Take Control of Your Diet
One of the most empowering things that you can do in your life is to take control of what you are eating. If you are eating a lot of processed foods bought in the supermarket, then you are not in charge of what goes into your body. How much salt and fat is inside that product and what kind of fat is it? How does the chemical balance, which has been put in place by the manufacturer to preserve that product, react with your own metabolism? There are so many variables to consider when you are not eating fresh food, and equally importantly, preparing it yourself.
Learning to cook and discovering the nutritional make-up of foods can really benefit you in so many ways, including losing weight and feeling more alive. Recently there have been huge leaps in the understanding of nutritional science and how foods are processed by our bodies. The importance of certain essential fatty acids, like omega 3, and redressing the imbalance of omega 6 essential fatty acids in our foods, with too much soy, grain fed livestock and vegetable oils – all rich in omega 6 – in our diets, which is often something like 40 times that of omega 3. We are generally not eating enough oily fish, nuts and seeds in our diets today.
What is the result of this? Too much omega 6 causes inflammation within our bodies and what are some of the chronic conditions this causes? Arthritis – inflammation of the joints; cardiovascular diseases – inflammation of the heart’s arteries; strokes – inflammation of the cerebrovascular; and there is speculation that depression may be caused by inflammation of the brain. Diet/ what we eat and how we eat is the most integral factor in our propensity to develop diseases. A lot of foods in the supermarket do not address this and their prime reason for existence is to make money for their manufacturers – food technology is about durability not nutrition.
Food is your best medicine, not some vitamin pill or pharmaceutical – these are again mainly about making money for their manufacturers – otherwise they would be free wouldn’t they? My advice is take charge of what you eat and how that food is prepared. You will find it can also be highly creative and you may derive some pleasure and pride in the act of cooking a great meal – which is healthy and delicious. You can also save money along the way.
Cooking classes are a great way to discover nutritional information whilst having some tasty fun. My Sacred Chef cooking school, here on the sunshine coast, focuses on preparing food that is both healthy and delicious – you will also receive a take home recipe pack with additional nutritional notes and articles, which I wrote for magazines like WellBeing, Conscious Living and Eco Living Health Aware; plus you receive a free health magazine too!
©Sacred Chef
Every class is full of healthy information and great recipes.
www.nofreudnoprozac.org for more information about omega 3
Blood Cleansing Morning Heart Starter
Ganesh god of fresh beginnings.
Wicked Juice
1 large beetroot
1 tbspn size piece of ginger
1 pear
1 green apple
1 lime
½ lemon
1 orange peeled
10 carrots.
A stimulating & evocative concoction that will put hairs on your chest, figuratively speaking of course (but I have heard a fashion whisper that hirsute is making a comeback) . The beetroot & carrot are great blood cleansers.
Drink this juice every morning for a month and you will notice the difference in your energy levels and perhaps some weight loss too!
Sacred Chef was WellBeing’s food editor for many years and wrote and read many articles about good health and nutrition.
Sacred Chef WellBeing articles click here
For more Sudha Hamilton articles www.midasword.com.au
Sacred Chef cooking school on the sunshine coast is a healthy and delicious way to spend a day!
Journal Weekender Interviews the Sacred Chef
Quest Newspaper’s Journal Weekender interviewed the Sacred Chef about his Vegetarian Cooking Class as part of the Real Food Festival on 10 & 11 Sept 2011
When did you fall in love with food and cooking?
I remember being drawn to restaurants and exotic menu items as a child, trying things like snails and steak tartare when I travelled to Paris with my mother on a trip away. I had this desire to experience great food and was very aware of just how bad Australian food was in the nineteen seventies. I started cooking in high school, doing home economics – which was also a great way to meet girls at the time. I started in restaurants when I was seventeen and was soon the sous chef at Zorba the Buddha vegetarian restaurant in Sydney’s Taylor Square, in the early nineteen eighties.
What’s the first dish you can remember making?
I think something out of a Margaret Fulton cookbook – probably a spinach pie or a quiche. I know that I made so much butternut pumpkin soup in my early years, cooking in restaurants and cafes, that I stopped making it for about 20 years.
What is your background in vegetarian food?
I started at the Rajneesh Meditation Centre as the commune chef, moved to their restaurant in Taylor Square, managed their cafe in Oxford St Paddington, before moving to start Doc Dinkum’s Natural Cafe in Willoughby, Laurie’s Vegetarian Restaurants in Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Randwick & Bondi before starting my own vegetarian restaurant in King St, Newtown called Rude Rumbles.
What is your favourite vegetarian dish?
I am currently doing a lot of tapas – goat’s cheese and tapenade grilled crostini; roasted red capsicum salsa, buffalo mozzarella and rocket pesto pizzettes; leek and tomato Spanish omelettes.
I also love Thai salads with crunchy raw veg, glass noodles, mint, chilli, fresh lime and toasted seeds and nuts.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about vegetarian food?
That it is an either, or, situation, when in actual fact 95% of all cuisines are about preparing vegetables, with the cooking of meat and flesh generally being for special occasions. Traditionally most people could not afford to eat meat every night, and whether it be French, Italian, Lebanese, Japanese and so on, these cuisines are rich in recipes for the preparation of grains and vegetables. Now we know, that it is far healthier to eat a diet with a wide array of vegetables, legumes and grains, so it is in everyone’s interest to learn how to prepare these ingredients.
Our diet, unfortunately, reflects the industrial approach to food manufacturing we have taken in the west and we eat too much fast food because we are inundated by its advertising. We need to understand that market forces will not, and do not, take into account our required optimal levels of nutritional health, and we are paying dearly for it, in health costs in our hospitals; when it is too late. Heart disease and bowel cancer, are our top two killers, and they are a direct result of our poor diets, in conjunction with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
What’s the one thing you hope people take away from your Real Food Festival cooking class?
That preparing meals with vegetables is both easy and very tasty – that you don’t have to miss out on meat – rather you can add in lots of delicious dishes made with sensational vegetable produce. It is a mind set thing, more than anything else, we all get stuck in doing the same old things in the kitchen, that maybe mum used to do, and we need to realise that the world has changed. There are now hundreds of fresh ingredients available, that were not previously available in our parent’s generation, so we need to source good quality vegetables and try new ways of preparing them beyond meat and three veg. Cooking classes are a chance to tap into some information and inspiration, get enthused about being alive, eating, drinking and creating something beautiful.
Thanks Lisa!
Cooking school on the sunshine coast with the Sacred Chef, where everyday can be an opportunity to celebrate being alive!
Diet a Way of Life
The Greek root of the word diet is diatia, which refers to a way of life toward wellness, and is more than just a regime of eating do’s and don’ts. It understands the link between how you live your life and what and how you eat. Epicurus the Greek philosopher of BC 341-270 stressed the importance of eating with friends, and I personally know that when I eat with good friends that I eat with a greater degree of joy and dont eat as much as when I eat alone. Good conversation and the sharing of gratitude for a well prepared dish is the reason why, I think, that we first started eating out at friends places and restaurants in the first place. The level of noise in most restaurants in Australian cities has taken much of the joy of keen conversation away, above the ‘night club’ yell, “how’s the steak?” Where we eat and how we eat impacts on our digestion and therefore ability to benefit from good food. Dishes in restaurants have to be designed to excite and rise above the clamor of the hustle and bustle of busy eating houses, they are therefore usually rich and high in sugar and fats. How do you get noticed in a crowded room? By being extra spicy or so sensual that I melt in your mouth. The ambience within restaurants is part of a cyclical fashion trend and I am confident that it will shift again, away from the current din.
Cooking school on the sunshine coast with the Sacred Chef, where the ambience is perfect for conviviality and a life affirming pleasure in good food!
Redeeming the Coconut
The Cocosplit team’s Mission Statement: COCONUT REDEMPTION
These two words acknowledge that coconut as food was, from the 1960s, presented to the world by the marketers of competing food oils as a danger to heart health in spite of its role since antiquity as a key component in the diet of tropical coastal communities.
Since the unqualified attacks on the value of coconut in the diet, independent research into the complex world of dietary fats and oils has exonerated coconut..
The Cocosplit team (Mike, Richard and Owen) is dedicated to join the many others who promulgate the many benefits of coconut in the diet, rebutting the wrongful claims that are still being made by competing marketers. Likewise many diet and health professionals in importing countries are not yet fully aware of recent research findings about the particular benefits of diverse dietary fats and oils.
