Vanilla Fruit Smoothie

We just spent a whole Saturday working in our yard in beautiful Seattle sunshine. Yes, when Seattle has sunny days, they are the most beautiful. It was finally warm enough for me to want a healthy cold drink! Pictured here is my empty glass of Vanilla Fruit Smoothie and some blossoms from our crab apple tree.

For the recipe, see my post at Naturopath.ca.

Purple Artichokes and Orzo

When I got my hands on these purple baby artichokes, it already felt like Spring in Seattle. We've dipped into dreary temps again, but seeing them while writing this brings a smile back to my face! I found them at Sosio's in Pike Place Market. I'll be honest -- I had attempted cooking regular artichokes before, but was poked and frustrated so much that I never bought them again. As you can see, these were so fascinating I HAD to try them!

The guru at Sosio's told me these baby chokes would be really tender with a nutty flavor. He demonstrated how they did not need trimming like regular artichokes do. You remove only the outer-most, tough leaves. If you find only larger or long-stem chokes though, then you may proceed as outlined here.


I used:
1/4 pound Supreme Orzo from Pappardelle's (it has amazing Saffron, Fire-Roasted Red Pepper and Porcini Mushroom flavors)
some small, purple baby artichokes
some garlic cloves (unpeeled!)
some broccoli heads
2-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
half a pinch of saffron (if you feel adventurous, mix some in oil & toss the mixture in the pasta!)


My method:
1. Preheat the over to 350F (175 C).
2 Clean the artichokes. Take only the tough, outside leaves off -- there shouldn't be many if the baby artichokes are fresh! Slice them in half. If you find these tender baby artichokes as seen in my photos, there is absolutely no need to trim off anything else.
3. I tossed all my veggies -- broccoli heads, artichokes, and garlic in oil, salt, and pepper, then placed them on a baking sheet, to bake for about 10 minutes. Make sure nothing burns.
4. Boil the pasta while the vegetables roast.
5. The artichokes might cook first, then broccoli, and then garlic. Be careful not to over-roast artichokes as they will get tough. Depending on your equipment and other ingredients, you might want to start roasting the artichokes last!
6. Once the pasta is finished, season it and toss it in oil (or, saffron-infused oil if you prefer).
7. When the vegetables are finished, combine them with pasta and plate to your liking. The pieces I had cut made for simple, elegant plating on top the orzo, as above.
8. Note, the photo above only shows a few veggies, but in fact we ate 4 times as many with our pasta :) I was only practicing my plating skills.
9. It is a lot of fun to squeeze the roasted garlic out of its peels. Don't forget to eat all the good stuff out of the artichoke leaves, mmm!
10. We really enjoyed this wonderful Purple Artichokes and Orzo meal with a crisp white wine, while looking forward to warmer days ahead :) We toasted to Summer!

Pairing Suggestion:
My husband, Brian is a beverage enthusiast and remembers we had a summery, local pinot gris. He said: "the nuttiness of our artichokes, the saffron and herbs in our pasta, and the garlic call for a dry, assertive white." I remember he idled around our wine stash for a while over what to pair with artichokes!

Grilled Veggie Wrappers

It's Spring in Seattle and everywhere you see beautiful flowers like this Rununculus. It makes you want to eat warm weather foods, too. One of my all-time favorites for Spring, Summer, and honestly, all year round are grilled vegetable wraps. Here is my recipe for these unique Grilled Veggie Wrappers, at Naturopath.ca!

Be Green Every Day!

When media and marketing campaigns use a phrase like "Go Green!" to sell products or increase their popularity, the effects can be good for awareness but bad for the movement. Some who see a "Go Green!" catch phrase on a product might buy it and think they have done enough.

Catch phrases may raise awareness, but awareness of our climate crisis is high enough. We need to take more everyday action to address climate change. For that, people need specific, practical advice. This is one of the main reasons I create and share recipes as Mango Power Girl. I give you recipes so you can go green every day -- all are healthy and vegetarian, and I focus on local foods from organic producers with sustainable businesses.

My husband and I recently went to the best green festival I've seen -- the Seattle 2008 Green Festival. We listened to Frances Moore Lappé, a pioneer of the green movement and one of the most influential people in the field. She wrote Diet for a Small Planet in the early 1970s, when it was not easy to get the green message across, especially for a woman. Lappé has dedicated her life to making people aware of how we affect our environment and how we can do better. Read more on her Small Planet Institute site. Her daughter, Anna Lappé helps take it to another level. I love Anna's ideas on eating and cooking in a climate-friendly way. See more on her new site and her blog, Getcha Grub On, which you might have also seen in my Power Links :)

The Seattle 2008 Green Festival offered tons of ways we can do better: natural and ethically produced foods, beer, wine, clothes, gadgets, and toys, responsible investing, political advice, and more. Many of the tips were simple, and I have seen them working in my daily life. For example, my office just started composting and buying more biodegradable supplies.

