Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Jo Schaalman and Jules Peláez are co-authors of two books The Conscious Cleanse: Lose Weight, Heal Your Body and Transform Your Life in 14 Days, a best-selling, step-by-step guide to help you live your most vibrant life and their brand new The Conscious Cleanse Cookbook! Together they’ve led thousands of people through their online supported cleanse through their accessible and light-hearted approach. They’ve been dubbed “the real deal” by founder and chief creative director Bobbi Brown, of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, beauty editor of the TODAY show. Daily Back Pain Relief with Kristin Gibowicz

Over the last few weeks, I have made this soup several times. Soup, for me, is a perfect food for cold weather food and a few weeks ago in Estonia we still had thick snow covering all the streets and temperatures were frigid. Then we had a week of very rainy, windy, and cloudy weather, that melted almost all the snow, and it was still a good time for hot soup weather. And now for the last week, it has been colder again, but with a lot of sun and a real Spring feeling (even though there are still months to go until real Spring). I am almost sure I will make this soup at least once more before the weather gets warmer. And why shouldn’t I, it is delicious, healthy, full of winter veggies, and extremely nutritious being full of vitamins A and K, for example. I love all kinds of celery, but I know many people who don’t.

One day I was craving nachos. But I did not have any chips at home. These days I am going to the store just to get chips, so I almost already forgot about my craving, but then I found 2 green plantains from my fridge. Plantains are not a common ingredient in Estonia, where I live, and I always order all weird ingredients if the supermarket stocks something. I have this weird idea that if they have made effort to sell something more special then if I as a client show my support by buying, they might continue selling it in the future. I realize that only one person buying weird ingredients is not enough but again – all big things happen because several people are making a small contribution.

This matzo is grain-free, gluten-free, and paleo-friendly! Year after year, Jo has reluctantly bought gluten free matzo (unfortunately also filled with additives and sugar) because matzo plays such an important role in the Passover Seder. But recently she found, Jennifer Robbins’ Paleo Grain-Free Matzo and was converted. For more amazing Jewish recipes, check out Jennifer Robbins’ The New Yiddish Kitchen. We hope you enjoy Jennifer’s recipe as much as we do. Don’t forget to grab your copy of The New Yiddish Kitchen cookbook here. Happy Passover, Jo & Jules

One of our favorite simple healthy meals is a vibrancy bowl! Vibrancy bowls are easy, quick, and make great leftovers. They combine a grain base, roasted and/or fresh veggies, and a dressing of choice. You can also add a protein of your choice for an even heartier meal! We’ve got a great how-to guide to make your own vibrancy bowl in our new cookbook, The Conscious Cleanse Cookbook. This recipe makes a hearty vegan meal that we think you’re going to love. Our Rainbow Vibrancy Bowl is a simple, (almost) one-tray meal full of good-for-you ingredients that’s perfect for dinner or lunch. It also contains beets, which means it’s a great way to check up on how efficiently your digestion is working (for more info about this, check out our blog about the Beetroot Test).

I love spice, and if I had to choose only one type of food to eat until the rest of my life, tacos would be very high on the list! They are incredibly versatile, and I always love to pile them with a ton of fresh ingredients. There always needs to be a spice element and always something crunchy. I am pretty sure that Mexicans would disapprove of this recipe because eggplant in tacos is far from traditional, but for me, it works! Preparing soft tacos is pretty straightforward. Besides water and salt, you only need masa harina flour. I am sure that tortilla press makes preparing them even easier, but rolling them out between two pieces of parchment paper works well enough for me. The tortillas do not need to be 100% round and uniform in size. They are, after all, homemade tortillas, and nobody expects them to be perfect. Saying that – if you don’t feel like baking the tortillas from scratch, feel free to use store-bought small tortillas, and the dinner will be served in even less time. One thing to keep in mind preparing this recipe is that the eggplant needs to be eaten quickly, or it will get soggy. One way to keep it crispy longer would be to fry the eggplant sticks instead of baking them, but I prefer keeping them on the healthier side. I recommend preparing everything else in advance and letting the eggplant sticks be the last ingredient added to the tacos right before eating them.

These little brownie bites are simple, sweet, salty, and totally delicious – perfect for a Valentine’s Day dessert. Plus, they contain a secret superfood ingredient: CBD oil! CBD is one of the hottest health supplements right now. If you're interested in learning more about CBD and its benefits, check out our interview with Plant People Founder Gabe Kennedy, on our website, here!

