Root Chakra Soup with Sweet Potatoes, Red Onion and Red Lentils

True to its moniker, this soup will ground you right where you are. It’s also responsible for getting me back into the swing of things; trying to posting with intention. I keep getting urged here. So, here I am. Hi!

I have been making this on the regular and either sharing the recipe, hastily texted to friends who want ingredients while they’re grocery shopping, or sharing the actual physical soup itself with friends or as a thank you. Because, soup. It comes together fast, it’s plant-based, loaded with protein and fiber and vitamins and all kinds of good stuff. I am partial to red lentils in soup because I am impatient; they cook faster than green ones and don’t taste like dirt no matter what you do to them. They also explode on purpose when you cook them, releasing their starches (and naturally thickening the soup). I’m down with anything that’s allowed to express itself, food included.

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Root Chakra Soup with Sweet Potatoes, Red Onion and Red Lentils

The past few years have been difficult, rootless, and unsettled, irrespective of the pandemic. I named this soup, admittedly a little bit as a tongue-in-cheek, as a gesture to food and healing. Root veggies are grounding foods for the winter, and everything in this soup is red or reddish-orange, or orange. It’s definitely a soup for the first two chakras, which are responsible for our sense of security (home, jobs, cars, etc.) and creativity, and so forth. After making it for several months on a regular basis, I realized recently that this soup does indeed possess some magic.

I was recently contacted by a friend who was passing through town. I hadn’t seen him in a while since he moved out west but we keep in touch regularly. He needed a pit stop, and that included food. (No, I didn’t serve him this, but wouldn’t that have been oh-so poetic!) I realized after he left that I’d created a situation in which I could help a friend feel rooted and recharged. Soup for the win!

So, I urge you, when you’re feeling restless, unsettled, rootless, anxious, not sure what’s next, make some food. Make soup. Make this soup, if you can. You never know who will show up at your doorstep, or what great stability may befall you.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil (or ghee, coconut oil, butter)

• 1 small red onion, diced fine

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• 1 teaspoon ground coriander

• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

• 1 tablespoon fresh turmeric, grated

• 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, grated

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1 cup red lentils, rinsed and drained

• 2 sweet potatoes, 1-inch diced

• 1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes

• 2 cups water, stock, or canned coconut milk (or some combination thereof)

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions

In a Dutch oven or large pot, heat the olive oil or ghee (etc.) over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it softens, about five minutes. (Most people undercook onions! Don’t be most people!)

Add the salt and pepper, cumin, coriander, turmerics, ginger, and garlic, and coat the onions with it. Add the red lentils, and do the same, again.

Add the sweet potatoes, diced tomatoes and water, stock, or coconut milk. Turn the heat up to medium-high, bring to a boil. Once it boils, turn it down to a simmer, cover it askew (i.e., leave the lid slightly cracked), and let it simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Test the potatoes (they should be tender but not too soft). Sprinkle with chopped fresh cilantro, if desired, and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if needed.

Soup will keep up to 5 days in the fridge and freezes well.

Tomato Onion Chutney and Cilantro Coconut Chutney

These chutneys are kind of a pair, a matched set, because they go with the Indian Breakfast bowl recipe from my cookbook Tasting Pennsylvania, which was gifted to me for the cookbook from Cafe Santosha in Trexlertown. If you haven’t been there, and you are local to me in Eastern Pennsylvania, please go.

Cilantro Coconut Chutney and Tomato, Onion, and Golden Raisin Chutney. Photo by Alison Conklin.

They’re delicious on their own, with eggs or anything else you’d want to use a chutney for, quite honestly. As a team, they work great with the breakfast bowl, but if you have leftovers, I don’t think you’ll be hard-pressed to figure out how to use them up—whether that means making the breakfast bowl again, or mixing it with rice or other cooked meats, that’s your decision. All good.

Ingredients for tomato, onion, and golden raisin chutney

• 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 2 medium onions, finely diced (about 2 cups)

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

• 1/3 cup golden raisins

• 1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

• 1 to 2 tablespoons red wine or sherry vinegar

• 1 (15-ounce) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes

• 1/2 Thai chili pepper or a pinch of chili flakes

Yield: 12 ounces

Instructions

Heat the olive oil in a medium saute pan and cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until they turn golden brown about 5 to 8 minutes. Add the salt and pepper, and stir a few minutes more. Add the raisins, sugar, and cardamom, and stir to combine.

Deglaze the pan with the wine or sherry vinegar and scrape any bits that are sticking to the pan. Add the tomatoes and pepper. Simmer and cook uncovered stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes.

Refrigerated, the chutney will keep for about 2 weeks. Serve at room temperature.

