Cooking

Here is a super popular, quick and easy, New Year’s Day/Dal meal. It actually has been voted in as a weekly Saturday winter dinner at my place, because it is so good. It takes 20 minutes from top to bottom, and costs perhaps $5 for 4-6 servings.

Basically we’re matching up haluska, an Eastern European staple, especially on New Years’, with a side of spiced black eyed peas, popular in the American South on that same day.

They go great together, and your grandma may be proud.

Haluska

• 8 oz. wide or curly egg noodles, dried
• one medium head of greenish-white cabbage
• one medium organic yellow onion
• 4 tbsps of ghee or oil of choice (I think Sunflower works well here) – I know that sounds like a lot, but you’ll appreciate it later

Bring 2 quarts of salted water to rapid boil.  Add only the noodles.  Boil for 5 minutes uncovered. Strain. Set aside.

Chop the cabbage and onion into little strips.  Sautee in the oil or ghee on medium, stirring frequently.  You want the onions to get translucent and  perhaps carmelized a bit.

Add 1 teaspoon good (like Celtic) sea salt and 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper.

Add the noodles and stir thoroughly.

Black-Eyed Peas

Open 2 cans of Organic Black Eyed Peas. (Hey, it’s the holidays.  I think it’s ok to take this time-saving step, but if you want to avoid the aluminum, by all means, soak some dried peas the night before, and boil for 1-2 hours in salted water to go the real old old-fashioned route.)

Heat.  Add 1 teaspoon dried basil and 1/2 teaspoon bay leaf powder (powerful stuff – I grind my own.) Stir well.

Serve haluska and black eyed peas together with organic sour cream ready to mix on the side which is quite essential!

The high quality spices are of course what give this meal great praana, precious always, but especially while shivering and hunkering in the cold season.

6 Tastes:

sweet= oil, ghee, noodles, basil, bay leaf, peas

sour= pepper, cabbage, sour cream

salty= salt

pungent= pepper, bay leaf, onion

bitter= cabbage, basil, bay leaf, peas

astringent= cabbage, onion, peas

haluska and black eyed peas for New Year's

Renay

It is said that the Gods rejoice when a person keeps a vow.

Here is mine, after seeing the movie, Food Inc.

I will only buy the following items, ideally unprocessed, organic and very local when available:

• flour
• water
• nuts
• legumes
• beans
• vegetables
• fruits
• milk
• butter
• yogurt
• eggs
• spices
• honey
• sugar
• oils
• rice

A local seller on Craigslist is allowing me to get a $20 breadmaker in very good condition.  That will allow me to take care of breakfast, with good chai on the side.  Toasted homemade bread with local butter and farmer’s market peach jam doesn’t sound like scrimping to me.

Let’s see.  What else?

For more good ideas and recipes, see http://cookforgood.com/

For more on the why, once you’ve seen the movie, check out the local action at  Boulder County Going Local.

Renay

all ingredients are organic, most are from the Farmer’s Market; serves 8

perfect for the late spring (Hemant) melting period

3 tablespoons ghee

8 young onions

2 tablespoons black pepper

2 teaspoons black salt

1 big soup/stock pot

Slice onions thinly and caramelize in the ghee, salt, and pepper for 5 minutes.  Then reduce heat.

4 large or 8 medium white turnips; greens removed and saved

1/2 gallon milk

1 pound asparagus

Slice turnips into thin rectangular cubes.  Add to caramelized mixture.  Stir 3 minutes.  Add all of milk.  Stir while saying mantra. Turn heat to medium.

Chop turnip greens into small strips and add to the pot.

Allow milk mixture to bubble. (It may take a while.)

After breaking the ends off, chop asperagus into 1 inch long sections.  Add to pot.

2 teaspoon dried sage

4 teaspoon dried dill

4 tablespoons pine nuts

3 cups potato flakes

Add all 4.

With soup simmering, add flakes, and stir again well.  Serve when all vegetables are cooked through.

Makes you feel terrific.

Representing The 6 Tastes (approximately)

Sweet: ghee, milk, pine nuts, sage

Sour: asparagus, black pepper

Salty: salt

Bitter: turnip greens, turnips

Pungent: black pepper, onions

Astringent: asparagus, turnips, dill, potatoes

Renay

When I was in my late 20’s, I became naturally involved with raw foods, where my diet consisted of fresh, blended, sprouted, or dried fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetables.

