Author Archives: Aissa

Peas Please Juice

22 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in juice, Natural Health, Superfoods, Vegan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

There was something especially refreshing about this juice. Might be because I had an afternoon attempting to dehydrate myself into Aissa Jerky. The peas and lemon and mint made it taste bright and sweet. Give peas a chance…? blush. Had to be said.

sunshine sunday juicy goodness

sunshine sunday juicy goodness

Peas Please Juice 

  • A half inch in diameter bunch of wheatgrass
  • Two inch (5cm) piece of cucumber
  • One unwaxed lemon
  • Two stalks of celery
  • A slice of organic ginger (top of my small baby finger)*
  • One unwaxed green pear
  • About 100g of mange-tout (approx. half a cup if you stood them up in it…)
  • Six mint leaves
  • Six oregano leaves

*I use all organic in my juices but if that is not possible do try and have the ginger organic. Non org can have been irradiated.

Peas please juice in the herbs

Peas please juice in the herbs

This makes a lovely juice. Bright green and chirpy. Perfect for a sunny evening, or a dull cold one really think it would cheer me up in winter too! 🙂 Good for the digestion and immune system. Deliciously healthy. Xs Aissa

 

Video

Energising Yoga for a lazy sunny Sunday

22 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Natural Health, yoga

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

I woke up feeling out of sorts. A little stiff and not really refreshed. So I had my “Not so smooth energy smoothie” for breakfast, a giant mug of organic coffee (that large crashing sound was my health guru myth collapsing ). Still feeling blah decided a get up and go wake up yoga routine is what I needed. I have followed this video before.

This routine is very well thought out. Challenging but never too much. She gives options as to how far to take poses. If something seems too much you don’t have to stop your yoga and just watch whilst feeling inferior. I did watch her do the headstand, it was a good reminder on correct positioning, as I have bad habits! I feel amazing after it, all that blood to my head really woke me up. My limbs are acting like my own again. I ready for the outside world once more 🙂 Hope you guys like it too. have an amazing day! Xs Aissa.

Sunshine, salad, kale and strawberries.

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in juice, Natural Health, Savoury, Superfoods, Vegan, yoga

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

O what a glorious few days of sun we have had. Got up into the high twenties (low 80sF). I got home from work, dropped shopping, jumped into shorts and was out the door. Sun, sun, sun sun O how I adore the big glowing ball of radiation! I practiced my yoga outdoors again, curling my toes in the warm grass. I reached up into the solid blue sky in my shoulder stand. I was extremely warm but also the heat increased my flexibility, my happiness to be in the good weather may have helped too! A lovely hour practice- including sun salutes as I mentioned in my last post- as it seemed rude not to 😉

I listened to the radio, read and just lay there for another hour and a half, as if there was nothing else I had to do. You have to take the sun when you can get it here in Ireland. You never know when the clouds will reappear.

I am still doing my healthy juice a day. I wanted something super green! I had eaten a plum and green apple while laying in the grass. I decided that was enough fruit so made a veg based one. It is CRAZY green and REALLY NOT sweet. So much so I had a beautiful ripe strawberry with it to balance it out. Now that I’m typing I’m thinking I could have diluted it… but eh!

kale and strawberry

kale and strawberry

Kale and Stawberries etc.

  • Four leaves and stalks of flat kale (cavolo nero)
  • A bunch of wheatgrass just under one inch in diameter (approx 2cm)
  • Three small carrots (equal to one large)
  • An inch long 1mm(.05inch) thick piece of organic ginger*
  • Half that amount of turmeric root
  • A couple of mint leaves
  • Optional: a quarter teaspoon of magnesium to balance the oxalic acid in the kale
  • Two ripe strawberries- to eat with the juice
  • I recommend diluting it with some water or water kefir

*organic as sometimes non-organic can have been irradiated

I made a salad with organic leaves, sunflower sprouts and miso

Organic salad

Organic salad

 

 

Grass Green Juice, Green Grass Yoga!

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in juice, Natural Health, Superfoods, Vegan, yoga

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Green Grass Juice- pre the juicing!

Green Grass Juice- pre the juicing!

Summer continues to be summer here in Ireland. It is a rare and beautiful thing. Every free moment I have is being spent in sunshine. I am building up vitamin D stores and the pale is going off me too 🙂

After work today I headed to a grassy sunny spot. It was over 25C (about 80F) lovely, sunny a hint of a breeze. I decided to do my yoga routine. My neighbours prob. now think me a little odd…. well odd and flexible! It was great, I have never done yoga outdoors on soft thick grass before. I started with sun salutes, seemed appropriate, headed into Triangle and Warrior one and two. I did a more yin practice after that, open hip positions, Pigeon, Double pigeon, Swan, Mermaid, leg stretches,some back bends and shoulder stands. I ended with some core, Crow and Shavasana Feeling the grass and gripping the uneven surface of the earth with my toes really focused my attention. It was much more calming away from the distractions of my living room. The breeze reminded me to breath, the grass tickling my nose helped me relax. If you get the chance and have your vegan sunscreen I highly recommend it.

