Eating is essentially a violent act, it is an act of consumption and therefore of violence. We take and consume. Those who eat meat, slaughter animals to feed themselves. Those who eat items from the plant/vegetable kingdom, consume the leaves, seeds, sap, fruit, flowers and other parts of a different sort of living being. We are killing living beings of two different sorts. When we consume creatures in the animal kingdom we are no better than cannibals. Consumption of materials from the plant kingdom while not ideal is better. Since we are already engaged in a violent act, eating should be done always with gratefulness.
Eating is also an act of nurturance. We eat to nourish our bodies, to sustain our bodies, to heal our bodies. Eating is not about completing what is set in front of you on your plate. The goal of eating should be centered in our bodies. We eat to assuage hunger. We do not eat to combat world food crises and other sorts of social inequities. When we eat to assuage our hunger, to heal our bodies, to nourish them and keep them well, we need to pay attention to what we are eating and when we are eating and how much we are eating. The goal is not to finish what is in our pantry and refrigerator or plate. The goal of eating is to nourish and sustain our bodies. When we eat it should be with mindfulness that we are eating to maintain our bodies, to live, to be well. As we do this eating becomes not only and simply an act of violence but also an act of grace. So when we eat we should eat with mindfulness of our bodies and also be thankful for the gift of the food that we are eating.
In general, meals should consist of hot water, boiled grain or bean, steamed or boiled vegetable. I have found that my body does a lot better if I eat carbohydrates/grains and beans/proteins separately. If I want to have black beans, I just prepare it by itself and have it with vegetables. I do not eat it with rice or other grain/carbohydrates.
Learn to pay vigilant attention to what my body needs:
My body will tell me it wants to eat a vegetable. At that time eat a vegetable - take what is sufficient amount, wash it with soap and water, boil or steam it and have it with rice. It is not necessary to have vegetable with every single meal.
If my body wants a fruit, something sweet, wash one serving of fruit, fresh or dried, with soap (if appropriate) and water and eat it. Eating a lot of fruit together does not constitute a meal. Eating fruit by itself will never be as satisfying as a grain or bean meal. It is not necessary to have fruit every single day.
If my body feels like having something heavy, substantial, have a protein meal consisting of beans and vegetables. Proteins should be consumed separately from carbohydrates, grains. It can be eaten with vegetables, salad, nuts. It is not necessary to eat a protein meal every single day.
If my body feels like having potato chips, have vegetable seasoned with heated and spiced oil to the rice meal. Avoid daily consumption of oil. Oil can be incorporated into the diet by cooking vegetables with gently heated oil once in a while when the need arises. Learn to pay attention to the body to determine when there is such a need. Oil is to be used exceedingly sparingly, half a teaspoon per person -- much like a condiment, pickle or spice - just a very little bit is all that is needed.
The method: add oil to a cold vessel and heat vessel and oil very gently on low heat. The oil
should only be heated so that it goes from its thick viscous state to a fluid state. then it can be removed from further heating. At this point a few spices can be added to the heated oil very sparingly. The heated oil is good for releasing the beneficial properties of the spices and make them suitable for consumption. Add cooked warm vegetables to the heated oil and mix to coat.
When grocery shopping, I need to remember to purchase enough food for twenty one meals. This means I need to purchase enough food stuffs for meals and snacks. This requires sitting down and thinking about what my body may need and making sure that it will be in the house when I need it. In general, I will need to purchase sufficient fruits, vegetables, nuts, dried fruits, grains, beans, salt, and umeboshi to last me for the week.
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1. Fruits are not hunger addressing foods. They should not be consumed as grains or vegetables - to address hunger. If consumed at all it should be to achieve a specific purpose - for example body's desire for "sweet" or to act as laxative.
2. Ideally, foods that need to be refrigerated should not be consumed. Regarding produce, since the obtaining of farm fresh, just picked fruits and vegetables is not always possible, you need to determine which vegetables and fruits to refrigerate. Do not put everything in the refrigerator. Do not put fruits and vegetables that will be eaten raw in the refrigerator. I have discovered that a lot of produce that is kept in the refrigerated produce sections of grocery stores can be stored at room temperature before being consumed. Vegetables and fruits can easily be kept for 3 to 4 days if not more at room temperature (depending on climate). In summer weather, I would expect that spoilage would happen in one or two days. In cooler weather and in cold weather,
vegetables can easily last for a week without needing refrigeration.
3. Root vegetables like potatoes (sweet and regular), yams, daikon, burdock, celeriac, beets, carrots, parsnip, turnip tend to be sweet or starchy or both. Starchy root vegetables pair well with grains and in fact should only be consumed with other starches and vegetables.
Bulb roots like fennel, onions, green onions, chives, garlic, scallions, leeks have various medicinal effects: anti bacterial, anti viral, antiseptic, tonic, etc. These should be consumed with an eye toward achieving a specific effect and should not be used thoughtlessly.
