Proper vegetarian lunch for 20cents in U.S dollar!

My lunch today was prepared with love by my assistant and believe me, she did a very good job.
Ingredients for lunch: 500Ar or 0.20cents in US dollar.
Time she spent to buy the ingredients, prepare and cook and presenting it on the table: 1hour only!
Main dish: morelle greens (anamamy) with raw peanuts
On the side: Rice and green salad with carrots, tomatoes and onions.

I must say that I didn't expect much of it since that is really such a cheap meal but the result was surprisingly good and I need to learn more from her. The combination of the bitterness of anamamy in a rather milky raw peanut sauce was just delicious. She will definitely participate in my blog more often than not. Wow!

Roughly chopped onions and tomatoes on a bedding of green salad and carrots.

Cyclone dish, tilapia and lemon verbena!

It's been raining for 3 days and very windy. It's cyclone time! My lemon verbena tree couldn't stand the strong wind neither did the chillies. So I had to go into the garden this morning and made new cuttings, collected seeds and came up with what I call a cyclone dish. The wonderful thing about seasonal food is that I don't quite know what I'd eat from one day to the next which spare me from wasting time planning. Rivers are overflowing and tilapia fish are in abundance. Since I live not far from a lake, people come to my door to sell tilapia. So I decided to make a dish out of the broken plants and the fish. This is the result, a delicious, spicy tilapia in lemon verbena sauce!

You will need quite a lot of lemon verbena leaves. It is very easy to plant it in your garden but do not make the mistake like myself where I never prune it so it got to 3 meters high and cyclone brought it down. This plant has a very beautiful, strong fragrance and has a slight lemon taste to it. I use this plant a lot for tea.

You will also need a big tilapia fish, cleaned thoroughly. I must say that I am eating here a foreign introduced fish to Madagascar that has put our endemic fish species into disappearance. May be if we eat more of them, they will be eradicated. Here is an interesting video and article about the change in rivers and lakes in Madagascar.

• Put a bed of onions, lemon zest, lots of lemon verbena leaves in a non-stick frying pan.
• Stuff some more of that combination inside the fish itself.
• Put the two types of chillies (cayenne and habanero) washed and unopened next to it
• Add salt and pepper
• Cover and let it sizzle with its own juice
• Turn the whole fish to cook making sure you do not break it.
• Finally, drizzle a little bit of oil on top and cook 3 minutes more before serving!

One type of breakfast

Good morning! I don't know if breakfast was meant to be prepared in a hurry or eaten fast but everything around my eating habits is slow. Slow cooking and eating slowly otherwise I don't get to eat at all. Not that I am fussy but everything goes moramora we say over here. Here is my breakfast this morning. Breadfruit pancake with fresh strawberry compote. Yes! That tree that gives you bread if you are following my posts. You can make flour from it and the result is a very fragrant fruit flower pancake!

Pic.1 Breadfruit pancake and strawberry compote

Pic.2 This is how I plant my strawberries

No breakfast is complete without coffee and I know my coffee well. These are special highland arabica beans that I harvested from my coffee tree right from my small garden. It is almost surreal but yes, one of my small tree provided about 7kg of coffee last year. Now it has left many more small coffee plants in my flower bed and I am in trouble because I do not want to kill any of them!

Pic.3 Highland arabica coffee beans harvested last year

Pic.3 And more coffee trees to come!

Apple or Banana?

I prefer apple banana. Well, I grow 3 types of banana in my garden. Apple banana, Cavendish ones and Lady Fingers. I didn't know this but, according to scientists, we might not be able to eat bananas anymore in 20 years from now because they will be wiped out by disease. The reason being the cloning of the one type called Cavendish banana or the ordinary one that you find everywhere. Pic.1 Apple banana

If you can, plant your banana. It is my favourite snack and I have it permanently in the fruit bowl. I remember that when I was young, I went through a whole year hiding from my parents and eating mostly bananas during the day. Well, I didn't die from it! Those of you who knew me then, please don't laugh! I love everything about banana. I think it is the most useful food plant on earth.
Banana is full of nutrition, its leaves are very useful for cooking, its peels are very good for your skin, and it is of a great value for energy, digestion, heart health and leaving you all relaxed!
Pic.2 Apple banana fingers still on the hand for fruit bats and birds in the garden

Pic.3 Pile of ordinary Cavendish banana, sitting on the street waiting for a pick-up

This one is called Gros Michel and I use this type for making the Malagasy pudding Koba that I posted earlier on. For me, it is the sweetest of all bananas.
Pic.4 Gros Michel type of banana

Political bitter gourd or Margoze!

