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Vegetarian Festival – Centro Yoga Devanand

Last Sunday we organized a Vegetarian Festival at the Yoga Center. It is the first Vegetarian festival of 2011 and the first one celebrated on a Sunday.

My friend Tania had a dream… she dreamt we did this kind of Festival on a Sunday, more people would come and try more of all the foods we offer. We usually celebrate these Festivals on Saturday nights, but people sometimes are not too fond of eating so much food at 9PM at night.

We have been doing these Festivals for a long, long time. It’s a way for the Yoga Center to demonstrate:

how varied and delicious Vegetarian food can be
the cooking talents of our Yoga Cooking Team

Usually people just bring in any dish they want to share along with the whole crowd. It’s our own vegetarian version of a pot luck dinner. It’s just a HUGE pot luck dinner featuring usually 15+ dishes, plus salads, natural juices and desserts.

Here is a round-up of all the dishes featured in this latest version of our Vegetarian Festival:

Onion Rice made by my Mom

Baked Rice with Spinach, Mushrooms, Pecans and Cheese aka Arroz Kristina made by me

Rice Pasta Lasagna with Spinach and Dairy-free Cheeses by Rosani

Chipa Guazú made by our friend from Paraguay, Ester

Vegetable Lo-Mein made by Manolo and Jesús

Roasted Potatoes with Spices by Mili

Sun-dried tomatoes Stuffed Mushrooms made by me

Breaded Eggplants made by Tania

BacalaFREEtos – made with some leftover batter from the fried eggplants inside the Lo-Mein

Pizza Pastelillitos made by Yazmín

Soy Albóndigas with a zesty Tomato Sauce made by Angie

We featured 2 different soups…

Roasted Plantain Soup made by Tania

Rice and Bean Soup with Smoked Veggie “Ham” made by Carmen G.

We had a green salad served with 2 different dressings and a natural Juice made with passion fruit, kiwi and other citric fruits.

And 3 desserts…

Candied Coconut (Dulce de Coco) made by Cony

Carrot Dessert with Raisins made by María Rosa

Walnut Cake with Candied Walnuts on top made by Rosani, our resident Master Baker…

Well… the Sunday plan was a complete hit. Dreams actually DO COME TRUE, right Tania?? We had 50+ people visit our center, some of them for the first time. It’s so gratifying to cook for a crowd and to see how the food would fly away and the trays be completely empty is a real joy.

The Staff - Medelicia, Carmen G, Angie, Katy and Tania, the mastermind of this Festival on Sunday.

I include some links to several recipes I have already shared with you. Click on them so you can enjoy them right away. And over the next few weeks I will be sharing some new the recipes I have learned from the star chefs in this Vegetarian Festival.

If you live in Puerto Rico, or close to our Yoga Centers in NYC/Queens or Miami Beach, I hope this display of photos make you hunger and come over to our next Vegetarian Festival. OK?? Just stay tuned to the Centro Cultural Yoga Devanand FaceBook Page were we usually post all our activities… It’s in Spanish, but you’ll enjoy it all the same.

Hari Om.

Tags: food, vegetarian, Yoga

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Categories appetizers, desserts, main courses, MY EDITORIAL, Puerto Rican delicacies, sauces, side dishes

The Boys Farmer’s Market – Delray Beach, FL

10 Jan

Close to where my sister lives in South Florida there’s a farmer’s market called The Boys. I always fund the name funny… particularly because it’s located next to The Girls Strawberry Patch store. We always drove past it, but never paid really much attention to it.

Recently, we’ve spent a lot of time at my sister’s and my brother-in-law always insisted The Boys had the best prices on produce. Even better than Publix or Winn Dixie. Being the market lovers we are, particularly when we travel (check out my market experiences in NYC, Paris and Guadalajara…) we had to go at least once.

We were certainly in for a surprise… The Boys, is indeed closer to a specialty food store than a mere farmers market. The concentrate in fresh produce, but have a great bakery, cheese/dairy shop, freshly squeezed juices, specialty items like gluten-free goodies, nuts and dried fruits section, cooked foods area, butcher and fish monger. I’ve never ventured into those latter areas; we tend to concentrate on the fresh produce, dairy/cheese case and the $1 table at the entrance, where they have bags filled with stuff and everything in the bag is just $1. Awesome…

My favorite things to always look for at The Boys are: $1 bags of apples, potatoes, limes, plum tomatoes, fresh ears of corn, sweet potatoes, etc. The fresh mozzarella, goat cheese, smoked cheddar, strawberries, blueberries, cut/peeled pineapples, mushrooms, poblano peppers, fresh leaf spinach, basil stalks, tri-color bell peppers, watercress, mesclun lettuce mix and red skinned potatoes.

