Monday, January 18, 2010

Veggie Brew


      
         Welcome to "Veggie Brew", the recipe section of The Artistry of Health Blog. It features original recipes created by me. All the food in this section is designed to nourish the body and uses the freshest ingredients and the healthiest preparation techniques. Though I am partial to raw foods, I've decided to incorporate a 50/50 cooked/raw food diet into my life and "Veggie Brew" reflects that. From raw to cooked and somewhere in between, each recipe is executed with healing and love in mind. Think of "Like Water for Chocolate" but it's more like " Like Water for Health".

      The first recipe came about as a result of a cold winter day when I was extremely. The hunger was oh so real! Though I love my fairly new rented duplex, I dislike the fact that there are few to no options in the neighborhood to consider food let alone healthy food. Wanting immediate satisfaction, I even toyed with the idea of getting a "salad" (or perhaps some other "veggie" option from the Crown Fried Chicken across the street. And there goes an example of compromising lifestyle choices. But behold, thanks for good and supportive friends! My homegirl Daryl talked me out of opting to hop across the street to the hood's favorite diner, and create a meal from home. What made me even consider Crown's was the winter cold. I wanted something warm and hearty as well to eat. So I pieced together what I had left of some various ingredients and voila, a cozy winter e-mergency meal.


Ingredients:

celtic sea salt
fresh rosemary
cherry tomatoes
1 block extra firm tofu
basmati brown rice
2 leek stalks
1 1/2 large sweet onion
green and yellow beens
baby carrots
scallions




1. Place brown basmati rice in pot of water. Heat at a low temperature. The rice will be done by the time the remainder of the meal is cooked.



2. Slice the sweet onions to 1/2 inch thickness. Place the sliced onions in deep skillet. Blanch the onions; cover onions in water, cover, and bring to a boil. Blanch long enough to soften the onions and bring to a firm wilt. Slice all vegetables and cut the extra firm tofu into 1in blocks.



3. Slice 2 Leek stalks about 1in thick. Drain onions and add extra virgin olive oil to skillet. Add onions and leeks to skillet and sautee on low heat. Sprinkle 2 pinches of celtic sea salt.



4. Add yellow and green french beens, carrots, and chopped scallions to skillet and mix. Add 3 pinches of celtic sea salt. Cook all ingredients for about 10 minutes. The key is to lightly cook the vegetables for a short period of time without losing too much nutrients. While the vegetables are brewing, place extra virgin olive oil in a large pan and add tofu. Sprinkle a dash of celtic sea salt. Lightly sautee the tofu until light golden brown on all sides.



5. Add tofu and chopped tomatoes to veggie mixture. continue to cook for 5 minutes. Add 3 pinches of fresh rosemary and cook for 5 minutes.



6. Once the rice is finished cooking, top with the cooked vegetables, pour on the juices from the skillet and InJoy!


Heal Thyself
With Love,
Nicole

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

New Year’s Evolution



        New Year’s resolution. Many of us know them well. We are so familiar with them that we repeat them, making illustrious patterns of well, disappointments. I plan on losing 10 lbs this year. I will stop drinking soda for the next 6 months. I will get a membership to the gym and attend a regular class there. I will stop smoking. I will be more compassionate. The majority of most of our resolutions have to do with our health and well-being. In essence, we wish to optimize our life experiences by being in better physical, mental, and spiritual shape. The guilt of having gained weight, picking up the habit of smoking, or having a not-so-gracious demeanor invokes us to change. Sometimes we do not recognize the depths of our symptoms until they have reached rock bottom. This is actually an opportunity to dig our deepest and discover at our core the reasons for our imbalances. Making a verbal commitment to ourselves by ourselves is a great first step, but deciding how to make the commitment real involves daily ritual.

I have often shied away from making resolutions all my life. Even as a little girl I just kept things moving as usual and made changes as I saw fit, and I’m pretty much the same way now. This year however, I’m determined to shed my life of relationships with limited mobility, and put all of my artistic gifts and pursuits into full gear. As I move into another phase in life and specifically womanhood, I am determined to learn from my own life experiences. It just so happens to be that I begun to play out these decisions and changes in December; like I said I keep life moving. I have dedicated the last 2 years of my life to consistantly exercising. I got a membership at the excellent Bed-Stuy YMCA , and regularly attend Boot Camp . (Foot surgery has taken me away from class for 3 months now, but I’ve been on the road to exercising at home again.) But this time last year, I was attending class regularly on average 4 times/week. I attended class after the holidays and wondered why class was over-crowded. I wasn’t late that day, so I pondered with a fellow consistent classmate about the boost in attendance. I was actually a little mad and to me the attendance was madness. Then we came to the conclusion that these must be people who made their new year’s resolutions. After the ah-ha moment, I leaned over and said to my classmate, “ most of them will be gone by February"… and they were. Not that I did not believe in them, but this is a SERIOUS class and yes you will sweat! Like any serious commitment, it starts mentally. Like they say get your head in the game...

