Yoga Diet - The First Week

So, I am now a little over the first week through the Yoga Body Diet that I was telling y'all about the last time I wrote. Although I was not technically scheduled to begin cooking from the book this week, I decided to eschew the traditional principles and advance myself to the point where I was allowed to begin eating foods designed for my pitta dosha. A quick review of the dishes this week will soon follow. Here are a couple of things that I have learned this week: first, although I would not have thought it possible, I have kind of managed to keep my food cravings in check. What I mean is that I usually crave salt, sugar, and spice (not necessarily in that order and often with the addition of alcohol to one or all of those three flavors), but I did not really have a problem with that this week at all. In fact, last night, as my husband was enjoying his weekly beer ration, I thought about having some chocolate - a couple of tablespoons of chocolate chips to be exact. At first, I decided that I really did not want any, but then gave way about halfway through the movie we were watching. I ate the chips, relished them even, but afterward, felt kind of empty. I was not upset with myself for breaking the diet, but I realized that, in fact, my initial instinct was correct: my body actually did not want the chocolate at all. Huh. Second, before I get to the actual food, I have also realized that being slightly hungry at the end of the day is not a bad thing. I actually feel more ready for sleep in that state (rather than overstuffed discomfort) and have actually slept better this week than several previous. Again: huh.

Okay. So, the burning question here is: how is the food and do the recipes work? The answer is: pretty good and yes, they do, for the most part. I started the week by making homemade granola: baked oats, heavily laden with cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla, augmented by pumpkin seeds and unsweetened coconut. It smelled incredible - a gorgeous combination of sweetness and spice, one that I thought would taste as good as it smelled for sure. Result: it tastes okay, but is nothing compared to its baking smell. If I could eat that scent - well, damn, I don't think I would need anything else for the rest of the day. That day, I also made Chocolate Chip Cookies with Oats and Coconut. This one was interesting - not a lot of ingredients, dry or wet, but the batter came together quickly and actually turned into something that closely resembled real cookie dough. Again, I baked these cookies which were spiked with cinnamon and coconut, and relished the scent alone. Fortunately, although slightly dry (especially four days after baking), they taste almost as good as they smelled. They are chewy, with a light crunch from the oats and coconut and have almost enough chocolate to be truly satisfying. Yum.

I have not really done anything as far as lunch goes this week, but dinner-time has been pitta specific all week long. We started off with Cream of Broccoli soup, made with (get this) goat cheese instead of cream. Oh. My. God. That was gooooooood. I actually don't care much for cream of anything soup (well, unless you count that cream of asparagus soup that I had - more than once in more than one country - when we traveled across Europe in the Spring of 2002. Incredible.), but this was tasty. My kids didn't care for it too much - my youngest held her nose the entire time she, literally, choked it down, but I thought it was heavenly. It was a pureed soup, so it retained a little of the grainy-ness inherent to broccoli florets, but the goat cheese mellowed the flavor and gave it just enough of a tart edge to make it really interesting. The second night was Fried Rice with Pineapple and Coconut: starring one of my dosha "power foods": tofu. Now, I don't mind tofu at all, but I do prefer it when the rest of the dish it is in creates a flavor palate that shines aside from its bland nature/texture/flavor. Despite the addition of fresh, gorgeous, juicy, sunshine-in-a-bowl, pineapple, this dish was, at best, blah. It featured short grain brown rice which had a chewy, satisfying consistency and called for snow peas (for which I subbed fresh green beans) which added an interesting level of crunch. Ginger and garlic provided the only means of seasoning on top of some shredded cabbage and toasted (which I lazily didn't do) coconut. "Meh" is about all I can say about that one.

Finally, for this post at least, we tried Roti Pizza. The book defines roti as a sweet-tasting Indian flatbread, but based on the fact that it is made from whole wheat flour, water and salt, I was not holding my breath for this "pizza" to turn out as anything besides edible. I am pleased to admit that I was incorrect: the dough came together quickly in the food processor, was fairly easy to roll out and, when topped with tomato paste, various delicious "power" vegetables like asparagus and artichoke hearts (two of my personal favorites), reduced fat mozzarella cheese and finished with fresh basil from our garden....well, it was, in fact, pizza! It was delicious pizza! The crust was chewy and, despite its humble beginnings and my extra low expectations, it held up very nicely to all of the toppings.

So, the score is: meh, tasty, yummy, blah and surprisingly delicious. More to come very shortly on more "Yoga Body Diet" Recipes.