I became beautiful. I became pure.  I received spontaneous marriage proposals and offers of modeling.

I want to write here why I ended that, before it ended me. By now, I only eat well cooked items, and it has everything to do with Ayurveda.

Late 20’s was an interesting time. I had entered Ketu dasha (Ketu natally in the the tenth), the time of letting go. I certainly did that, but it was also a time of amazing realizations.

For example, classical yoga asanas (postures) would suddenly appear in my heart and mind without any prior exposure.  Lacking a yoga mat, I would do them on my open futon, not knowing what I was doing, but doing it well.

After breaking up with my partner of three years I was alone and relished it.  I re-evaluated everything with respect to the new body knowledge of “release (asana) is good (Ketu)”.

I led a simple life, then a simpler life, then one of extreme simplicity.  I sat on the ground, ate out of a single jar with a single spoon. (Fork tines felt too violent in my hypersensitive body. And chairs with their 4 pointy legs seemed like they hurt the ground and interfered with my connection to it.)

Freshness, purity in my food and water became the focus of my days. I was a quick 2 block bike ride from Whole Foods and soon my oversized bike baskets were filled with gorgeous fruits, sopranic greens, novel grains.  My limited money was devoted almost wholly to this.

My eyes started turning from dark brown to greenish blue.

There is actually a type of saddhu in India who lives on only fruits and vegetables. I can see the power of this approach. Looking back, my body was never more sensitive, more aware, more pure, but what was ethereally wafting IN the temple?  Alas, just the same me.  Finally I realized I couldn’t get rid of that me, and that ethereal essence is the most important thing of all.

How did I begin this journey?  One day, I was hypnotically drawn to the book Raw, on the cooking shelf of the local bookstore. With the same fervor that I brought to exploring The Moosewood Cookbook in college, I made every recipe in that beautifully designed book.

I believe that was in May, Colorado’s most outrageously colorful, delightful month.  High on the lightness of this food, I felt the blueness of the sky sparkling everywhere overhead, the mountains in the distance were emitting a motherly type of gravitation, birds were out, saying hi.

The sun seemed like it went through and enlivened every cell of my ever thinning body.

Always interested in being active, I found my every step, every turn of my bike wheel, and every breath to be joyous and yes, pure.

I also was deeply alone, and it was great.

I hadn’t received instruction in meditation, but something like meditation would happen spontaneously throughout the day, like the yoga postures earlier.  Some kind of innate intelligence was taking over, and I found I could not only trust it, but it was giving me ideas and answers that were consistent with the few Great Teachers that I knew of, such as the Buddha and Jesus Christ.

I was in a swirl of sensation and the foodie in me kept experimenting. My favorites were greens and sprouts. I looked on the internet for hours each day, mostly reading about other raw foods recipes.

There was a raw foods conference in Portland.  It was a little pricey for me at $50 but I saved up for a bus ticket and went.  My sister, who lived there then, really wanted to host me, to take me to the famous Powell’s Bookstore and a small Thai restaurant nearby.

I wasn’t really interested, relishing my singularity  but I felt I should honor my sister, my singularity hadn’t yet turned selfish, and my 17 year long Mercury dasha had not been that long ago, so I had a modicum of interest in books still.

Mostly I chose to share in my sister’s sensibilities and gifts with culture and the written word.  I think I looked at raw foods books and their allies in permaculture farming, societal idealization, and so on.

We then went to the restaurant.  I had a few grains of cooked rice, the first cooked stuff I had eaten in months.  My energy for lack of a more appropriately powerful and encompassing word sank down my spine immediately. I felt very sick.

My sister’s feelings were hurt that I did not enjoy this special meal more.

I left in a dark haze and went to the conference.

There I became happy again, surrounded by people who seemed much like me. I tried jackfruit for the first time and sipped on young coconut. Everyone seemed to be at the same vibration as me.

I met a resplendent young fellow named Tre Arrow.  He was quietly and shiningly absorbing all that was around him.  We exchanged numbers.

I went home.  Fall and then frigid snow set in, Vaata season in our high desert microclimate.  In the next two years, I started wigging out, lost my reason, lost more pounds, lost friends, but found Ayurveda, what has become my Great Love.

Dr. Lad would read my pulses at this time, and declared me to be a “4+ Vaata”, compared to what for me should be a 3.  Vaata, the cause of disease, was running rampant through my system.  I didn’t know yet what havoc it would bring.