The second food on my plate is just a mixture of mushroom and young spinach leaves but the third one is the political food. That is funny, why is that you may wonder?
I saw an article about bitter gourd in Mauritius one day and posted it on my Face book. I had so many reactions and I decided that I will plant this gourd again because my family loves it. Mauritius has one of the highest level of diabetic people on earth and they badly need their bitter gourd back! But here is the article that I read on their local newspaper.

 Here is my Malagasy native margoze that came out of the earth without being planted!

And it is not the longer fruit "Taiwan variety" they talked about in that newspaper article. :)

Plant your bread!

So here I am with the explanation of what I ate last night, pictured on my post yesterday.

If there is such a thing as breadfruit, why would I eat processed white bread?

That big lump on my plate was a quarter of a whole breadfruit!

It comes out of my garden, freshly collected by my parents who taught me how to eat it in the first place. They love it when it is slightly yellow and very sweet, boiled and served as it is or with a bit of butter.

I've tried so many ways, grill, steam, fry or mash and to me, it just simply replaces any carbohydrates. So I swap it for rice or sweet potatoes sometimes.

Pic. bellow with my parents selecting their favourite ones, my baby dog and myself

I love the fact that I can still eat the food that my ancestors ate 3000 years ago! There are many varieties of breadfruit but the one we have in Madagascar is the Polynesian one.

Our fruit tree can produce up to 200 fruits a year and I seriously believe that this "tree of bread" has a great potential to play an important role in alleviating hunger. If we think environment, and food problems, this is one of many solutions. Please check its nutritional value on the net here and plant your bread!

Guess what I had for dinner? Political food!

Good evening everyone!

This is a dish I made for dinner tonight. You can guess what it is and please leave me a comment later. If you haven't found out in 24hours, I will tell you all about it. Basically, everything in this plate is extremely good for your health. Of course! I would say so wouldn't I? But it is true. It is a vegetarian meal and only two of the ingredients I put in it didn't come from my own garden! One comes from a very big tree and the other ingredient has political problem for food justice right now! It was so delicious, I am tempted to make it again next week. Go on, have fun guessing! :)

Local or international?

My friend helper came back from our local market this morning empty handed. Why I asked? Apparently, she did not recognise most of the vegetables on the stall and she was afraid to make mistakes. I decided that I would go myself to find out. And yes, I understood what she meant. There were different onions, different cucumbers, different honey, different green leaf vegetables!
When I asked the names of these strange looking vegetables, the seller did not know but he explained how each one tastes! I took the risk, bought the one that looked like a spaceship and spent time on the net to find out. To my amazement, the one which is supposed to be called a horned African cucumber was after all a melon that the vendor could have waited until it was ripe and yellow so it would have tasted like a mix of jelly, banana, and zucchini! Well, I learnt something today! I only buy local vegetables and look what I found. An ancestor of cucumber which originated from Africa! YES. Buy local if you can and you learn something new. Spiky cucumber.

Thank you Malala for taking the photo while I was sniffing the spaceship! :)

I cut it in half, scooped the inside and ate it. People, you do not need vinegar or lime! It is already naturally with the taste of lemon. I just added a bit of salt, pepper and drops of olive oil... Yummy!