The principal purpose of the Cocosplit team is to provide this simple yet remarkably effective tool, Cocosplit, that gives simple direct access to the juice and kernel of the mature coconut. Tools for extraction of the kernel from the half-nut complete the “do-it-yourself” kit for preparing fresh coconut to eat direct or process further.
Links are provided here to many other web-sites, opening the door to a wide range of reports on coconuts, coconut juice and oil, and their many potential health benefits.
Cooking school on the sunshine coast with the Sacred Chef
The Sacred Chef recommends the Coconut Splitter as a fantastic kitchen tool to facilitate greater use of the true superfood – coconut!
The Pleasures of Food
Pleasures of Food
By Sudha Hamilton
Published in WellBeing Magazine
I have always been passionate about food. It has, in fact, been a cornerstone of my existence. I recognised the signs early on, when I did not come off the bottle (alas breast feeding was out of vogue at this time) until I was about four years old, and I made quite a commotion about it then. That warm white milk spurting forth from that rubber teat was obviously a sensual and nourishing feed. Following that I remember a wonderful meal that mother used to make me, consisting of warm runny soft boiled eggs mashed up with torn crustless fresh white bread, the merest splash of milk and salt and pepper, mmmmm.
Ah food…it is a heady mix of psychological spells wound up in tasty matter. Foods that comfort us, foods that excite us and foods that calm us down. Our palate and our attachments to certain foods are I think all born of a time when we inhabited a yeasty humid world of milk sops and wet nappies. Textural considerations are of utmost importance when discovering dishes that provide us with inner sensual happiness: viscous soups and sauces, gooey eggs and soft steaming scoops of mashed potato, or balls of sweetened sticky rice and slippery steamed dim sum.
Eating food is pleasure and filling the empty tummy with something very scrummy is best. Pleasure. Is it a universal primary motivation? Or is it simply the avoidance of pain? Is hunger, once satisfied, the end of the matter? Or do we seek to enter that satiation by choosing just what we put in our mouths? The pursuit of pleasure: to achieve sensual gratification. Is it inextricably linked with our need for nourishment? Babies must have succour and must be touched to survive, and thrive to adulthood. Food in my opinion is not just fuel and not simply the sum of its parts. It is more than a list of kilojoules, fats, carbs and proteins. Like love it must be made pleasurable to do its work well.
Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) states: “The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When such pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together. The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life.” However, perhaps Oscar Wilde put it more succinctly when he said, “Pleasure is the only thing to live for.”
Has my passionate relationship with food ever got out of hand? Yes. I was a fat child for a couple of years, and I paid the price with my slim, bordering on acetic father, ridiculing me whenever possible about my new found weight. Lolly addiction was a real problem for me at this time, as my mother, who did not enjoy making cut lunches, would endow me with forty cents tuckshop money and I would invest it at the corner shop in a large white paper bag stuffed with mixed lollies. I would share these with my best friend at the time, and he would entertain me with half his lunch, which consisted of sliced white bread sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. So as you can see my flirtation with food as pleasure flourished a long time ago. Trips to the dentist, despite all that fluoride in the water, were far too common.
Appetite and control
Appetite – the desire to eat until one is full, or to eat a certain kind of food; to experience a particular feeling as that substance slides down your gullet. Control or denial – the decision not to satisfy that desire and to go without, or to distract oneself by exercising; having sex or working. Or to appease or tease, by allowing only one mouthful, or two or three mouthfuls, or just a homoeopathic dose of your bodies desired dish. The sins involving food and the bible’s condemnation of gluttony inhabit us culturally and permeate all realms of our western civilisation. The way fat people are ostracised in our communities and portrayed in popular media as sad laughing stocks, and perhaps we all secretly feel that our derision will inspire them to lose weight and return to the company of the slim.
Can you remember the power of the lolly? Or do you have children who have reignited your experience with this over whelming obsession with these sugared jewels? The startling variety of colours, shapes and flavours. Surely these are the building blocks of taste experience for us all, as we sit quietly on the footpath outside the local deli sucking upon that first lozenge of truth. Milk bottles; musk sticks; bananas and sherbets, cobbers, raspberries, snakes and jelly babies, just to name a few of these highly desirables. Of course these addictions were managed in a cloak of normality, whilst competing at sport and doing homework, but always at the core of the pleasure principle was the lolly… and for me pleasure was life. I remember going to visit my maternal grandfather who was a doctor and lived in another geographical state, and he had a huge jar of jelly babies on top of the fridge. I thought this was great as we didn’t have anything like this at home and he was a doctor after all. Such was the alluring power of the lolly that it permeated even the highest levels of society.
Later, working in a liquor store I came upon that same phenomenon again; but this time for adults. Shiny bottles of spirits and wines were their lolly equivalents. I could feel their hardly suppressed excitement as they fingered the bottles and read those colourful labels with gleaming tiny gold and silver medals stuck to them. Alcoholics; drug addicts and sugar fiends we are all dependent on the balance between our appetites and controls, and the psychology of our passions. What did the Buddha say, “that all life is suffering and suffering is caused by desire.”
What about the neurological pleasure systems in the brain? Michael A. Bozarth from theUniversity ofNew York’s Dept of Psychology says “Neurological research has identified a biological mechanism mediating behavior motivated by events commonly associated with pleasure in humans. These events are termed “rewards” and are viewed as primary factors governing normal behavior. The subjective impact of rewards (e.g., pleasure) can be considered essential (e.g., Young, 1959) or irrelevant (e.g., Skinner, 1953) to their effect on behavior, but the motivational effect of rewards on behavior is universally acknowledged by experimental psychologists.
Motivation can be considered under two general rubrics—appetitive and aversive motivation. Appetitive motivation concerns behavior directed toward goals that are usually associated with positive hedonic processes; food, sex, and wine are three such goal objects. Aversive motivation involves escaping from some hedonically unpleasant condition; the pain from a headache, the chill from a cold winter’s night are among the list of conditions that give rise to aversive motivation.”
Hedonism then appears to be something that we should understand. The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary defines hedonism as “belief in pleasure as the highest good and mankind’s proper aim”. Personally I have been a big fan of hedonism and have lived my life as hedonistically as possible. However, having been brought up in a Christian /Presbyterian household, where hedonism was given a pretty bad name, it was necessary to throw off the shackles of the church’s wowserism and to embark single mindedly upon the pursuit of pleasure. I imagine that many people reading this have felt similarly about their lives in terms of giving to themselves and grasping the true meaning of ‘charity begins at home’ – and in my case the kitchen.
One of the most fulfilling aspects of cooking that I have found is making up new dishes. When you are cooking everyday for hundreds of people, and although often making batches of the same dishes, it is in my nature to want to break out and try something completely different. I was at this stage in my own little restaurant cum takeaway and like many young people I found pleasure in novelty and variety. I had one particular customer, who by tacit arrangement, would receive whatever I could challenge myself to come up with. A dish or plate created right then and there with no prior thought, and as luck would have it, he would often arrive at the busiest possible time during service. I would be swearing sweating and smiling, and making haste with the pans. Usually the result would be rather good, and although frazzled by the experience it was ultimately rewarding. Creativity can be a hard task master, especially when you operate out of chaos. Cooking is however one of the few great arts that you physically put inside yourself, try eating a painting for instance.
So food has always been important to me and although when I first began cooking professionally I had not really recognised that, as I always thought that it would be something I would do until I found my true vocation. Cooking was not the supposedly glamorous job, that it is perceived to be today. Then, no, it was just another trade but I found it to be a very satisfying one. It was essentially creative once you had mastered technique, each day I would be challenged to come up with new and diverse dishes. Regular trips to the produce markets would have me coming across vegetables that I had never seen nor heard of. What does one do with a box of Kasava? Well here’s one fromAfricato get you started:
Kasava Cake
Ingredients:
3 cups (or 2lbs.) grated kasava or manioc root
1 cup shredded frozen fresh young coconut
1 12 oz. jar of Macapuno Balls
1/3cup evaporated milk
1 14 oz. can unsweetened coconut milk
1/3cup. whole milk
1/4tsp salt
1/2cup white sugar
3 eggs
1cup light brown sugar
1tbsp melted butter
Mix everything together, and bake in a buttered 9 X 13 inch pan for 2 hours at 325 degrees.
