Daoist Diet - Meal Suggestions?

[Blackfinger]

Greetings Bums,

 

I'm trying to modify my daily diet to improve my practice (and general health/wellbeing of course) and would welcome suggestions from any and all about ideas for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks that would be in keeping with a Daoist diet.

 

I have seen plenty of lists of foods which constitute good Daoist types e.g. avoiud red meat, spicy food, cold food/drink, processed food etc etc. but I am an absolute incompetent in the kitchen and as regards cooking and preparing food etc. It is something that I don't have the time or the inclination for to be honest, so contstructing my own recipes and ideas is something that gives me the fear. I think I'd be much more successfull in my endeavours if I was able to have a clear and prescriptive structure to follow.

 

SO if anyone could share what they eat on a daily basis - that they believe constitutes a good Daoist diet - then this would be much appreciated! I'm hoping to put together a simple plan for three simple healthy meals.

 

I should say that I have a moderately active life - commuting/working with long days (though in a sedentary job) with some light exercise and qi gong in the evenings and daily meditation.

 

Any input much appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

 

[C T]

http://www.amazon.com/Taoist-Cookbook-Michael-Saso/dp/0804830371

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine

 

interesting pics here: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/wudang/2012-07/26/content_15620275.htm

 

http://www.china.org.cn/english/LivinginChina/238578.htm

 

http://daoistgate.com/nutrition/

 

http://www.taopractice.org/dragonfly/3/03-CookingTao.html

 

Above are some useful sites that hopefully you will find interesting and helpful.

 

 

 

I just found this vege patty recipe a short while ago - sounds really simple, practical and delicious.

http://ambikaskitchen.com/?p=2691

 

Good luck with your nutrition plan!

[soaring crane]

Soups! :-)

 

With a little rice ...

[C T]

Sushi rice!

[Silent Answers]

Soups! :-)

 

With a little rice ...

I love rice in my soup! Best combo ever.

[Blackfinger]

Thanks all for the input,and the links!

 

I realise rice and soup would be a staple (brown rice?) but am interested in hearing specific meals e.g. what do people have themselves for brekky/lunch/dinner?

 

That veggy patty does indeed look beautiful CT, but that's wayyyy beyond my ability and the time i would have to make it....maybe for a weekend project, but not something I can knock up in 20 mins when i get back from work or prepare for the next day's lunch etc.

[wallum]

Are you a vegetarian?

 

For breakfast I like avocado on toast. If you eat animal by-products, adding an egg keeps you feeling full for a long time.

 

For lunch; a salad wrap, or; salad sandwich, or; tin of tuna-crackers-cherry tomatoes, or; an avocado-boiled egg-rice, or; sauteed chicken breast-soy sauce-rice

 

A simple evening meal can consist of some steamed vegetables (whatever are your favourites - zuchini, carrots, pumpkin, beans, greens, etc), some sushi rice (or other short/medium grain rice), and a bowl of miso soup. [Miso soup can be as simple as putting miso paste into hot water, without boiling it, or a tastier version is made by following the recipe below].

 

This meal can be eaten every night, using different vegetables and different soups for variety. If you eat fish, a piece of fish is a nice addition. Mushrooms are very tasty when sauteed with a little tahini, and make a good addition also.

 

Miso soup:

Bring water to boil in pan (enough for a bowl or 2 of soup)

Place a few 2inch squares of kombu (seaweed) and a tablespoon of bonito in boiling water, boil for 5 or 10 mins

Remove seaweed, bonito, and discard them (leaving behind your stock water

Into stock place chopped spring onion, cook for 1 minute, turn off stove

Into stock place miso paste and baby spinach leaves (do not boil once miso paste has been added)

Enjoy

p.s. the spinach leaves and spring onion are optional. If you are vegetarian, omit the bonito.

 

If you tell me what kind of flavours you like, I can give you more ideas

[Blackfinger]

Wallum - that is excellent advice, very useful and informative and exactly what i was after.

 

Thanks very much

 

flavours are fine for me I will eat anything...and I'm not a veggie but am trying to reduce meat intake, so this all looks excellent.

[BaguaKicksAss]

http://www.amazon.com/Taoist-Cookbook-Michael-Saso/dp/0804830371

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine

 

interesting pics here: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/wudang/2012-07/26/content_15620275.htm

 

http://www.china.org.cn/english/LivinginChina/238578.htm

 

http://daoistgate.com/nutrition/

 

http://www.taopractice.org/dragonfly/3/03-CookingTao.html

 

Above are some useful sites that hopefully you will find interesting and helpful.

 

 

 

I just found this vege patty recipe a short while ago - sounds really simple, practical and delicious.

http://ambikaskitchen.com/?p=2691

 

Good luck with your nutrition plan!

 

Those photos are awesome, most especially this one:

 

 

Makes me want to liven up some meals .

[C T]

Mmm... i love miso soup tooo!! Mine would always have white tofu cubes (about half inch squared ones) and mushrooms, either dried shiitake (needs soaking and slicing after), enokitake or shimeji. The texture of the tofu & mushrooms plus the flavours of the miso and seaweed is divine. Some spinach leaves is great too. Sometimes i'd also add some glass noodles (chinese clear or glass vermicelli) and garnish with 2 or 3 drops real sesame oil, fresh scallions, deep-fried shallots, and/or a tiny bit of roasted sesame seeds. Yum yum!

