Going vegetarian/ vegan workshop in Brussels

Want to go vegetarian or vegan?

Find out everything you need to know about healthy, balanced, plant-based nutrition.

There are many prejudices and concerns about changing to a vegetarian or vegan diet: Will I get enough protein? Will I be hungry? Will I need supplements? How do I ensure that I get everything I need?

This workshop clarifies such issues and gives tips on a delicious, healthy way of living. Obviously there’ll be several vegan finger foods to try out :-).

When: Saturday 1 October 2016 at 15:00-17:00  => World Vegetarian Day

Teacher: Annemarie Ijkema (Ambika), certified health coach and Sivananda yoga teacher

Price: 30€ (25€ for unemployed/ students)

Location: Sampoorna Yoga Studio, 40 Rue du Houblon/ Hopstraat, 1000 Brussels

• Online booking

Om shanti -ॐ शान्ति

Join the 2016 Sampoorna Yoga vacation

The Sampoorna Yoga team organises a yoga vacation this Summer, in The Netherlands.

Dates: 8-12 August, 2016

Location: Wijlre (Limburg, NL)

A mid-week break to feel relaxed, recharged and healthy.

A holiday with people who share your love for yoga.

A time of spiritual practice, enjoyment of nature and peace. 

What else do you need for a perfect time out?

Daily program includes:

• Morning & evening meditation and chanting
• A morning hatha yoga class
• Delicious organic vegetarian brunch & dinner

Price: 450€

Beautiful house, large garden, green walks, thermal spas nearby, etc.

• Registrations & info

This vacation is organised by the experienced Sampoorna Yoga teacher team of Eknath, Hanna, Gauri and Vyasa.

Om shanti -ॐ शान्ति

Wraps with kale, chick’pieces and sweet peas Ⓥ

If you ask me, wraps are a great invention ! A hearty and filling, healthy lunch (or dinner) option, that you can mix with basically any ingredient you like. You can make cold or warm (I prefer) wraps. The other day I whipped up some filling for a wrap with the following ingredients from my fridge and pantry. I assure you, it was the best wrap I ever had! The saltiness of the tamari mixed with the crispiness of the vegan chick’pieces , the sweetness of the sweet peas and the slightly bitter taste of the kale: absolutely fabulous!

Ingredients  (2P):

• 2 wraps (check the packaging for hidden animal ingredients), I like to use the brand Amaizin (bio shops in Belgium)
• Vegetarische Slager/ Vivera or Greenway chick’pieces (supermarket)
• A bunch of kale leaves
• 150 g of frozen sweet peas
• A dash or 2 of tamari or shoyu sauce
• Coconut oil
• Black pepper
• Asafetida powder (Indian shops)

For the tahini dressing

• ½ a cup of tahin (sesame paste)
• ¼ a cup of (filtered) water
• 1 tsp of  fresh lemon juice

Preparation

1. Wash and shred the kale leaves (use the stems for juicing for example).
2. Heat the coconut oil in a frying pan or skillet.
3. Add the vegan chick’pieces and stir-fry for a couple of minutes until they’re golden or crispy.
4. Add a dash or two of tamari.
5. Add the kale leaves and stir-fry for 5 to 8 minutes depending on how crispy you like your kale.
6. Add the asafetida powder and mix with the other ingredients.
7. In the meantime prepare your tahini sauce by mixing all of the ingredients in a blender (like Tribest) using the grinding blade. Add some more water if the sauce is too thick.
8. Add the (semi-)thawed sweet peas and mix for 2-3 minutes until the peas are warm, season with some fresh black pepper.
9. Put the 2 wraps on top of the mixture in the pan and put a lid on the pan, this way you warm up the wraps to perfection (max. 1 minute).
10. Put the wraps on a (warm) plate, add some tahini then 2 to 3 spoons of the filling and add some more tahini (don’t fill them too much as everything will fall out 😉 speaking from experience).
11. Serve warm.

Tip 1: You can make endless variations, or use leftovers in your wrap. The other day I had a wrap with oven roasted spicy cauliflower and avocado with tahini dressing, simply fabulous and ready in 2 minutes (time to warm up the cauliflower and wraps).

Tip 2: you can replace the vegan chick’pieces by (home-made) seitan or well marinated tofu or tempeh or pulses, ….

Om shanti -ॐ शान्ति

Free yoga classes ! Open door day at Sampoorna Yoga Studio on 14 September 2014

Come and join us next Sunday 14 September to kick off the new healthy, happy Yoga season: Open Door Day !

The doors will be open 11:00-18:00 and there will be:

FREE yoga classes for adults (60 minutes) at 12:00, 13:30, 15:00 & 16:00.

FREE Children’s yoga (60 minutes) at 13:30.

FREE Mantra Chanting (45 minutes) at 15:00

There will be special offers on yoga passes and products: buy 10 lessons, get 5 free & on all products in our shop you get a 10% discount. It’s the perfect time to buy a (new) yogamat.

We will prepare delicious sattvic (vegetarian & vegan) snacks and herbal tea.