Other pleasurable delights…
Sudha’s Baked Spinach Pie
2 bunch field spinach washed and bottom stalks removed
2 med brown onions diced
½ cup strong white wine
4 large cloves garlic minced
1 Tsp ground cumin
1 Tsp ground coriander
2 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 cups fresh ricotta
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
2 free range eggs lightly beaten
1 cup chopped fresh basil
½ cup chopped fresh oregano
1 cup chopped walnuts
12 sheets filo pastry
½ cup melted butter
Sauté your onion, garlic spices in olive oil until translucent, cook in wile lastly before setting aside. Steam or blanche your spinach until just done immerse in cold water to stop the cooking process and then gently wring out excess water and chop into smaller segments and add a squeeze of lemon juice or a teaspoon preserved lemon rind finely sliced. In a large bowl mix together spinach, cheeses, egg, herbs, walnuts and your onion sauté and salt pepper to taste. I often add a little splash of a good quality soy sauce here and to most dishes really. In an appropriate baking dish spoon out your filling before laying sheets of filo pastry and brushing every second one with melted butter. Bake until golden brown in a moderate to hot oven. Serves 6-8.
Pumpkin and Pistachio Nut Soup
1 ripe butternut pumpkin peeled and chopped
2 large brown onions
1 Tsp minced fresh ginger
1 cup dry white wine (optional)
4 large cloves garlic minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ Tsp ground cumin
1 cinnamon quill
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
½ Tsp ground coriander
1 cup peeled pistachio nuts
2 cups chicken or strong veggie stock
2-3 cups purified water
1 cup watercress
1 cup pouring cream (optional)
In a large heavy based saucepan sauté your onions, garlic, ginger and spices in olive oil until translucent adding your wine in a few minutes before they are ready. Add in your pumpkin, stock and cover with water and continue to simmer for at least 40 minutes. In a blender blend your remaining ingredients with the cooked pumpkin and onion mix, leaving your cream if desired to whisk in by hand at the end. Serve with a sprig of watercress, a few sprinkled sliced pistachios and a dob of sour cream and fresh black pepper.
Oven Dried Tomatoes
Doing these at home will fill your house with an irresistible aroma that will have you salivating against your will. Hedonistic terrorists could use this process in their battle against the forces of parsimony. This operation will take a considerable amount of time and consumes quite a bit of energy/electricity or gas, so you get maximum slow food brownie points and I recommend that you do a big batch at one time to conserve energy and because they are so delicious you will kick yourself if you only do a few.
Lots of tomatoes (Cherry Tomatoes or small Romas)
Corn of garlic
Bunch of fresh rosemary
Bunch of fresh oregano
Bunch of fresh marjoram
Salt and pepper to sprinkle
Set your oven really low to around 80 degrees Celsius. Slice your tomatoes in half or quarters depending on size but smaller is quicker, place on baking trays sprinkle with finely sliced garlic, chopped herbs and salt and pepper and bake or dry for around eight hours. Serve on fresh crusty Italian bread with the finest extra virgin olive oil and your favourite cheese.
Savoury Mediterranean Vegetable Muffins
I made these muffins recently to take along to a night of chanting for Guru Purnima day, an Indian religious festival celebrated by those in the Hindu faith. I took along a journalist friend, Chris, and he enjoyed them so much that he has been haranguing me ever since to include the recipe in one of my columns.
11/2 cups plain flour
2 cups SR flour
1 tsp baking powder
200g unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
5 whole 60g eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup sauted chopped onion
1 cup roasted chopped red capsicum
1 cup grilled chopped eggplant
½ cup black olives pitted and chopped
1 cup pecorino grated cheese
1 cup crumbled fetta
1 cup chopped fresh basil
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C. Grease muffin trays at least 12 muffin spaces. Sift flours, spices, baking powder into large mixing bowl and rub in butter to form a bread crumb like consistency – can do this in your mix master if you like. In a separate bowl beat your eggs, milk and add in cheeses, gently pour this into your big bowl of dry ingredients and fold remaining ingredients in to form raw cakey base glug with visible chunks of vegetable. You may like to stir in a further splash of extra virgin olive oil for consistency. Spoon into muffin trays and bake until golden brown and cooked through for about 40 minutes check with skewer.
Cooking school on the sunshine coast with the Sacred Chef
For more recipes and food articles www.sudhahamilton.com
Fig & Dark Chocolate, Macadamia Nut Muffins
Fig & Dark Chocolate Macadamia Nut Muffins
Delicious melt in the mouth muffins that are energy giving and healthy too.
- Flour plain 1 cup
- SR wholemeal flour 2 cups
- Baking powder 1 tspn
- Cinnamon ground 1 tbspn
- Butter 200g melted
- Linseed sunflower almond LSA ground 1 cup
- Coconut shredded 1 cup
- Macadamia nuts 1 cup chopped
- Eggs FR 6 beaten
- Honey 1 cup
- Vanilla Essence 1 tsp
- Raw sugar ½ cup
- Yoghurt 1 cup
- Milk ½ cup
- Lemon peel 1 tsp grated
- Figs dried 1 cup chopped
Preheat oven to 170C. Grease muffin trays and drop in muffin cases. Sift flours and add in to large mixing bowl, with spices, baking powder and melted butter, mix well. Fold in LSA, macadamia nuts, coconut, lemon and figs. In a separate bowl mix beaten eggs, vanilla, sugar, honey, yoghurt and milk, before folding into the bowl with the remaining ingredients. Mix evenly before spooning into muffin cases and baking for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Makes 18 to 24 muffins.
©Sacred Chef
Quick and Easy – Transformation Guaranteed!
Quick and Easy – Transformation Guaranteed!
We have all seen these words splashed across advertisements, books, and websites; and heard them coming out of the mouths of sales people everywhere. There are doctors, naturopaths, therapists, and other ‘so called’ health professionals, extracting dollars through the promotion of pills, courses and products – all claiming to do the hard work for you. Well here is the bad news, it’s not true and they do not work! There are no quick fixes in health, weight loss, and just about anywhere else in life. Ask yourself honestly, have you ever really taken a pill and instantly achieved whatever it claimed to do for you? Of course not, occasionally they have been an accessory and encouragement on the road to your goals – a bit like gym clothes really.
If you want a few guidelines in life that really stack up, this is point one – there are no quick fixes. Now immediately you have one structure in your life to guide you away from delusional situations, involving those who claim to be able to facilitate change in your life, instantly and without some sacrifice. This is not a case of mere exploitation with you and me as the victims; no we are actively involved in the whole fraud, because we want a quick fix too- as we do not want to do the necessary hard work to achieve change. We want to have our cake and eat it too – and we want to be thin and attractive at the same time, as we want to stuff our faces with cake. This is the modern dilemma of humankind in the consumerist age.
Quick and easy meals! Just 4 ingredients! Dinner in 5 minutes! Cookbooks around the globe are emblazoned with these headlines. What is the mass appeal of this message saying about us? Well maybe that we don’t enjoy cooking and that we would rather be doing something else. There are a number of issues here of course – mothers who are traditionally coerced into cooking meals for an often unappreciative family audience; singles who would rather work or play elsewhere and do not enjoy cooking for one; and those who do not know their tastebuds from their haemorrhoids, to name a few. However health is derived from a good nutritional diet and if we continue to take the easy option, popping a few multi-vitamin pills to prop up our neglected nutritional selves, we are heading for a state of disease. Quick and easy cancer in just a few years!
Become a Reiki master in 3 days! Learn to heal your emotional self in one weekend! Re-birthing in a single session! Wow when I flick through the pages of the monthly, throwaway, holistic journals I can see how easy it all really is. World hunger, victims of the devastation of war and suffering watch out – there is a Reiki master waving his hands right now. Refugees from the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, where our Australian soldiers are fighting now, are however not benefitting from these ads for instant transformation – in fact they cannot even get into our country.
Horny goat weed; fat blaster; tiger penis; snake oil – products packaged and sold in pharmacies, multi-level marketing pyramids, and TCM shops around the globe – all promising transformation in exchange for money. The health industry! We have doctors and pharmaceutical companies (who now own all the vitamin producers) on one side, ready to chop you up and medicate you with anti-depressants, and on the other side we have a mish-mash, containing a few good hearted healers interspersed with the providores of the all natural, quick fix, in various forms. The former bunch do not respect you at all and see you as meat, muscle and bone and the latter are predominantly ineffectual and unrealistic in their claims for you and for themselves – because in many cases their training has been as inadequate as the one they are now selling to you.
