Vegan Fusion

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Vegan Fusion Raw Food Intensive
Los Angeles, California

April 2 – 4, 2010

Discover the essentials of raw food cuisine from Mark Reinfeld, coauthor of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Raw and winner of the Aspen Center for Integrative Health’s Platinum Carrot Award for Living Foods.

During this three day intensive you will learn how to create energizing soups, superfood smoothies, granolas, seed and nut milks, pizza, pasta, crackers, raw salads, plant cheeses, pates and nori rolls, raw desserts such as puddings, parfaits, pies and more.

also included is

Yoga in the Yurt with Michelle

Join us at a beautiful private home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. We will begin our day at noon with an hour of relaxing yoga in a magnificent yurt by Michelle Mazur. After this we dive into the world of raw food cuisine. Its a hands on opportunity to learn techniques from one of the leaders in the vegan and raw food movement. There will be plenty of food to sample! Then its back to to the yurt where we end the day at 6pm with a 15 minute restorative yoga session with Michelle.

In Michelles’ words, “Sometimes in our busy lives we do all the necessary things we need to stay healthy and feel great. However, quite often the stresses of everyday living take over and effects our nervous system which effects our digestion, assimilation and elimination of food. Even if we eat the healthiest of foods the state of our mind can directly decide how we will respond to the glorious things we put in our mouth. Together we will explore how yoga can help. Taking basic principles from ayurvedic medicine (the science of life) along with some understanding of the three gunas which are the qualities of nature (Prakriti).

I will teach a set series of asanas for different conditions that may occur and upset the natural healthy order of things. Students will leave this retreat with a list of asanas to do on their own for different situations that may arise. I will also teach different restoratives every day to culminate the work in asana and cooking to relax the physical body and thinking mind. “

$625/person

Includes:
Daily raw food lessons and raw gourmet meals
Vegan Fusion raw food recipe manual
1+ hour yoga instruction in a beautiful yurt by certified yoga instructor Michelle Mazur

Michelle Mazur has studied the movement of the body for over 30 years. She focuses particularly on how and why we injure ourselves and live in pain. Twelve years ago she began practicing yoga after spending her life trying to heal from injuries of the spine, lower back, and hips created from years of ballet dancing. She began studying with many of the master teachers from around the world and immersed herself in the study of yoga, its philosophy and its therapeutic aspects.

Michelle is registered with Yoga Alliance at theE-500 level, along with certifications in Yoga Therapy, and Yoga Philosophy. With her personal experience and vast knowledge of yoga, she has an exceptional ability to spot an individual’s specific needs and to tailor a class or private instruction accordingly to bring relief.

Spaces are limited. To register and for more information please call us at 808.822.0820 or email info@veganfusion.com

The 30 Minute Vegan: Over 175 quick, delicious, and healthy recipes for everyday cooking

The 30-Minute Vegan by Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray (Book Review)

I’m not vegan, but I do love vegan recipes. As someone who is dairy-free and who loves their veggies, I am always looking for new and creative ways to enjoy them. Vegetarian cookbooks are typically filled with cheese and milk … I have never understood why such authors feel the need to drown their produce that way! Vegan cookbooks tend to rely more on using seasonings, fresh pairings, and unique cooking techniques to bring out the flavor in natural foods. That said … so many vegan cookbooks spend the majority of their recipes trying to recreate non-vegan foods by using various soy products and faux meat and cheese alternatives, but not The 30 Minute Vegan. Honestly, this cookbook was breath of fresh air.

First, it is packed with recipes. But second, there doesn’t seem to be a specific agenda beyond good vegan food. Yes, there are some recipes that use dairy or meat alternatives and yes, there are some recipes that are variations of “old favorites,” but there are also countless recipes that pair delicious seasonings with fresh produce, and even numerous unintimidating raw recipes. In other words, there really is something for everyone in this cookbook … and the recipes really do take less than 30 minutes! At first pass, I encountered so many recipes that captured my attention that my copy was already riddled with dog-ears within 24 hours of receiving it.

I started with the Seasoned Spuds.

Rather than roasting, these taters are steamed and then bathed in a unique mixture of seasonings and a little bit of oil just before serving. This different technique intrigued me, especially since you could actually use high quality oil without fear of its smoke point or breaking it down. The seasonings included fennel, rosemary, soy sauce, fresh garlic, salt, pepper, and paprika. I was amazed by the resultant smoky taste. Though my husband and I tend not to like fresh garlic, when crushed and added to the hot potatoes, it cooked just enough to keep it from being to strong, which was nice. Also, I loved the instructions and cooking technique. I am very slow in the kitchen, but their steps of “put this on,” “do this while that is warming up,” and “do this while that is cooking,” really worked. The dish, along with the rest of our lunch, came together in no time.

For my second recipe, I made the Chocolate Sesame Bonbons.

These babies could be in The 5 Minute Vegan cookbook (if it existed of course)! I wasn’t sure how they would turn out, so packed full of seeds and with so little sweetener, but they were positively delicious. The sesame seeds gave these little snacks a delightful rice crispy-like crunch. I will definitely be making these, and variations, again.

In the end, what impressed me most about The 30 Minute Vegan was how well thought out and executed the recipes were. The ingredient amounts and instructions were spot on and well-tested, no adjustments needed (surprisingly rare among the sea of cookbook errors and untested recipes). Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray have really delivered in this cookbook.

Other cookbooks by these authors include:

• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Raw (Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray)
• Vegan Fusion World Cuisine: Healing Recipes and Timeless Wisdom from our Hearts to Yours (Mark Reinfeld)
• The 30-Minute Vegan’s Taste of the East (Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray) – available in July, 2010

This is a third party review by Alisa Fleming, author of Go Dairy Free: The Guide & Cookbook. The 30-Minute Vegan is available to purchase on Amazon