The Yoga of Pizza and Icecream

Food is a vital part of our yoga practice. What we put in to our bodies has an enormous impact on the way we move, think, breathe and create in the world.

As we grow more conscious about our yoga practice on the mat, we naturally want to support that with good practices off the mat. We prefer to spend time with people who are uplifting, choose to work and do things which serve the world, and naturally, we want to eat foods which nourish and heal us instead of slowing us down or making us unhealthy.

At the BaliSpirit Festival we are blessed with an abundance of amazing, healthy food to nourish the body, mind and spirit. I had the good fortune to speak to two of the many amazing vendors about their passion and their dedication to creating food which nourishes not just the mind but the spirit, but ultimately the whole world in which we live in.

Pierre is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed manager of Swasti Eco Kitchen at the Swasti Eco Village. As he chatted in a French accent about crepes, pastries and gluten-free pizzas served with flower petals I could sense his genuine passion and simple commitment to creating amazing, nourishing food which everyone can enjoy.

Swasti Eco Village is an eco-resort close to the Monkey Forest in Ubud. They have their own organic garden on site which supplies their amazing restaurant. 40% of their ingredients come from the garden. The rest they source from local organic gardens.

“My mission is to give people an emotion. I want people to feel good after they eat our food. If someone feels good after they have a bite, me, I’m happy!” – Pierre Menu

At his stall the first thing you noticed was the delicious array of vegan, gluten free pizzas. The toppings were fresh, colorful, bursting with flavor, and completed with beautifully vibrant blue pea-flowers, golden marigold petals and other flowers, all of which created beauty and the added health benefits of balancing your hormones and endocrine system.

Pierre also had an amazing range of juices and drinks, including his charcoal lemonade (incredibly refreshing and containing activated charcoal which draws toxins from the body), ginger kombucha, and his version of jamu jamu, the local health drink containing turmeric, a powerful antioxidant with wide-ranging health benefits.

I can’t wait to head down to the kitchen in Swasti Eco Village and see what he’s developing next!

Next to Pierre was another Frenchman called Phillipe – the King of the Crepes! Hailing from Brittany in France, Phillipe has been perfecting his French vegan creperie using buckwheat flour which makes them gluten-free. His memories of crepes stem from his childhood – his grandmother had a garage from which she made incredible crepes for the whole village. The villagers would come over, bringing their own ingredients to put in the crepes and all enjoy the delicious flavors together.

After you’ve finished your pizza, followed it with a crepe and washed it down with an amazing juice, make room for some of Pierre’s delicious desserts. White mango cheesecake, spicy chocolate cheesecake, mulberry cheesecakes and raw granola bars topped with white chocolate were just some of the amazing sweets on offer.

And if you’re still satisfying your sweet tooth, any talk of desserts would be incomplete without mentioning Kokolato, the coconut ice-cream created right here in Ubud.

Jonathon Keim is taking Kokolato to new heights (and all the way to LA amongst other places). I asked him what inspired him to create Kokolato.

“My inspiration is to provide as many people as possible with healthy alternatives to their favorite dessert.

We want to make a product that tastes better than the alternatives and is healthy at the same time. This is the direction that food is going in and we’re happy to be pioneers in this realm.

Food needs to be healthy and people want to understand why Kokolato is so good and take these principles and apply them to their entire diet.

And the most fun way to make people happy is to feed them dessert!!”

It’s true that Kokolate ice-cream not only tastes great, it supports a healthy lifestyle by virtue of its ingredients and the care that goes in to its manufacture.

Kokolato uses fresh young coconut meat as the base for their ice-cream. Coconut meat contains Medium Chain fatty acids which are healthy fats supporting our

• Immune system
• Brain function
• Hormone regulation
• Cellular energy production

They also have fewer calories than other fats and help you lose weight!

By using coconut sugar, Kokolato icecream also helps to regulate your blood sugar as it has a very low Glycemic Index compared to other sweeteners.

The taste of Kokolato is inspired by the flavor palette of Bali and includes

• Raw cacao
• Moringa mint chip
• Cold pressed coffee
• Coconut
• Strawberry
• Smoky vanilla
• Jamu
• Black rice pudding

So really there’s never been a better time to eat ice-cream. Or pizza.

Written by : Russel Price