I took this image from etnayoga.blogspot.ie I am not familiar with her blog. I had a glance it seems nice, I must go back and have a proper look. I think this simple drawing is very effective.

sun salute

sun salute

I stayed out reading and warming my bones for another hour or so after. When I came back in I was ready for a refreshing anti-oxidant hit.

In honour of the good weather and the outdoors I made Green Grass Juice!

  • Six dark flat kale leaves and stalks (Cavolo Nero)
  • An inch an a half in diameter of wheatgrass
  • One unwaxed golden delicious apple
  • one little carrot
  • One unwaxed lemon
  • A 2mm (.10 of an inch) thick slice of organic ginger
  • Roughly the same amount of organic turmeric root
  • Three stalks inc. leaves of oregano
  • Five mint leaves
  • Optional: A dash of organic apple cider vinegar (one with the mother)
  • Optional: A double shot of water kefir- for the good bacteria and yeasts
  • Optional: A third of a teaspoon of magnesium powder*

*I put in magnesium as I worry about the oxalic acids in the kale, it will bind with the magnesium from what I have read.

This is enough to make two small juices or one big mug of a juice. My partner found it a little sour, prob. due to the giant lemon and apple cider vinegar. I like the sour and intense green taste. If you are new to green juices or wheatgrass, perhaps half the wheatgrass and add another apple. This juice is supports the bodies natural detoxification process. It is alkalising and energising. The ginger and turmeric are good for digestion and have anti-inflammatory compounds. It is packed with vitamin C , the B vitamins and vitamin K and the super lemony-ness was really refreshing after all my time in the sun! It tastes summery.

Grass Green Juice!

Grass Green Juice!

Wishing you all good weather and a good yoga practice. Xs Aissa

Rose Cake Cookies or Turkish Delight Biscuits?!

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in Biscuits, Cookies, Vegan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

At times I want a biscuit that is crunchy, gives a lovely snap as you take a bite. This time I wanted a cake textured one. Something a bit different too. I went through my batter splattered recipe book and discovered rose biscuits I had made up last year. They had ground almonds and rose, which is such a great combination and a lovely Turkish Delight flavour. I thought with the addition of some apple puree they could gain a soft texture- perfect for what I fancied!

Rose flavoured in blue light of the evening.

Rose flavoured in blue light of the evening- that gave a soft fuzzy effect evidently!

I am not too sure what to call these. Hence the clumsily named post 🙂 Might come back when my head is in a space where I can make a decision and commit on a title.

Rose Cake Cookies vs Turkish Delight Biscuits

  • Two dessertspoons of apple puree at room temperature
  • One generous dessertspoon of organic coconut oil
  • One dessertspoon of blanched almond butter.*
  • Four drops of a food grade rose oil or one dessertspoon of rose water
  • Half a teaspoon of vanilla powder or one teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • Third of a teaspoon of almond extract- just enough to give a hint of flavour
  • Three dessertspoons of dark agave
  • One dessertspoon of coconut blossom sugar ( if unavailable you can use rapadura sugar )
  • Half a cup of ground almonds
  • Half a cup of wholemeal spelt flour
  • One teaspoon of aluminium free baking powder
  • A small pinch of Himalayan pink salt or good sea salt (eighth to quarter of a tsp )

*You could use cashew nut butter if you do not have this. Do not substitute normal roasted almond butter it has a very different flavour. Blanched almond butter is a pale sweet wonder of a nut butter with a light creamy flavour. Closer to cashew nut butter than a whole skin almond butter.

Preheat the oven to 150C/ 300F. Prepare a baking tray. This recipe makes roughly 12- 14 biscuits / cookies.

These are super easy to make. One caution though- make sure the apple puree is room temperature or your coconut oil will go all solid and not mix properly. I was impatient. I had to stick the perspex bowl in the preheating oven for a few mins so everything would melt together!

Get two bowls. In one add your coconut oil and blanched almond butter and mash them together. Add your almond extract and mash again.

If using rose oil add this now. If using rose water add this after the apple puree.

Add your agave and coconut sugar and really go to work on the ingredients. With energy combine the sweeteners with the fats until it is almost fluffy. Add the apple puree and mix again.

Wet ingredients- that I impatiently melted together this time!

Wet ingredients- that I impatiently melted together this time!

In your other bowl get ready to add the dry stuff. Add your ground almonds and press out any lumps. Add the spelt flour and vanilla powder (if using vanilla extract then go back and mix it into the wet ingredients!)