No pre-registration required, just come along and meet the teachers and other yogins !

Location: Sampoorna Yoga Studio,  Hopstraat 40 Rue du Houblon, 1000 Brussels.

More info on the website.

Yogi recipe: vegan parsley pesto

I’m a huge fan of pesto and I’ve already posted a recipe of kale pesto before. Now that kale is no more in season (at least not here in Belgium), I’ve started exploring other ingredients to make pesto. Parsley is an excellent replacement for kale, it’s cheap too. It’s very nutritious, easy to find, to cultivate yourself (on your balcony if you don’t have a garden). Parsley is a great source of antioxidants, vitamin A and C, folic acid and iron. I love to mix parsley with sunflower seeds in this pesto recipe. Sunflower seeds are high in vitamin E (anti-inflammation), magnesium (keeping nerves and muscles relaxed), selenium (improved detoxification).

Ingredients

• Bunch of parsley*
• A handful of sunflower seeds
• Juice of one lemon
• Olive oil
• Sunflower seed paste (optional)

Tools

• (Jazz max) slow juicer

Preparation
Wash the parsley. Put it in your juicer, add sunflower seeds in between sprigs of parsley (to not jam your machine, don’t put all the seeds in at once). Squeeze the lemon. Mix the parsley & sunflower seeds paste with the lemon juice and cover it with olive oil to keep it fresh longer in your fridge. You can add some sunflower seeds paste if needed as well as black pepper.
The pesto is delicious on toast or with raw or baked vegetables as well as with a pasta or gnocchi of your choice.

In this picture (right), the pesto is served with orecchiette pasta and some nutritional yeast.

* I use organic produce.

 

Yogi recipe: gnocchi with tempeh, eggplant and tomato sauce

Last year I went to Frankfurt for the first time in my life and it was such an amazing city to discover, especially since it was super easy to find delicious vegan food ! In the Veganz supermarket there is this small café (Sesamo) where you can get delicious food to take away or eat there (there are some high chairs with high tables against the windows), they sell pastries too, all vegan! I love gnocchi, but it’s not easy to find a vegan version, at least not in Belgium. Hence I was super happy to find a gnocchi recipe with eggplant, tempeh, mozzarella and tomato/ basil sauce. I ate it twice that weekend …

Back home I’ve tried to recreate the recipe, hereby my version:

Ingredients*

• 1 block of tempeh
• 1 large or 2 small eggplants
• 1 portion tomato sauce (home-made or bought)
• Gnocchi (I buy a vegan version at an organic supermarket)
• Fresh basil
• Vegan mozzarella cheese, i.e. Daiya, Tofutti or Cheezly (so far, I’ve only found it in Ekoplaza, in the Netherlands)

*I use mostly organic, unless impossible to find.

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Cut the tempeh in 1 or 2 cm pieces or strips. Marinate it for at least 30 minutes in a mix of shoyu or tamari sauce mixed with some olive oil and black pepper. Wash and cut the eggplant in cubes, add salt, leave it for about 30 minutes until the water comes out of the eggplant, use paper towels or a clean kitchen towel to wipe off the excess water.
Sprinkle olive oil and black pepper on the eggplant cubes, spread out on an oven plate, in one layer and put in the oven. (You can add garlic if you like that’s not a sattvic ingredient, so I don’t use it in my yogi recipes). Add the tempeh in an oven plate and put in the oven as well. After about 10 or 15 minutes, turn the eggplant (or when well baked), idem for the tempeh. Cut the mozzarella cheese in thin slices. Wash the basil and shred the leaves. Boil a big pot of water for the gnocchi. When the tempeh and eggplant are well baked, transfer them to a big pot, add the tomato sauce, fresh basil and mozzarella cheese, add salt and pepper to your taste. You might want to add some fresh cherry tomatoes (when in season) and leave the sauce for an additional 5 to 10 minutes. Prepare the gnocchi according to the instructions. Serve the sauce on top of the gnocchi and serve directly. Garnish with some freshly washed basil leaves. You can serve the gnocchi with a seasonal salad.

Yogi recipe : vegan eggplant-quinoa roast

This delicious recipe combines eggplant, quinoa, a red pepper & zucchini with a lemon, ginger & tamari sauce.

It’s a real yogi recipe as it doesn’t contain any garlic or onions or other stimulants & is taken from the Sivananda  Yoga Cook Book, a highly recommended cook book (available on Book Depository, free shipping, mind you not all recipes are vegan)!

