One of the many things I talk with my clients about is how we fuel our body — the physical package we reside in. A Buddha Bowl is one of the daily staples in our home. So in the spirit of a healthy new year, here’s how it’s done:
Find a unique, large-sized bowl that for you symbolizes nourishment and gratitude. And perhaps a pair of chopsticks to enhance slow eating and mindfulness. Preparing this meal should be enjoyable, relaxing, and creative. As you fill your Buddha Bowl, remember that you’re creating food art.
Farm-to-table means little to no processing involved. The closer to the earth we eat, the healthier the food is for us. I’m all about nutritionally dense fuel — foods with a high nutrition-to-calorie ratio. And it goes without saying, buy organic whenever possible and avoid anything that’s genetically modified (GMO).
50% of the Bowl — Greens
Raw organic greens: kale, arugula, watercress, spinach, Swiss chard, turnip greens, collards, romaine lettuce, cabbage (red and green), and a bit of cilantro and/or parsley. Greens are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. Note: the darker the color, the more nutritionally dense it is.
25% of the Bowl — Vegetables & Fruit
Raw, steamed, or roasted vegetables; mix textures and tastes — crunchy, sweet, bitter, juicy, bland — sprouts (my favorite are alfalfa), asparagus tips, onion, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, broccoli and/or cauliflower florets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, tomatoes, avocado, peas (snow, sugar snap, or English), papaya arils, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, diced fruit; the choices are endless.
25% of the Bowl — Protein
Protein: beans (garbanzo, black, kidney, pinto, lima), cooked lentils and/or quinoa, diced hardboiled eggs, tofu, and/or maybe a bit of brown rice. Did you know that 1 cup of cooked brown rice has 5 grams of protein? Another great source of protein are raw seeds and nuts: walnuts, pumpkin seeds, almonds, hemp seeds, cashews, sunflower seeds, sesame, ground flax seed, pecans, pine nuts, chia seeds.
Dressing the Meal
Like the rest of the bowl, the final touch will vary from meal-to-meal, depending on what you have available:
Drizzle your favorite oil—olive, avocado, coconut
Splash on balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice
Spice it up with a dash of sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, or maybe some cayenne
What’s your recipe for a healthy new year?
Tuesdays with Laurie 
Beautiful and Healthy ! I would make something similar if I find a place to create such a dish. At the moment I am grateful for any meal I can accomplish!
Blessing to you on a New Abundant Year!
Jeff — Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year 🙂
Concur with you,Laurie.I plan to eat mindfully and with an awareness of nutrient content.
Great suggestion for the start of the New Year.
All the best to you in 2015.,love,Roamer
Roamer — I’m glad this post resonated with you. Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year 🙂
What an excellent idea! Happy New Year!
FatimaSaySell — I’m glad the recipe resonates with you. Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year 🙂
Now I am inspired to go out and buy me a big beautiful bowl, Laurie! I love all of the ingredients, too. You could eat from that bowl all year long.
Barbara — I took my time in a variety of resale shops looking and looking for the “right” bowl. This one called out to me. You’re going to have fun looking for your own Buddha Bowl. Please let me know when you’re found by the one that calls out to you. Peace, Joy, and Health to you in the new year 🙂
oH, Yum! this is the way I like to eat too!
Joan — Great minds think alike, not only about food, but other things too. I loved your focus-word post this morning. Mine will be revealed to you next week — the first Tuesday in the new year 🙂
But doesn’t Buddha tell us to empty the bowl for it to be truly full? Well he can empty his whole pantry at my place !May New Year have bright new beginnings for you and safety.
Carl — You made me smile 🙂 Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year!
Last evening, Cliff and I enjoyed a bowl of Vietnamese Pho noodle soup from World Market. No, I did not prepare the dish painstakingly like your recipe suggests, but I did check the ingredients to make sure they are healthy. According to the label, this soup represents “the best of the five classic flavors: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, the savory, deeply satisfying fifth taste.”
My recipe for a healthy new year: flavorful and nourishing with something to satisfy the fifth taste — all served in a pretty bowl. That’s my wish for you and Len too!
Marian — We love Pho noodle soup, too! Thank you for the beautiful with for the new year 🙂
Oh what a lovely Buddha Bowl! Simply love eating like this, simply, easily, healthily. So often so delicious! What a very tasty post. 🙂
Kathy — There have been times in the past when you’ve shared a peek in your ever-healthy refrigerator, and glimpses of what you’ve made for you and Barry to enjoy. It’s always made my mouth water. Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year!
This sounds and looks delicious. Yum!
For very slow and mindful eating, try using one chopstick. 🙂
Vincent
ViewPacific — Your comment just triggered a face-splitting grin. Thank you! Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year!
