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We are preparing two distinct meals. The first is whole wheat pasta with sauce and a green salad. This meal is designed for athletes engaged in prolonged activities, such as training or long sports competitions, as it supports endurance while being easily digestible. The second menu is for bodybuilders focusing on muscle mass development; it consists of vegetables with fava beans, fried tofu, and salad. Both menus will include a milkshake. For athletes, this shake is a mixture of milk and cow cheese, combined with nuts like hazelnuts and almonds. It is crucial that athletes avoid sugar entirely. Honey can also be difficult to manage, so today's shake will be sweetened with raisins. Alternatively, for such purposes, you can use dried figs or any dried fruit with a naturally high sugar content. #### Cooking the Vegetables with Broad Beans We begin by preparing the vegetables with broad beans. Pour a relatively small amount of olive oil into the pot. The oil must not be overheated, of course, to prevent burning. Add a little garlic. For athletes, heavy foods and spices are not needed in large quantities, but a small amount is used for flavor. Garlic also facilitates the digestion of legumes and is healthy in every respect. When cooking different vegetables and legumes together, proceed from the harder to the softer. This means you start by cooking what naturally takes longer. We almost never put everything into the pot at once, as that is not a proper way of cooking. To prevent burning, add just a little water. A key principle in cooking is to never use too much water. Do not cook vegetables in a large pot of water. It is better to add water continuously in small amounts rather than boiling vegetables excessively and losing minerals and vitamins. Now, add some salt. We use Himalayan salt, which is very good for athletes among mineral salts. Again, not too much. Sports food should not be overly spiced or heavily fried, but it should not be tasteless either. Add a little shoyu or tamari. This is also a good source of vitamin B12, as mentioned when discussing B12 sources. In this case, we combine beans and chard. These are Mediterranean plants that go together exceptionally well. With more kitchen experience, you can successfully combine ingredients from various parts of the world. Over time, you will gain the experience to judge the doneness of food with just a glance and the touch of a wooden spoon. The beans here are not yet half-cooked. Finally, add the chard, which cooks very quickly and doesn't need much. Before that, season the fava beans. We add jeera (cumin). Although this is a Mediterranean dish, the spice is Indian, but it should be used to improve digestion. I like to add it with my fingers, though not too much is needed. It is a strong spice whose aroma can dominate the dish, but its primary role is to aid digestion. Next is turmeric. If you add too much, the food will become intensely yellow. Turmeric doesn't have a strong taste and won't be bothersome unless used in very large amounts, which can worsen the flavor. The essence is to use not too much water. Since our group has an affinity for Indian flavors, we add a bit of chili. Chili enhances flavor and digestibility. Always add chili with a teaspoon; do not add it directly from the container, as a mistake with chili is much worse than with turmeric. We have added just enough. Chili can even be added to sweet dishes; it serves as a bridge to enhance the aroma of other spices and ingredients. If used in the right amount, it complements; if used too much, only spiciness remains. Now, add the chard. It is always important to use a pot large enough for chard, as it reduces in volume when cooked. A common mistake is to pour two liters of water and start cooking. Instead, mix it and add water gradually. It is generally said that spinach needs only as much water as remains on the leaves after washing. In such cases, put everything together, add a little water, cover well to retain steam and flavors, and cook until the chard softens. #### Preparing the Whole Wheat Pasta with Sauce For the second menu, whole wheat pasta with sauce, we start by cooking onion in olive oil. Onion is usually not used in large quantities. We grated the onion so it will be sufficiently cooked and not weigh you down, aiding digestion. The prepared red onion will not be too strong. We can add a little more oil because there will be quite a bit of pasta. When not preparing for an athlete, you can add sliced black olives and capers (from oil, not vinegar, to avoid sourness). Today, for light, easily digestible food, we omitted these. Now, add chopped, diced tomato. It is best to peel fresh tomatoes and chop them. If not in season, use uncanned tomatoes. Always use foods with no preservatives or additives; homemade preserves are even better. Salt the tomato with Himalayan salt for minerals, and add a little tamari for flavor and B12 vitamin. Not too much is needed, as the sauce is very aromatic on its own. A crucial point is that almost no water should be added to the chopped tomatoes. They are sufficiently watery on their own. Do not cook for too long, and under no circumstances add herbs (spices in leaf form) right at the beginning. Cook the sauce for about 5 to 10 minutes. If you add spices too early, they will lose their fragrance as the aroma evaporates in the steam. Therefore, spices are added at the end. We can also add a little turmeric. It won't be a problem, even though this is continental food; for the sake of intestinal health, it won't be very noticeable in the red sauce. Kolikuma (turmeric) is added here again, like tamar, only for its beneficial qualities. Now, simmer for a few minutes. One to three minutes before turning off the heat, add the spices we mentioned and discussed. There, everyone can find their own blend: thyme, mother’s thyme, oregano, and such. If you wanted to improve the sauce—I have, let’s say, now forgotten—but in any case, zucchini, thinly sliced, go in immediately with the onions. They actually give wealth. If you have forgotten that, it is not a big deal. In an additional pan, sauté the zucchini very, very briefly in a little oil and add it to the sauce. It will have the same effect again. Now we will prepare dessert. This dessert is truly meant for our athletes, something that can replace those various protein powders used for making shakes. Proteins are not only important for building our muscle mass, but they are also very important for our brain. In this case, you have almonds here. In India, in Āyurveda, it is said that you should start each day with a few almonds, and in that way we will keep the mind in good condition. What is true in today’s world is that we are constantly under stress and often feel that our mind