I was hard, certain, about continuing raw foods. I was boiled down to my essence and wanted to stay that way.

The other students, amazing people really, couldn’t relate to me, barefoot, eating dried dates like a chipmunk outside in the wind and cold of winter in minimall Albuquerque.

Resisting the comforts and teachings of the Vedas that were all around me, I grasped more tightly to raw food, my only passion, my necessity.  (People said I looked wonderful though.)

I could not focus on the teachings.  My years of singularity made relating to people, especially such awesome respectable people, very very difficult.  Their own sensitivities made me realize my seeming ridiculousness and so  my grasp tightened onto raw foods, furthering the cycle of separateness.

I was all Air and Space.  There was nothing for the teachings or the other students to grab onto, and frankly I was attached to how free I felt.  My ego felt I was doing the right thing, and I was very attached to my singularity, my own sensations, my ego. To other people, I was barely there, figuratively and literally.

My thoughts were like a plastic bag in the wind. Yet, the remnants of my prior clarity and what I got from Dr. Lad’s teachings at least gifted me one certain electric meta-certainty: Ayurveda is true, all of it.

Extremely scared, I knew I was becoming Ayurvedic. I had been so great, I thought. I knew that I would change, but to what, to whom?

[Part Two: My Unbelievably Difficult Transition to Cooked]

Renay

Sounds cute: Codex of Nutrition, only it’s not.

Watch this video if you feel strong:

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-5266884912495233634&hl

Googling it shows FDA meeting minutes and such that reference it.

Here is the official website:

http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp

I was going to write on the art of the ladoo today, until this came across my desk.

I’m speechless.

Dr. Lad says

If one knows the rasa, virya, and vipaaka of a food or medicinal herb, it is simple to understand its action on bodily systems. This knowledge is essential for both healing and cooking. (Textbook of Ayurveda, p. 255)

As usual, this is actually quite an important set of sentences. A lot is contained therein.

I have compiled a visual map of sorts of the six tastes, a simplified summary that might be good for printing out and using when you want to create meals. Keep in mind that the goal is to have all six tastes in one meal so that the whole of the digestive system is stimulated and in the right order: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent astringent.

PDF here.

Here is the image. Click to enlarge.

rasAH svAdamla lavaNa tiktoSaNa kaSAya kAH

SaD dravyam AZritAs te ca yathA pUrvaM balAvahAH (VaghbAt sUtra,1)

The six tastes are: sweet, sour salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. They are present in substances. Each one produces more strength (for the body) than the one which follows it.

Interesting, no?

There are more sUtras:

The first three tastes (sweet, sour and salty) decrease/reduce vAta doSa. The three tastes beginning with bitter (bitter, pungent and astringent) reduce kapha doSa. Astringent, bitter and sweet tastes reduce pitta doSa, whereas the others (the remaining three unlisted tastes for each respective doSa) increase the (respective) doSa. (VAghbhat, sUtra1)

Sweet and salty tastes become sweet after digestion, sour remains as sour, the vipAka of bitter, pungent and astringent tastes is generally pungent. (VAghbat sUtra Ch. 9)

This is quite an important topic and goes well-in depth. Maybe the best thing is to go example by example.

Renay

Also see “Raw Milk Available For Local Pickup”.

From the most recent email from the Boulder’s Farmer’s Market:

Windsor Dairy’s Line of Raw Milk Cheeses

Not long ago you had to travel to Europe or Amish country to purchase handmade raw-milk cheeses, crafted from grass fed organic cow’s milk. Now that Windsor Dairy has introduced its own line of artisan cheeses, you only have to travel as far as the Boulder or Longmont farmer’s markets to enjoy these delicious traditionally made cheeses.

These farmstead cheeses have evolved out of the dairy’s mission to become a local raw-milk micro-creamery that is committed to producing delicious and nutritious dairy products in an environmentally sustainable and traditional manner. The cheeses are made on the farm where the dairy’s owners manage all aspects of the cheese making process, from managing the variety of wildflowers in the organic pastures to making certain the cheeses are aged at the right temperature.