Laurie I just love your bowl! I pick up two handmade local pottery bowls this summer that are the perfect size for your recipe. This time of year, I also like unsulphurated fired apricots and blueberries with my nuts and a wee bit of organic artisan cheese for a no fuss meal – taken usually as I finish painting in the morning with a cup of mint tea. Dessert is a long walk in the woods or by the sea. The daylight hours are short so everything is compressed into a few hours then it is quiet time again.
Terrill — Ohhhhhhhh, that sounds absolutely w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l. Thank you for sharing it here. Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year 🙂
That should say dried not fired apricots and blueberries. Hope it still sound wonderful 🙂
Terrill — Funny thing, I read it as “dried” from the get-go 🙂
All of those ingredients tossed into organic (or better yet, homemade) chicken broth and simmered on this ten degree day.
Carol — yes, Yes, YES! 🙂 Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year!
Laurie, i love your idea of the buddha bowl, and we are indeed creating food art which transforms us. As always u’r presentations are spectacular! Have a most joyous New Year! ♥
Hi Laurie
Your meal sounds great.
I don’t usually have quite as much greenery as you, and I do have a large white porcelain bowl about the same dimensions as yours. It often has a cup and a half of dry brown rice, soaked overnight then cooked in the pressure cooker for 22 minutes. I’ve taken rather a liking to mushroom do payaza – and sometimes the bowl is just full of salad much as you describe.
My healthy new year is going to have a lot of fresh organic food, a lot of golf, cycling, some boating, some hiking and a couple of days in Paradise (a station just above Glenorchy – about 10 hours drive from here).
Very best wishes to you and Len from Ailsa and I.
Arohanui
Ted
Ted — The addition of brown rice sounds tasty, but the mushroom do payaza sounds exquisite; a real treat for the tastebuds!
Peace, Joy, and Health to you and Ailsa. Here’s to no broken collar bones in the new year — Cheers! 🙂
Delicious, Laurie.
My recipe…
Ingredients:
a coupe of pounds of love of life
add full cups of fun, dedication to an occupation that fulfills, admiration of companions and residence
gently stir
taste mindfully
alter this recipe, daily — add ingredients that nurture you
Leanne — That’s a BLUE RIBBON recipe if ever I saw one. Thank you for sharing it here. Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year 🙂
Love the Buddha bowl and the concept of mixing and matching good foods. No wonder you glow.
We eat like this often, and I hope to keep moving in this direction more and more.
You and Len are great examples.
Happy New Year!
Shirley — Here’s to Peace, Joy, and Health to you, Stuart, and your extended family throughout the coming new year. Cheers! 🙂
Love the recipe and the concept. Must get myself a bowl worth of it…:)
Olga — Check out any resale shops you may have in your geographic location. The search for it is half the fun! Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year 🙂
Oh this is PERfect! My resolution to read my fav bloggers once again has paid off in spades here! THANK you!!!! Just settled (finally) in Florida where produce flows and I’m starting my sprouts again – outside – in January! I’m shopping for a bowl like that!!!
I love shredded kale, cranberries, pine nuts, walnuts and balsalmic dressing. Another is vanilla yogurt, blueberries, walnuts, chia seeds and a spoon of maca – it makes the yogurt taste like coffee!
Bless your heart for this post! All the best for 2015!
Susan
(aka Suzen from Today’s Path, which has disappeared into cyberspace!)
Susan — Growing sprouts outside in January? Wow! I’m tickled pink for you. As I recommend to many, you may want to look in resale shops for your special Buddha Bowl. And take your time because half the fun is in the looking.
I love the recipes you shared here — Yum!
Peace, Joy, and Health to You and Yours in the new year 🙂
Laurie, I remember well your search for that bowl, a matter of several months till you found the The Exact Perfect Bowl for you and Len. You know I’m a Southerner, and we have traditions of our own to keep up with. So to insure a lucky and prosperous 2015, I’ll be having the the Time-Honored and Absolutely Proven Without a Doubt, New Year’s Day Lucky Menu, collard greens, cornbread and black-eyed peas, seasoned with smoked hog jowl ( bacon) served with peach-glazed ham. Then for the next few weeks, I’ll do my annual clean-food diet, mostly from my own well-stocked commercial freezer and grown by me. And I know exactly what went into the growing of this food.
Sandi – Your New Year’s Day Lucky Menu has served you well for many years, as has your wonderfully productive garden. You always know how to strike the perfect balance 🙂
My recipe for a healthy New Year is to vigorously adapt some of the fantastic dishes you have intermittently advised on these pages. The idea of 50% greens and 25% fruits is nutritionally superlative, especially when one has Type 2 as I do. I would like to think I have been careful this past year, but nothing can match the kind of regimen you have been sponsoring. So let it be written, so let it be done.
A very Happy New Year my excellent friend. The very best to you and Len!!
Sam — I admire your commitment: “So let it be written, so let it be done.” My hat is off to YOU!
This is lovely! Nice way of bringing healthy foods into our daily intake and buddha bowl makes it more interesting. I have none such bowls, may be I must get one this new year 🙂
Thank you Laurie, always nice reading from you.
