My Blog

Posted on

Amazing Fall Casserole – Recipe

Yoga therapy helps us celebrate every day activities.

With the fall harvest underway, markets are abundant with eggplants and tomatoes. I was searching for a hearty vegetarian, make ahead meal that was different. This Barley Crust Eggplant Lasagna is high fibre and packed with seasonal flavor.

Pot barley (not pearl – those grains have been polished to remove much of the healthy fibre and vitamins) is a wonderful grain to have in your pantry. When cooked, it is toothsome, chewy and almost meat like. In this recipe, we used cooked barley as a base for a rich ricotta layer topped with fall vegetables and, of course, more cheese!

Make ahead. This will keep in the fridge for 3 – 4 days before baking. And leftovers can be enjoyed for the rest of the week. This recipe makes an 8″ square baking pan, and serves at least four people. To make it in a traditional lasagna pan, double ingredients.

Recipe:

For the crust: Bring 3 cups vegetable stock to a boil. Add one cup pot barley. Reduce heat and simmer, lid on, for about 20 – 30 minutes. Drain well. Combine cooled barley with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, 1 egg and chopped fresh parsley and chives (other herbs are fine – about 1/4 cup in total). Press mixture into bottom of well oiled 8″ square bake pan.

For eggplant layer: Slice eggplant into 1/4″ thick rings and place on sheet pan. I use parchment paper to cover the pan first so the pan stays clean. Salt generously. Place in 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. When eggplant is browned and tender, place slices over crust.

For the ricotta layer: In a mixing bowl, combine one package ricotta with one egg, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper and 1/4 tsp nutmeg. Spread evenly over eggplant layer.

For the tomato layer: Slice heirloom tomatoes in 1/4″ thick pieces. Place over the ricotta layer.

For the topping: Top casserole with 1 cup grated mozzarella cheese and 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese.

To bake: Place in pre-heated 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Keep casserole covered. When vegetables are tender and hot throughout, remove foil or cover and broil to brown cheese.

This is the amazing comforting fall meal that awaits you after the casserole has a few minutes to rest. Check out other unusual recipes such as Carrot Top Pesto and freezing your own Roasted Red Peppers.

Posted on

Meet Natalie

Hiking the Bruce Trail. Her longest distance is 14 km and she was still raring to go.

I grew up in the country and always had a dog. Usually a larger, mixed breed that stayed outside except on the coldest nights. The last dog I had – her name was Bailey – lived with me until she was 15 and too ill to cope any longer. What a horrible decision to end her suffering! And that horrid experience caused us to declare that there would be no more pets!

But I couldn’t stand the house so empty. No little clickety clack of nails on the hardwood greeted me as I came home. No warm little furball to snuggle with at nap time.

After applying online to several dog rescue sites, and being turned down several times (apparently you are supposed to save your dog’s dental records for seven years????!!), Natalie rescued me.

On the dock at the cottage. Hunting frogs at the shoreline is a favourite pastime.

We are somewhat inseparable now. She comes hiking, camping, canoeing, shopping and gardening. She executes a mean “down dog” on my yoga mat.

What I love most about hanging with Natalie is the constant reminder that love is all that really matters. She probably had a traumatic past (rumour is she was wandering too free in California before Toronto Humane Society imported her) but her joy at each moment is inspiring. It inspires me to move on from whatever stress is catching my awareness and seek connection instead.

There are very few situations in life that can’t be made better with a puppy cuddle.

Posted on

Breathe into a More Joyous Life!

“Our breath is constantly rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, entering and leaving our bodies.  Full body breathing is an extraordinary symphony of both powerful and subtle movements that massage our internal organs, oscillate our joints and alternately tone and release all the muscles in the body.  It is a full participation with life.”    Donna Farhi, “The Breathing Book”  (Holt Publishing, 1996)

                On your last visit to the doctor, he/she may have asked you to take a deep breath.  Here’s what I commonly see in my yoga therapy practice when I observe someone instructed to deep breathe. 

They inhale.  Their nostrils pinch a bit and it makes quite a sound on the intake of breath.  Their arms and shoulders hug into the body.  The shoulders and collar bones lift up.  Neck muscles tighten.  And often their bellies pull in.  Try a deep breath in this manner.  Does it feel liberating or joyous to you?  It feels like a lot of work to me.