Ingredients for cilantro coconut chutney

• 1 small green chile

• 1 pinch ground cumin

• 1 tablespoon agave nectar

• 1 large bunch fresh cilantro, tough ends removed

• 1 lime, zested and juiced

• 2 cups unsweetened flaked coconut

• Salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

• 1 to 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, as needed

Makes 1 pint.

Instructions

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together the chile, cumin, agave nectar, cilantro, lime zest and juice, flaked coconut, and salt and pepper. Add the oil while the machine is running. The chutney should be a thick paste, not thin like a pesto. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Serve at room temperature. Chutney will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Indian Breakfast Bowl

This, right here, is one of my favorite things to make. It’s not something I was brilliant enough to come up with on my own, but I was blessed enough to be able to share it in my cookbook Tasting Pennsylvania (2019, Farcountry Press). It’s a collection of 100 recipes from contemporary Pennsylvania cooking, dining, and eating.

It comes to me from Cafe Santosha, a lovely little eatery that’s tucked inside a health food store, so you know it’s already got a lot of good stuff going for it. And so I am now sharing it with you because it’s plant-based and delicious.

Indian Breakfast Bowl from Cafe Santosha. Photo by Alison Conklin. Recipe reprinted with permission from Tasting Pennsylvania, Farcountry Press, 2019.

This Indian Breakfast bowl is a delicious and filling dish that owner Sarah Collins serves at her cafe. Now you can make it at home. You may look at this recipe and think, why are there two chutneys? And where on earth am I going to find curry leaves? There are two chutneys because you need both of them. You can find them elsewhere on this blog.

And the curry leaves? You can get them at some Indian grocers or, if you’re like me and you live near a cool market that stocks all sorts of groovy things for food lovers, you can find curry leaves at the Easton Public Market Highmark Farmstand. Whatever you do, please don’t swap curry powder. It’s not the same thing. If you can’t find them, don’t sweat the small stuff, as they say. It will still be really delicious, and you won’t regret a single moment of making—or eating—this dish.

The chutneys live elsewhere on my website because otherwise this recipe would be too long and no one would want to make it. Please make them ahead of time (the day before or so is fine) so all you have to do is just spoon them out when your breakfast bowl is ready.

Ingredients

• 5 to 6 medium Yukon gold potatoes, 1-inch dice

• 4 tablespoons olive oil, ghee, or coconut oil (divided)

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

• 4 tablespoons mustard seeds

• 6 curry leaves (omit if you cannot find)

• 8 eggs (or 12 ounces firm tofu, drained excess moisture patted out of it)

• Pinch curry powder

• 4 cups baby spinach (or kale)

• 2 cups purple kale, rinsed and torn into small pieces

• 1/2 cup tomato, onion, and golden raisin chutney

• 2 tablespoons cilantro coconut chutney

Instructions

Heat the oven to 400. Toss together the potatoes on a rimmed baking sheet with 2 tablespoons of olive oil or ghee, salt, pepper, 2 tablespoons mustard seeds, and curry leaves. Roast for about 30 minutes until crispy. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat the oil or ghee in a small cast-iron or nonstick skillet on medium heat. Whisk the eggs in a small bowl and season with salt, pepper, and curry powder. Using a spatula, gently push the eggs around the pan, forming “sheets” of eggs. Continue to fold the eggs over themselves until they are just cooked through or a bit undercooked—they will continue to cook once they’re off the heat. This should take about 5 minutes.

(To substitute tofu for the eggs, wrap the tofu in a clean kitchen towel, and place a heavy plate or bowl on it for ten minutes to extract as much water as possible. Pat it dry. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high, and add the tofu. Break it up with ta spoon and saute until it starts to turn golden brown—it should only take about five minutes. Add the salt, pepper, and curry powder. )

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a small saute pan and add 2 or 3 tablespoons of mustard seeds. Stir to coat in oil and when they start to darken after a couple of minutes, become fragrant and then pop, remove from the heat and set aside.

Place a quarter of the spinach and kale in a bowl. Top with about 3/4 cup of potatoes, add a quarter of the eggs or tofu, followed by 2 tablespoons tomato chutney and a teaspoon of cilantro chutney. Garnish with a little bit of mustard seeds on top, and serve with your favorite hot sauce.

What Keeps You Grounded Right Now?

This is a new normal, for now.

Until it isn’t.

Here’s what’s keeping me grounded, tethered, sane and giving me some sense of routine. Some of these things are the same as before. Some are different. I’m approaching them differently.

Yoga and Meditation—When I can, I do it. My energy varies wildly. Mostly, it is a lot of yin and yoga nidra. And sometimes interrupted with more active flow when I am antsy, anxious, and need to just purge energy from my system in a holistic way that walking can’t really do.

