Join us for an exciting month of yoga and eatery events!

Check here regularly for recipes, reflections, yoga and green initiatives at Radha — your guide to an integrated, inspired life!

Having had such tremendous success with our bakesale fundraiser for Haiti last month, Radha has decided to team up once again with Vancouver vegan bakers to raise funds for the Chilean earthquake relief efforts.

Come for dinner (reservations recommended), or just for the event, and please bring your own reusable containers to tote your goodies home.

Reid Jamieson will be performing live music for the occasion!

We’d like to send out a big thank you to Ventana Construction for their very generous donation that made our contribution to the festival possible. We are also so grateful to all the volunteers and karma yogis that offered their labour to make the event a success. Please stay tuned to this blog for a video recap of our HomeGround participation.

When Radha hosted its first “open house” of 2010, I did a demo of a roasted beet soup.  While traveling & teaching in the Ukraine just after the break-up of the USSR, I was served a delicious version of this soup by my then-girlfriend Olya’s mother… and was told in no uncertain terms by Olya that this was the “real Borscht.”  Since I do not remember the recipe except that it likely had cabbage in it – which my version does not – I could not in good conscience call this recipe by its Ukrainian name… let’s just call it a roasted beet soup so as not to stir-up the diplomatic waters!

Traditionally, this soup can be garnished with sour cream and contains dill, so to put a vegan & “Radha” spin on the recipe, I decided to add the dill to the creamy topping made with sunflower seeds.  The toasted caraway seeds which spice the soup are evocative of hearty pumpernickel bread, which can also be an accompaniment.

ROASTED BEET SOUP
Serves 6-8
                                                                                                                                                                                                              
2 medium onions, diced
4 medium beets
1 potato, peeled and diced
1/2 tsp caraway seeds (toasted lightly and ground)
1 tsp thyme (minced)
1 1/2 – 2 L vegetable stock
1/3 cup miso

Clean the beets and place in a roasting pan with 1+cm of water, cover with foil and place in a 180C oven for approximately 90 minutes.  When cooked-through, remove from the oven and allow to cool, preserve the liquid in the roasting pan.  Once cooled, the beets should peel easily with your hands, you can use a rough cloth or a peeler to help.  Dice the beets into a similar size as the onions & potato.

To toast the caraway seeds, place in a dry, hot pan over a medium to high heat for a few seconds, until you can smell the spice’s perfume but before they get dark or begin to smoke.  Allow to cool, then grind in a coffee grinder.

In a heavy-bottomed pot, sautée the diced onions in olive oil, when translucent add the potato (this is help to “cream” the soup later), the roasted beets and the beet liquid and the ground caraway seeds.  Add the stock and bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer.  Once the potato is cooked through, add the fresh thyme and miso and remove the soup from the heat.

This soup can be served as is, chunky, but I like to blend it to give it a thick, hearty texture. Garnish with the sunflower-dill “sour cream”.

Relax into classical yoga positions in the reflective environment of the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden (578 Carrall Street). Led by Radha teachers, you will learn yoga poses, visualizations and meditation. Classes will move between the heated indoor beauty of the Great Hall and the fresh outdoor beauty of the early spring garden.

A local blogger also covered the exciting event!