KOBA, Malagasy pudding

Today I would like to introduce to you the first kind of koba. I had this one for breakfast earlier on in the morning today since I had to do some physical work and needed a bit more energy. It is made out of rice and banana. Normally, it is already sweet enough but I added a teaspoon of forest honey as well. It is so delicious and I have to admit that wherever I go these days, I always make a new version of koba because I have to eat it at least once a week. As I mentioned before, I was so inspired by this food that I wrote a song about it. You can listen and watch the Koba video clip here!

Bidens pilosa - Asteraceae or Anatsinahy

Bidens pilosa, or Anatsinahy in Malagasy.
In the highlands of Madagascar, we eat quite a lot of leaf vegetables. It is easy and cheap because it grows everywhere. This one is a strong medicinal plant that lots of generations have been using in my family. When you look it up on the Internet, it has so many names and so many usage so make sure you search for it with its scientific name to avoid confusion.
It is considered to be a weed, a nasty one since it can take over your whole land! But in Madagascar, we eat so much of it, you will be surprised that it is almost disappearing in my region. People love its tender young leaves so they pick it up too early. After few years, there aren't many left and they wonder why. It has to be left alone to spread more seeds to get more Bidens pilosa! I grow it in my garden these days because I particularly like it for tea, for salad, to stir fry quickly and to mix it with raw peanuts. It has a bitter taste but that is where the good stuff is! I recommend not to take that away.
I stumble upon this site to find out more about Bidens Pilosa, Anatsinahy.

Red rice

Rice is our staple food and there isn’t any food talk without talking about rice! As you may know by now, there are more than 40.000 types of rice in the world but I eat mostly red rice. I know where to find the best kind and there is plenty in Madagascar. We cook rice in so many different ways but I like it when it is possible to separate the grains when it’s cooked. 

• I eat rice everyday to accompany my meal and I eat it with beans and vegetables.
• We also make a kind of rice soup (vary sosoa) that I prefer to eat with honey
•  I use it for salads and for a pudding called Koba.

I wrote a song based on Koba recipe in my album Soul Makassar to bring this traditional famous dessert back on fancy restaurant menus!
When travelling, I bring my red rice with me and sometimes, I mix it with black rice that I find in health food store these days. Rice provides lots of energy. You will benefit from learning how to cook it properly and have it on your diet.

I also like to drink the ranon'apango, which is basically the rice water that comes out after it is cooked. That is the drink we have on the table!

Sunday, sorting out day

Wow, it’s been a week already since my first post on Zen Food. The response has been amazing because I have had people from all around the globe to send me questions and viewing the blog! Thank you for your support. Food is an important part of our life and so many of us are keen to eat better, eat for our health and care for our planet. Within a week, there has been more than 20 countries that viewed the blog and my target is to share it as much as possible. From Madagascar to Qatar, Italy, UK, Mauritius, Lebanon, Greece, Cameroon, USA, Finland, France and so many more. I hope you like the blog and you will also share your good food practises and experiences with us.

Sunday is a sorting out day for me so I spent three hours in the garden to weed and took pictures of the homeless very free range chickens!

Red grapes for snacks or dessert

To finish my food of the day, I eat tons of grapes. I prefer red when they are in season. I collected these In my very small garden this morning. I eat them raw as they are. When I feel I had enough, I put them in salads or make juice and very rarely, I cook them in sauce accompanying poultry.
All in all, I eat everything in the fruit. No waste here.

I must say that during the season of grapes, I eat loads and I replace them with glasses of red wine when the season is over. I urge you to learn about the fruits'anti-aging and heart protection functions. Pretty amazing really! I hope you will have your own plant, it is so beautiful when they are ripe!

Madagapotamon Humberti, Foza kely

My food today is a big plate of small fresh water crab or foza kely. It has been raining in the last 2 days in the highlands of Antananarivo and small fresh water crabs are thriving in any collection of water. They taste so good, you won't believe you can actually eat as many as 50 crabs. In fact, it is not a plate for the squeamish neither for those who look for big chunk of meat because there isn't any! Check out on the net its nutritional benefits and you will be surprised why you didn't eat them before.