Now get a sieve and sieve in the baking powder and salt. Lumpy baking powder bits are a horrid thing to come across in a biccie. 😦

Dry ingredients- on my windowsill.

Dry ingredients- on my windowsill.

You will notice the dough texture is rather wet. More like a cake batter in fact! This is gooood, all is going according to plan! Maniacal laughter of making nice things to share Narhaahahha ha! Ahem.. yes the recipe.

By the teaspoon plop the dough/ batter on to your baking tray and give them a press down so they are a few mm thick ( approx. .10 of an inch). They will only spread a tiny bit, but just incase do leave a cm (under half an inch) gap between them.

I had a peek at nine minutes and took the opportunity to turn my tray around. They were done at twelve minutes. Leave them completely cool before eating. This is because they will continue to cook on the tray for a few minutes. Also if you eat them straight away the rose flavour is predominant. When they have cooled the rose calms down and the other flavours come out.

Turkish Delight will always remind me of my Nana. When I visited her she often had a round tin in the dresser. As an extra treat my sister and I would be offered some. She was an excellent baker and as you will know from other posts has inspired me. She taught my Mum how to bake and I grew up having the most excellent chocolate cake every birthday. Now I want cake! Vegan chocolate cake recipe coming soon!!

Hope you try them out. Xs Aissa

 

 

 

Colourful Juice

10 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in juice, Natural Health, Superfoods, Vegan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

 

Colours….

Colours….

Green juices have been all the rage for a while now. There are other lovely colours in our fruit and veg. I believe we should be eating and drinking as many different ones as possible! Therefor any colourful juice is great! Those colours indicate different antioxidants and nutrients all having their benefits. Not dissing the green! Green is fantabulous, chlorophyll rich, helps deliver oxygen, boosting energy. I always have a green goody in there like wheatgrass. Beetroot has vascular dilation effects and helps lower blood pressure. Great if you are about to do some exercise. The herbs I’ve added are good for your digestion and oregano leaf is a fantastic anti-microbial. With the a dash of water kefir it will do extra good things for your gut 🙂

Here is the uber juicy palette for my Colourful Juice

  • An bunch of wheatgrass an inch in diameter
  • Half a head of green oak leaf lettuce
  • A red beetroot
  • Two small carrots
  • A stalk of celery
  • A half cup of celery leaves
  • One green pear
  • Half a small cucumber- 3inch/9cm piece
  • A slice of ginger
  • A quarter inch / 5mm piece of turmeric
  • Three mint leaves
  • Three oregano leaves
  • Three sprigs of curly parsley
  • Optional: A double shot glass of water kefir.
Colourful Juice

Colourful Juice

Xs Aissa

 

Functional Sweet Treats with reishi!

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Chocolate, Gluten Free, Natural Health, No bake/ Raw, Superfoods, Sweets, Vegan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Functional Sweet Treats

Functional Sweet Treats

These are packed with good stuff! They taste pretty amazing too, if I don’t say so myself. Tomorrow I am helping to give a demonstration to nutrition students, it is on how to use medicinal mushrooms ( I did this morning, it went well 🙂 ). I am bringing along sweet goodies made with reishi mushroom powder. Reishi has been used for thousands of years. It is one of if not the first medicinal food to be written about, in China roughly 2,000 years ago!Paul Stamets is a good name to look up if you want know more about these natural powerhouses, his Ted talks are a good intro.

Savoury is generally they way we go when it comes to mushrooms but why not with cacao? Or blueberries? Think of the antioxidant levels! Picture the immune boosting! Discover their adaptogenic properties!! Imagine the tastiness!

Here we go Functional Sweet Treats

    • Two dessertspoons of goji berries. Soaked over night in just enough water to cover them. I used water kefir.*
    • Half a ripe avocado- should a bit of give to it when pressed and be going a dark sap green colour.
    • Two big dessertspoons of blueberries
    • A flat dessertspoon of organic coconut oil
    • Two generous dessertspoons of raw dark agave/ date syrup / maple syrup. Whichever you prefer.
    • A generous cup plus two dessertspoons of ground almonds
    • Two generous teaspoons of raw cacao powder
    • A sachet of reishi powder which includes mint, licorice, star anise and stevia. Great for those adrenals. *
    • Optional: Half a teaspoon of pre-gelatised maca powder
    • A half teaspoon of vanilla powder or the scraped inside of one vanilla bean.
    • A quarter of a teaspoon of good quality sea salt or himalayian pink salt.
    • A third of a cup of organic desiccated/shredded coconut. For sprinkling on top or rolling in.

*This is about double the goji needed. I do more incase some stay a bit hard and eat the left overs. Yum.

*If you are using reishi capsules make sure there are not tons bulking agents, these could change the flavour. One capsules may do, go by taste.

