions and tomatoes while the pan was heating up and the butter was melting. I tore the spinach directly above the frying pan so I didn't need to waste any time prepping that. The 1/3 potato was also something I just crumbled over the frying pan. And the result was absolutely phenomenal.

Not only is this a great post-workout meal with proteins you can boost by varying how many egg whites you want to add, it's a delicious way to incorporate 1 entire cup of spinach into your breakfast with almost no effort.

Don't want the potatoes? Skip it. Make it a low glycemic breakfast and have an orange or an apple to add some complex carbs.

I still can't get over how someone like me who struggles to get out of bed on time, let alone pour milk in a bowl to put cereal into, could make something this is a delicious and healthy in so little time.

Great site for stir-fry sauces of all sorts

http://www.fortysomething.ca/2012/05/15_basic_stir_fry_sauce_recipes.php

Some great ideas when you've run out of them.

Vege/Bean Pate

I used to buy an incredible vege wrap at my university snack bar. It was a tortilla or pita wrap, with a vege pate filling, mayonnaise and shredded purple cabbage. I remember I absolutely LOVED that wrap because of the absolutely delicious pate in there. I always, always wondered how I could replicate that pate recipe.

And today I did. Completely inadvertently. And here it is:

Ingredients:
1 cup of cooked black eyed peas
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp tahini paste
salt to taste

Method:
1. Mash the black eyed peas thoroughly. I used a hand blender.
2. In a separate bowl, mince the garlic, add the lemon juice and tahini and mix really well. If you have a mortar and pestle, then use that.
3. Combine all of the above. Mix the beans thoroughly with the sauce and salt to taste.

Absolutely incredible. You can eat this with crackers or in a wrap like my university snack store made it.

I just made this and I've been snacking on it just as is... I'm not sure it's going to last long enough to make it into a sandwich or wrap.