Sonali — I’m glad this post resonated with you. Like the journey — not the destination — half the fun of eating from a Buddha Bowl is the search for one that suits you to a T. May Peace, Joy, and Health fill your new year 🙂
Laurie – I having a little downtime before school goes back and I hit the final stretch of my teacher training post-grad. I am SO happy I popped on – as ever, your post had an immediate effect on lifting the corners of my mouth AND the often hard-to-reach corners of my soul. Thank you!
We are heading into the desert for what has become an annual Hogmanay camping tradition of gazing into the campfire with gratitude and some gentle hopes for growth in the coming year.
I’ll confess though, that our Hogmanay bowls will be filled with hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows…but we do strive for the healthy plates in 50%/25%25% proportions the rest of the year. Wishing you a wonderful 2015 and I look forward to catching up properly with all you have been up to when i graduate in March. x:)
WarmGinger — It’s ohhhhhhhhh so good to hear from you. Congratulations on your up-and-coming graduation — Woohoo!
The richest blessing of Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year!
That is such a pretty bowl full of ‘Pretty’ healthy food . A healthy year to me looks like lots of walking , swimming , writing and reading . But most of all looking after myself , that doesn’t mean being selfish, that means to care for myself so I function better . It worked last year Laurie . A very happy new year to you and yours thanks for all the wonderful posts . I couldn’t manage Tuesday without you .
Cherryx
Cherry — Self-care is one of the best gifts we can give ourselves because it spills over into being our best self for others. My hat is off to YOU!
Peace, Joy, and Health to you and yours in the new year! 🙂
This looks lovely and healthy. In case there are others who have my eating quirks, I wanted to say that although I also gravitate to nutrient-dense foods, I would never be able to eat that bowl of food – the sheer size of it would send me running from the house and I wouldn’t come back until I was sure the pups had finished it all. So I have a similar aesthetic, but on a much smaller scale, and also less mixed up together. For those like me, a few small, pretty plates serve the purpose, and I seem to enjoy creating more work for myself by preparing several distinct little dishes for each meal. But I also love a lot of bright color on a plate, like you. As far as slowing down, I grew up eating “continental style” (fork in left hand, tines down), and it does slow the process a bit, especially if you haven’t always eaten that way. But good conversation and real enjoyment are the best ways I’ve found to savor a meal! It would be lovely to share a meal and a conversation with you, Laurie.
Jeannie — I love what you’ve shared here. yes, Yes, YES! Each and every one of us is oh-so-different and eating definitely doesn’t fit into a “one size fits all” category. You’ve hit the nail on the head with the best way to savor a meal: “…good conversation and real enjoyment…” I, too, would enjoy sharing a meal and conversation with you 🙂
I am still primarily on a liquid regime these days – love those salad smoothies! Vegan Raw with organic chicken in the winter – I do like some hot foods in winter. I am reading the funniest novel for review for January 5th right now called the DIVORCE DIET and it contains a lot of interesting foods and cooking. Many many clever lines written per page.
I am going to be so Healthy in 2015 it will be amazing and I hope the jaw will be totally repaired and throat recovered.. I think my body will love more chewing action too
Balance is improving and IT GIRL built me a new computer out of parts on hand and a new larger screen –
Wishing you a healthy new year and lots and lots of Happy!
Patricia — It sounds like you’re ready and rarin’ for a fantastic 2015. I’m cheering you on! 🙂
Beautiful Buddha bowl and beautiful foods-for-thought; or thoughts-for-food? I try to eat mindfully, and love a good bowl full of greens and beans and rice. If I was isolated on an island and only allowed one ingredient, it would be spinach.
BUT I still need some chocolate in my Buddha bowl. 🙂
Roughwighting — Spinach (with a pinch of chocolate thrown in for good measure) sounds like perfect sustenance for island life.
Peace, Joy, and Health to You and Yours in the new year!
I am beginning with no sugar in my tea. I keep you posted Laurie. 😀 I wish you a year full of sweet wonder and fun. 🙂
Nomzi — Cheers to a fantastic beginning! 🙂
For health reasons, I’m going for low glycemic index health — trying to ward off genetic propensity for diabetes in my family (both mother and father). That bowl looks delicious!
Melissa — Yaaaaaaay for YOU! AI applaud your preventive approach 🙂
Ohhh the concept is wonderful! Happy New Year 🙂
Christy — Peace, Joy, and Health to You and Yours in the new year 🙂
This sounds wonderful. I have been eating with chopsticks to slow down and because it’s fun! I also like the farm to table idea…. I also call it “one ingredient, whole food cooking”, “nothing from a box, bottle or can”, or “eat food that comes from nature, not a lab”.
Green Girl — “Nature, not a lab” is a great rule of thumb when eating. I’m glad you stopped by, thank you 🙂
Lovely Buddha bowl