All however is not lost. Put down the newspaper, magazine, and mouse. Close your eyes and ask yourself – really ask yourself, where do I go next? What is the next step for me? How can I heal myself? Keep asking the questions – this is no quick and easy solution. Meditate upon the question and follow your fears into the unknown. It may take a lifetime but the journey is worth taking, and really you don’t have a choice anyway. It’s your life after all!
©Sacred Chef
vegetarian cooking class series sunshine coast maleny
Vegetarian Cooking Classes in Maleny
Would you like to extend your vegetarian, culinary repertoire and feel more confident in tackling a vast array of vegetarian ingredients? In most of the great cuisines of the world 90% of the ingredients are from the vegetable kingdom, so it makes sense to know how to treat the numerous, delicious, members of this most healthy family.
Each vegetarian cooking class includes a delicious lunch at the conclusion of each 2 hour session in the cooking studio.
Let me know what you would like to learn more about or explore and we will cater for your requirements during the course!
You will receive a take home pack of recipes, notes, articles and nutritional information each week!
What a great way to spend a day on the sunshine coast, in the green and beautiful hinterland, overlooking the Glass House Mountains!
My vegetarian background is that I had my own vegetarian restaurant in Kings St, Newtown for nearly 10 years. Prior to this I was the chef at Zorba the Buddha vegetarian restaurant in Taylor Square, Sydney; and before this Commune Chef for Satprakash Rajneesh Centre. More recently I was WellBeing Magazine’s food editor for five years.
NEXT SERIES BEGINS 8 OCTOBER 2011.
AMAZING VALUE – Includes a lunch to really live for!
$69 per person per class.
$399 per person for the series.
Class numbers are limited to 6 participants
Give a gift that changes lives for the better!
Bookings 5499 9280 orsacredchef@midasword.com.au
Information & Bookings 5499 9280
Sunshine Coast Corporate Cooking Classes
Sacred Chef, your unique coast foodie, has a new cooking studio and I have been entertaining sunshine coast corporate groups with cooking classes followed by delicious gourmet lunches. This is a day, that your valued staff members and co-workers will fondly remember with every taste bud on top of their tongues. We begin in the morning with some blind folded sensory work, ascertaining flavours and aromas, of spices, herbs, exotic ingredients and boutique local produce – this is serious fun! Then out come the knives, but surprisingly not for anyone’s back, as we keep all the action on the chopping board. Gorgeous smells soon fill the studio with garlic, galangal, chilli, fresh lime and sunshine coast seafood dancing on the hotplate.
Groups will learn to cook some seriously delicious dishes, as they overlook the Glass House Mountains perched on top of Maleny, clad in aprons and appreciative smiles. Recipes, notes, articles, information about nutrition and the culinary background of ingredients and produce – are all provided in a take away pack for later digestion and to make sure that these new skills are not forgotten.
Try rocket pesto pizzas with buffalo mozzarella – which is made locally in Maleny!
Tapas Mooloolaba King Prawns!
Butterflied Parmesan crumbed whiting fillets with aoli.
Linguine Vongole with leeks and white wine.
Sesame glass noodle salad with crunchy raw veg, chia seeds, and coriander lime dressing.
Slow roasted lamb Thai shanks with jasmine rice.
Pure chocolate tart with raspberry coulis and double cream.
We can make all of these things in just two hours!
Then you can sit down for lunch and sample a selection of fine wines to match your culinary flair!
Ph 5499 9280 or email the Sacred Chef
Spices and their Uses in History
“Spices greatly improved the state of food. In an age before refrigeration, once pastures dried in the autumn and livestock was slaughtered, meat was preserved for the long winter months by salting. From November until spring, dry, chewy, and salty flesh was the mainstay of the diet (of the better off, that is). Long boiling softened up and desalted the meat: sauces made with eastern spices turned it into enjoyable and varied dishes. During the numerous fast and Lenten days, fish was also rendered more flavourful by exotic seasonings. Wine, which tended to turn rancid soon after the barrel was opened, became drinkable owing to cloves and cinamon, and quick-spoiling ale was preserved by nutmeg.
Spices also healed a host of ailments, from stomach problems to pestilence, or so Cyriacus’s parents and contemporaries believed. Medical authorities advised that one should “eat a nutmeg in the morning, for the voiding of wind from the stomach, the liver, and the guts.” John of Eschenden, a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, credited his survival during the Black Death to a powder of cinnamon, aloes, myrrh, saffron, mace, and cloves. An elixir of ginger, pepper, galangal, cinnamon, and various herbs taken sparingly after lunch and dinner was said to cure impotence. And while ginger was meant to boost sperm, desire, pleasure, and fertility, pepper enhanced sexual performance. A Middle English guide to women’s health promised that three ounces of powdered cloves mixed with four egg yolks would make a woman conceive, “God willing.” Indeed spices did bend the ears of God and the saints. After all, the Magi brought frankincense and myrrh to baby Jesus. Chrism, the anointing oil used for various church ceremonies, was mixed with a combination of spices. And when tombs of saintly figures were opened, they emanated sweet aromas.”
reference – To Wake The Dead by Marina Belozerskaya, Norton & Co, 2009, pp 16-17.
Ganoderma – Miracle Healing Mushroom
Heading: Miracle Healing Mushroom
Subheading: Ganoderma.
Mushrooms or rather Fungi are intrigueing organisms, with certain species being the largest known on this planet (covering hundreds of kilometres) & with more species of fungi (1-2 million) than any other.
Even more bizarrely, the mushroom has been seriously suggested as one of our true visitors from outer space, with the spores having travelled here aboard meteorites millennia ago. Perhaps those mushrooms with psychotropic properties really do have something to say to us. Certain species of mushrooms are also known to have great healing qualities & the Lingshi(Chinese) or Reishi(Japanese) mushroom, which is known botanically as Ganoderma lucidum is perhaps the greatest of these. Widely revered & utilised in Traditional Chinese Medicine for over 4000 years, it is probably the oldest species of mushroom to have been utilised medicinally. Lingzhi in Chinese has been translated to mean’ “herb of spiritual potency.” In Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic, dating back 2000 years & considered to be the oldest book on oriental herbal medicine, the Linghzi mushroom is ranked number one superior medicine of all 365 listed healing herbs.
Ganoderma is a bracket fungus, which in nature grows at the base of deciduous trees like the maple. It is however quite rare in the wild & is now cultivated commercially both indoor under sterile conditions & outside in controlled environments. It is the polysaccharides & triterpenes contained within Ganoderma’s fruiting body & mycelia that have shown to have efficacy in improving immune system functioning. Ganoderma lucidum is the only known source of a group of triterpenes, called ganoderic acids, which have a remarkably similar molecular structure to steroid hormones. Also contained within the mushroom are ergostol, coumarin, mannitol, lactones, alkaloids, unsaturated fatty acids & vitamins B1, B2 & B6 & a variety of minerals.
Numerous studies in medical institutions around the world have been conducted into the healing abilities of Ganoderma lucidum & it has shown a remarkable effectiveness in treating an amazing array of diseases & conditions. Western medicines desire to isolate compounds from nature so that they can be synthetically reproduced by pharmaceutical corporations have been frustrated by inconsistent results in the studies of the isolated ingredients within Ganoderma that were thought to be the active constituents. This leads many experts to speculate that it is the combination of these active ingredients that may be the answer to its magical healing qualities. Research has shown Ganoderma’s effectiveness in strengthening the respiratory system, with healing of the lungs & benefits to those with asthma & bronchial complaints. It is generally considered to be an excellent restorative, improving immune system functioning. It has also shown to be anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anti-parasitic, anti-fungal & anti-allergenic. Altogether a healing superfood of the highest order. Recent studies in Australia have included a clinical trial at the University of Western Sydney into the healthy maintenance of blood pressure, blood sugar & cholesterol levels for optimum heart function with the aid of Ganoderma supplementation. Also studies at the University of Sydney in its Herbal Medicines & Research Unit confirmed the presence of high levels of anti-oxidants.
In the preparation of Ganoderma extracts it has been found that the oil within the spores contains a greater presence of the active compounds that are thought to be responsible for its amazing healing properties than the body of the fruit itself & that there is a husk or spore wall around the oil within. When this husk is removed it allows greater absorption by the body of the active constitutes, recent break throughs in the extraction have now made this possible.
High quality extracts of Ganoderma are now available in supplement form & are beginning to be included as ingredients in teas & other beverage formats.
©Sacred Chef.
Appeared in Conscious Living Magazine.
Eco Living Health Aware Magazine
Cordyceps Stamina Mushroom
Heading: The Stamina Mushroom
Subheading: Cordyceps.
