Ayurvedic Vegetable Dishes

MARCH 6, 2010: Cooking Class Two - Vegetables
Cost: $110.00 (Click here to make payment)

Vegetarian recipes have always been at the core of the Ayurveda and of the Hindu living principles. Ayurvedic wisdom provides a deeper insight into the reasons why you really should stick to vegetarian recipes, even if the meat-industry would ever get rid of mad cow disease, antibiotics and other horrifying stuff. Take mental health for example.

The Ayurvedic cook derives his knowledge of herbs, spices, vegetables, legumes and so forth from the Ayurveda, which helps them maintain physical, mental, social and spiritual harmony.

Ayurvedic foods are appetizing, flavourful and aromatic and a way of offering love, becoming healing when served in an inspiring atmosphere. The cleansing of toxins that have entered the body and the electrochemical vitalising of the body are main objectives. Ayurvedic cooking thus is an art and a science at the same time, when cooking becomes alchemy and food becomes Tantra.

Plants become suitable foods for man in two basic circumstances : at the end of the reproductive cycle or at the end of the life cycle. Plants rely on the consumption of their fruits and seeds for reproduction. Most other vegetable foods are mostly eaten only when ripe, that is at the end of their life cycle.

All vital energy on the planet ultimately comes from the sun. Vegetarian recipes provide the most efficient nutriment for the human system, because plants form the basis of the food chain, closest to the source of life itself, which is solar energy. Carnivores rely on second-hand photosynthetic energy, first converted to the flesh of the herbivorous prey. Very few people have tasted the flesh of carnivores because it is tough, stringy and difficult to digest.

A comparison of the digestive tracts of man and carnivores reveals man to have a considerably longer intestinal system - yet shorter by an almost equal proportion than the viscera of herbivores. The human system is not geared for eating meat, but neither for eating raw fruits and vegetables. Man however has mastered the element of fire, thus reducing the expenditure of energy required by the intestines. One who is seeking to raise his energy level must inevitably conclude that digestion is one of the single greatest demands on the system. That much less energy is available for meditation, concentration and enjoyment. The obvious path of least resistance is well cooked vegetarian recipes.