Solyanka is an old Russian soup that, in its original form, always contains a lot of meat. The most classical version includes 7 different types of meat, including kidneys. So the recipe I am sharing with you is definitely not an authentic one, but it sure is delicious. I promise you that the taste is still very similar to the original one and is so much better for the body. If you have a meat addict in the house, feel free to let them add some meat products (leftover roast, frankfurters, salami, whatever they like) to the soup after it is ready. I do eat meat sometimes, but I don’t feel it is necessary to use it in this recipe, and I definitely would never add 7 different types of meat in my soup. Who would even have so many various meat products just lying around in the fridge? Anyway, meat or not – the essential things in this recipe are onions, pickles, black pepper, tomato paste, and olives.

We’re entering mid-winter here in Colorado, and if you’re like us, the cold weather and extended time inside might be starting to get you down. To counter those wintertime blues, we like to cozy up at home and make healthy comfort food – like today’s recipe: Herbed Turkey Stuffed Squash! This is a recipe that I (Jo) and my husband, Adam developed together for our family. Cooking is one of our favorite things to do together – we’ve developed several recipes from our new cookbook, Conscious Cleanse Cookbook together, including the Squashie Pancakes and Curry Chicken Salad. Cooking nourishing, healthy, delicious meals for ourselves and for our 6-year-old and 8-month-old kiddos brings us connection as a family and a lot of joy, and we want to share some of that joy with you today with this recipe. This is one of our go-to healthy comfort meals – it’s warming and filling, perfect for a cozy meal by the fire.

Mustard is a common ingredient in many cuisines and widely available all over the world. But I still felt that I need to spend time to make a condiment from mustard seeds from scratch. It started as an idea to add to Christmas presents – homemade cookies, sourdough rye crispbread, vegan Nutella truffles, and pickled mustard seeds – all packed up in nice little jars. Add a (vegan) cheese to this, and I am sure that most people would be happy to get this kind of present! Since preparing the mustard seeds this way for the first time, I am adding them everywhere. They are relatively mild in taste but add a wonderful zing to many dishes. The texture slightly reminds caviar bursting in the mouth, adding a wonderfully gentle and warm spiciness.

Have you ever had the thought “I don’t have time to do a cleanse because it takes too much time to prepare healthy food”? If so, please read on! I’m a big fan of easy when it comes to food prep. Mostly because I have two small children, work full time running a business, health coaching and teaching yoga, and try to maintain some resemblance of balance when it comes to practicing what I preach. I admit it does take extra time and some planning ahead (I could do better here) to eat healthy and feed my family nourishing meals, but to me, it’s totally worth it! And, it doesn’t have to take nearly as much time as we think it does with a few tips and tricks. Below is one of my secret weapons.

In Estonia, we are big on foraging. Berries, mushrooms, some wild herbs – we have gathered them from the forest since we were kids. As this year has been exceptionally warm (in some years, we have snow in October already), you can still find mushrooms in the forest, and I used some chanterelles I picked myself. As I know that you can not go foraging all over the world, I substituted the mushrooms in this recipe for oyster mushrooms as they are easier to find from the stores. If you can’t find those, button mushrooms are okay too. Dumplings of this style are not typical for Estonian cuisine at all, but I don’t think that everything should be traditional all the time. I love how the miso paste in this recipe rounds the whole filling up, the spinach and lemon give extra brightness, and ginger is just an excellent ingredient that also boosts the immune system. I am sure that we could all benefit from a healthy immune system in this bizarre year.

I will not say that the cake is exactly healthy, but it is definitely better for you compared to regular chocolate cakes. I have not used any white sugar or flour; also, I chose applesauce instead of a whole lot of fatty ingredients. Avocados, dark chocolate, and banana replace the regular sugar and fat packed filling. On top of all that, the cake is entirely plant-based—a complete winner in my book. As a disclaimer, I need to mention that for some people, used to a lot of sugar, this cake might taste too healthy. I have been practicing life without much white sugar for a long time, so if you are still a beginner, you might want to add more sugar. The cake is vegan, so feel free to taste the batter before baking and adjust the sweetness. I have made this cake at least 10 times, and I still can’t get over the fact that the base of this cake is so so soft and juicy without adding a ton of fat to the batter. Make sure not to overcook the cake.