In 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson was on a conservation speaking tour, when he announced the first ever Earth Day. I applaud Earth Day, but I am not going to celebrate just for one day. I am going green more and more in everyday ways. In addition to sharing my foodstyle with you through Mango Power Girl, here are other initiatives I have taken that you might find interesting:

(1) Eat Local Now! -- I am attending the Eat Local Now! dinner in my neighborhood of Seattle. For you Puget Sounders or Cascadians: find out what exactly is in season and when and also what you will find now at farmers' markets. When you eat local and from farmers' markets, you are eliminating "the middle man" and giving yourself a break financially, you are eating from more reliable and healthier sources, and you are helping your local economy, too.

(2) Edible Plant Sale -- Eat more of what you can grow yourself. For my local readers, this links to Seattle Tilth's annual edible plant sale, and elsewhere you should search for something similar. This event is extremely popular around where I live, where people are serious about what they grow and what they eat. Keep it up Seattle! This is something I want to practice more. It is harder if you don't own the place you live in, but through Community Supported Agriculture (local CSAs here), P-Patches (specific to Seattle only), Container Gardening or Veggie Boxes that even students, renters, and city people with no space at home can join in.

(3) Watch "King Corn" -- This is a must-see, independent film, maybe the movie of the year! Especially for Americans, this movie will open up your eyes to what the mainstream diet is really made of!

(4) Go Vegetarian, in more ways than ever -- We already are vegetarians based on what we eat, but there are next steps we can take. I have to give my husband props for this one -- he started buying vegetarian clothing, which means no more leather! He recently bought a pair of ethically made Vegetarian Shoes and belt, and he even gave up his once-cherished leather jacket. He wants to go vegan eventually, which I really admire. There is still more for us to weigh before we take a huge step like that, but the point is: there is always something more you can do.

Challenge yourself not just to "go green," but instead to "go more green." Educate yourself and change your habits, not for one day but for a lifetime. Make every day Earth Day!

Healthy Palak Paneer

I did a non-traditional, call it "fusion" Mushroom Spinach Curry some time ago. Now, here is the traditional Palak Paneer, but done in a healthier, modern way. Indians typically fry the paneer for this dish, but I don't fry! Read my post at Naturopath.ca for the recipe and more!

Spring Saffron Shortbread

This cookie is my way to welcome Spring and the big Lama to Seattle.

Although the temps are slightly chilly in Seattle, we are fortunate enough to have everything blooming -- from the famous UW cherry blossoms to daffodils and tulips. The seeds of compassion are blooming in Seattle, too, as the Dalai Lama has arrived for a five-day visit; more on that below :)

I've been dying to make cookies using this tulip-shaped cutter we've had in our supplies for a while now. As soon as I saw the first tulip in my yard, I finally did it. Shortbread is one of those cookies that I love to eat, but never thought of baking. Recently I was going through a cookbook I received for my birthday last year and discovered a simple shortbread recipe. These cookies are my adaptation of a recipe from Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery.

With this I want to prove you can have beautiful food colors from totally natural ingredients. I will publish more posts in the future with more colors and flavors. Spring Saffron Shortbread deserves its very own alongside the lovely tulips from our yard!

Saffron provides the beautiful yellowish-orange color and gives your food the most amazing aroma. This combination of flavors was very much inspired by the Indian sweets I grew up eating. I added a bit of powdered almonds and pistachios, and the flavor was out of this world. These are soft, buttery, aromatic cookies with a salty bite -- as a good shortbread should have. They are decorated with a saffron cardamom icing.

For the cookies, I used:
2 sticks unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1/4 tspn kosher salt
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour, sifted
a pinch of saffron
a handful of finely ground pistachio and almonds
1 tbspn milk

For the icing, I used:
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tbspn water (more or less based on the consistency you feel comfortable to drizzle with)
half a pinch of saffron
a pinch of ground cardamom
1 clean Ziploc® bag (a clear plastic, disposable bag, sandwich sized)



