Chi packed breakfast dishes?

[dwai]

I agree -- Ayurveda is fascinating, these are both powerful and complete systems, and the reason I prefer TCM is not because it is "better" but because it is not as difficult for a solo lay practitioner to implement. Pop Ayurveda as given to the Westerners seems easy enough, but the real thing (e.g., as taught in Maya Tiwari's Secrets of Ayurvedic Healing) is sooo complex... "techniques" abound, and many procedures are more technically involved than acupuncture by several orders of magnitude. Ayurveda is to TCM what yoga is to taijiquan -- both are strongly efficient, but the former is way more "convoluted" than the latter. Similarly, the Hindu religion (and everything it spilled into buddhism in the course of cross-polination) is, compared to taoism, very complicated. The same applies to cooking... I tried to read a cooking encyclopedia written by a professional Ayurvedic chef and she starts out by explaining that you need three or four of your sisters, daughters, nieces to help in the kitchen, but then adds bluntly, "in order to do real Ayurvedic food preparation, you need to have servants in the kitchen!"

 

 

Agreed. Ayurveda, as is Hindu religion needs to be 'grown into'....pop-cultured versions are not really very effective (albeit I must admit that they at least let the sheep think out of the box). I have met Ayurvedic practitioners who switched over after getting an MD and many do Western medicine, Ayurveda and TCM (I think this is a good thing in most cases)...

 

The "complexity" arises due to the different-ness of it.

 

I think it is perfectly possible to cook within bounds of Ayurveda by oneself (although having help sure makes it easier)

 

 

A few principles to start out with (and I got a confirmation that they are a living tradition during my recent trip to China) --

1. Most preparation is done before cooking begins -- the cleaver rules! Everything is shredded into small pieces. Meats come in thin transparent strips, vegetables are cut uniformly into small morsels or thin slices or straw-like bits no thicker than vermicelli.

2. Then rapid stir-frying or grilling takes only a few minutes. Very short term, very high temperature cooking is typical. Vegetables aren't eaten raw but are never overcooked to mushy conditions. The color of a cooked vegetable is brighter than that of its raw version -- the moment the color intensifies is when the stir-frying stops.

3. If they eat it raw, they think of it as a fruit. Tomatoes and cucumbers are in this category. I've seen people bite into a cucumber in Xi'an many times, the way we bite into an apple. (Don't try it with a supermarket cucumber, it tastes like nothing.)

4. Awareness of food's energetics is part of the culture -- you find entries on restaurant menus like "soup to moisten the lungs," "kidney qi strengthening congee" and the like.

 

This of course is just the tip of the iceberg... TCM is huge and equipped to customize an individual diet with much precision if necessary or desired -- for any purposes, physical or spiritual or social. (You eat certain things because there's a festival during which they are traditionally eaten -- for a few days you eat the same thing a billion others are eating simultaneously with you -- and have been doing this for thousands of years -- that should do something interesting to the "spirit of unity")

 

Thanks for the summary on TCM-based cooking.

[Ramon25]

Well... I AM all over this discussion and I never eat breakfast either.

 

(doesn't mean I don't know what I would eat if I did.)

 

It has always surprised me that so many people somehow manage to wake up hungry. I know the "breakfast is the most important meal" blah blah drill... but I simply never wake up hungry, ever. And I have this policy, I don't eat if I'm not hungry.

 

I have night munchies. I know the drill too... it's just that I can never go to sleep hungry.

 

Tried "breaking" myself to conform to conventional thought in this regard many times. Doesn't work! So now that I'm reading up on Native American nutrition, I've discovered they didn't eat breakfast either. In fact, they didn't eat the first meal of the day till they did something physically strenuous -- if there was nothing urgent to do, they played games. Late night meals, however, were common. Hmmm...

 

awww dont tell me the debate is over...

 

 

I dont eat breakfast either, I eat when hungry, If you wait a few hours after waking and eat within an 8 hour window or so daily, you put your bosy through an 16 hour fast daily. Its good stuff