Again, resolutions are excellent vantage points. The key to the success of a resolution is to start before your “start date”. We are all familiar with “binges” before the "big date”. Consume all you can before you begin. Think of it like this, excess is excess. The more you exceed, the more you have to work and the less your mind is engaged in the transformative process. This is not going cold turkey, which, is more or less a split decision. This is setting you up for failure. A resolution is better reached when it becomes a lifestyle through action based on understanding, and not through mere force. This Is Evolution. We are all worthy of giving ourselves time to reach our destination one day at a time. If we really want to see change, you have to at least plan it in your mind and allow it to be part of you as the understanding of it comes. 

Here are some keys to creating your successful Evolution:

  1. Determine the thing you most want to change in your life.
  2. Think about achieving your goal until it feels it is embedded in you.
  3. Consider your obstacles ahead of time, without being discouraged. You will have to overcome them, but need to know what some of them may be ahead of time.
  4. Allow it to be a part of your life. Accept both criticism and praise about your choice and lay it down beside you. Indulging in either one will create an imbalance in your mental scale and thwart your success. Say thank you and keep it moving!
  5. Do it when you’re tired and when you're bored. Your body and wallets will thank you later for the diligence.
  6. Reward yourself along the way as you achieve milestones in your commitment. 

Thursday, December 24, 2009

On The Road Again...



                                                               At the beach with my sister 


        Hello wonderful people! I am back on board from a two month hiatus. After starting on the good foot, I had surgery on the other one, ha (pun intended). It was minor surgery, but surgery none the less. I am very much a physically active person and I love working out at home or at the gym and enjoy being as mobile as possible. The reality of what I was actually getting into did not set in until I was on the operating table and that's when I realized "oh, this is surgery". I am so used to bouncing back from anything that I do, that the post-surgery reality didn't sink in either until day two of me lying in the bed unable to walk... yes I did not walk for five days, unbelievable! That is what catapulted the actual start of the Artistry of Health Blog. The idea was already there but now I had the time to create it with no excuses, I just had to hop to my studio to use the computer.

         So between then and now, I went back to the 9-5 and spent the remainder of the month searching and looking at apartments (shout out to to Tiffany for walking at snails pace with me the whole time!), and actually moving in. For most people that I know who have had the surgery, I am having the most speedy recovery. Could I attribute that to mentally not wanting to feel and be so dependent and having the will to do so? Since I was going to the gym regularly attending boot camp, could my body handle op and post-op better? I could concur that it was these things, but by no means has it been mentally or spiritually easy. For a quick moment I understood what it is like to not be able to use your body to full capacity. Now after walking for 20 minutes, I have to sit and rest, but indeed, I can walk.



                                                                                The opposite foot pre-surgery        


           In my case, having to have the surgery was in my opinion partially hereditary. Take one look at my feet and you see my mom's and grandmother's feet. Not really appearing deformed, there was much pain and aggravation, to the point it had been affecting me at least since 2005 when a college friend reminded me that I spoke of the issue even then. Though I looove a great pair of high heel leather boots, which I buy a new pair every winter/fall, I only where heels and shoes on occasion. I have even been accused by my students of not owning any because I wear kicks so much. In later research that I did post surgery, I came across this website: http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article.php?id=28075 . It discusses the relationship between bunions, sugar, and the spleen. Of course too much of anything is not good, and a high consumption of sugar is connected to inflammations in various areas of the body, and the article details how it is connected to bunions. Could my infamous sweet tooth be the cause as well? My instinct tells me yes. Could I have prevented surgery and most of all inflammation had I moderated my sugar intake? My instinct says yes. There have been times when I cleansed and/or regulated how much sugar was in my diet and inflammations of every kind simmered down.

Always preferring to take the non-medical and non-medicinal route, having the surgery is something I still ponder about mainly because I did not research all my options, "alternative" methods of treating the bunion,or seeking a podiatrist who would inform me of other options pre-surgery. Now that i have been taking the time to help my foot heal correctly, here are some resources in regards to bunions, surgery, and "alternative" methods (both eastern and western):

products for correcting bunions -


General bunion information -




Health Thyself!
With Love,
Nicole


Thursday, October 8, 2009

City Eating


      I am a city girl to the heart...New York/Jersey City that is. As I continue my efforts to travel as many places as I can on the globe (I've trekked France and Nicaragua), I still appreciate home and some"down home" cooking. Yes my family has deep roots in the South, but down home for this health conscious earthy-yet gritty girl born in the South Bronx may look like food picked straight from a grandmother's backyard. Food made with Love and Health in mind.

      As an urban chameleon living in BK (Brooklyn for you who may not know) apartment living doesn't easily lend itself to the world of food harvesting. So as one part of the compromise to city living, I enabled myself to stay abreast of the best Vegetarian/Raw food eats that New York City has to offer. As I make my regular pilgrimages to my other favorite cities Washington D.C. and Philly,  I'll add many more physical destinations to my life's journey and take you there with me through food, movement, and art as reflections of a holistic lifestyle. So to kick it off I would like to serve up just a taste of some of my favorite spots to eat in NYC:


and of course for on the go....Whole Foods

Check 'em out, and inJOY!

P.S. Look for my upcoming reviews of these cool places.