Most commercial salad dressings, I am sorry to say, are filled with chemicals. Choose them carefully, and consider making your own. It’s easier than you think.
Dressings and sauces are an opportunity to perfect and balance vegetables with nutrient-dense oils, vegetable proteins, and spices. Here’s a nice tahini dress to serve over cooked or raw greens, sprouts, carrots, peppers, and scallions. I am waiting impatiently for my Thai basil to grow to add to this one.
You can make a base of this dressing, and change it up by adding one or more of the following to small batches of it: Cilantro, lots of garlic, Thai chili, peanuts, lime
Ah, the holidays. I grew up in a large Catholic family, so Christmas was a celebration of food and board games – it was magical and fun. This time of year can be magical, filled with light and sweetness, but there’s also a bit of stress. The stress of expectation, of awkward gatherings, of being surrounded by less than healthful food. There is stress, too, in the ways life has changed since we were children.
Through the years that I’ve kept this blog, I’ve written quite a bit about the holidays – and how the heck we stay healthy during this time of year. Here is a roundup of posts that speak to moving through this season in a healthful joyful way. Enjoy!
In need of a truly extraordinary holiday gift? How about finding yourself & someone you love in paradise? There’s still room in our Costa Rica 5-day retreat – Feb 17-22.
My boon of elderberry enabled me to, in addition to making tons of elderberry syrup, make elderberry ginger cider – a variation of fire cider. For this one, I relied on ginger and honey as a base and kept it simple yet strong. It’s delicious and I’ll use it the way you would fire cider – take a shot during cold and flu season to warm up and keep the creeping crud away.
Want to explore Elderberry and Elderberry Flower Essence? Immerse yourself in the transformative powers of elderberry, boost your immunity, savor culinary delights, and embark on a spiritual journey. Learn through my blog post Elderberry and Elderberry Flower Essence: Heal with Nature’s Wisdom.
My elderberry ginger cider is a variation on fire cider. Use it the way you would fire cider – take a shot during cold and flu season to warm up and keep the creeping crud away.
Course Drinks
Keyword Elderberry, Elderberry Ginger Cide
Prep Time 10 minutesminutes
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
Equipment
Medium Saucepan
Ingredients
4cupsfresh elderberriesclean and free of stems
2slivers of fresh peeled gingerabout 1 Tsp
1/2onionchopped
3garlic cloves
1cupapple cider vinegar
2Tbsplocal honey
Instructions
Warm elderberries in a medium saucepan for 15-20 minutes over medium-low heat. Let cool.
Place ingredients in a clean bottle.
Place top on the bottle, and mix by inverting the bottle several times. Make sure the liquid covers the berries
Leave in a cool dry place for six weeks, inverting the bottle to mix every 3 or 4 days.
Remove elderberries from the cider.
Notes
The cider is the elixir, but you might use the elderberries in a pickle also.
The science is in – it’s the diet you stick with, and the one that honors energy balance.
I’m reviewing the evidence on weight and yoga for the 3rd edition of my CE program, and I came across this info from the NIH Obesity Review Panel…interesting.
A variety of dietary approaches can produce weight loss. It’s all about which one you follow over time while not overeating. Do you like meat? Zone and the like works. Rather focus on plant-based proteins? Absolutely. Whatever path you choose to a healthy weight (I personally lean toward Mediterranean – people can stick with it, it’s nutrient-dense, and it’s a delicious way to eat) you’re going to have to come to terms with reducing your – I’ve gotta say it – calories.
That’s where tools like mindfulness and meditation come in – they can help us to find our way to change a little more easily. These practices help us disconnect from the immediate urge to inhale delicious foods when our body doesn’t really need them, and to relax, pause, and make a more skillful choice. Really. It can happen. It’s a practice for sure, but it can happen.