In the 1990′s a group of female, Chinese, distance runners broke world records in their events by considerable margins. The apparent ease of their wins attracted a great deal of suspicion in regard to possible illegal drug use, but what emerged was not a steroid or erythropoietin (EPO) tainted athletic performance rather a rediscovery of an ancient Chinese remedy centred around Cordyceps Sinensis. Cordyceps are very rare and unique fungi, also known in China as Dong Chong Xia Cao (“Summer Grass, Winter Worm”), it has been highly regarded and effectively utilised in Traditional Chinese Medicine for well over 2000 years. It grows in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, at an altitude of about 3,500 metres and can only be harvested in relatively small quantities. Its positive effect on increasing stamina was first observed by Tibetan shepherds, when their flock of yaks had consumed the fungi whilst eating the summer grasses and then proceeded to mate more vigorously than previously observed. In the wild it has a symbiotic relationship with a particular variety of caterpillars, which consume it and then become one with it on a cellular level.
What actually are fungi?
Fungi are a division of eukaryotic organisms, which grow in irregular masses, and are without roots, stems, or leaves; they are also devoid of chlorophyll or other pigments capable of producing photosynthesis. Fungi contain ergo sterol instead of cholesterol in their plasma membranes. They reproduce sexually or asexually (spore formation), and may obtain nutrition from other living organisms as parasites or from dead organic matter as saprobes. Fungi have a well-defined cell wall composed of polysaccharides and chitin; they can be moulds, yeasts, or dimorphic.
Cordyceps Sinensis is now being safely grown and processed to be available in capsule form, this process does not involve caterpillars. Its use in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) centres on its properties as a liver tonic and it stimulates the system encouraging greater stamina. Cordyceps has powerful active ingredients, which can help restore the normal functioning of the body, stimulate immune response, increases energy, vitality, and longevity. Recent research has shown that Cordyceps can improve peak performances during sports, and also has muscle-building capability. In TCM, Cordyceps has been used to help regulate blood pressure, strengthen the cardiovascular system, and improve sexual energy. Clinical tests performed at the Hunan Medical University have shown that Cordyceps significantly contributed to increased levels of libido in the test subjects. Further clinical studies, primarily with elderly patients with fatigue, showed that Cordyceps-treated patients reported improvements in their wellbeing, ability to tolerate cold temperatures, memory retention and cognitive capacity. According to the biochemical analysis of Cordyceps species it is noted that they contain interesting properties like Cordycepin, which has been used to create the pharmacological drug Ciclosporin – which is helpful in suppressing the body’s immune system during organ transplants. In 1950′s the chemical constituent of Cordyceps were determined by and a crystalline substance was isolated and named Cordyceps acid. This acid was later identified to be D-mannitol and further studies were performed to identify the constituents of the fungus. The chemical substances isolated were; ‘amino acids, steric acid, D-mannitol, mycose, ergo sterol, uracil, adrenine, adenosince, palmitic acid, cholesterol palmitate and 5α-8α-epidioxy-5α-ergosta-6, 22-dien-3β-ol’.
My own personal experience in taking a Cordyceps supplement was that it immediately acted on my liver and stimulated similar sensations to when I was on a liver cleansing program. I did then begin to feel greater levels of stamina in my day to day life and it encouraged me to be more aware of parts of my diet which were not in tune with a liver cleansing program. I would recommend a juice fast and/or a raw vegetable diet for a few days before beginning taking Cordyceps, to maximise its efficacy. It is also recommend, by TCM consultants engaged by the manufacturers, taking the supplement first thing upon awakening and last thing before retiring to sleep – two capsules a day drunk with plenty of warm water for the kidneys. Whether you are feeling run down and needing a potent natural lift or perhaps you actually are preparing for a marathon, Cordyceps could be the answer for you.
©Sacred Chef.
Appeared in Conscious Living Magazine.
Marine Phytoplankton Superfood of the Sea.
Heading: Marine Phytoplankton
Subheading: Superfood from the Sea!
What is it? Phytoplankton are single cell plants that inhabit the oceans of the world & are thought to be responsible for producing up to 90% of the Earth’s oxygen. Whales of course consume both plant & animal plankton in their diets. Recent nutritional studies are discovering that phytoplankton may indeed be a super-food for humans as well. Made up of many different micro-algae that are incredibly nutrient rich, phytoplankton forms the basis for all living life on our planet, through its vital role in photosynthesis. Their indispensable part in the carbon cycle is an indelible illustration of our holistic universe, with ancient dead algae over million of years forming fossil fuels like oil and coal, which when burnt produce carbon dioxide that is then transformed into oxygen by today’s marine phytoplankton. An ever repeating cycle of life.
If all life did indeed evolve from the sea as is theorised by science, there are signs within our physiology that provide a link to that origin, with the composition of human plasma (blood) and the fluid surrounding cell walls being remarkably similar to sea water. Diluted sea water contains almost the same concentration of minerals and trace elements as blood plasma and its sodium content matches that of blood also. Diluted sea water has been used in blood transfusions involving animals without any perceived adverse effects and there are calls for research into its use in humans. The micronutrients and electrolytes contained in phytoplankton are perfectly suitable for what our human cell membranes require when metabolising. What are our cell membranes made up of? Sugars, proteins and fats. Thus what we eat provides both the fuel that our cells need to function but also the very building blocks for their structure. A diet lacking in the necessary micronutrients will over time reduce effective metabolism and thus lead to disease.
What is the nutritional make-up of marine phytoplankton? The phytoplankton that we can now purchase is produced in sea farms or aqua-culturally and is pure micro-algae rather than cyanobacteria, which can be toxic. Within these micro-algae are a veritable cornucopia of nutritional riches – omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin B12, thiamine (B1), selenium, potassium, superoxide dismutase (SOD), zinc, vitamin E, vitamin C, iron, electrolytes, folic acid, magnesium, niacin (B3), calcium, arginine, beta carotene, chlorophyll, manganese, phenylalanine, pantohenic acid (B5), bioflavanoids, biotin, aspartic acid, alanine, boron, methionine, molybdenum, nucleic acids, phosphorous, gamma linolenic acid, glutamine, lecithin, tyrosine, pyridoxine (B6) to name most of them. The extraction processes used in these farms create a phytoplankton food product that is full of phyto-nutrients and sea minerals.
Good nutrition contributes directly to the function and structure of all the organs that make-up our bodies. As Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician who founded his practice on the principle of observation, said “let food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.” Every system within our body benefits from a balanced nutritionally rich diet, our immune system in fighting off colds and flu’s, our digestive system in providing optimal energy, weight management and letting go of wastes via healthy kidneys, liver and bowels, our nervous system effecting mental functioning, and our endocrine system for our skin’s health. Shiny hair, healthy nails, clear eyes, and restful sleep are all indicators of good health and are all influenced by what we eat and drink. Phytoplankton is the perfect food for healthy cell functioning and provides high levels of anti-oxidants for the maintenance of our bodies on this cellular level.
You know I was once very sceptical about all the positive health claims that many health supplements purport to induce but once I understood that true wellbeing is about our cellular health then it was obvious that all conditions are linked to this. Having grown up in a time when the prevalent view of allopathic medicine had reduced diseases into distinct specialised fields I could not then see the interconnectedness of these conditions. The recent expansion in our knowledge of nutritional science has dispelled that all too often cynical standpoint taken by some in the medical fraternity in regard to things like so called super-foods. In fact, many supplements, like marine phytoplankton, are now being championed by doctors around the world.
If our capitalistic economy has failed to deliver the necessary nutritional building blocks in the food that it produces and sells to us, and instead leaves us with supermarket shelves groaning with over packaged items made of refined sugars, fats and carbohydrates then we may need to source our own nutritionally rich foods like marine phytoplankton in concert with other organic foods. Otherwise we are likely to end up over weight, functioning poorly and eventually succumbing to disease. At a time of weak governments and overly powerful unfettered corporate giants, the need to take your own health into your own hands has never been more acute.
©Sacred Chef
Appeared in Conscious Living Magazine.
Spirulina Superfood
Spirulina the original Algae Superfood!
Spirulina is the name commonly used to refer to a food supplement produced primarily from micro blue-green algae, which lives on sunlight through photosynthesis in alkaline waters. It has been highly valued as an excellent source of nourishment by many different cultures for centuries. Now widely available in many different forms – tablet, powder, flake & liquid, it is fast becoming one of the better known so called “superfoods.”