                Our breathing automatically adjusts to whatever external circumstances require.  It’s brilliant really.  Because we spend more and more time in sedentary activities, during which our brains are concentrating on reading or talking but not movement, our breath just goes into a shallow holding pattern that just keeps the basics going.  No point in investing a lot of energy in breathing deeply when the muscles are relatively stagnant.  Every once in a while, however, the tissues of the body send out an SOS.  FEED US!  And you are prompted to sigh or inhale as described above.

                Breath is literally your life.  As oxygen is brought into the lungs and permeates through the alveoli to the blood stream, hemoglobin molecules shuttle the oxygen to all the cells of the body.  During shallow breathing, not a lot of volume of oxygen is being delivered.  This translates to sluggishness, mental fog and increased stiffness.

                One of the more efficient ways your body can breathe is shown in this illustration.  As the lungs fill with air, the diaphragm descends down toward the abdomen to make more room for that balloon like action.  As you exhale, the lungs deflate and pull all the other bits back into place.

                Maybe you notice that this natural breathing pattern involves letting your belly muscles relax on inhale.  That can be a barrier for many of us who try to look skinny (by sucking in our gut) or think that tight “abs” will keep our backs happier.  Breathing is a whole body experience.  Relaxed breathing means that muscles need to relax as well as contract.  That is a definition of strong muscles – ones that can lengthen and shorten as needed.

Program for Restoring Your Life by Breathing Better

  1. Constructive rest:  (this could be done in bed if getting to the floor is difficult)

Take 2 – 20 minutes here. Use a pillow if necessary and blanket to keep warm. Observe your natural breathing. Where do you feel movement?  No movement?  A lot of movement?  Do you hold your breath?  Is your breath ragged or irregular?  Are there pauses?  Where and how long?  There is no right way to breathe right now.  You are just familiarizing yourself with what you are experiencing today.

2. Cat/Cow Stretch:  Inhale, sit up erect, lifting the chest toward the ceiling.  Exhale, hug the belly muscles in and let the back body stretch.  Repeat 5 – 10 slow breaths, breathing in and out through the nose.

3. Side Stretch   

Lean to one side on exhales.  Lift back upright on inhales.  If your arm gets tired up in the air, tuck it behind your back.  Repeat 5 times to each side.

4. Seated twist    

Inhale, sit up tall, facing forward.  Exhale gently twist to one side.  Repeat 5 times to each side.

5. Down dog with Chair   

Keep knees a little bent, or a lot bent.  Lift buttocks up and backward to length the entire spine.  Take 3 – 5 long, patient breaths.

6. Relaxing Chest Stretch   

This could be done in bed if getting to the floor is too difficult.  Place a rolled blanket along the length of the spine. Buttocks is on the ground. An additional pillow can support the head if needed.  Knees are dropped out to the sides and supported by more blankets or pillows so hips are comfortable.  There should be a pleasant stretch along the inner thighs but no pain in joints.  Let arms drape out to sides, palms up.  More blankets could support the arms if this stretch is too much for tight shoulder or chest muscles.  Rest here up to 15 minutes.

Making these movements part of your daily routine will bring more life to your life!

Posted on

Roasted Red Peppers will add Sunshine this Winter

Living in Niagara during August and September is one big harvest of yumminess. Yesterday I decided to process a bushel of red shepherd peppers (sweet). They are easy to roast using the barbecue and freeze wonderfully.

The whole process takes about 1.5 hours. To organize your workstation, you’ll need a cutting board, a pail for the peelings (to the compost of course!), a large sheet pan for the prepared peppers and a hot barbecue. This can be done in your oven, but it is messy.

Once the peppers are sliced in half and the seeds removed, place them skin side down on the grill. Cover and cook about 10 – 15 minutes until the skins are blistered and blackened.

Take the charred peppers and place on sheet pan. Allow to cool and the steam will loosen the skins. I needed to do about 4 batches of peppers to do the whole bushel but you can do smaller amounts.

The skins will just slide off after about 20 minutes. If some parts didn’t cook evenly, or are blackened, just leave them. It all adds to the smokey flavour.

Pack peppers in freezer bags. They store well for at least a year.

To bring a wonderful sunshiney taste to winter, use the red peppers on pizzas, sandwiches or in pasta sauces. Here’s a quick sauce that I use on cooked vegetables.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

In a powerful blender, like a Vitamix or Ninja, blend 1 cup roasted red peppers with 2 T olive oil, 1 small clove garlic, 1 T balsamic vinegar and salt/pepper to taste. Keeps in the fridge for one week.

