Yoga And Healthy Eats

This morning I woke up with an urge to do some serious yoga.  To be honest, I've been a bit of a slacker lately with my yoga. It usually consists of 30-40min after my run. I really should take advantage of being able to take free yoga classes at the studio where I teach, but it all comes down to convenience. I can do yoga easily by myself and I can do whatever posture I feel like doing. If I go to a class on the other hand, I'm at the mercy of the teacher and what he/she wants to teach. I'm usually never disappointed when I take a class though.

Today I needed to get out of my head and have someone tell me what to do so I took a yogalates class. Yogalates is a fusion of yoga and pilates. The two really go well together and the teacher teaches this fabulous routine. First we warm up with some Astanga Sun Salutations, followed by a few standing forward bends, and warriors etc. Then we spent a good amount of time doing some serious core work laying down. We then finish up with more standard Astanga poses; seated forward bends, shoulder stand, back bending, and all the while were told to focus on our core and engage it.
Its a physically oriented class, but it was very therapeutic for me. For that 1.5 hrs I was able to forget about my issues in life (we all have then don't we?!) and after the class I felt relaxed and rejuvenated.

Yoga is SO healing! I love it!

Other things I love are yummy foods. I can't end a post without some food related thing can I! Recently, I've been keeping it really simple in the kitchen. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a lot of produce to use before they go bad. Yesterday I did a pretty good job of making a dent in the fridge. The variety of vegetables and fruits I had yesterday made me proud :)

•  spinach
•  kale
• sugar snap peas
• green pepper
• carrot
• cucumber
• apples
• pear
• banana
• tangerine
• lemon
• tomato

 Some simple things I enjoyed today.

Pear & apple w/flaxseed topping

 

Roughly pureed tomato and avocado topped on a rice cake - mmmm ,this was SO good! 

 

My current favorite nut is pecan! Raw pecans and raisins. 

 

I'm SO excited its Friday! I've got a full sporty weekend planned. A long run with girlfriends tomorrow and a hike with Motozo on Sunday. I hope the weather continues to be as beautiful as it is now. Crisp cold air and clear blue skies. 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone and if you're feeling some sort of stress....never underestimate the power of yoga and healthy food :-) 

Vegan Raisin Cookies

What defines a foodie?
Can you call yourself a foodie when you lay in bed thinking about what sort of ingredients would taste good together or how you can improve a recent recipe or better yet.... thinking about how to get your mill to work!

I seriously was so perplexed last night after my mill just would not grind up the whole wheat! 

I had HIGH hopes of experimenting with different grains, but I don't want to put my coffee grinder under more abuse, so I was determined this morning to figure out how to get my mill to do what I wanted. 

First thing in the morning, I went online, found a youtube clip that showed the ins and out of my mill, and then went to work  immediately on the thing. I realized that I wasn't turning the 'knob' far enough to the 'fine' setting, so the mill stone (whatever its called) wasn't tight enough to press the wheat into flour.

Turning the "knob" was quite some work. My forearms got a little sore in the process of turning and readjusting. 

And then it happened! I finally found the right setting and the grains started turning into flour! 

It didn't turn as 'fine' as I was hoping it would, but I knew it would work if I just shifted my flour before using it. I was so excited that I had to try some brown rice. Yes, I now have brown rice flour! 

I was so happy with myself that I promptly emailed Motozo to tell him the wonderful news. I know he doesn't really give a damn about mills or even about muffins for that matter (he still hasn't tried the muffins I made last night! HUMP!). But being the kind husband that he is, he humored me and said "good babe!" :)

Enthusiastic husband or not, I was thrilled! 

Of course, I had to use the flour when it was fresh, so I used a tried and tested Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, taken from EveryDayDish

I don't have chocolate chips other then cacao nibs, but I really want to save those for raw desserts, so I substituted with raisins instead. 

Don't they look yummy! So easy to whip up and only 11mins of baking time! The problem was they turned out too salty. I'm still learning this whole measuring thing. I wasn't looking at my measuring spoons properly and I put way too much salt in. So far my sweets seem to be either too sweet or too salty. One of these days I'll find the right balance. Until then, I have a big tupperware of muffins and cookies that should last me for a good while! YAY!     

Vegan Banana Muffins

I'm totally addicted to this women's site Oh She Glows !
She has absolutely amazing recipes and photography of her vegan creations! Although I'm trying to stay towards raw food, seeing her delicious foods, especially desserts, has made me want to turn on the oven and make some sweets. 

And today I finally did! I had 3 over ripped bananas that I thought would be lovely in a cake or muffin. So I went to Oh She Glows site and found the perfect recipe http://ohsheglows.com/2009/08/22/vegan-peanut-butter-banana-bomb-muffins/

If you actually do go to the site, please don't compare my muffin with hers. Of course, hers look better! ha

I didn't go all the way and make the filling that she made for her muffins and I had to make a few ingredient adjustments, but they still turned out very fluffy and delicious! 

 I started off with whole grain which I wanted/needed to grind up. My wonderful mill, which I got as a wedding gift, unfortunately was not doing the job! 

Very frustrated that the mill was just spitting out the grains whole (not a single dent in the grains!), I gave up after 15mins of trying to get it to work and pulled out my never failing tiny coffee mill. 

Now that's more like it! 

It took a while for the grains to turn into flour and my poor coffee mill got so over heated that it started making a strange noise. The recipe called for 1 and 3/4 cups whole wheat flour, but I only managed to grind up a cup of whole wheat and used regular white flour for the 3/4 cup since I didn't want to kill my coffee mill. 

My 100% freshly ground whole wheat. Very proud of myself for spending 30mins just on flour! 

I made quite a huge mess in the process of putting together the wet/dry ingredients and then mixing them together. But the final result didn't look bad after putting them into the muffin tin

I planned on sprinkling some cacao nibs on top, but I totally forgot about it because I was busy licking the bowl and mixing spoon. The batter was delicious! 

20mins later.....TADA! 

I forced myself to have a large salad (dinner) before eating a muffin. The taste: very fluffy, moist, light, and not too sweet! The original recipe calls for 1 cup of mashed bananas, but I only got 1/2 cup out of my 3 small bananas, so the flavor of banana was a little weak. Next time I want to definitely making sure I have a full cup of mashed bananas. But still very yum! 

I really want to try making gluten free desserts, so I'm going to play around with Amaranth in the next couple of weeks. 

FUN FUN!