I wish I had a specialized market near my home, so accessible and cost-effective, as The Boys. There used to be a time where we would visit The Boys daily to get the ingredients of what we would make that day for dinner. Just like in the ol’ times. I’ll be sharing some of the recipes I was inspired to make based on the awesome fresh produce from The Boys…

This makes me want to visit farmers markets every weekend now… let’s see if I can do that now in the New Year. Am I adding another resolution to my list??? Hope not…

Tags: farmer's markets, food, vegetarian

Comments 1 Comment
Categories MY EDITORIAL, Travel

Santa and the 3 Wise Men love to watch Infomercials!!!

7 Jan

Here in Puerto Rico we celebrate the best and longest Xmas Season in the world… We start right after Thanksgiving and finish right about the middle of January with the Fiestas de San Sebastián. So we have a few more weeks left to continue the celebrations and parties…

That’s why our kids receive gifts twice during the Xmas season – first comes Santa Claus on December 25 and then, the 3 Wise Men, or Los Reyes Magos, as we call them in Spanish, visit us bringing extra gifts on January 6. Kids leave grass inside shoe boxes for the camels or horses to feed along their route delivering gifts. For our kids, school doesn’t start again until after the 3 Kings have visited.

This year, apparently I’ve been a good girl cook… because Santa and the 3 Kings brought me kitchen gadgets. But not any ol’ kitchen gadgets – they brought me The Magic Bullet and the Xpress Ready, Set, Go. I swear I did not ask for these by name… however I am certainly super excited to receive them both.

Have you seen the infomercials??? They both offer 1001 ways to cook in less than 3 minutes… The Xpress Ready, Set, Go came without the insert pans. My mom got those in her kit. God bless the “call now and get a second one absolutely free” offers. The Magic Bullet came with the whole shebang – 2 cups, a blender attachment, a juicer attachment, 2 blades and 4 mugs that can double as storage containers.

Now, I want to record the infomercials on TiVo so I can see the demos of the recipes one more time now that I have the gadgets. In the next few weeks I’ll be test driving these beauties and sharing with you some of their wondrous advantages… cool?

Do any of you have any of these appliances?? Care to share some of your vegetarian quick recipes??

Tags: xmas

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Categories MY EDITORIAL, Xmas

Maoz Falafel

22 Nov

While staying with my sister in Southern Florida recently I did most of the cooking for about 7-8 people on almost a daily basis… It was fun. It gave me the opportunity to try out a bunch of new recipes and to showcase to a new audience a few old favorites.

But every once in while we needed to BREAK AWAY!!!!! Borrow the car and go out into the sunshine and go some credit card damage… That’s what brought us to the Mall at Boca Raton and Maoz Falafel.

I have seen and eaten Maoz Falafels before – eaten it in Madrid during my last visit and seen them in NYC. But I have never seen them in Florida. It was a VERY WELCOME surprise to go to the Food Court and see Maoz as an alternative for our lunch hunger. I learned today Maoz is a Dutch chain…

They serve $5 falafel sandwiches that you can fill with a variety of toppingsthey have. I went for the traditional vegetable salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions in a light lemony dressing and roasted broccoli and cauliflower. Then drizzled with copious amounts of yogurt sauce to cool off the falafel’s cumin taste – which to me can be a bit overwhelming.

Maoz has a guy in front of their storefront serving sample pieces of their falafels for everyone to try… I do not know if it’s the samples or the growing vegetarian community in Boca, but Maoz had a long line consistently during the time we were at the Food Court. Something the traditional fast food giants could not brag about that afternoon…

I am glad to say Maoz is expanding their operations in the US… and if you have a chance to see a Maoz store in your town or in your near future travels, give them a try. They’re delicious!!

Tags: food, vegetarian

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Categories MY EDITORIAL, Travel

KarmaFree turns 3!!!!

17 Nov

It seems like it was just the other day when I decided to share the recipes I adapted from magazines, books, TV shows into delectable vegetarian concoctions all my friends and I would equally enjoy.

How quickly times go by, no?? Since that day in 2007 KarmaFree Cooking has grown into areas I never imaged then…

We have a new awesome logo and incorporated it into a brand new look…

We have a FaceBook page…

http://www.facebook.com/karmafreecooking

We have a Twitter account…

@KarmaFreeCookin

We have developed a reader base that spans the whole world around…

I am super proud of my US-based fan base, but it never ceases to impress me that people in Australia, India and even Russia are reading my posts here on a regular basis. A great shout-out for you guys and feel free to say hi directly in the comments here. I would like to know more about you all.

Now in year #3 I have a new goal… I want to average 1,000 daily visitors. I am not there yet, we need to work out a few things, but with your help… I am confident we can do this in the next few months.

This is where you come in… I would like for all you KarmaFree Cooking regulars to share KarmaFree Cooking with your friends who like to cook, with those that would benefit from eating less meat in their diet, heck, just your friends that enjoy making easy and delicious recipes. We want to grow and I need your help getting there.

Here are your favorite recipes in the last year…