Vegetarian Festival – Centro Yoga Devanand

17 Jan

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.

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Caprese Salad

13 Jan

I don’t know what it is about tomatoes in Florida… but every time I visit my sister, we can’t contain the urge to buy lots and lots of tomatoes. They’re just so plump and red and sweet and delicious… And I learned never to put them in the fridge. Just leave them on the counter and eat from there. They’ll not spoil and you’ll always have the best tomato experience.

We would go to The Boys Farmers Market or to another smaller more traditional type of farmers market near my sister’s home and would always return home with a batch of delicious tomatoes.  I would make batches and batches of my Tomato Basil Brushetta mix and this Caprese Salad for my sister… her favorite.

 I always like to add a bed of crispy lettuce underneath to bump the nutritional value and heft of the salad. Even though its tradition to have only tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, I need lettuce to make it feel more of a real salad to me. All the components are readily available fresh from The Boys – mozzarella, basil leaves and mixed greens…

CAPRESE SALAD

6-8 romaine lettuce leaves, thinly shredded or baby spinach leaves would work well also
2 large tomatoes, sliced
½ ball of fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced
10-12 basil leaves, washed and trimmed
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Coarse Sea Salt
Freshly Cracked Black Pepper
  1. Just place cut lettuce or other greens  as a bed on a serving platter. Arrange tomato and mozzarella slices alternately on top of lettuce bed.
  2. Place a basil leaf in between each slice of tomato and cheese.
  3. Drizzle with Olive Oil and Balsamic. Sprinkle liberally with Salt and Pepper.

Don’t the tomatoes look scrumptious???

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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…

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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??

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Three Kings Day Menu

6 Jan

Today is 3 Kings Day… when we celebrate the arrival of the 3 Wise Men to visit Baby Jesus at the manger. It’s a great holiday in Puerto Rico. Back in the days of my grandma, kids only received presents on 3 Kings Day, never on December 25. That’s a new thing of the last 50 years…

Because of my yoga retreats, which start on Dec 25 until Jan 1, our plans usually are to spend 3 Kings Day as a family at my aunt’s farm in the country. We had agreed she would make for us the traditional menu she likes to prepare for us:

Rice and Pigeon Peas or Rice with Corn

Vegetarian Pasteles – brought by my mom and me

and yes… that’s a pastel hiding underneath all that ketchup…

Boiled Green Bananas

Green Salad

And my Tití Carmín’s famous Potato Salad

My former grad school roommate, Michelle, was always baffled by my wanting to have Potato Salad on our holiday menus. When for her, potato salad is a summer salad only. Well, my dear friend Michelle, Puerto Rico has consistent 70F weather during Xmas time, which is pretty warm for most US standards.

This year, my aunt and her husband are “under the weather” with one of the worst flu ever. So we had to cancel our 3 Kings Day celebration. Later on, I will be trying to attempt her Potato Salad recipe and try to share it with you all. OK?

Happy Triking Day!!!!

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