Historically Spirulina is thought to have been a food source for the Aztecs, as reported by the Spanish in the 16C, during their occupation of parts of Central America. After its harvesting from Lake Texcoco, which is located in Mexico, it was sold in a cake form. The Aztecs apparently called it Tecuitlati, meaning stone’s excrement, perhaps indicating they were not mad on the taste of it but recognised the nutritional value despite this. Researchers in the 1960′s found a plentiful supply of Spirulina at Lake Texcoco & the world’s first large scale production plant was established there in the 1970′s.
The cultivation of Spirulina takes place on lakes & in open channel raceway ponds, with paddle wheels used to agitate the water. It grows naturally in lakes in China, Mexico & Chad & is now being cultivated commercially in these places. Further commercial cultivation of Spirulina is now taking place in Thailand, the USA, India, China, Taiwan & Myanmar. There has been much discussion over the last few decades about the ability of micro-algae’s like Spirulina to become superior food sources that could feed the hungry in the third world & hopefully end malnutrition & starvation amongst the poor. Indeed space agencies like NASA & the European Space agency have proposed Spirulina to be a likely candidate as a food source that could be cultivated aboard spacecraft during lengthy journeys.
Spirulina is a complete protein & contains unusually high amounts of protein in comparison to all other plant sources. The nutritional content of Spirulina are many and varied, with all 8 essential amino acids and 10 non-essential amino acids present. It is also a rich source of vitamin C, B complex & E. The provitamin Beta Carotene is also contained in Spirulina & this is turned into Vitamin A by our bodies. Its deep green colour comes from its rainbow of natural pigments – chlorophyll (green), phycocyanin (blue) and carotenoids (orange) – that harvest the sun’s energy. Spirulina is easy-to-digest, which means that the nutrients are absorbed quickly. Spirulina is also a natural source of iron. Spirulina contains anti-oxidants, which of course are important in reducing the effect of free radicals that contribute to the ageing process & setting up a conducive environment for diseases. It has many unique phyto-nutrients like phycocyanin, polysaccharides and sulfolipids that enhance the immune system, possibly reducing risks of infection and auto-immune diseases. It has cleansing chlorophyll which helps detoxify our bodies of ever present pollution.
Any contentious issues involving Spirulina are mostly directed at the purity, quality of cultivation, harvesting & manufacturing processes. Whether certain spirulina’s are from organic, natural sources or rather artificially grown, often to avoid the possibility of toxic blue-green algae outbreaks that can occur in lakes around the world. In either case today’s Spirulina is cultivated in man- made ponds or strictly controlled water-ways. There is continuing scientific research into improving all aspects of cultivation & manufacturing. This really is a superfood that has the potential to not only greatly improve your own health but quite possibly feed the world as well. As we continue to over populate our planet & pollute our traditional food sources it may be time to turn to the wondrous spiral shaped micro-algae for our trip into the future.
©Sacred Chef
Appeared in Conscious Living Magazine.
Chia Magic Seeds
Heading: Chia Magic Seeds
Subheading: Nutritional Superfood.
This is no ‘Jack and the bean stalk magic seed story’ – but there are some parallels with reaching a giant nutritional understanding from what appear to be very little seeds. There is an exciting buzz about Chia seeds, and the more I researched, the more I discovered that there is good reason to get excited.
They are like little black and white magic granules, that you can sprinkle over ordinary food, to make it like Jack’s beanstalk; extraordinary! These seeds are an ancient superfood, rediscovered and we now have the science to understand their incredible properties, and to explain the magic. Chia is also being grown in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, making it an Australian superfood.
Chia (Salvia Hispanica), a plant of the Salvia genus in the Mint family, originated in the Valley of Mexico and was traditionally cultivated by the Aztecs. The seeds of the Chia plant are incredibly rich in nutritional value. Chia was one of the Aztecs’ most important food sources and had great value as a super food. It was said that the equivalent of a tablespoon of seeds could sustain a warrior for 24 hours. Due to its unusual properties, it was used as a medicine for both oral and topical applications. It was even used, as a monetary currency; such was the esteem with which it was held in Aztec culture.
Known as the running food, its use as an energy rich endurance food was well known amongst the Indians of south west Central America and Mexico. Chia was forcibly removed from the diet of the Indians by the conquering Spanish, because of its important cultural and religious links to their previously established kingdoms.
The chemical basis underpinning its qualities as an endurance food is revealed by the following experiment: if you add water to a teaspoon of Chia and leave it for half an hour you will find not seeds in water but an almost solid gelatinous mass, due to the soluble fibre (mucilage or long chain polysaccharides) in Chia. The same process is thought to occur in the stomach once we have ingested Chia. This gel then forms a physical barrier between the carbohydrates and the digestive enzymes that break them down, slowing down their conversion to sugars. Similar to a sustained release vitamin pill, the energy is available for a longer period, and the metabolic changes are stabilised – avoiding the highs and lows commonly associated with digestion. Chia would have positive effects for diabetics.
Chia also has the ability to absorb twelve times its own mass in water, and this hydrophilic quality helps you to remain hydrated for longer. With the vital importance of fluids and electrolytes to healthy cell life throughout our body, the Chia seed’s ability to help the body regulate its absorption of nutrients and fluids, becomes a wonderful natural helper in keeping a healthy cellular balance. Chia seed’s hydrophilic colloidal qualities can aid in the digestion of foods that may cause indigestion or heart burn in some people.omega 3,
Chia seed’s high oil content makes it the richest vegetable source for Omega 3 essential fatty acids – a great tool in the vital restoration of balance to a diet containing an over-consumption of Omega 6 fatty acids. Both are important but many people have diets with twenty times the amount of Omega 6 to Omega 3 fatty acids present. Chia seeds are rich in the unsaturated fat linoleic, which our body cannot produce itself, and a diet rich in this helps us to absorb Vitamins A, D, E & K. It also helps in the respiration of our vital organs and in the distribution of oxygen through the blood stream to all cells, tissues and organs.
Unsaturated fatty acids are essential for healthy glandular function, in particular the adrenal and thyroid glands. Chia seeds also contain long chain triglycerides, which can help to reduce cholesterol on arterial walls. Chia is a rich source of calcium, as it contains the mineral boron, which aids the body in absorbing calcium from foods.
Chia is an incredibly versatile food, due to its ability to absorb large amounts of water and become a gel. The Chia frappe is probably one of the best known yummy applications and here is a selection of recipes to delight your palate.
Chia Avocado & Honey Frappe
Blend
½ cup chia gel
1 peeled deseeded ripe avocado
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 cups soya milk
1 cup crushed ice
Chia Chai Tea Frappe
Blend
1 tbsp chai syrup
½ cup chia gel
2 cups soya milk
1 cup crushed ice
Chia Berry Smoothee
Blend
½ cup chia gel
1 cup fresh or frozen mixed berries
½ cup yoghurt
1 tspn honey
2 cups soy milk.
Chia seeds are fantastic sprinkled over rice noodles in your Vietnamese rice paper rolls.
Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls with Sate Dipping Sauce.
Mix in a large bowl.
1 packet rice noodles- rehydrated.
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
2 tbsp chia seeds
2 tsp black pepper
2 cups chopped fresh coriander
1 cup chopped fresh mint
½ cup soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
½ cup fresh lime juice
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 cup julienned celery
2 cups bean shoots
1 cup julienned red capsicum
1 cup julienned carrots
½ cup minced Spanish onion
1 packet rice paper wrappers- rehydrated
Roll mix into finger shaped rolls.
Sate Sauce
In a saucepan gently heat and whisk together until creamy.
1 tbsp minced ginger
1 tbsp minced garlic
4 minced red chillies
½ cup soya sauce
2 tbsp palm sugar
1 cup peanut butter
1 can coconut milk
With a mild slightly nutty flavour Chia seeds are great sprinkled over salads, added to cakes, muffins, breads and just about anything else you can think of.