I love eggplant. The sad thing is that my partner does not, so the amounts in this recipe are given for one person, but they are very simple to double or triple. Baking only one eggplant is a little sad, so I always bake more than one and make something else out of the others. I already wrote it down in the recipe too, but I can’t stress enough – do not undercook the eggplant. Undercooked eggplant is not a nice thing to eat. Baking whole like we do today, it is practically impossible to overcook it as the skin protects the tender flesh, so baking for longer is in this recipe always a better choice. I have included one of my favorite condiments in this recipe – marinated onions. As there are bigger onion lovers and the ones who only tolerate them, I did not mention amounts in the recipe (in fact, I never measure the ingredients when making marinated onions), so you can choose yourself how much of them you wish to include.

I used to think that it is impossible to do good soft cinnamon buns without a ton of real butter. This recipe is proof that I was seriously wrong. I still eat butter sometimes, but already for years, this recipe here has been the only one I use for cinnamon buns. In fact, I use the same dough with other fillings too – in Estonia, we do a traditional yeasted pastry with all kinds of different fillings – carrot, cabbage, meat, mushrooms, jam, cheese, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The traditional dough is made with cow’s milk and butter, but I don’t see any need to use either, even if I sometimes do use some animal ingredients to fill the pastry. Back to the cinnamon rolls – these are the softest, fluffiest and tastiest cinnamon rolls you have ever seen. Like really. You need to make them today. And the good thing is that they don’t take much time to bake at all. The resting takes time, and this is the process that you can’t skip, but everything else is effortless, and even a 5-year-old could do them. In fact, a very similar recipe (the traditional way) is the first recipe I remember myself cooking. I have no clue how old I was but definitely under ten, and I made a huge pastry called kringel in Estonian (it is a yeasted dough similar to this recipe here, filled with a lot of butter, sugar, raisins etc. and then braided into wreath) all on my own.

Hanukkah is just around the corner and today we wanted to share one of our favorite Hanukkah recipes with all of you – Root Vegetable Latkes with Apple Pear Sauce! These latkes are a tasty and festive way to get some extra veggies in, and pair deliciously with our homemade apple pear sauce. The perfect addition to your family’s Hanukkah traditions! This recipe is one of the many delicious healthy holiday recipes you’ll find in the extra special bonus Holiday eCookbook we’ve put together this year as a FREE instant download when you purchase our new cookbook. We’ve included all our personal faves that we love to cook up for our families during the holiday season. We hope you love them as much as we do!

Years ago, I’d do anything for a box of Junior Mints or Peppermint Patties. I’d fallen prey, like many of us, into the low calorie, nonfat mindset of the 90’s where Snackwells and Fig Newton’s were all the rage. ​As I’ve transitioned into a healthy lifestyle and new way of eating, I’ve found myself looking for healthy sweet treats. I’ve realized that the packaged so-called “health foods” just fed my sugar demons, leaving me with an artificial sense of healthy and a sugar hangover to boot. Instead of going cold turkey, I started looking for other options to satisfy my sweet tooth, something delicious and decadent that could replace, if not outperform my old guilty pleasures. Below is one of my favorite new recipes. It’s so rich and creamy you’ll hardly believe it’s actually good for you!

Vegetables are good for you. I am sure everybody knows this. But still, people usually don’t eat enough of those. I hope you are an exception and eat at least five handfuls of vegetables every day. But if you are struggling, here is a good recipe that counts towards the five servings a day. If you also add a salad to the side, it might very well be that you’ll cover all your official vegetable need for one day with only one meal. Of course, I am not stopping there – I like to keep all my meals bright, light, and naturally colorful – some purple cabbage here, a few orange carrots there, a red apple as a snack, and many greens throughout the day. I like to think that the more colors we eat, the more necessary nutrients we get from food. Healthy or not, these cabbage patties are just plain delicious. I usually eat them straight from the pan, but they are even more filling next to a green salad or a rice bowl.

I just counted, and I have 7 different pancake recipes up in my blog. And I have at least the same amount written down on post-its and waiting to be on the blog soon. Why so many? The answer is pretty simple. I often make pancakes on Sunday mornings, and since I usually do my weekly shopping on Sunday evenings, I often have run out of an ingredient, so I just replace it with something different, and voila – a new recipe is born. Usually, it works out well (there have been some disasters too, but these will definitely not be featured anywhere)! These chocolatey pancakes are a big success, and I have made these many times by now. As a bonus, the cottage cheese gives these pancakes an extra boost of protein compared to “regular” pancakes. If you want the recipe to be dairy-free, you can substitute the cottage cheese with a vegan yogurt instead.

