Yoga is not just exercise; it is a lifestyle. Exercise alone will not keep you healthy. For optimal health, you need yoga exercise combined with daily mindfulness practice, meditation, and mindful nutrition. You may have wondered what keeps the Spira yoga teachers looking so vibrant, and healthy into their 40’s and 50’s. Here is your answer in three short bullet points!
We feed your mind: i.) We meditate and practice mindfulness daily!– Check out 200-hour Self-Enrichment, 40 days, and Making Friends with Stress Workshops under “Yoga Beyond Asana” tab on our website. ii.) We read! Check out our book recommendations: https://spirapoweryoga.com/books or read our reflections: https://spirapoweryoga.com/category/reflections-from-the-mat
We exercise daily – Take a Spira Power Yoga class 3-6 times a week.
We eat right – nourishing home cooked food made from scratch!
Spira’s Soulfood blog is dedicated to giving you weekly recipes from your yoga teachers kitchen. Nothing staged, nothing artificial in our food or our presentation. What you see on this blog is what we eat at home. We cook it, we take pictures, and we share it with the community.
– Wanna contribute? Write to us: info@spirapoweryoga.com
Early winter, my fuchsia still lingering onto summer!
This week’s recipe comes to us from Dora, the owner of Spira Power Yoga
“I was about to write that we have an amazingly gorgeous fall season, except as I look outside my window, I see snow… What did just happened the past week? We transitioned from warm sunny fall days right into the depth of winter in less than a week.
The view from my house…
Well that is OK, despite the snow, I am sticking to my fall recipe;
Savory-Sweet Stuffed Delicata Squash
This is a dish that is not only delicious but also very pretty. It is surprisingly quick and easy to make, but looks fancy! If you wish to impress a new date or the family, this is the right dish for you!
The Ingredients:
3 Delicata Squash cut in half (the skin is edible once baked, so scrub the squash well and scoop the seeds out)
Avocado Oil
one red onion cut as fine as you can, I just toss it into a food processor and save the tears for a good book.
four garlic cloves
1 pound of organic, humanely raised, ground pork (or for that matter, you can pick any protein of your choice)
Ground black pepper
Ground nutmeg
Dried, cherries or cranberries or raisins – or skip it – it is your choice
1 generous cup of walnuts or pecans (walnuts are way less expensive, and you will grind them up anyway… just saying, then again, I am known as a bit too frugal.
½ of chopped Chinese celery root.
Shredded Parmesan
Ready for baking! I know it is more than 3 squashes, I was hosting dinner for 10.
The process:
Preheat the oven to 350F – place the washed, cut and deseeded delicate squash on a cookie sheet on top of parchment paper. Drizzle with avocado oil. Rub the oil all over the inside and flesh of the squash, place them into the oven and cook until they look soft and cooked but not collapsed and shriveled…
In the meantime, on medium heat saute the finely chopped onions in avocado oil until they are nice and translucent. Add the chopped garlic and cook for another few minutes. Be careful not to burn the garlic; it will turn bitter when burned.
Add the ground meat and salt to taste. In your food processor, chop up the Chinese celery root, add the nutmeg and pepper to taste. Mix again (I like to make sure that the nutmeg is properly mixed up. Nutmeg is really potent, so you just need a little amount to deliver a good punch. Once all mixed up, add the walnut or pecans to the food processor and pulse it up a bit until you got a nice mixture of small crunchy stuff. Not paste, you don’t want cream, you want crunch!
Add the crunchy mixture to your cooked ground meat in onions, and cook further for five more minutes. At the end mix in the dried fruit of your choice. (or skip the fruit if you think it is too weird – some people have issues mixing savory and sweet, it is truly their problem because the mixture is amazing, but hey, it is a free country, and this is your squash!)
OK, now take your squash from the oven and carefully fill them with the precooked stuffing from above. If you are OK with cheese, sprinkle a little parmesan on top, or sprinkle a lot, up to you!
You will only need to bake at 350F for another 5-10 minutes until the cheesy, squashy meat stuffing had some time to party together and get to know each other.
Enjoy!
Serve warm straight out of the oven with a side of salad. I prefer a balsamic arugula salad on the side to cut the sweetness of the squash.
So there, squash is not a decoration; squash is a nutritious, delicious fall treat!
Enjoy,
Dora”