Chia, Fetta Bran Muffins
1 cup wholemeal plain flour
1 ½ cups wholemeal SR flour
2 tbsp chia seeds
½ cup bran flakes
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp grated lemon peel
200g unsalted butter
4 whole 60g free range eggs
1 cup soy milk or alternative
2 medium sized brown onions roughly chopped & liberally braised in olive oil
1 cup parmesan grated
1 cup crumbled sheep’s fetta
1 tbsp chopped fresh basil
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease muffin trays & or line trays with muffin cases. Sift flours & dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Either rub in softened butter by hand to this dry mix or whizz together in a food processor until you achieve a breadcrumb-like consistency. In a separate bowl whisk eggs, soy milk, lemon peel & herbs, before folding in fetta & parmesan cheeses & cooled braised onions. Slowly & gently fold this wet mixture into the dry ingredients. Add in extra grind of black pepper & sea salt. When thoroughly mixed spoon cake like mix into individual muffin rings. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
©Sacred Chef
Christmas Madness in Summer’s Kitchen
Heading: Christmas Madness In Summer’s Kitchen
Subheading: Summer Snack Food
As the seasons turn and we emerge again from spring’s enchanted and energetically aroused embrace, we are once again warmed to the core by our southern hemisphere’s hot sun. It is a sensual time of bodies exposed and a social time of being out and about. Eating food for its nourishment factor is not a priority, as in the colder months; it is more an adjunct to the pleasure of celebrating and relating. We want smaller morsels of tasty victuals that delight & sometimes challenge our palates with extremes of salt & spice, amid the crunch of carbohydrate. Yummy things interspersed with cold draughts of refreshing drinks, be they soothing or stimulating substances.
To quote the ever-present question posed by our own Socrates, the late Dr Julius Sumner Miller. “Why is this so”? What is happening physiologically within us to determine these seasonal and somewhat universal cravings? Well, when we perspire we lose sodium and our bodies need to replace this salt to balance the ship – so to speak. Where do we find this necessary ballast to keep our bodily systems doing what they do best? In our diet of course, and this is where our love of snack foods is rightly in its element. It is signalling that our changing desire for different foods is totally appropriate at these times, in accordance with the changing seasons. In summer we are often more physically active and therefore we are sweating and burning more calories and expunging mineral salts from our bodies. Now is the time to enjoy salty snack foods in delectable moderation.
Appetites, our conscious mind, our emotional brain beneath & our stomach – layers of being that interact in their own unique manner. We do not generally behave like astronauts or nutritional scientists, when we are confronted with a restaurant menu or the display in our local delicatessen, counting calories and phytonutrients like Dr Smith on the Jupiter Two. Rather, we are instinctively stimulated by desires to consume particularly yummy looking things. Good food, like love, works better upon the poetic sides of our nature and it is often a dry struggle to maintain left-brain regimes, like diets.
Can we afford to listen to our body’s desires? Well, yes with understanding and an overview of what our bodies need at various times and seasons. Of course, we also need to slay the dragon of our psychological dependence on comfort foods, which can prevent us from really listening to the nutritional needs of our bodies. What does this mean? It is recognising habitual appetites for foods from childhood that are not serving you well nutritionally. For example whenever I am stressed or emotionally overrort I may crave things like hot chips, sex, chocolate, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, junk food or the like. Why do I want these things? They may have, in the past, temporarily assuaged one or more symptoms of, “ah! I am an imploding bucket of yesterday’s vomit over my mother/father, please shoot me kind sir?” Once I have ingested them will I feel better? No, usually I feel worse. They are leftover cravings from less conscious times in our lives, that still have a real pull over us when we are struggling with aspects of our lives. Learning alternative techniques like meditation, yoga, self-awareness and the like will help you move beyond these oral fixations. Once you have garnered some space from these cravings you can return to listening to your body’s desires for optimal nutritional direction.
Another factor interacting with our ability to truly listen to our bodies needs is that of ritual.
How will you cope this Christmas? Is the coming together of family & friends a time of wonder & peace for you? What’s on the menu this year? Traditional fare from generations past, or a break with yore to rediscover you!
The summer months fall, in our neck of the woods, during the high season of celebration, with Christmas, New year and, of course, my birthday. These heavily proscribed events (possibly with the exception of my birthday – 30 December & all presents are greatly appreciated) are times when what to eat, when to eat, and for how long, are virtually written in stone. The mish mash of festival rules that have filtered down through the ages to us, are an eclectic, didactic collection involving turkeys, egg nog, presents, Christmas trees, crackers or bon bons, mistletoe, sparkling shiraz, midnight, fireworks, kissing strangers and smiling a hell of a lot. Confused, indigestible in more ways than one, and often making it mighty difficult to listen to your body’s needs. It is a time of family, friends, and perhaps prayer to a God well supported by a Christian based capitalistic economic megalith – at least here in the west anyway.
It is one of the very few times when the state and church support us to lay down tools and take up glasses of good cheers to acknowledge the point of what we are working so bloody hard for anyway = family, friends and an abundant land. Many people are confused at this time of the year because they are so completely out of practice at enjoying themselves. Perhaps not overly familiar with their families – “this is not my beautiful wife, this not my beautiful house” – which I suppose is why Christmas is regularly reported to be a particularly busy time for police and welfare workers. My advice, to ease this burden, is to begin slowly and be true to yourself, don’t spend your time in that last minute shopping marathon, stumbling around a tinsel toe festooned department store, asking yourself for the very first time in your life, what your sister’s new husband, whom you have never met, would really like for Christmas. Give up, forget it, and get off the spinning wheel in the materialistic rat’s cage of life because you will not get it right anyway. Go home, have a drink & perhaps smile at your kids or partner.
What will you be doing this Christmas? Will you be sitting down at someone else’s table or will you be dancing around your own kitchen in prayer for a tender bird or at least for the presentation of a sumptuous feast? Summer can mean hot times in the kitchen, often with the added strain of several seldom seen relatives out there in the living room staring uncomfortably into space. Again my advice is don’t over do it, keep it simple, most people are there for the company and good cheer, not for elaborate fine dining. Our warm weather suggests small amounts of food that zing on the palate. Things like dips and exotic chips, marinated olives, grilled seafood, crudités, and finger foods of all persuasions, are guaranteed to please, especially when accompanied by a superior liquid refreshment. May your mantra be – relax, enjoy and allow it to happen organically, meaning don’t impose too many uptight rules of engagement, give life a chance to unfold unpredictably, it’s the secret to actually having fun.
Carbohydrates these days, are usually considered food types to be avoided, with many diets focusing on the complete omittance of these to the exclusion of proteins to assist with weight loss. However “polysaccharides” are providing a new avenue of research that is showing some very interesting nutritional results. What are polysaccharides? Basically complex carbohydrates and these carbs are in certain cases proving to be vitally important in providing essential cell nutrition. Which continues to indicate that there is still so much that we do not know about nutritional science and is why we seem to be receiving a great deal of supposedly conflicting information. Many of the recent studies into so called “superfoods’ are putting these combinations of sugars (complex carbohydrates) or polysaccherides under the microscope to see what they do when absorbed into our cellular structures. It seems that certain combinations are more effective than others in feeding and repairing particular vital cell functions in our bodies. Research into polysaccherides is continuing today at Southern Cross University in NSW.
Here are a few recipes for some tangy nibbles that could enliven the palates of your guests this Christmas.
Shallow fried wakame with wasabi dipping sauce.
1 packet dried wakame rehydrated
500 ml canola oil for frying
30 ml sesame oil for frying
1cup tahini
½ cup lemon juice
1 tbsp tamari
1 tbsp wasabi
Mix together tahini, lemon juice, tamari & wasabi to form your dipping sauce.
In a fry pan suitable for shallow frying heat up your oils & when ready add chopped wakame pieces for a couple of minutes until crunchy, drain on absorbent paper. Arrange around sauce in a ramekin on a plate.
Cassava or manioc root is an interesting source of carbohydrates, which is widely eaten all over the world, native to South America but also widely cultivated in Africa and numerous islands around the globe. It cannot be eaten raw, as it contains glucosides than can be converted to cyanide, but in the case of smaller cassava roots cooking is enough to remove all toxicity. The soft-boiled root has a lovely delicate flavour and is great in stews and soups. Cassava flour or tapioca flour is likely something you have tasted or heard about, widely used as a thickening agent in sweet dishes due to its flavour neutral quality. Cassava flour is also gluten free, making it an ideal alternative to wheat flour in many cases. Cassava is now the main ingredient in several lines of yummy commercial vegie chips that you can purchase in your supermarket. Cassava root is one of those exotic vegetables that you rarely come across, and personally, was one of my celebrated failures in my early days as a chef. Imagine if you can the scene, it is 1983 in down town Darlinghurst, NSW at the Rajneeesh Commune Centre, a young 17 year old novice cook is preparing the evening meal for 200 orange clad disciples of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Having earlier that day come across something new at the Flemington vegetable markets & purchased a box of these gingerish, sweet potatoish looking tubers called cassava, & with the brash confidence of youth, said “yeah I’ll cook them up for the hungry hordes, no worries baba!” Well as an accompaniment to a tasty quiche I thought this would be a fresh not oft had delight. Upon pulling out of the oven, after 40 minutes or so, 3 large baking trays of these elusive roots I tried to put a fork into one of them and it was akin to an attempted penetration of a slightly singed piece of wood, straight out of the fire, the prongs merely bounced aside and the fire engine siren like message was, “warning highly inedible fare do not approach with mouth.” The next evening, having survived my first encounter with culinary failure, I tried boiling the tubers and was rewarded with a stringy, gluey mess of grey fibres – that to me, was as far away from cuisine nouvelle (which at that time was the in thing) as possible. I surrendered complete defeat to the manioc root and left it alone for a very long time. Recently however, somewhat older and wiser, I have returned to a staple carbohydrate enjoyed by so many ancient cultures and with greater respect have begun to work with its many qualities both nutrition and culinary. Cassava roots do not keep well and need to be prepared and eaten within days of reaching market – a sacred root that belies its ordinariness and challenges one to have a go!
