Yoga Diet - The First Week Part Deux

Ha! See, I told you I would have more posts coming on the "Yoga Body Diet" recipes! So, last night we tried Chicken and Zucchini Quesadillas which is supposed to be served with a mango-jicama salsa. Well, because I had planned to serve the quesadillas with a salad anyway and because I didn't really get the idea of a "salsa" lacking any spicy components, I decided to add the salsa ingredients to my salad. I did make the quesadillas as directed by the recipe....well, more or less that way. I used whole wheat tortillas, chopped zucchini, sliced poached chicken, reduced fat cheddar cheese (in lieu of the mozzarella written in the recipe) and added about a pinch of adobo seasoning to kick the flavor up a notch. (Oh, my God. Did I just quote Emeril? Is that even how you spell his name? I apologize - I really couldn't think of anything else to write right there. I won't do it again. Promise.) The quesadillas were sprayed with cooking spray and baked in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes. The result was a crispy exterior with a juicy, gooey, cheesy interior that boasted perfectly cooked zucchini chunks (still bright green and crisp-tender) and a minute level of savory spice that satisfied my ever-cooling taste buds. (I still miss my peppers - don't get me wrong.) The salad was pretty incredible as well. I combined butter lettuce with fresh, homegrown tomatoes, ripe mangos, avocado, sweet and crunchy jicama, dressed with an exceptionally light lime, soy and agave vinaigrette. Damn tasty and freaking fresh. It made great leftovers for lunch today as well.

Tonight's dinner was the "Yoga Body Diet" version of pad thai, a dish that I often make, both from written recipes as well as new creations straight out of my own head. This one featured tofu and rice noodles, both of which I have managed to find products that were made right here in Texas! If I geek out about anything (science fiction, British science fiction, books - okay, I geek out about a lot), it is finding local food products in my local grocery store that can supplant items made in far off lands that previously represented my only choices. Anyway. So, this pad thai recipe had the noodles, the tofu, the egg, the lime, the fish sauce, the cilantro and even....a teeny bit of cayenne pepper! Oh, happy day! The tofu was just chewy enough, the noodles were slightly starchy, even retaining some al dente texture and the sauce was tart, slightly sweet, bright, fresh, piquant and herbaceous. All in all: a good pad thai in my book. (My kids, despite the multiple attempts at this dish, still are not Thai food eaters. I am still not willing to give it up. I will broaden their little palates, so help me God!)

Current score: two more tasty dishes! Tomorrow, if I feel up to it, I may attempt the intriguing Cherry Basil Granita for dessert following something called, "Tasty Tacos". Until then, my friends, bon apetite! (See, I left Emeril out of it - you can't go wrong with quoting Julia, after all.)

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.

Gearing Up

So, this week, I will begin cooking from my new book, The Yoga Body Diet. I received the book in the mail last week and read it, cover to cover, in about three days. I took the assessment test and discovered, much to my own surprise, that my dosha, or personality(ish) type, is pitta. Pittas are associated with the element fire and the summer season. They are typical "Type A" personalities with a fair amount of drive and ambition. Now, I can't say that I fall completely into this category, especially because the test indicated that I am also fairly close to the kapha, or earth dosha, but a lot of the pitta characteristics seem to apply to me.

Why am I writing about this right now? Mainly because, as a pitta, I am supposed to (essentially) cook from summer's bounty and limit the amount of spices that I use in my cooking. I am good with the fresh fruits and vegetables that abound with this season - in fact, summer is really my very favorite time/season in which to cook. Summer produce is incredible and the flavors are made even more amazing by eating everything at the peak of ripeness. (Anyone who has ever been suckered into buying summer fruit -watermelons, strawberries, etc. - during the winter knows what an extreme disappointment they usually are. Trust me - been there and done that just because I have been jonesing for a bite of summer on a cold winter day.) I love the beautiful, ruby-red strawberries and the way their flavor brightens my entire mouth. I adore fat, fuzzy peaches and their sweet-tart juiciness that feels like a dose of sunshine itself. Summertime, homegrown tomatoes are to die for - plump, earthy, explosively warm tomato flavor in a riot of colors. All kinds of peppers are amazing - some scorching and some sweetly piquant - picked at the peak of ripeness, and can enliven just about any dish. I also love the cooking techniques (or lack thereof) the hot weather brings - cold and crisp dinner salads, savory meats grilled outdoors, fresh fruits and vegetables that need no further embellishment than a sprinkle of salt or a twist of black pepper. Ahhh......I can almost taste it all now.

I started by saying that I can deal with the pitta perspective of a diet based on fresh fruits and vegetables and that is, in fact, the truth. I think the only issue I might have is with limiting the spices, although I think my children will thank me for it (not big fans of spicy anything, unless it is a sausage of some sort). True to my predominantly pitta nature, I LOVE spicy foods and would pretty much eat them any day and any way. As a Central Texan, I adore Tex-Mex, but I don't limit myself to the cuisine of chips and salsa. Oh no, I am international in my spice consumption - Thai, Indian, Italian and so on, each hold at least one heavily spiced dish that is near and dear to my heart (and the subsequent burn). Ah well, much like the alcohol that I have overindulged in the past couple of weeks, it is not going to hurt me to give it up for the next few weeks. It should facilitate the re-balancing of my dosha and the deepening of my yoga practice (which is a surprisingly good workout - trust me, I am pretty hard core with my exercise and I was astounded by how difficult holding various poses actually is). I am menu planning this afternoon and should have more posts this week as I attempt to adhere to an Ayurvedic, pitta-specific diet. Wish me luck....or perhaps send me a "namaste".

A Couple of New Things

This one is gonna be short, folks. I thought, what with finishing school and getting through wedding season and all, that I was going to have mountains of time in which to write witty/inspiring/laugh out loud (I refuse to use text-speak)/delicious word pictures of the many foods that I try/buy/make/consume. Sadly, I was incorrect in the respect that I have lost all sense of discipline over the past week and a half, and I have found many other things (TV! Fictional novels! Sleep!) with which to occupy my time.

In any case, here are a few quick thoughts: first, after renting a margarita machine for my graduation party this past weekend, I have decided that I am officially tired of margaritas (or "margarinas", as my six-year-old was calling them). I currently have about 1/2 a gallon left in my freezer. (No way were we going to waste good booze by turning it back over to the margarita machine folks!) I am guessing that I am not officially tired of alcohol because I continue to consume all of the post-party goodies in my fridge as well - goodies as in beer mostly.

Second, just as soon as it gets here in the mail (or however it is being delivered to my house), I am planning to try a new diet called, "The Yoga Body Diet". (Wow, Mom! I can hear you rolling your eyes from here!) I am not doing it so much for the weight loss (although, hell, who I am kidding? That would be a nice side-effect), but more for the assessment tests and yoga moves to support health, weight loss and general relaxation. Despite my undisciplined post-culinary school state these days, I still feel kinda stressed, so I figured, ancient discipline based on centering yourself to achieve a calm relaxation? What could it hurt, right? Also, I am pretty excited about getting some new recipes (the book has about 75 of them) added to my already fairly extensive repertoire. I will definitely keep (all four of) you updated on how those recipes and the diet program itself stacks up.

That is about all I have for now and, really, based on my level of anti-productivity these days, that is pretty dang good, if I do say so myself. More to come soon....