4. Oil and fats in general are to be treated with extreme care and consideration. They should be consumed in extremely small amounts, heated gently when the body has a desire for oil.
Oils are potent distillations of the life energy of plants, extracted from seeds, nuts and fruits. Oil should be consumed with extreme care. Extreme care has to be exercised when heating oil to keep it from overheating or burning. Adding spices to warmed oil heats them,cooks them, transforms them and helps the body receive the full healing benefits of the spice. Oils and fats can be eaten with protein, grains and vegetables. In addition to oil, seeds and nuts are also a valuable source of fats provided you have a good source. Nuts and seeds need to be thoroughly washed before consuming them along with your meal. I prefer to meet my body's daily requirement of fats by consuming a handful of nuts with meals when I feel such a need.
5. In my experience of commercially, widely available oils, only olive oil seems safe. But there are other exotic oils out there which may be locally available: palm oil, sesame oil, coconut oil, mustard seed oil, shea butter, baobab oil, oil expressed from a variety of camellia sinensis, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, rice bran oil, hazelnut oil, almond oil. Peanut oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, and canola oils are readily available. Sunflower is generally safe if you can get an
unpolluted supply of it. In my experience canola is very bad for the body. I have a similar suspicion about corn oil and peanut oil. I have heard of cottonseed oil, linseed oil as well. I am not sure about the safety of these oils either and would avoid them.
6. Members of the nightshade family should be eaten with caution because they contain some sort of chemical which if consumed in large quantities can be problematic for the body. If eaten it should be infrequently and to benefit from their potent pharmacological actions as with the bulb roots mentioned above. Members of the nightshade family include: potatoes, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, sweet peppers (aka capsicum, bell peppers), spicy peppers.
7. Soya bean products and Brassicas are problematic vegetables requiring careful preparation to offset their tendency to affect the thyroid gland negatively. These two groups contain what are called goiterogens - substances that disrupt thyroid hormone function. It seems their negative impact can be minimized a bit by cooking but this has not been really established very well from the few articles I have perused. I think occasional consumption of a cabbage and tofu should be okay provided they are cooked before consumption. Brassicas include: cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, turnip, kale, rutabagas, kohlrabi, mustard, Brussels sprouts.
8. Squashes and melons: eat only in moderation and once in a while the winter/heavier varieties. The tender summer squashes zucchini (courgettes), crooknecks, pattypans seem to be edible on a daily basis. Melons are fruit versions of their squash vegetable relatives and should be consumed only to hydrate the body, satisfy the body's craving for sweet, or to benefit from their
laxative properties. In general both melons and squashes have cooling properties and/or the capacity to generate phlegm, congestion.
9. Just as the body needs fats, it also needs sugar. Periodically one has to satisfy that by eating a ripe fruit with the chemical, nutrient profile appropriate to your body's condition and the time of year. In general most of the fruit out there are toxic because of pesticide residue and other forms of contamination. Good fruits to eat raw seem to be papaya, melons, cherries. Good fruits to eat boiled include pears, apples, and maybe peaches. Tropical fruits such as mangoes, lychees and similar fruits, cherimoyas and similar fruits seem to be either problematic due to chemical profile or insect infestation. Temperate fruits generally available in the US are so heavily pesticided they are usually free of pests.
Now i don't know what to make of the pure, isolated sugars out there: agave syrup, maple syrup, molasses, cane sugar, date sugar, palm sugar, honey, stevia. I guess honey should be considered by itself since it is actually the secretion of an insect, the honey bee. But insofar as it is sweet we can consider it here. Personally, it grosses me out to think that i am eating the vomit of an insect so my inclination would be to avoid it. Period. I don't care what sort of medicinal effects it may have. If I need its medicinal properties maybe then i will consume it not as food but as drug.
The other things: agave syrup, maple syrup, molasses, date sugar, cane sugar, stevia I don't know what use they have. Perhaps they may be combined with fruits. But can they be combined with grains? or proteins? or vegetables? And also which of these sugars is actually fit for consumption? If you ask what is sugar, you realize that it is the food the plant generates to
sustain itself. It takes sunlight, oxygen, minerals and who knows what other components to synthesize a complex carbohydrate/sugar syrup which it then circulates in its system to sustain itself.
In this regard the various plant syrups are similar to honey, the honey bee is making honey to sustain itself and others in its hive. The plant generates the syrup to sustain itself. Reminds me also of milk of various herbivores whose milk is generated to sustain the animal's young. The purpose of all these foods is sustenance of creatures similar to it or to nourish itself. If we are not cow, goat, bee or plant I don't really see how we can consume the food that these beings/entities are generating for their own need. Despite this what i can say about myself is that i have eaten sugar both by itself and in various prepared foods. I have desired to eat various sweet foods and have found them delicious to consume. I can only repeat that there is something in my biochemistry which likes and perhaps needs sugars and remind myself that eating in general is a violent act and should be done with gratefulness.