The owners of the dairy, married dairy veterinarians, Drs. Meg Cattell and Arden Nelson have a unique background for making cheese at a raw milk dairy. Respected dairy veterinarians, they also hold degrees in environmental health, nutrition and anthropology. Meg has studied indigenous cultures’ ancient relationships with cattle on research grants to Nepal and the Orkney Islands and to India on a Fulbright scholarship. She and Arden have also traveled the world lecturing and consulting with dairy farmers. When they purchased Windsor Dairy in 1999, they began to transform the farm into a dairy where they could put their unique expertise into practice and raise a family.Meg and Arden have discovered that allowing cows to live like cows have lived for centuries results in the best animals husbandry and a creamy, sweet, nutritious milk. Windsor Dairy’s cows are a mix of European mountain dairy breeds famed for cheese making, like Brown Swiss and Tarentaise.Like their ancestors, the cows spend most of the day grazing fields full of grasses, herbs and wildflowers. The cows’ all grass diet results in a milk that is high in omega 3’s, the kind of fatty acid found in salmon and walnut oil, and high in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), a fatty acid that has high cancer fighting properties. Because the milk is un-pasteurized the milk’s enzymes and vitamins remain intact when the milk enters the cheese-making vat.The dairy’s small batch cheese making vat is housed in a room adjacent to the milking parlor. In the traditional manner, cheese-making begins when the cows are milked, so the culture and the rennet can be added while the milk is still the body temperature of the cows. The curds are hand pressed into twenty pound or two pound cheese molds and then placed in aging rooms where they are aged a minimum of sixty days. After sixty days, by federal law, raw milk cheeses are available to the general public without a raw milk share.

Delicious cheese is the happy result of the careful attention to nuances of cow health and cheese making. Currently Windsor Dairy has nine varieties of cheese in production. Though some of the cheeses are made in “Swiss,” “cheddar,” and “jack” styles, the cheeses are named for geographic features along the dairy’s watersheds, names like Glendevey, Buckhorn, and Nakhu, and reflect the dairy’s commitment to environmental stewardship, local food and tradition.(Historically cheeses are named after the region they are made in. For example, Emmental from Switzerland and Stilton from England.) Many of the cheeses are true Colorado creations, like Buckhorn which has both jack and yogurt cultures and a natural or “mold” rind, Glendevey, a gruyere cheese aged with a natural rind, and Melville is a gouda-like cheese with a natural rind washed in organic apple cider from Meg’s organic heirloom apple orchard.

These unique and delicious cheeses are only available from Windsor Dairy.

Fermented cheese is not strictly speaking incredibly Ayurvedic, but I like what they are about.

Renay

Sorry for the late notice.

This from the great folks at Boulder County Going Local:

“June 19th (Thurs.) 7-8:30pm INTRO TO EASY AYURVEDA CUSISINE

with Indira Bhatt Gupta, founder of Madrid to Madras Cooking School and co-founder of Institute for Personal to Planetary Wellness, who shares tips on how to prepare easy, delicious dishes. Experience the delicate flavors of spices and herbs such as ginger, turmeric, cumin, cardamom, garam masala, and exotic chutneys. Learn to enhance your agni (digestive fire) and increase energy for total wellness. Free. Location: Boulder Meadows Community Room, 4500 19th St.”

Renay

I just had freshly picked Shitake mushrooms sauteed in turmeric and mustard seeds with organic spinach and tomato from the Boulder Farmer’s Market.

The mushrooms certainly didn’t taste or feel tamasic.

Could the Ayurvedic admonition against mushrooms be for the stale or heavy variety (such as Portobello)?

Renay

the old fashioned Indian way:

1. Get Red Label Tea (available from Indian shops incredibly cheap) or any other black tea to your liking. There is one brand in a yellow and green bag that begins with a D that is the cheapest of all, and my favorite by taste. (Really, old India.) Also, I understand that Rooibos (a healthier red noncaffeinated) tea is good.
2. Mix Homemade Chai Masala. This can include:

• Ground Cardamom Seeds
• Green Cardamom Pods
• Nutmeg
• Cloves
• Black Pepper
• Ginger, fresh if possible
• Cinnamon
• Anise
• Fennel
• Red Pepper
• Lemon Grass

Be creative here. The right balance depends on your dosha, the season, your vikruti, many other things, so just try a balance. You can always adjust it later. Fresher spices are better. You don’t need much.

2 (American sized) servings:

Boil 2 cups water, 1 tablespoon tea, and 1/2 teaspoon chai mix for 4 minutes.

Add 1 cup milk and 2 tablespoons sugar (preferably sucanat; I even once used raisin juice successfully). Bring to a boil (watch carefully so that it doesn’t spill over), reduce heat and allow to simmer until ready to serve. But really, the boiling points are essential here to give a full body.