Posted on

Don’t Throw Out the Carrot Tops

In yoga philosophy, there are several suggestions for living a happier and simpler life.  We are encouraged to practice non-greediness (aparigraha) or santosha (contentment).  I was raised on a farm and those pioneer ideals of always using everything fully and embracing what nature gifted us are already ingrained.

So it’s harvest time in my garden.  When you are done admiring my special gardening hat, you may note the lush greenery.  Everywhere.  And my farm roots and my yoga training insist that I find a use for it all!

                Take carrots for instance.  <!–more–> We traditionally only focus on the root, but the lacy green tops are quite edible.  I chop them into salads, whip them up in my greens smoothies and I still have tons more.  So today I got creative.

Vegan Carrot Top Pesto

  After cutting the greens from the carrots, and removing the larger, tougher stems (little ones are fine), I rough chopped the greens until I had about 3 cups.

This is the seeds and garlic ready to be chopped finely.

   Out came my trusty food processor.  This is one of the hardest working tools in my kitchen and I’m always surprised that so many cooks don’t invest in one.  It’s invaluable for making hummus, muffins, lentil burgers, grinding nuts and chopping veggies.  Mine is a $150 model and it’s worth the extra to get the precise cutting.  Here you see the 1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds and one peeled clove of garlic ready to go for a whirl.

  Now add the carrot tops.  As you can see, there are a lot of greens in that bowl.  Add ¼ cup balsamic vinegar, ½ cup good extra virgin olive oil and generous amounts of salt and freshly ground pepper.  You can adjust the seasoning later so use less than you think at first.

  This is what the mixture looks like after spinning, and scraping the sides of the bowl down, and spinning again and again.  Adjust the olive oil and seasonings as you go.

  Pour into a glass storage container and cover with a thin layer of olive oil to keep the colour bright.  It will store covered in the fridge for a month or in the freezer for up to 3.

                What do you do with all that pesto?  Add it to cooked pasta (1/4 cup at a time, then taste); flavor salad dressings; use it on cooked veggies or meat or make …..

Smoked Tofu Panini Sandwiches

  1.  Prepare bbq tofu:  Slice one block smoked tofu (extra firm; available at any grocery store) into ¼” pieces and marinate in barbecue sauce for a few minutes.  Broil or bbq slices until browned (the tofu is all ready to eat so you’re just adding flavor here).
  2. Using a hearty multi grain bread, slice two pieces for each sandwich.  Spread generously with the pesto. 
  3. Thinly slice a garden ripe tomato and layer over the pesto, followed by a single layer of tofu.  Top with second slice of bread.
  4. Using a panini press, grill the sandwiches until heated through.  Alternatively, keep the bbq hot and use a sheet pan on the grill.  Make sure it’s well oiled and place sandwich on pan.  Push down with metal flipper to compress sandwich a bit.  Flip after the bottom gets nicely browned and repeat technique.
  5. Serve with basil aioli (blend chopped fresh basil with mayo or vegan mayonnaise) for dipping.
Posted on

The Hidden Muscle that Affects Everything

                What is one of the biggest muscles in your body, crossing three joints, affecting your breathing and every step you take?  Let’s go on a tour of this hidden giant and discover how releasing tension in this muscle can liberate your health and spirit.

                Have you guessed yet?  It’s the psoas (pronounced so-as) and it is primarily regarded as a hip flexor, although, as with most of our anatomy, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Image result for psoas

  Let’s first look at the geography.  This photo shows an anterior (meaning from the front) view of the left side.  The red is meant to represent the muscle fibres.  See how the muscle starts up on the spine?  It has big, ropey attachments to the front of your vertebrae starting at T12 (just under the bottom of the shoulder blades) to L4/5 (the arch of your low back).  It travels along the inside (anterior) side of the hip bones (those are the saucer shaped ones, either side of the illustration).  It emerges at the groin and finishes on the inside of your thigh bone.  Stop reading and measure this by touching your body from the mid-back to inner thigh.  That’s a long muscle!  Because it is so large, the top and bottom of it are often doing different things.  Which makes it very tricky.