10. Be careful with leafy vegetables. Some times you can get a good supply at which time they are good to eat. Eat them on those occasions. the only issue is making sure you cook it correctly. some of the tougher leaves (collard greens and the kales for example) require boiling for at least 30 minutes. steaming leaves is another method that may be helpful. i have found that steaming cabbage makes it very edible. Between boiling and steaming, i prefer boiling. just make sure that
you have boiled the leaves until they are done. the more tender leaves require less cooking time. The problem with eating leaves is making sure to obtain contamination free samples.
From what I remember from grade school science, leaves are responsible for the primary activity of photosynthesis in a plant. As such it is the place in the plant where sunlight is transformed along with other things into food for itself. In eating the leaf we are ingesting the organs of the plant that are responsible for the primary activity in the plant's bid for survival and growth. So once again eat with mindfulness and thankfulness.
11. Herbs, Spices, Salt: spices are volatile compounds best left to the trained. I am not competent at wielding them. If one can apprentice with each spice then only can one wield them safely and with efficacy. I think the primary rule with regard to the use of spices has to be: Handle with care! You don't want to create addictions, you don't want to make it difficult to live mindfully. You don't want to make living life more difficult than it has to be. To live life with mindfulness takes an incredible lot of effort. You don't need to punish yourself further by making the job a lot more difficult than it already is.
12. The five tastes: bitter, pungent, salty, sour, sweet are widely referenced in the Asian cooking traditions. In fact they have a never ending variety of categories so taste is just the beginning. I suspect the five we typically start of with are fairly crude. Other dimensions of food include texture and methods of preparation etc etc etc. I don't have a problem with all this food technology but for the common man if he can get a bowl of rice and vegetables that will not kill
him it is a miracle. so since i am not a trained scientist in this discipline/technology i am not in a position to disavow it or praise it. What i can say is mindfulness in eating and cooking will lead you in your explorations. Again, the focus should be on mindfulness. Everything that can aid in peacefully mindfully living your life should be favored and utilized.
13. Wash vegetables and fruits thoroughly in several changes of water until all the dirt residue has been removed. Cook vegetables by steaming or boiling. I personally prefer boiling at the moment. in the past i was quite enamored with the steaming technique. experiment and see which you like. what i have learned from steaming and boiling is that the vegetable changes the water: it changes color, gets bubbles.. this is when the vegetable is done. boiling gives the cooked vegetable a very pure, clean taste and feel which i enjoy. another reason i like boiling is that it is easy to control the amount of cooking because everything is visible while with steaming i cannot see what is going on.
14. When confronted with a choice between an organic and conventional edible item select the organic. For example i have access to organic sushi rice and conventional Thai white jasmine rice. i think it is better to select the organic sushi rice. of course this requires the addition of a proviso: eat a sample of both items and then make a call. sometimes, the conventional is better than the organic.
15. I don't like flour based things like mochi, amrita phala, halva made using mochiko flour, buckwheat flour etc. I also don't leak breads, pastas, noodles. I find, in general, flour products to be really upsetting for my body. The Japanese/Korean daifuku mochi with sweet bean filling and rice cakes (various duks) are very potent and nourishing foods. The only problem is getting products that are not spiked with toxic ingredients like food dyes, toxic varieties of sugar, preservatives and whatnot. The processes/methods which produce the oriental rice cakes however is sound and create food of superlative nutritive benefit.
16. I suffered for years from eating beans with grains/carbohydrates and not recognizing my body cannot tolerate beans very easily. For me the bean category includes vegetable beans (haricot verts, string beans), beans (azuki, pinto, kidney, garbanzo, white beans, mung beans, black beans), peas (yellow peas, green peas), legumes/pulses (red lentils, black lentils, green lentils, yellow lentils).
Of the beans I have tried (in parentheses above) I like organic black beans best. They have to be cooked using the Quick Soak Method:
1)Put a pot filled with filtered water on the stove to boil.
2)Measure, sort, sift through, clean beans.
3)When water is hot, wash beans and add them to water pot on stove.
4)Wait for the pot to come to a rapid boil. After 2 minutes, cover the pot, turn off the stove and remove beans from stove's heating element (if using an electric stove).
5)Allow beans to soak in covered pot in hot water for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
6)Drain off soak water and rinse beans thoroughly.
7)Cook bean in fresh supply of filtered water for 1 - 1 1/2 hours.
8)Do not add acidic ingredients like lemon, tomato etc. while cooking beans in these two stages of bean prep. I also avoid adding salt.
9)When beans are at desired stage of tenderness, stop cooking it and drain off the cooking water. 10)At this point, you can eat the beans as is or use it in a bean-vegetable recipe. I usually just have the cooked beans with some salt, ketchup and vegetable side dish.
With regards to tofu, after trying various ways to eat tofu, I find that it really is best when you can have it boiled lightly and eaten with a good safe soy sauce or tamari sauce. Since tofu, tamari, and soy sauce are made out of soy and wheat products I cannot eat it except on rare occasions. I find that it is just better to avoid this whole cluster of "food" products since it is not really food for my body.