A bonus is that with boiling, the tea leaves get saturated and heavy and hence, sink to the bottom of the pot.

Avoid tea bags. To my senses, they just color the water with a dusty pretaste of the potential power of the spices.

Don’t get me started on the mixes used in coffee shops.  Yech.

Everybody likes authentic chai and it’s pretty easy.

Renay

Ayurvedic Healing Cuisine by Harish Johari is my favorite go-to book for Ayurvedically innovative recipes that reach to the heart of old India.

It has a decent introduction to Ayurveda for those just starting out, yet can also finally answer those more esoteric questions of how to for example, properly use cumin seeds or bitter gourd.

It is a complete recipe book too in the sense that everything from chutneys to chai is covered.

My favorite recipe is Chickpea Soup with (Fresh) Garam Masala, on page 113. It’s like poha, simple, but delightful (like all his recipes actually) and a wow-er. All his recipes are so delicate and strong and sensitive. (Gosh, sounds like a good man — sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I do not doubt that if one ate from the recipes in the book for 3 weeks (perhaps with an Ayurvedic consultant to point out appropriate recipes) and did yoga with breathing, healing would be obtained.

The late wonderful Harish Johari was a Vedic man, writing books on Tantra, Cooking, Ayurveda and more. They all are exceptional: beautiful, simple, and powerful; a tasty sampling of the perfect life.

Renay

Pleased with myself and my poha, I told my guests yesterday, “Thank you for coming. Without eaters there would be no food.”  (It would just be stuff on a plate, otherwise.)

My friend piped back, “Without food there would be no eaters.”

Ah, the elegant dance of life.

Renay

Talk about Pitta reducing! (The sweet and rose tastes and the prabhav of lime all reduce pitta.)

Perfect for summer.

Rose Limeade
1 quart filtered water
2-3 freshly squeezed limes
1 cup rose water (can be found in Indian stores)
Agave to taste
Mix.

This was courtesy of our friends at Peaceful Meadow Retreat.

This is a popular favorite, and is even easier than dal!

It only takes around twenty minutes from start to finish.

Serves four:

Rinse 4 cups dried poha very well under warm tap water. (First put it in a colander.) If you prefer to use filtered water, set the pot of water to boil and get started on the following. While waiting for the peanuts to brown, do the poha then.

Heat up 3 tablespoons ghee or your favorite oil in a wok type pan. Sesame oil goes well in this recipe. Only heat up to medium heat regardless.

Add:

1 teaspoon mustard seeds and

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

Allow to fry until they start popping.
Add 1 tespoon salt (I prefer the Celtic kind here) and

2 teaspoons turmeric and

3-4 crumbled dried red peppers

Immediately add

2 cups peanuts and

10 curry leaves

Stir-fry until peanutes are lightly brown (may take longer than you think) and the curry leaves are soft.

Add 1 gorgeous organic tomato, chopped.

Stir fry just a short while (1 to 2 minutes) until tomato is soft.

Add the drained poha and stir to distribute the turmeric color evenly.

Serve!

Very colorful, attractive, and tasty.

Renay

There are many good recipes for kitcheri, an important food for Ayurvedic cleansing and maintenance.

My guests and I however seem to like best when the dal (beans) are separated out from the rice and vegetables. I guess I appreciate the leela of divided colors and textures.

Here’s my recipe for dal soup, a protein centerpiece of the triumvirate.

serves four:

Take

1/2 cup of unsoaked split mung beans

3 cups of filtered water

Put in pot. Stir to reduce sticking. Allow to boil. Reduce heat and simmer (at boil point) for 30 minutes.

Add:

1/4-1/2 teaspoon of salt (I like black salt the best for this.)

1-2 teaspoons turmeric

Bring to a boil again. Allow to simmer for another half hour, after which the beans are soft enough to be edible.

Add the following, stirring after each:

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon coriander

1 teaspoon garam masala

a sprinkle of chili powder

a sprinkle of cinnamon

a sprinkle of asafoetida

Let simmer for 15 minutes.

Serve hot with rice and vegetables on the side.

Tridoshic.

Renay

Windsor Dairy, the people who bring you the groovy lumps of cheese at the Farmer’s Market north end, are now providing shares to their cows, allowing for real raw milk in Boulder.

