Love and light

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Dear readers,

Pure Nutrition has transformed into something bigger and more spiritually rewarding – Awakened Reconnection, filled with intentful cooking, intuitive nutrition guidance and more. The Ask Maya blog continues, just in a new place. I invite you to look around, gain new knowledge, and maybe stay for a transformation of your own…

Website: http://awakenedreconnection.com/

Blog: http://awakenedreconnection.com/?cat=86

Intentful Recipes: http://awakenedreconnection.com/?cat=87

Mailing List Community for new programs, products, newsletter, blog posts, and recipes! http://awakenedreconnection.com/?page_id=9

Pure Nutrition has transformed into something bigger and more spiritually rewarding – Awakened Reconnection, filled with intentful cooking, intuitive nutrition guidance and more. The Happy Belly Food blog continues, just in a new place. I invite you to look around, gain new knowledge, and maybe stay for a transformation of your own…

Website: http://awakenedreconnection.com/

Blog: http://awakenedreconnection.com/?cat=86

Intentful Recipes: http://awakenedreconnection.com/?cat=87

Mailing List Community for new programs, products, newsletter, blog posts, and recipes! http://awakenedreconnection.com/?page_id=9

When you are preparing this meal, taste the arugula raw, and then taste a leaf after it is dressed. From spicy to spunky & sassy simply with a few new flavors. It doesn’t take much for a taste profile transformation to occur, just real ingredients and good intent.

What You’ll Need:

• Fresh Arugula
• Any sprouts (I used mung bean, you can use alfalfa, broccoli, etc)
• 1 T peanut butter
• 1 T Nama Shoyu or Soy Sauce
• 1-2 tsp fresh ground/minced ginger
• 2 T white wine vinegar
• 2 T non-GMO, expeller pressed canola oil
• 1 T sesame seeds

Combine the washed and dried arugula and sprouts into a bowl. In a cup, mixing bowl, or mason jar, combine all the remaining ingredients. Shake or mix thoroughly. Lightly dress the fresh mix with dressing. (You most likely won’t use all the dressing so keep it in a jar in the fridge for future use.) 

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When you whip up a batch, be sure to visual the joyful, bright, sunshine from the cornmeal and the fruitful Mother Earth from the whole wheat. Know, that these muffins you are creating, from scratch, are the most nourishing, most satisfying addition to your meal. Don’t just bake them, create them.

What You’ll Need:

• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup stone ground, whole grain cornmeal
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp unrefined ‘dirty’ sea salt
• pinch of freshly ground pepper
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 cup honey
• 2 T non-GMO, expeller pressed canola oil

Heat the oven to 350 F and line a muffin tin with paper liners. Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in another. Slowly add the wet to the dry and becareful not to over mix. Scoop into the paper lined muffin tin filling each 3/4 full. Bake for 15-20 minutes and enjoy (with butter)!

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What You’ll Need:

• 2 cups almond meal (like almond flour)
• 1/2 cup organic agave nectar
• 1/2 cup organic, smooth peanut butter
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp unrefined ‘dirty‘ sea salt
• 3/4 cup raw cocoa nibs (this is what chocolate is before we process it!)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until thoroughly combined. Coat a cookie sheet with extra coconut oil to prevent sticking. Drop ‘dough’ onto cookie sheet in small, spoon sized drops.

Stick them in the oven on LOW at no more than 200 degrees F! These delicious morsels tend to burn on the bottom very quickly. Cook them on low here for about 10-15 min (less with convection ovens). NOTE: They will NOT be hard or set, or rise very much when you bring them out. They should be golden brown all around. You’ll need to let them cool completely, even overnight, which will allow them to ‘set’.

The end product is smooth, buttery, a bit crumbly, and absolutely melt-in-your-mouth good!

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What You’ll Need:

• 2-3 T real butter
• 1 small white onion, chopped into rings
• 1 bunch fresh sage leaves, chopped
• pinch of ground cloves
• 1/4 cup white cooking wine (optional)
• 1 roasted butternut squash, meat removed
• 1 roasted acorn squash, meat removed
• 1-2 cups buttermilk (or organic milk or almond milk)
• 1 cup water
• unrefined sea salt, to taste

Heat the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and saute until they begin to brown (about 5-6 min). Be sure to stick your head over the pan here to smell this! It’s amazing! You are creating the first layer of depth…

Then add the chopped sage and allow the smells to meld. Can you smell the complexity begin to develop?

Add the white wine and allow that to heat off in a reduction, about 5-6 min. The wine reduction adds an initial pungency and then fades into a sweeter, softer layer.

Add the cloves and smell it again…

Now add the buttermilk or milk or almond milk and allow that mixture to reheat until bubbling.

Once the milk is bubbling, add the squash meats and mash down until smooth and lumpy throughout. Add the water (to thin it out into a soup consistency), add a pinch of unrefined sea salt, stir, and cover until heated through (stirring occasionally along the way).

Open the lid and behold your transformation of flavors and colors! One layer, one step, each a complex, crucial component that has morphed and changed into a smooth masterpiece! Serve in a large, wide bowl with a dollop of sour cream!