Over the years since first making this dish, I’ve added onion and garlic to the recipe. It’s up to you to decide whether you like these ingredients or not.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of quinoa
• 2 to 3 medium sized eggplants, cut into equal long slices
• 1 (purple) onion, diced
• 1 large red bell pepper (paprika/ poivron rouge), cut into small cubes
• 2 zucchini, coarsely grated (or cut into small cubes)
• Parsley sprigs, to decorate
• Vegetable oil (I like to use sesame or olive oil)
• Coarse salt
• Black pepper

Ingredients baking sauce

• 3 tablespoons tamari (or other soy sauce you may have at home)
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 3/4 cup (filtered) water
• 2 tsp (or more 🙂 ) grated fresh ginger root
• Optional: 2 cloves or garlic
• Black pepper

Preparation

1. Wash & prepare all vegetables.
2. Prepare the baking sauce: mix all ingredients together in a small bowl.
3. Heat the oven to 180°.
4. Arrange the slices of eggplant in a single layer in a baking dish. Pour the baking sauce over the eggplant slices. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes. Turn the slices over and bake for another 15 minutes or until the eggplant is soft.
5. Rinse & cook the quinoa according to instructions (mostly it’s 1 volume of quinoa requires 2 volumes of boiling water).
6. Add the onion in a skillet with some vegetable oil and stir fry for a few minutes.
7. Add the red pepper and zucchini and sauté until soft. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Add the cooked quinoa, mix well, and spoon over the eggplant in the oven dish.
9. Return to the oven and bake for about 10 minutes.

Serve hot decorated with parsley sprigs & a green or tomato salad on the side.

 

Om shanti –ॐ शान्ति

Leftover lunch with eggplant quinoa roast.

Yogi recipe: vegan pumpkin carrot soup

I love making soup, it’s very easy & satisfying as you can make lots with little effort. You can combine it with quinoa, rice, bread, …  to have a very filling main meal. Every season has its distinct vegetables to enjoy different types of soup all year round. I often just use one or two different veggies in a recipe and don’t even bother to use broth. I prefer to use spices, such as turmeric, cumin, paprika and Herbamare salt & black pepper as well as fresh herbs to bring out the taste of the veggies.

If like me, you always make way too much soup, then surely don’t hesitate to freeze the left-overs in portion sizes to have some nice food readily available to take to your work or for some other good reason.

This recipe is for approximately 10 servings & ready in ~35 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 kg chopped pumpkin
• 1 kg carrots
• 1 piece of fresh ginger
• 250ml Provamel Bio Soya Cuisine cream or coconut milk
• 3 l (filtered) water
• 70 g vegetable stock powder (to taste/ optional)
• Fresh coriander
• Black pepper & Herbamare/ Sea or Himalaya salt

Preparation
Cut the pumpkin and carrots into cubes. Peel the ginger and cut it into pieces or grate it.
Place all vegetables in a large pot. Add the water and bring to the boil.
Add the stock powder. Let it simmer on low heat until the vegetables are tender.
Remove the pan from the heat source and mix the soup with a blender.
Season with pepper & salt. Add the Soya Cuisine cream or coconut milk and stir well & let it simmer a little longer. Finish with a few coriander leaves.

TIP
If you buy organic produce, you can leave the skin of the pumpkin & carrots on (less work!), just make sure to wash them well (optional: use a vegetable brush).

Yogi recipe: vegan dahl

As a first yogi recipe, I’d like to share the most common Indian dish: rice and dahl. A typical dahl is composed of some type of lentils, water, mustard seeds, lots of spices and often carrots, ginger and coriander. It’s a very easy dish to prepare and very filling as well. I never cook dahl just for one meal or person, mostly I cook enough for several meals or people.

Ingredients (serves 2/3)

1 cup of lentils (red or yellow)
2 or 3 carrots sliced
A piece of fresh ginger, grated
1 tsp of mustard seeds
1 tsp of coriander seeds (optional)
1 bay leave
2 tsp of turmeric powder
1 tsp of cumin powder
1/2 tsp of garam masala powder
Salt & pepper to taste
Water
Some wedges of lemon or lime
Fresh coriander leaves
Vegetable oil of your choice (I mostly use coconut oil)
Optional: garlic/ onion to your taste, chili powder/ crushed chili

Preparation

Wash the lentils thoroughly, until the water runs clear. Peel & grate the ginger. Cut the garlic/ onions if using. Peel & slice the carrots. Heat the oil in a wok. Add the mustard seeds and wait until they ‘pop’.  Add the freshly grated ginger (and garlic/ onion if using), stir until golden. Add the turmeric and cumin powder. Stir everything until the spices become very fragrant.

Add the carrots, stir fry to coat the carrots with the spices for 2 minutes.
Add the washed lentils, mix everything well.
Add 3 cups of filtered water, the bay leave and bring to boil. When the water boils, lower the heat, let the mixture simmer for about 15 minutes, make sure to keep on adding water if the mixture becomes dry. The dahl needs to ‘swim’.
Taste the mixture when the lentils become soft, then add salt & pepper to taste.
You can add half of the dahl mixture in a blender, blend it for a short while & add it back to the pan to have a more firm dahl.

Serve with quinoa or rice and add some freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice and coriander leaves.

This is a very hearty meal for cold winter nights but I admit I can eat it any day of the year. Try to experiment with different types of lentils, mung beans, etc. It’s also nice to add some coconut milk to your dahl for a softer flavour.

You can find all the ingredients in your local Indian or oriental shop. I prefer to buy mostly organic, most of the ingredients can also be found in your organic foodstore (except for garam masala I haven’t yet found an organic version in Brussels).