A netting of trees. Photo by Miles.

Nature. Every day, weather and time permitting, I am walking, even if it just means I’m taking 15 minutes around the neighborhood. And every day, when the kids are here, when we can, we do it, too. We’ve been trying to go places that are less crowded, which is increasingly challenging, but weekdays seem okay. Most people are not walking during the week the way they do on the weekend,—in groups, with lots of dogs and kids—so that’s fine by us.

Contemplative Miles.

Cooking. Yes, this isn’t new. But what I am doing is even more pared down, essential than usual. I’m cooking through everything I’ve got out of necessity and more than usual. I’m also dipping into nostalgia archives, as I suspect many of you are, too. I’ve had two friends share old recipes with me, one of which was his grandmother’s and he can’t get it to work, so I am trying to figure out why. (It’s a Depression-era recipe, and not so much a recipe as a scant list of instructions.)

The kids are also expanding their repertoire considerably as it pertains to food and general household responsibilities. They’re becoming more acclimated to what’s required on a daily basis to keep the house running all during the day. I’m making breakfast and lunch, mostly because they’re working on school stuff, and then we usually make dinner or dessert together. They’re learning more.

Sourdough bread.

Stealthy Drop Offs of Food Products. My friend Rebecca gave me some of her starter. I sent some of that starter to another friend, along with some scoby for kombucha. I dropped off a loaf of bread at a friend’s house down the street just in time for him to eat lunch. The kids eat it, I send some with them back to John’s if we have half a loaf lying around, and I freeze some of it. I’m mostly doing Jim Lahey’s No-Knead bread, because it’s really easy, tastes great, and is so forgiving, especially if you need to incorporate different flours. I’ve been mixing all purpose and white whole wheat until I got a new infusion of flour over the weekend. This loaf, however, is a sourdough—it’s the basic rustic sourdough recipe from King Arthur Flour’s website.

Green Tea. There are more interruptions. Trying to work on the details of adulting while you are trying to pack and move and interview for jobs and start freelance work, right now, when the kids are doing work, means that there are way more distractions. I am already easily distracted. But going back to green tea in the morning has helped me regain my focus without making me feel jittery. Coffee and I broke up about 12 years ago. And caffeine and I generally do not get along. It always wins, and it’s not very kind about its victory, either.

New Agey Stuff. Ok, this isn’t new, but some of the things coming through are new. I’ve been compelled to do more with challenging and oracle cards so I started sharing short videos with my yoga community and it’s been very gratifying to share the messages that come to me from other realms. And there is one crystal that just won’t leave me alone, so I am forgoing others in the meantime. It’s an oddly monogamous time for me and my crystals.

Sleep. I know, this sounds obvious, but it’s not. I am sleeping more than usual, and I’m ok with that. This is a weird time, with weird rhythms, but I have been working with unorthodox rhythms since November, since I was laid off, so I have been oddly prepared for this time. Except for the social distancing part, but sometimes life forces that upon you for spiritual reasons—COVID nothwithstanding.

Social Media Fasts. In the past 10 days or so, I seriously curtailed my Facebook time, and I haven’t posted on Instagram for weeks. I’ve already gotten evangelical about why in a previous blog post, but suffice to say it has given me clarity, headspace, and energy to do what is needed to do here, right now, in my life. Social Media has been a huge distraction for me right now, one that really jarringly removes from my sphere. I want to shield what comes through, and Facebook can be an all out assault on one’s energetic field on a good day—again, COVID notwithstanding.

Pizza made in Stargazer Cast Iron’s 10.5-inch pan.

I popped on a couple times to respond to messages and to share some work I was doing with Stargazer Cast Iron, an amazing local company that’s donating 10 percent of its proceeds to restaurants, on all sales on its pans through 4-25. They’re awesome guys, and I’m honored to be working with them, and hope to be able to do more evangelizing for them. It’s great to work with people with good hearts, sharp minds, and an innovative product. (For real. I wouldn’t work with them if I wasn’t in love with their cast iron! See the pizza I made up there!)

Phone Calls. Normally, so many of us default to texting. But this is a beautiful time to just pick up the phone. I had started to do this with a couple of friends in particular, before COVID, and sustaining this practice and expanding when the spirit moves me has been incredibly rewarding.

Rodale Institute, Kutztown.

Farm Shopping. This is a normal habit for me, mostly, except I don’t usually drive a half hour to pick up flour from a farm store, until you cannot get the regular things at the store, such as flour. And if you’re there, there’s other good stuff, too. Thanks Apple Ridge, for sharing what you’ve got, and growing all the green things, baking all the bread things, and so on. I also stopped on the way home at Klein Farms, and got some eggs, Smoogurt, and some of their veggie cheese spread, which is like a tangy cream cheese, because I promised the kids I was going to make bagels last weekend. Both stores are smaller, local, and therefore it’s easier to manage the situation right now. It’s also making it even more gratifying to shop locally.