Here is a brief environmental information for the week-end. Madagapotamon humberti is the scientific name of the foza kely. Madagascar has 12 species of fresh water crabs and these are all endemic to the island. They are found in inland water ecosystems throughout Madagascar, in rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, and marshes, or wherever there is freshwater collection . Andava-pofotra.

How this one was prepared? Well, very simple. You buy your foza kely still alive, you clean them well and you drop then in a pan with onion, tomato, garlic and a bit of ginger and serve with parsley and finely chopped spring onions! How you eat them is another matter!

Manga or Mango

Before I add the second food I eat this season, I would like to repeat that all these food need to be as fresh as possible for your own benefit. So, please if you can, plant them. You are better off if they are in your garden!

Also, one other thing, please do not be lazy to find out what are the fruits and vegetables in season if you need to buy them in the market. 

I keep a diary of when they are at their best and try to only eat those in season because, they are better for your health and they are in abundance therefore cheaper. 

I eat lots of mangoes. I have mango trees in my garden and they produce far too much mangoes than I ever need in a day. Once again, there are so many ways of eating mangoes but the freshest is the best.

This is what I do:

• I smell the mango off the tree
• I peel and clean my face with its peel
• I then make fresh juice and drink it all day
• I also make chutney, sauce and eat it as it is

I believe, this is one of the secrets of my clear skin. You can find out more about its nutritional values.

I also love making green mango salad which is one of my favourite salad dish.

Watch the video on how to cook it!

Here is what I found on the net on how to cook my favourite sweet potato leaves dish. My choice would be fresh tomatoes not in tins and leaves only without the stems please!
Watch the video here.

Sweet potato leaves, ravim-bomanga

Here is another type of sweet potato leaves. You can find out on the net everything about the plant and all its nutritional values if you wish but I would like to just give you few examples of how I would eat them.

• Eat them raw as if they were for salads.
• Quickly boil them in water to get a sort of clear soup (ro).
• Stir fry them with onions and garlic.
• My favourite one is cooked with patsa mena or dried dwarf red shrimp. This is a typical malagasy dish eaten with rice.

My main purpose here is not to give you recipes but to rather encourage you to incorporate them in your daily food. Plant some, eat them fresh from your garden as often as you can and let me know how you are doing! It is fully packed with good nutrition and you cannot go wrong.

One kind of leaf

Ravimbomanga, sweet potato leaves

I realize that some you might not even know that we can also eat the leaves of sweet potato! Not only it is a power pack nutrition but it is delicious raw or cooked and on top of that, it is a beautiful climbing plant!

Sweet potatoes, Vomanga

Start with sweet potatoes. There are different kinds. You learn to distinguish them by the shape of their leaves and their colours. These are freshly dug out of my flower garden yesterday! They are of the pink sweet potato kind, full of nutrition and good values as far as food price is concerned. I only planted 1 stem and I got 3kg of sweet potatoes. Meanwhile, I have been eating the leaves all year around. Surprise surprise, I was not sick once in 2012 and I saved a bit of money both on medicines and on vegetarian meals! You can plant your food and eat it fresh. It is a joy to be able to learn all about it on the net these days! Feel free to share your thoughts and experience with us!

Happy New Year 2013 everybody!

Wishing you all the best for this new year and above all, good eating habits, health and happiness!

Why Zen Food?
Well, for those of you who are not familiar with my work, I would like to say few words to introduce myself.
My name is Hanitra, I am an artist from Madagascar. My work and life style involve a lot of travelling and moving from one country to another. In other words, busy. You can find out a little bit more on my website when it is finally running here.

Very often, I come off stage, people ask me what do I eat to keep fit and dance for hours while singing, playing and then travelling, often missing meals and lacking sleep, then find my home, my family and dogs and taking care of them!

Well, I've never asked myself that question before but not long ago someone stopped me in the street to ask about the secret of my clear complexion so I thought I'd create Zen Food blog to try to answer to some of these questions.

It's time for a new resolution, something else to try since it's new year, we can all make our life a bit better so be my guest.
I will post as I travel! Follow me, you will find me through my food. Please interact, give suggestions or comments, you are most welcome!