is running on empty, that our memory is weak. Likewise, we suffer from something we call low blood pressure. However, if we look a little closer, it is not so much low blood pressure as it is a lack of nourishment in our brain. So this preparation, this shake that we will make today, will be made of almonds, cashews, peanuts, sweetened with raisins, and we will have hazelnuts. Concerning these nuts and dried fruits, we will also include a banana because it is a good carbohydrate that is absorbed very quickly and provides strength. And there will also be cottage cheese mixed with milk. Cottage cheese is also one of the foods that works exceptionally well for building muscle mass. When we asked our Hanumān what vegetarian food is best for muscle building, he said, among other things, cottage cheese and peanuts. So we will put that here today. It is extremely tasty, so be careful with it, because it might happen that instead of muscle mass, a cushion grows in front of you. What shall we sweeten it with? It can be sweetened with many things. We can sweeten it with dried fruit, so we can add raisins, figs, or any other dried fruit, but with dried fruit always be careful and make sure it doesn’t contain too many preservatives, sulfurs, or other additives, but that it is naturally prepared without preservatives. You can sweeten it with honey, which is also a very good nourishment for the brain. It also quickly enters the body and can maintain a certain level of sugar in the blood. And you can, if you want to make it for yourself and make it a bit more diet-friendly, you can add stevia powder. It is a substitute, and you must be very careful with it because very small amounts are enough to sweeten an entire meal. One more thing that is important about this shake is that if you want, you can slightly enhance the flavor even more, but also make it act as a tonic for our brain, by adding ground cardamom pods. However, today we will not be working with spices. We will work only with these nuts, and as we mentioned at the beginning, the question about B12 often comes up, so you can enrich the shake by adding one tablespoon of brewer’s yeast per person. In brewer’s yeast, you will find all the essential amino acids, and we can say that practically even in one tablespoon of the drinkable classic, you have enough B12 to meet the entire daily requirement. So, today we will begin our practice. First, we will take these harder things, the almonds, then we will take the peanuts. We will mix all of that in this device, which is quite powerful, and we will take some Indian nuts, a bit of hazelnuts, quite a lot. And now we will mix it all together. Then we will make the shake. Add the milk. The ideal thing would be to add real, fine, natural milk, which today is not so easy to find on the market. Then we add fresh cow’s cheese inside. How much shall we put, Hanumān? Two large ones, since we are working for two people, then we will put four, a little more. And then come the ground nuts. Inside, we left behind almonds, peanuts, cashews, and hazelnuts. They can replace the usual powder that is bought for protein powder. A little more B12, from this brewer’s yeast. Are you adding it? Yes, there as well, the god of complexes. The God of complexes and everything else. Today we will not use it, but we will use finely ground ones. One more question, we will ask Hanumān right away, what do you prefer more and what is better to sweeten with, honey or something else? With grapes. As a rule, if the honey, as you mentioned earlier, comes from a natural beekeeper, from whom we know it is genuine honey and not some melted sugar, then I would personally recommend honey. So, if it is natural honey—and thank God we have natural honey in Croatia—then we will take natural honey. Now the question is always how much honey to add, how much you like; we prefer Indian sweets, so shall we add, say, two tablespoons? Two good tablespoons each. So, two good ones, richer, and then we will have to place them here now. Since there is a little more milk, then there is no problem. Yes, since there is more milk, we will add three bananas. The fly like this, so that we don’t waste anything. And inside, we will also put a banana. This is commonly called an energy bomb in sports jargon. So, we hear it straight from the source, an energetic bomb. Before the practice, I would recommend it to everyone. So, to make it a bit thicker, and also to beautify a banana. However, the boys do not have training today, so it would not be good to overdo it. Now we are done with dessert, and what we haven’t shown you, and won’t show you, is the green salad. Everyone knows how to prepare a green salad, so you will see a ready green salad on the plate. A normal thing, we will not acidify it like people do here with large amounts of vinegar, nor with large quantities of salt and sugar, but practically on green salad we will always put a few drops of natural olive oil, put a little, a little, a little lemon juice, a few grains of salt, some pumpkin seeds which can be added, and a few roasted or raw sunflower seeds. From that time, you can decorate it like that and add a cube of cooked tofu, and in this way, you can quickly prepare a nice salad. At the same time, such a salad can also be good for those on a phalahārī diet, but more about that in another talk. Here, thanks to our vīkṣeporī, that is Sādī Nandī and all our vīkṣeporī, thank you very much, we have received wonderful meals here, truly very wholesome, and as I was saying, so, integral pasta with beautiful sauce and zucchini, light quinoa, definitely a bit of salad and seeds as additions with acids, so all those omega-3, omega-6, omega-9 are extremely important, lightly seasoned. Tofu cooked in a way that does not create acidity, wonderful. Since I will probably, precisely because of that, first lightly drink this shake, and then eat solid food during the time. First of all, I thank our dear friends who have prepared this wonderful meal for us. This is how I would correct what we said earlier, meaning both of us. It looks like the meal that we specifically use in our diet, specifically for me, a bodybuilder. We have received tofu, which is an excellent source of proteins, and alongside it, clearly, vegetables that are also a very good source of all kinds of vitamins and minerals, obtained through very light carbohydrates. And also what I love the most, usually what I have been practicing for many years, is that shake called with dried fruits and a certain amount of milk, enriched with honey which gives a particularly good taste, and besides that it is a good, excellent source of energy which before training is highly recommended to everyone. Friend, good luck. Praise to Brahmā, praise to Brahmā,... Thank you, Brahmā, thank you, Brahmā, thank you, Brahmā.