A couple weeks ago, I drove out to the Rodale Institute and bought some herbs, including valerian, stevia and lemon balm. They were doing a curbside sale, and plan to do another one for flowers in May. The drive was beautiful and I almost cried when I got out of the car and saw all the plants lined up waiting for people. Sensing my response, the volunteers there let me go into the greenhouse, where I stood for a few minutes and just soaked in the warmth, the loamy aroma of new plantings, and all that green. It was deeply therapeutic, and I was tempted to hide out there all day.

In a few weeks, I will transplant some of these items into my yard. Yes.

Tomorrow, I hope to go to the socially distanced Easton Farmers Market, and I want to get some flowers from Traugers for outside the house, too.

What about you? What’s keeping you grounded right now?

Sausage, White Beans and Tomato Stew

This sausage, white beans and tomato stew, my friends, is one of my favorite pantry meals, hands down. I almost always have the ingredients for it, even in a pandemic, my kids will always eat it, and the leftovers—if any make it—are sublime for several days.

Sausage Love

You start with your favorite Italian sausage. Mine happens to come from Giacomo’s on the Hill, here in Easton. I try to buy a couple pounds at a time of their fennel sausage (or the plain, or the parsley and cheese, depending on what’s available). I will cut about a pound of it into 4-5 inch pieces, wrap it in aluminum foil, and then pop it into a ziptop bag. And label the bag, accordingly.

If I am dealing with the sausage immediately, I cut the sausage into link-like pieces (about a half to a full pound, depending) and cook to just to brown it for maybe 5 minutes, then remove it from the pan and set it aside. (I like to do this in a cast iron pan—Stargazer, a local company, is my current favorite.) Then, I start the onion in a Dutch oven over medium heat, adding the herbs, salt and pepper, the chopped pepper, tomatoes, white beans, greens, and so forth. It’s pretty adaptable, but the sausage gives it a ton of taste.

A Word About Cheese

Before serving, I like to sprinkle this soup with Pecorino Romano, simply because it’s got a bit more assertiveness to it, but a good quality Parmesan will work, too. But know what’s even better? Parm Rinds!

Do you wonder what to do with those old rinds of Parmesan or other hard nutty Italian cheeses? (Or Spanish ones, let’s not discriminate). Stick them the freezer. Pop one into your soup or stew, and you’ve got an umami-punch that no one will be able to really detect but will permeate your soup with so much tastiness. I’d suggest doing it for this soup in particular, if you’ve got one, but I’m not putting it on the ingredient list because I didn’t have one. Just pop it in about halfway through the process of cooking and remove before serving. If you want. It will get a little gooey in there, but that’s the point!

Make-Ahead!

This dish is so easy, and you can cook it and let it sit a little bit if need be over low heat. If some of the liquid evaporates, just add a little more water. (I like to save the tomato can and fill it with water so you get some tomato-ey water if you need more.)

Here’s what you do.

Ingredients

• 1 pound (or less) Italian sausage

• 1 tablespoon cooking oil of your choice

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 1-2 teaspoons Italian seasoning (or equal parts of dried oregano, parsley marjoram, fennel—customize to your liking depending on what the spice rack yields.)

• 1 medium bell pepper (or other frying-type sweet pepper), chopped

• 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained

• 1 (15.5-ounce) can white beans, rinsed and drained (or approximately 1 1/2 cups cooked)

• 2 cups Tuscan kale, cut into thin strips, or baby spinach, left whole

• Salt and pepper to taste, always

• Grated Pecorino Romano cheese

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, for garnish

Directions

Cook the sausage in a cast iron pan for about 5 minutes until it browns on all sides and starts to release juices. Remove from the pan, set aside to cook on a cutting board. When the sausage is cool, slice it thinly.

In a Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat and add the onions, stirring to coat. Add the seasonings, and let the onions soften, about five minutes. You want them to start to take on a little bit of color, but not burn. (Most people don’t let their onions cook long enough.) Add the chopped peppers, and cook over medium heat for a few minutes, just to soften.

Add the canned tomatoes with all their juices. If it looks too scant, add half a can’s worth more. Cover and bring to a boil, briefly. Reduce heat to medium-low, add the beans. Simmer for 5-10 minutes to warm through.

Add the sliced kale right before serving, toss it in to gently wilt. Sprinkle Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper on top, stir. Taste. Top with pecorino and chopped parsley, if desired.

Serves 4-6, depending on size of bowls and appetite.