                So what does the psoas do for you?  It flexes the hip, for starters, which means in bends the leg up into the body or pulls your body down toward your leg.  So walking involves lifting a leg which means the hip flexor is active.  It also deeply influences the curve of your low back.  In cases of non-specific back pain, I always suspect the psoas.  It typically presents as tightness in the thoracic or lumbar area that responds well to gentle stretching and relaxation but gets worse with prolonged standing or sitting.  Typically, an exaggerated lumber curve means a tight hip flexor, but flattened back curves can mean psoas malfunction too.  As I said, it’s a tricky character.  The muscle also acts as a bit of an external rotator, which means it turns your thigh bone out a bit.  If the external rotator muscles are overused (if you tend to walk a bit duck foot like, this might be you), this can create hip pain and other conditions such as sciatica.

                The psoas crosses the hip joint, sacro-iliac joints and the spinal connections.  It is the only muscular connection between the leg and the spine.  Misalignment and tension can affect knee, pelvic and shoulder function.

                As the psoas travels through the torso, it weaves in amongst all your digestive and reproductive organs.  Malfunction or tension in the muscle can contribute to acid reflux, constipation, IBS, fertility problems, menstrual irregularities and cramping, among many other issues. 

This charming fellow is showing the position of the diaphragm.  It’s that big dome shaped muscle under the lungs and heart.  Look at the fibres right at the spine where we noted the psoas starts.  They interdigitate, which means they hook up quite intimately every breath.  Which brings us to the biggest insight into getting a healthier psoas muscle.  Breathing!

                Moving a bit deeper into our investigation, think of the basic job of the psoas.  Hip flexion is called for in fight or flight.  We are either going to lift the leg to run or fight, or we might pull the body into the legs to protect our belly.  We are deeply hard wired to initiate a psoas reaction to any environmental irregularity or threat.  So did someone criticize your report today at work?  That’s an environmental threat to your psoas.  Did someone pass you too fast on the highway?  Did you feel disappointed that you weren’t invited to lunch?  Did you worry about making budget?  Was it really loud or too bright?  You get the picture.

                Many clients ask about stretches for the psoas.  It may make much more sense to begin to release the tension of the last few decades a bit first.  Aggressive stretches  (isn’t this one fun?) 

 can cause damage in the groin and take a long time to heal. 

                Let’s look at a more patient plan that is safer, quite pleasant to undertake and provides ripples of benefits to all systems of the body.

  1.  Legs Up The Chair Pose : This video demonstrates the pose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1dvKsv39tY&t=17s).   In this series, plan to spend 5 – 10 minutes here.  Get comfortable.  Begin breathing in and out the nose, slowly and rhythmically.  Gradually take as full breaths in and out as you can without straining.  After the first few minutes, let go of actively breathing and just let nature take its course.  Deliberately day dream about pleasant thoughts, like a favourite vacation memory.  If an emotional charge comes into your relaxation, gently set it aside, promising to revisit it later.
  • Half Knee to Chest Pose:    Start with both knees bent.  Inhale.  As you exhale, hug one knee gently to chest, not too tightly.  Gradually straighten out other leg to form this shape.  Feel the bones of your straight leg as they might be made of iron …. sooooo heavy!  Take a few active nostril breaths.  Repeat other side.
  • Gate Pose:    Place a folded blanket under the knee for cushion.  Modify to stand on the left leg here if weight bearing on the knee is painful.  Inhale, reach left arm up and exhale to side bend.  Move in an out of the posture a few times and then hold for 3 – 5 breaths.  As you use your diaphragm fully to breath, see if you can start to sense the influence that has on the psoas.  Repeat other side.
  • Active Bridge Pose:  Place a yoga block, or full roll of toilet paper, between knees.  Inhale to lift hips and arms.  Exhale to lower.  Keep block or toilet paper roll firmly hugged between knees.  Repeat 10 breaths.
  • Savasana (or Relaxation Pose):  Lie back on mat, using a pillow under head or rolled blanket under knees for comfort if necessary.  Stay as supported by the floor as much as possible for about 2 – 5 minutes.

As you slowly stand up and move about, notice if there is a lightness in your step.  The psoas muscles act as guy wires between the leg bone and spine.  When they are relaxed and receptive, they conduct the electricity more fluently.  These exercises may also be accompanied by a feeling of light heartedness as they release deeply held stress.

Privacy Policy Proudly powered by WordPress