Welcome to the recipes for prana page. Here you’ll find simple, super-tasty, wholesome vegan yogi recipes for home cooking. Find out more about the yogic diet here
Mangiamo! Let’s eat! Eating together round the big table is at the heart of the retreat community here at Viveka Gardens Yoga Farm. Dhal, rice and subji – and maybe chapatti, but that’s another story – is a meal that will extend to feed all. You don’t want to miss out on chutney with tamarind, …
Though April and early May can feel like full spring there’s not much harvest yet. Carrots and certain over-wintered brassicas like kale, or spring greens may be coming on. Roots like swede and celeriac, which love a Devon soil, have been in harvest. This year there has been an early glut of carrots. Celery may …
Sometimes it’s nice to do a bit of old fashioned baking. The sweet, warm aromas, the cutting of the cake around a table with friends: it’s full of heart. The purist vegan in me is a little offended by analogues – here soya flour providing the binding agent lecithin that you would get from albumin …
Thursday soup for hungry karma yogis and after class is now a fixture at Viveka Gardens. It’s a joy to prepare using seasonal Devon veg: we’ve had green lentil, tomato and rosemary; tofu, miso and noodles; Indian yellow split pea; dried fava and herbes de Provence, for example. This one was inspired by student Ness …
It’s the details of a vision where you can warm your hands when the big picture seems a bit nebulous. A wholesale order of organic pulses, grains, nuts, seeds, dried fruit, herbs and spices has been a sustaining dream over the past two years. And yay, the first order has arrived! Feeding guests tasty, good …
Here is a basic bliss ball recipe adapted for Christmas when finding a vegan mince pie just seems too difficult. A burst of natural sweetness to share with guests or to finish off a meal. There good minerals in chia and lucuma. You can also add raw cacao and/or maca another time for extra benefits. …
This hearty, proteinaceous and wholesome dish has good measures of secret ingredients. Sweet, salty and tangy sundried tomatoes and oregano bring Mediterranean warmth and digestibility to earthy green lentils and grounding sweet potato. Celery and carrots, organic for the best taste, bring sweetness. You could use ‘normal’ potatoes as is usual in this dish. But …
Fried, salty food is not so good every day, but for a celebration it’s perfect. Gram (chick pea flour – protein!) is used to make a batter to coat vegetables and these are deep fried. The first time I made pakora I felt grown up, in charge of a pan of very hot oil for …
This is a vegan version of this traditional Indian desert. It can also be offered as prasad, food for the altar which is then shared after a ceremony, full of devotion. Coconut cream is delicious and easily available. Coconuts have settled right round the tropics of the globe! You can find coconut cream in FOUR different …
Sizzle! In this recipe the spices are fried in oil at a high heat and added in a dash at the end of cooking the dhal. This is a template for making a simple, wholesome, kind of all-in-one protein-packed curry in just about an hour. You can substitute yellow split mung dhal, toor dhal or …
It’s not difficult: one cup (aargh, what’s a cup?) to two cups of water. And a pan with a close fitting lid. A cup is about 200g rice but just find a cup that works for you and it’ll be easy after that. Decide what spice you want to add in order to complement the …
I feel tamarind should be in the title as this is a distinctive taste that always makes the tastebuds sit up and take notice. Its sour taste is very pleasing in conjunction with the other tastes in chutney: salt, acid (lemon juice), sweet (dates) and pungent (ginger, cayenne pepper). Chutneys round out a meal because …
I’ve got a crush on dates at the moment. It’s not just the sweetness – a little goes a long way sweetness-wise – but the taste, rich and light at the same time! FULL of sunshine and prana. I was looking for some kind of loaf and alighted on a very simple BBC vegan banana …
The warm aroma of cardamom in the kitchen brings a feeling of comfort and a smile. Halwa is often made to offer on an altar. Its heart-opening sweetness is welcome after satsang: ninety minutes of meditation, bhakti (devotional chanting) and a spiritual talk. It’s extra nice when infused with the good vibes of a yogi …
If you are starving hungry and only got access to a supermarket usually hummus is the only vegan thing you can find to eat of any nutritional value. But for a yogi it’s going to mean having garlic, a stimulant on a par with caffeine, and you’ll humming not ommming. Made with protein-rich chickpeas, humus is a …
Kitcheri is Indian fast food – old school. It’s a one pot dish with full nutrition: veg, rice and dhal. Simple and tasty comfort food, it’s a dish that all vegans and vegetarians would do well to add to their repertoire. It gives the grain-legume full amino acid complement. It’s a bit like making risotto because …
Today we were transplanting over 1000 kale seedlings at Tolhurst Farm. We ripped off the top leaves so the plants won’t transpire too much*. The baby leaves were way too good to throw away. By chance I had some of the farm’s borlotti beans soaking: yes! Tuscan bean soup tonight. Traditionally it would be a …
I couldn’t decide which would be the star of this dish, the star anise tofu or the leaves…still not sure as the chard and mustard greens I picked today on the farm are so full of prana and very tasty too. Tofu is a high protein (33% more than beef!) food but it is heavy …