1/31/12

Seaweed Soup


By Anne-Marie Keppel

This is a very simple, highly nutritious, and delicious recipe.  It’s perfect to boost your immune system and detoxify your body.  It is vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free.  Of course, it's best if you can use an onion and scallion from your own garden or your neighbor's garden! 

Seaweed soup is delicious on it’s own as a light meal or can be a perfect appetizer, especially as a prelude or accompaniment to a rice dish.

Ingredients:

- One yellow onion
- Wakame seaweed
- Miso brown rice paste
- Sea salt
- One bunch of scallions
- Olive oil
- Tofu (sprouted tofu is best)

Preparation and cooking instructions:

- In a large pot, gently sauté the onion in olive oil until the onion is slightly transparent, but remains crunchy.

- Create broth by adding desired amount of hot water and brown rice paste to the sautéed onion.  Start with a half-gallon of water and 3/4 cup of paste and add more water or paste as needed.  Add sea salt to preferred taste.  Mix well until all the brown rice paste has dissolved into the water.

- Drain and cut the tofu into bite-sized pieces and add to broth.

- Add two cups of dried wakame seaweed. The seaweed will expand and soften in the water.  More seaweed may be added if desired.


- Chop the scallions and add to broth.





Since all these ingredients essentially can be eaten raw, cooking time is minimal. Make sure all the brown rice paste has dissolved, the seaweed has expanded to full size, and the tofu is warm all the way through. It's easy to reheat this soup and add fresh seaweed, so making a large quantity is a good idea. 

*Nutritional note: seaweed contains all of the minerals and many of the vitamins the human body requires for restoring and maintaining supreme health!  Seaweed is known to prevent diseases and enhance the healing process for cancer, heart disease, and immune deficiency disorders.

1/11/12

Dathün Creativity and Aspiration

Reflecting on her recent dathün, Jenny Bruce was inspired to create a message. During the retreat, she watched a video featuring Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, titled "Building Enlightened Society."


At the end of the video, Rinpoche said, "This world needs your help very badly."  Jenny says, "Those words came to mind a number of times during my trip back to Buffalo and as I returned to work."


Jenny set to work on creating a poster: "The words remind me to engage wholeheartedly in whatever I am doing." With regards to the poster, Jenny aspires the words inspire others to engage in this world.


Jenny Bruce lives in Buffalo, New York, and works at the food co-op on the corner of her street. She first encountered Shambhala in January 2007. The Buffalo Shambhala Group had two members at the time and has since grown to 15-20 meditators who practice every week. This past fall she began to explore the art of letterpress printmaking.


About DathünDathün, Tibetan for "month session," is a one-month group meditation retreat, and one of the most important training programs in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. The program is open to anyone and is a very powerful introduction to and deepening of mindfulness-awareness meditation (learn more). Karmê Chöling hosts 3-4 full dathüns each year and also offers half-dathüns.