Grab your soaked goji berries. It really is up to you what you would prefer. I don’t want goji lumps on my cacao reishi fantasticalness so I cut or shred my softened gogis. If you like big hits of the gogi then just chop them in two. Put them to one side for use as a topping later.

Mash your avocado and coconut oil together. Add your one dessertspoon of the blueberries and mash again. Should be a creamy paste.

Add the liquid sweetener and Mash MASH mash… again. Add the other spoon of blueberries and mix through. I press this less, as I like having more whole pieces of blueberries too.

Colourful even in the orange light of my kitchen diner.

Colourful even in the orange light of my kitchen-diner.

In another bowl combine all the dry ingredients (except for the coconut, that is for on top). Make sure there are no lumps of ground almonds or cacao. Sprinkle the salt in so it is evenly dispersed.

Dry goodies

Dry goodies

Add the dry things to the omega rich, mct containing, antioxidant abundant….stuff. Mix, stir, combine and merge the ingredients. Pressing the mixture to make sure the fats are taken up well.

Here is the one I used

Here is the one I used

My preferred Option A: You can roll them into teaspoon size balls. Prepare a plate with your gojis and one with coconut. Roll the balls in goji and then roll them in the coconut. Pop them on a dish and stick them in the fridge to set. They need to live in the fridge (and die in your tummy) as they will go squidgy when left unchilled.

Option B: Get a 7.5 inch cake tin/ tart dish and spread the mix a one centimetre deep. Ah the mixed measurements! That is 20cm cake tin and a quarter inch thick! 😉 You can the sprinkle and press the goji and coconut on top. Pop in the fridge for fifteen minutes. Take out and cut into one inch (2.5cm) squares. Put in the freezer to set. It is happier in there all the time really. It gets shy and melty at room temperature.

Hope you like these!Xs Aissa

P.S. There is a wealth of info on line but here are a few of links about reishi!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stamets/reishi-mushrooms_b_2200808.html

http://www.alive.com/articles/view/17705/reishi_mushroom

And for a bit more of the nitty gritty science bit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92757/

How’s the Ferment?

05 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Fermentation, Gluten Free, Natural Health, Superfoods, Traditional, Vegan

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

About a month ago I posted my Sauerkraut recipe. Any one join me at the time? Here is what mine looks like now. The water is nice and clear. No floating scumminess. Nothing on the glass above the water line. This is a sign all is well. It has a good strong vinegary smell too. Fermented foods are sadly missing from many of our diets, and they are so good for us!

The backlighting is flattering!

The backlighting is flattering!

 

I also keep Water Kefir and Kombucha. The water kefir is very active in the current warm weather. I changed mine last night. I thought it would be nice to add extra flavour. The orange colour comes from the rapadura sugar I feed it, i always put in a little ginger too. After straining it I added organic parsley and mint. It is a lovely drink for these warm long evenings. Filled with billions of good live bacteria and yeasts, fantastic for keeping your gut happy and healthy. I hope the summer will continue in this form and in another month I will be sitting in the sun having my sauerkraut with a big organic salad! 🙂

Xs Aissa

Veg-extravaganza Juice!

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in juice, Superfoods, Vegan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

A typical Irish day, warm and sunny with a light breeze to start. It got a bit dull, still and humid, has completely clouded over and is now lashing rain. It’s irregularity is dependable. Not as dependable as my daily juice routine! Was that a segway? Did a clumsily commit segway-ness?

Veg-tastic Juice pre juicing

Veg-tastic Juice pre juicing

We have beautiful fresh organic herbs in the health shop I work in. So delighted to be able to add these nutrient packed refreshing goodies to my juice.  All the ingredients I use are organic. I know that not everyone has easy access to organic foods, but I would esp. try to get organic ginger as it can have been irradiated otherwise.

Veg-extravaganza Juice!

  • A an inch in diameter bunch of wheatgrass
  • A GIANT pak choi leaf/ two average ones
  • Five catalogna leaves
  • A three inch piece of cucumber
  • Half a purple kohl rabi
  • Four small red cabbage leaves
  • A stalk of celery
  • One medium unwaxed green apple
  • A couple of dessertspoons of peas! ( I had some defrosted organic marrowfat so threw them in!)
  • Half an unwaxed lemon
  • Five sprigs and stems of parsley
  • A sprig of mint (had about 6 leaves on it)
  • A slice of turmeric root (1/4 inch)
  • A slice of ginger ( about the same )

Packed full of nutrients, antioxidants and flavour. The lemon parsley and mint prevent the bitter green leaves from being over powering. The mint particularly lifts the flavour. You could use rocket instead of the catalogna leaves. You could have oak leaf lettuce instead of pak choi. Lime would be lovely instead lemon! Play around make your know Veg-tastic version!

Veg-tastic Juice! I shared mine :-)

Veg-extravaganza Juice! I shared mine 🙂

Xs Aissa