Pizza is one of those fast food items that I don’t necessarily find unhealthy, especially when prepared at home, keeping the bottom thin and making good choices on toppings. Of course, homemade pizza is really not very fast food either as the dough's resting time is quite long, but in my opinion, every minute is completely worth it. As I bake sourdough bread at home, I always use sourdough as a pizza base, but if you don’t spend a few hours every week on bread baking, you can use any other recipe with yeast that you like. OR if you wish to get even faster results, just use a large flatbread or tortilla as a base, and you will get the whole recipe done in 10 minutes!

Ramen is one of those dishes that everybody loves. Homemade delicious broth, slurpy noodles, and all kinds of toppings you can imagine - what is not to like! Perfect for windy, cold, and dark autumn weather. Ramen can be extremely simple if using store-bought broth and noodles. It can be even more effortless by ordering in from your favorite takeaway. BUT if you want to create something truly special and have a few hours to spare, give this recipe a try. And imagine the amount of packaging you can avoid using by preparing the broth and noodles from scratch (I hate excessive packaging and always try to buy free from plastic to reduce my ecological footprint as much as possible).

There are never too many healthy snack ideas out there. The same can not be said about overgrown zucchini, and even if I always try to pick all the zucchini while they are still nice and firm, it sometimes happens that I am away from home for a few days and coming back, there are a few overgrown beasts out in my zucchini bed. I never recommend using too large zucchinis, but once you have them, this is one of the recipes that helps to use them up and does not suffer much from the zucchinis to be overgrown. For the first time in my 36 years of life, I had too many zucchinis for my own plants, and I am actually pleased about it. I gifted a few of them and ate around a ton of zucchini throughout the summer. Even today, mid-September, if the temperature is only around 14 degrees and it has been raining for the past 2 weeks, some of the plants are still flowering. Therefore, I still plan to eat zucchini flowers this year and maybe even get a few more baby-zucchinis.

In today’s soup, the sweet nectarines meet up with ripe homegrown tomatoes. It may seem a bit strange at first – especially with the onion in the mix, but I promise – it is so so so delicious! As there is no real cooking involved, all the ingredients must be at their best ripeness. During the wintertime in Estonia, where I live, this kind of soup would be impossible to enjoy as the store-bought winter tomatoes taste like plastic. So at the moment, I am enjoying as much fresh produce as possible. This recipe here is one of those where it is not important to follow the ingredients' exact amounts. I give you a recipe, but feel free to play around – if you only have 5 tomatoes, go with 5. If you have 3 nectarines waiting to be used up – use them here. The same with seasoning – just make sure to taste the soup after the first seasoning and decide if you may like a little more vinegar or little more salt. With seasoning, I recommend adding a little at the time as it is easy to add in more, but once you add too much, it is not possible to remove the extra seasoning.

As you probably know by now, then most of my recipes are extremely simple and seldom require a precise measuring, but here is one exception. Baking is a science, and this is the only type of cooking where not following the exact amounts can have catastrophic results. Believe me – I am the type of cook who loves playing around and changing up at least half of the ingredients, also when baking, and let’s just say that all of the changes do not work ☺ So follow the given amounts here, please. I originally planned to make a regular round cake with the same ingredients, but as I wanted to take the cake to a friend's place, carrying around a roll seemed more comfortable. And it was! To make the roll more interesting, I wanted to make a green base. I have baked a peppermint cake before, but as it was too strong in mint the last time, I decided to reduce the amount this time. I am very happy with the taste this time, but the result is not as bright green as I would have liked so that I will add a little spinach for extra greenness for the next time.

One of the core tenets of the Conscious Cleanse is removing common inflammatory foods from our eating rotation for 2 weeks to allow our systems to detox and find underlying food sensitivities. Tomatoes fall under the category of nightshades, so during our 14-day cleanse, we keep them off our plates because they can cause inflammation. Just like many people are sensitive to gluten, dairy, soy, and other common allergens, some people have a reaction from eating nightshades, including tomatoes.