Starting June 1, 2008 there will even be pickup at the Farmer’s Market.

Real raw milk has many Ayurvedic benefits over pasteurized, so this is good news. Moreover, the care of the cows is paramount to good health of the planet and for what you are taking in your body.

Even “organic” milk can use the same miserable standards of cow care as the biggest agribusinesses, so care is warranted in procuring this essential ingredient of Ayurveda. The vibe of its provenance will be part of what’s feeding and hence creating you.

The dairy people seem pretty nice and really care for their cows. They definitely encourage a visit to see the animals and to establish a personal relationship with your “share”.

Another option may be to use Johnson Acres in Brighton, CO.

[Edited: Windsor Dairy evidently weathered the recent tornado pretty well! See their website for more.]

Renay

This recipe is as simple to make as it is satisfying.

It is a big hit and something of a conversation-starter!

Take:
5 parts of coconut milk (not coconut water)
Heat on a stove at medium low until it starts bubbling a bit.

Mix with:
1 part sugar, preferably sucanat
Stir until it has dissolved. Take off the stove.

Stir in:
1 part mung bean flour

You’ll need to stir slowly and completely to get the fine flour to mix in.
Add a good deal of ground cardamom, but not too much. (For 1 liter of coconut milk to start with, I add 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom.) Same thing goes with some high quality vanilla.

Allow to cool before serving.

That’s it.

Vaata and Pitta decreasing, Kapha increasing.

Renay

from a conservative Catholic web site:

Does the Spirit even speak through the very construction of vegetables and fruits?

A sliced carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye…and yes science now shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes. A tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.”

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food. A walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over three dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.”

“Kidney beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys,” it is pointed out. “Celery, bok, choy, rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23 percent sodium and these foods are 23 percent sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

"Eggplant, avocadoes and pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female — they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? …. It takes exactly nine months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them). Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm to swell to overcome male sterility.”

“Sweet potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics,” we are told. “Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries. Grapefruits, oranges, and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

“Onions look like body cells. Today’s research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.”

What a good article. The original had beautiful pictures that made the piece sing.

Renay

Like an individual wave rising from the ocean, it is not separate from the ocean. Just so, anything truly organic is ancient and anything ancient is organic.

My first review will be on Ancient Organics brand ghee.

They are fully worthy of the high honor.

Ghee is an essential to Ayurvedic cooking. It is a rasayana (medium), it is a food, it is a nectar. Well, just read the article linked to above.

I met the guy who makes this ghee at last year’s Ayurvedic Conference. I was impressed by his clarity, calmness, and glow even in the midst of the rajasic vendor spaces.

He explained to me that the ghee is made under the full moon when its powers peak. Mantras are said.

I waited until a friend ordered some. I might have been put off by the price: 32.50 for 32 ounces, plus substantial shipping and handling. (They now offer smaller jars.)

I had some and I was convinced.

If you use ghee, this is real ghee, the right way.

The taste is smooth, cooler and denser but less oily than other commercial ghees. The color is richer, perhaps from the higher chlorophyll diet of these cows. They use Stauss fermented butter for extra Agni. (There is lots of information on how they do everything on the company’s website.)

It’s not just marketing pap. I was a tad bit cynical at first, but the free sampling won me over in an honest way.

My friend uses it on everything now and I’m convinced, it is THE ghee to use, for cooking and for medicines.

I may review other ghees, but the reviews will all be in the negative. This is the first commercial ghee that feels like its life force is intact.

An interesting trivia is that Ancient Organics ghee was determined by Gourmet magazine to be the best “butter” in America. That used to be on the Ancient Organics website but now is not. I don’t blame them for removing it.

Anyway, I wish them well in their height of gheedom.

Renay

A good pot is a beautiful thing. It is sturdy, reliable, trustworthy, able to withstand abuse and yet supports the creation of amazing things other than itself.

It is the symbol for Aquarius ruled by a lord Shani, Saturn, who represents responsibility, duty, hard work, and perseverence.

What cook doesn’t know the rewarding gleam of a pan after the cleansing ritual of washing dishes?

The pot can be used again and again, selflessly giving of itself once more to the betterment of the whole, just like a Kumbha, Aquarius. And we are all an Aquarius somewhere in our lives.

I am especially fond of Korean old style handmade pots that were hand thrown with a small intentional flaw. They indeed recall the forms of ourselves, never perfect, but perfectly so.

Renay