My method:
1. Cream the butter and salt for a couple minutes with a mixer.
2. Add the sugars and cream till the butter is soft and fluffy.
3. Add the sifted flour in a few different parts, mixing on low till all is combined.
4. Take a pinch of saffron in milk, and combine (mortar & pestle works the best here) till no strands are left; you'll have a nice orange liquid -- that is your natural food color! Add it to the cookie mix and mix till the color combines evenly.
5. Flatten the dough into a disc shape, wrap it air-tight in a plastic wrap, and chill for a couple hours.
6. Preheat the oven to 350 F (175 C) when ready.
7. Take the dough out 5 minutes before you want to roll it out.
8. Roll the dough out into a 1/2" thick sheet on a floured surface, and cut into it whatever shapes you like.
9. Place cut outs onto a baking sheet and bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until you see their edges starting to brown.
10. These cookies stay pretty light in color, so once the edges are done, take them out and cool.
11. Make the icing while your cookies cool. Combine sugar, water, cardamom, and saffron in a bowl, or directly in the Ziploc® as you prefer. I crushed the saffron with my hand, but did not melt it this time so I would see little specks of saffron in the icing!
12. Cut a tiny hole at an angle on one of the tips of the icing bag, and make sure there is no air before you close the bag. Once the cookies cool, decorate away, and enjoy!


There is another reason I am featuring saffron. Saffron is the color worn by peaceful Tibetan monks. With the atrocities long going on and now flaring up in Tibet, with all the protests and now more violence, it is sad more is not being done internationally. The world needs to stand up! Even with the on-going turmoil, the Dalai Lama is here in Seattle for a five-day series of discussions, speeches, and more by the organization called Seeds of Compassion. The gathering will be webcasted in 24 different languages at their site, so if you will not be in Seattle for the next five days, be a part of it virtually. With thanks to my friends in the Tibetan community and at work, I will be able to attend parts of the gathering, and for the rest of it I, too will be logging in :)

Free Tibet & Peace to the Monks!

Eggplant Jack!

Eggplant is one of the most nutritious vegetables you can eat. It is also called aubergine (in French) or where I grew up in India, it was brinjal. Unfortunately for my health, when I was young eggplant was the one vegetable I hated with a passion.

I went to a full-day school in India, where we were served a nice, balanced lunch made up of daal, roti, rice, vegetables, lentils, and yogurt -- every day! This was no Hogwart's Dining Hall, but the food was great. Among the vegetable dishes, you could be assured that you were going to get eggplant at least once per week. Complicating matters: you had to eat it! Until the 6th grade, there were teachers eating at every table to make sure you ate all you were served!

They even checked our thalis -- stainless steel dishes -- before we bussed them out to the washing area. What could we do? Some of my eggplant-hating gang and I would try to hide our eggplants under an upside down bowl and sneak them out. BUT BUT BUT -- if the teacher decided to turn the bowl around, and if she saw what you were not going to eat, you were made to stand there and eat the eggplant all by itself! Oh, it was torture! It happened to me once and I learnt my lesson. Better to eat your eggplant alongside the rest of lunch.

Even back then, I did sometimes eat my eggplant and liked it. My mom was sneaky: she cooked and blended eggplant into our dishes so we wouldn't recognize it. Those days are gone now. I have come to love the once-most-dreaded purple vegetable.


There was always good reason to eat eggplant, of course. It is rich in fiber, iron, and compounds called terpenes which lower your cholesterol. Most of its nutrition is in its skin. I have called eggplant a vegetable all my life because we eat it like a vegetable, but it's interesting to know that biologically, eggplant is not only a fruit but in fact it is a berry! You can read more here about the beautiful purple berry called eggplant.

The most common way eggplant is eaten in America is unfortunately not the best for you. Eggplant Parmesan is the most common dish, but the eggplant is usually drenched in egg, then deep fried, and then over-loaded with mozzarella. It is of course OK to use some cheese, but if you also want to enjoy the flavor of the eggplant, avoid the breading and frying that cover it up. As you know, I do not fry my food, so I came up with this wonderful baked dish, Eggplant Jack. Below is my simple recipe:


I used:

1 big, purple, bell shaped eggplant (I don't know the variety's name, but when picking one out it should be light in weight for the least seeds, and make sure it's a male. It will also be less bitter!)
1/2 cup grated pepper jack cheese
2 big cloves minced garlic
2 tbsns extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

My method:

1. Turn the oven to 350 F (175 C).
2. Slice the cleaned eggplant into 1" thick cylindrical slices.
3. Drizzle olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and toss. There is no need to salt the eggplant and drain it in traditional way, if you are using it right after slicing.
4. Press the minced garlic into the crevices of each slice. As it cooks, the flavor will be infused and the garlic will not burn.
5. Lay the slices flat in a foil-lined baking tray, and bake for about 20 minutes, or till they smell and look slightly brown.
6. Sprinkle on the cheese and bake for a few more minutes, just till the cheese melts.
7. Enjoy it as an appetizer or as a side to your meal.

French Toast Bites n Berries

This is an easy way to make and eat your French Toast. You've seen my traditional French Toast, but try turning it into bites! Read my post at Naturopath.ca for the recipe and more about this healthy and delicious breakfast.