(Note: If you want a smooth soup, just carefully puree all the hot ingredients. Me, I like it lumpy, so I can see all the layers of complexity.)

This soup is a beautiful fall orange color, the same color as your second chakra, also know as Svadhisthana. The second chakra is located in the abdomen, lower back, and sexual organs. It is of the element water, and related to emotions and sexuality. It connects us to others through feeling, desire, sensation, and movement. Ideally this chakra brings us fluidity and grace, depth of feeling, sexual fulfillment, and the ability to accept change.

The sage in this recipe offers a subtly sweet yet savory component and contributes high antioxidants including rosmarinic acid and flavonoids. It’s used by many to sooth sore throats and decrease inflammation. The sage in this recipe adds yet another layer, another level of depth, creating and requiring a higher awareness to sense and to smell all the ingredients used to create layers of complexity, ultimately resulting in the creation of a beautifully smooth end product.

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This recipe was a creation last night, one that ‘got me out of my head’ as my friend Todd likes to say. Cooking for me is my form of meditation. Creating in the kitchen is the one place where I naturally think about nothing while creativity, acceptance, and openness rush in, without effort. It’s how I de-stress, gather ideas, make decisions, & remain open to the possibility.

Yesterday was what seemed like a really bad day. I am blessed to have friends and family to help me through these ‘bad days’ and even more blessed to wake up in the morning and understand the larger lesson at hand. So, in the midst of my stress and unknowing last night, I cooked, and this is what came out. So maybe when you need to release control of a situation for which you know you have no control over, I hope this dish will help you as it did me.

What You’ll Need:

• 1 can whole fat coconut milk
• 1 cup water
• 1.5 cups wild rice
• 2 small or 1 large eggplant, washed and cut into 1 inch cubes
• olive oil
• coconut oil or butter
• 1 cup green beans, washed, and ends chopped
• 1 T curry powder
• 1 T dirty sea salt
• 1/2 T cumin

Put coconut milk and water into a pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Add the rice, bring heat down to a simmer, add the spices (cumin, curry, and dirty sea salt) and close with a lid. Stirring occasionally the rice will take about 40 minutes. (It’s cool here because the liquid will turn purple from the rice then to orange from the curry.)

Place the cubed eggplant on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and roast in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. (They will be done when the eggplant it slightly browned.)

You can either pan fry in olive oil or oven roast the green beans. I like mine slightly cooked and a tad crunchy so I roasted them after the eggplant was done, without olive oil, in the oven at 350 for about 10 min.

Once the rice is done, add the cooked veggies to the pot of rice. Stir to combine. There should be a slight bit of coconut milk mixture still left as a ‘sauce’.

Serve in a bowl and top with coconut oil or butter plus dirty sea salt to taste.

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It’s made simply with coconut flour, no wheat & barely any sugar, making it a perfect gluten free alternative. The consistency is one of a crumb/coffee cake without the sugar. It is very dense yet almost fluffy… aka perfect with morning coffee! The taste is not very coconut-y as I would have expected, rather, very subtle. The bread itself is actually very high in protein and fiber.

(Picture compliments of Nourishing Days.)

What You’ll Need:

• 1 cup coconut flour (Coconut flour is gluten free, high fiber, and high protein, you can see a nutrition fact panel and where to buy it here.)
• 1/2 cup real butter
• 6 eggs (The properties of coconut flour are very different from that of wheat flour. Since there is no gluten,  the eggs are needed to provide structure for the bread.)
• 4 T honey (You can use only 2 if you’d like)
• 1/2 tsp dirty sea salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl using an electric mixer until it become a ‘clumpless’ paste. Grease a loaf pan and drop in the batter. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes or so. The top will become golden brown or darker. Serve as is, with fresh made jam or coffee!

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What You’ll Need:

• 1 can no sodium black beans
• 1 can no sodium chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• juice of one lemon
• 2 cloves fresh garlic
• dirty sea salt and black pepper
• 2 T tahini (the nut butter from sesame seeds)  – Although I was lazy and only had actual sesame seeds, no tahini, so I just through in sesame seeds instead of the tahini, it actually worked out better for the burger texture.
• 1/2 Tbsp cumin (my fav spice, you can use less if you’d like)
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 cup hemp seeds (optional) I used them  because they were just in my fridge but the ended up giving the burger a great texture with a nice protein kick!
• (feel free to add any shredded veggies here! 1/2-1 cup of shredded carrots, squashes, spinach, red onions, etc)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2-3/4 whole wheat flour

Combine all ingredients from the beans down to the eggs in a food processor or blender. Remove from the blender and fold in the whole wheat flour until you have a nice, sticky, thick bean paste like substance.

Heat olive oil in a non stick skillet on medium high. Take a slightly-smaller-than-a-handful chunk of bean mixture, drop it into the pan and flatten out to about 1/2 inch thickness. Brown on both sides (about 3-4 min on each side). They are thin but work perfectly heated up for quick and easy lunches!

Serve along side colorful roasted veggies, salads, whole wheat pitas, or as a traditional hamburger!

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