The panel found that the following dietary approaches (listed in alphabetical order below) are associated with weight loss when a reduced dietary energy intake is achieved:
A diet from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) guidelines, which focuses on targeting food groups rather than formal, prescribed energy restriction while still achieving an energy deficit;
Higher protein diet (25 percent of total calories from protein, 30 percent of total calories from fat, 45 percent of total calories from carbohydrate) with provision of foods that realized energy deficit;
Higher protein Zone®-type diet (5 meals/day, each with 40 percent of total calories from carbohydrate, 30 percent of total calories from protein, 30 percent of total calories from fat) without a formal prescribed energy restriction diet but with realized energy deficit;
Lacto-ovo vegetarian-style diet with prescribed energy restriction
Low-calorie diet with prescribed energy restriction;
Low-carbohydrate diet (initially less than 20 g/day carbohydrate) without formal prescribed energy restriction but with a realized energy deficit;
Low-fat, vegan-style diet (10 to 25 percent of total calories from fat) without prescribed energy restriction but with realized energy deficit;
Low-fat diet (20 percent of total calories from fat) without formal prescribed energy restriction but with realized energy deficit;
Low-glycemic load diet either with formal prescribed energy restriction or without formal prescribed energy restriction but with realized energy deficit;
Lower fat (≤30 percent fat), high-dairy (4 servings/day) diets with or without increased fiber and/or low-glycemic index/load foods (low-glycemic load) with prescribed energy restriction;
Macronutrient-targeted diets (15 percent or 25 percent of total calories from protein; 20 percent or 40 percent of total calories from fat; 35 percent, 45 percent, 55 percent, or 65 percent of total calories from carbohydrate) with prescribed energy restriction;
Mediterranean-style diet with prescribed energy restriction;
Moderate-protein diet (12 percent of total calories from protein, 58 percent of total calories from carbohydrate, 30 percent of total calories from fat) with provision of foods that realized energy deficit;
Diet of high-glycemic load or low-glycemic load meals with prescribed energy restriction; and
The AHA Step 1 diet (with prescribed energy restriction of 1,500 to 1,800 kcal/day, <30 percent of total calories from fat, <10 percent of total calories from saturated fat). Strength of evidence: High
All these different approaches to weight management can work, if you pay attention energy balance. Everyone is different – something different works for each of us. I would say if you are looking of shift your diet and find a healthier weight, ponder the above list. What feels most satisfying to you?
Combine the approach above that is most satisfying with the emotional work of yoga & mindfulness and poof! That’s how we do it. We learn to eat a bit less, enjoy a bit more, and move, and manage stress.
When someone says theirs is the only way to weight loss, they are wrong. There are many paths to healthy weight. If you’re having trouble finding yours, stay connected with this blog and my work. I have lots of tools, resources and support to help you find your way.
You might work individually with me.
You might attend a workshop.
If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet, that’s a great place to start.
Be well and enjoy the holiday season.
What is it about traveling that allows our spirits to soar?
As most of you know, I have lead programs at Kripalu for about a decade and received my yoga training there more than a decade before re-landing there as faculty. I have also studied with a teacher who loves to travel, and her inspiration has enabled two trips now that I will never forget – going to Damanhur in Italy for a dandelion initiation, and to Vieques to commune with the tropics and the ensparklated biobay there. Oh, and I lived part time on Kauai, part time on Nantucket for 13 years.
When guests come to Kripalu, it is often a spiritual pilgrimage. They save, sometimes for years, to be able to come. They dream of the transformation that getting away to a beautiful place, with loving expert teachers and guides, to practice soul-work with other aspirational beings, enables. Then they come, and it happens. It happens.
So, it is a milestone for me to offer my first tropical retreat. A group of us are going to a beautiful spa in Costa Rica in February, that magical land of mountains, tropics, monkeys in the trees, cloud forests and volcanos. We are going to have fun, do some yoga, connect with the medicine gardens at the spa where we will be staying, watch monkeys dance in the trees, meditate, clear, connect and recharge.
There is something about stepping out of your life, particularly to take a spiritual journey. It’s an opportunity to look at your life, appreciate it, and fine-tune your path. Somehow, meditation is more accessible. Somehow, insight is more accessible.
I know from the years I spent on Kauai and in other tropical locales that there is an energetic activation that also happens. The simplest way to say it is that it opens your chakras – the energy organs of your body. The tropics are incredibly expansive. So, doing energy work (like we’ll be doing in Costa Rica) allows big shifts to happen. It literally gives you an opportunity to re-arrange the building blocks of who you are.
So, for those of you going with me to the south, I am honored and eager to guide you on a gentle expansion – and for a few of you I’m sure, a great bursting open into new ways of being. I am creating ceremonies and rituals to guide us, speaking with the master gardeners there to ensure we connect with the magic of Costa Rica’s magnificent plant world.
As of this writing, there is still room in our tropical retreat. Interested in joining us? Check out this page for more information and to reserve your spot.
Whether you come with us or not, arranging your spiritual life with a collection of daily practices, regular connections and occasional journeys is a excellent mix that sparks and strengthens the soul and charges the spirit. May your path have more pleasure than pain, and take you home.
Namaste!