Bolinhos de mandioca e queijo
cassava fetta cheese fritters
500g fresh peeled cassava
200g fetta cheese crumbled
4 FR eggs beaten
1 tbsp chopped flat parsley 1 tbsp chopped spring onion
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
canola oil for deep-frying
Boil the peeled cassava for 20 minutes, then drain and let rest for 5 minutes in a colander, to make sure it is thoroughly dry.
Mash the cassava with a potato masher.
Add your cheese, eggs, herbs & onions & mix well.
Heat your frying oil in a pan. Shape the dough into dumplings.
Drop the dumplings into the hot oil and fry for at least five minutes.
Serve with a spicy roasted red capsicum sauce.
Pickled Lemons
Pickled lemons are all about transformation, with salt being the catalyst for drawing out the bitterness from the lemon & leaving behind the wonderful piquancy that is the essence of lemon, a bit like good psychotherapy – where we do not lose the unique character but just the chip on the shoulder. Pickled lemons are a fantastic condiment to have handy to add to your cooking or to a finished dish. The complexity of flavour that a little pickled lemon creates really intensifies the enjoyment that your guests will derive from your food. Now this is the ultimate in slow food as it may take up to three months for these lemons to get really pickled. You will need a very big jar with a seal tight closure to hold as many lemons as you can fit, because if you have to wait that long you will want to do a lot.
12 med sized lemons
2kg rock or sea salt
1 bunch fresh rosemary
1 bunch fresh thyme
2 Tbsp coriander seeds
1 bunch fresh thyme
2 Tbsp coriander seeds
2 Tbsp whole black pepper
1 Tbsp whole cloves
1 Tbsp star aniseed
1 Tbsp cumin seeds
Take each lemon and make two incisions as if to quarter the lemon lengthwise but leave a couple of centimetres so that the lemon remains whole. Then mix your spices and herbs through the salt before packing this salty mixture around the lemons inside the jar. You will want the lemons completely covered by the salt before sealing your jar and storing in a dark place for its lengthy sojourn. You will notice after a few days that the salt leaches out the moisture from the lemons and that your jar fills with a brine solution, this leaching out takes the bitterness with it. At the conclusion of the pickling time you use the lemon peel not the flesh, as the flesh is very salty but the pickled peel is piquant and wonderful.
©Sacred Chef
Appeared in WellBeing Magazine
Midas Word
frisson online magazine
Summer of Salt.
Heading: Summer of Salt
Subheading: Our bodies need for sodium.
Summer is, if you boil it down to one of its essential components, all about salt –the salt on your sweating skin, which tastes especially good when making love; the salt of the sea, after a day at the beach: and of course the salt in your food. Salt accentuates tanginess, and it is refreshing tang that we often seek in our summer fare. It’s that salty, spicy lift that when combined with a splash of coldest fluid revives and relaxes us at once.
Standing outside on your patio, balcony or in your backyard, summer is also a time of celebration. When we gather together as families and friends and seek the sensual heat of the sun to toast our good health and good fortune. It falls here, in the southern hemisphere, at the same time as the calendar signifies the greatest Christian festival of them all, Christmas the nominal birthday of one Jesus Christ. This date was of course borrowed by the Christian church and replaced the earlier pagan celebration of Saturnalia. So this December time of year has been a focus of good cheer for eons.
Unlike our northern hemisphere cousins this time of celebration is not climatically conducive to lashings of roast turkey and pudding, rather it cries out for salad, seafood and skin all to be salted and spiced.
Now salt has of recent modern times been given a bit of a bad name, health wise that is, and with good reason with salt being added as a flavour enhancer to just about every packaged food that you can think of, but really the bottom line is if you are eating a lot of packaged foods you are asking for trouble, and don’t really care about your health in my opinion. Preparing food is an opportunity to give creatively to those around you and to give to yourself as well, don’t you want to explore, discover and offer something wonderful in these circumstances? So with that little diatribe out of the way, lets move on to more about salt.
Salt or more exactly sodium chloride is the only rock directly consumed by humankind. It is an essential element in our diets and is an important part of digestion, as it increases the hydrochloric acid content of our digestive fluids. Sodium ion in our blood is one of four ions that we must have to survive, the others being magnesium, calcium and potassium. Sodium is a mineral that our body cannot produce itself and so must be ingested from external food sources. With salt, it is a balancing act, too much in relation to fluid levels in the body and we eventually die, too little and the same applies. So we excrete salt through our urine, faeces and sweat when the concentration becomes too great. Sodium also assists with the re-absorption of water in the kidneys, which would otherwise be excreted. Thus salt is an integral part of our biological make-up, in fact, our bodies need for salt links us to this earth, and is a clear example of the holistic connection.
So with salt being one of the bedrocks of humanity, it is easier to understand the numerous literary references to salt down through the ages that appear in every culture. Pythagoras said, “salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea.” For this is where we derive our salts from, with sea salt being evaporated or distilled from sea water. Geologists believe that all salt deposits were originally formed by the oceans before being covered by strata’s of rock over time. Rock salt is mined from deposits that have formed salt domes. Unrefined it is grey in colour and contains many impurities, and these so called impurities are a source of many other essential minerals. How do we get our salt? Well, in underground salt mining, a shaft is sunk into the deposit, where the salt is drilled, and then the broken salt is carried to a place where it is crushed and screened into varying grades. The salt is then taken to the surface for packaging and shipment. In solution mining, fresh water is injected through a pipe into the salt deposit. A second pipe removes the brine formed when water dissolves the salt. The brine is then evaporated in large pans where the salt crystallizes into small granules. The salt is dried and sold in packages, like table salt, or bulk for food processing. The third method is solar evaporation of sea water or natural brine. Large earthen ponds are flooded with a shallow layer of sea water or brine. Sun and wind successively concentrates the brine by evaporation. The brine is moved from pond to pond, and finally, the salt crystallizes on the floor of the last ponds in the series. The salt is then harvested, washed and stored before shipping.
Historians record that the earliest known use of salt in China was around 6000BC, where a seasonally evaporating salt lake in Northern China left salt crystals that were gathered up by the local inhabitants. The Chinese however, do not generally sprinkle salt directly on their food, rather it is added through the use of various sauces and pastes. This is generally thought to be due to the great cost of salt at that time and that it was stretched through this process. Indeed I would say that salt was one of humankind’s earliest white crystal addictions with reports of primitive tribal men selling their wives and children into slavery in return for salt. Salt is of course the great preserver and fermenting fish in salt was popular in the ancient world from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia. In China they began adding soy beans to ferment with the fish and this was called Jiang and over time they dropped the fish and it became Jiangyou or as we know it soya sauce.
Soy is a legume that produces beans that are grown in 4cm long furry pods. Different varieties produce yellow; green; brown; purple; black or spotted beans and Chinese cuisine makes great distinction between them and for their culinary uses. Jiangyou is made from yellow beans. Soy was taken to Japan in the sixth century BC by Chinese Buddhist missionaries and by the tenth century BC the Japanese were making it and calling it Shoyu. The process that they used to ferment the soy beans in earthen pots is known today as lactic acid fermentation or pickling. This occurs as the vegetables begin to rot the sugars breakdown and produce lactic acid, which acts as a preservative. Without salt being added yeast forms and you get alcohol instead of pickles. ©Sacred Chef.
Appeared in WellBeing Magazine.
Eco Living Health Aware Magazine
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