[Silent Answers]

I eat once at about 4pm usually a big salad and some fruit ..sometimes accompanied by fish. I might go all out on a fish curry. No other form of meat, though.

 

Drink quite a bit of water, and I do love a cup of milk tea! 1 coconut (water) every night..if there's stock.

 

I also mix up some special teas now and again: Pu'er tea with lots of ginseng, goji berries and these hard twisty root things that I shan't name. I usually let it brew over night in a flask and then filter it in the morning.

 

I doubt there's anything daoist about my diet but it feels pretty good. I take vitamins 3000mg of fish liver oil and Spirulina. Oh, and I haven't been sick in yeeaaaars, even when I'm surrounded by a family of germs.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Silent Answers

[C T]

Those photos are awesome, most especially this one:

 

 

Makes me want to liven up some meals .

Vegetable carving is an art in itself! Some 5* Asian restaurants have their own carving Sifu who gets paid almost as much as the head chef, just to carve decorative vegetables into dragons, phoenixes, rabbits, fish, all kinds of flowers... Amazing to watch!

 

For example...

 

[BaguaKicksAss]

Vegetable carving is an art in itself! Some 5* Asian restaurants have their own carving Sifu who gets paid almost as much as the head chef, just to carve decorative vegetables into dragons, phoenixes, rabbits, fish, all kinds of flowers... Amazing to watch!

 

For example...

 

 

I hope they are still edible, if not it takes all the fun out of it, and is a waste of food!

 

This person went all out!

 

 

I think it would be great fun to carve some Taoist health talismans into one's lunch .

[Chang]

You may find this link useful> if you read down to the bottom you will find a link to recipes.

 

http://www.seahorsearts.co.uk/chang-ming-diet.php

[BaguaKicksAss]

C T may have covered this already in his links, but in case not; most Taoist folks I know eat with the seasons. Specific foods to balance out the organs, as well as yin and yang, damp, cool, heat, etc. etc. So a little different each season, but also taking into account where one's own personal excesses and deficiencies are.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

They used to eat a lot of millet back in the day. It's a bit sweeter than rice and cooked exactly the same way, with higher nutrition than rice. You could pre-cook some at night and then just drop it in boiling water for about 20 seconds in the morning. Eat it with seeds and/or nuts and fruit for breakfast.

 

I forget the whole elemental association of it, but you always want to have some non-starchy vegetable or fruit with your meal to balance it out.

[dust]

Try everything once. Know what you like and what you don't, what you can eat and what you can't. Then, just listen to your body, and listen to the earth.

 

We usually know what we need, and the earth knows what to give us. Eat local, eat with the seasons, eat what you want.

 

And unlearn all the Western nonsense about diets and any particular food group being good or bad. It's all good.

 

Just my humble opinion.

 

 

 

 

 

Little story..

Visiting Hainan province (Chinese island) in February last year, I and a few friends took to chewing areca nuts wrapped with calcified lime and betel leaves (basically, a tropical seed that people chew like gum -- tastes great and you spit red all day).

 

After this little holiday in the sun, I went to Liaoning province in northern China to spend spring Festival with some other friends, and took a bag of the areca nuts up with me. We drank beer and ate lots of food and had a great time, and I got a couple of them chewing on the areca too, as a taste of the tropical south.

 

The thing is, areca nuts are native to the tropics. Hainan is hot; Liaoning in February is cold. I went from blazing sun to sub-zero temperature in a day, and these foreign areca nuts were still fresh and juicy. After a day or so, still chewing them every so often, I noticed my mouth starting to get a little sore. By the second day, I couldn't touch any sharp/acidic food or drink without fairly severe pain in my mouth. My friend from Liaoning who had been chewing the areca with me had the same issue.

 

Eventually, we connected the dots. We stopped chewing the arecas, and after another day or so the pain went away.

 

I learnt a simple lesson from that: eat with the climate, eat with the seasons. Also, beer is good everywhere, areca nuts are not.

[Taomeow]

I love rice in my soup! Best combo ever.

 

Hey, in this case you have to discover Kharcho, the great soup of Georgia (not the state, the country) which is, hands down, the best soup with rice in existence IMO. There's many online recipes in English I'm looking at, but I haven't found THE one that my Georgian friend's mother taught me to cook ages ago, which includes oil-cured black olives. Of course some other ingredients would have to be modified too -- you may not find tkemali plums but you can get tamarind from an Asian grocery instead (go for the sour variety, not sweet), and don't try to make this hearty fatty-lamb wonder of culinary skill into a vegetarian dish (there's recipes for vegetarian kharcho out there too, but I would strongly recommend going with the original, classic version, and that's a lamb, tomato and rice soup.) You'll see some recipes with beef instead of lamb -- that's acceptable, though not as great. You'll see suggestions to trim the fat off the lamb -- don't. Otherwise, choose the recipe you can manage (some are very complex, some, unnecessarily so -- as long as you have your main ingredients and don't skimp on the herbs and spices, you can't go wrong with this). This soup is served very hot (if you want lamb to shine in any dish, this is the rule of thumb -- lamb fat is great when piping hot but disgusting if it starts cooling off), tastes even better on the second day than on the first (so make plenty), and cures SAD (I'm not kidding) in those who are prone to it.

[Taomeow]

They used to eat a lot of millet back in the day. It's a bit sweeter than rice and cooked exactly the same way, with higher nutrition than rice. You could pre-cook some at night and then just drop it in boiling water for about 20 seconds in the morning. Eat it with seeds and/or nuts and fruit for breakfast.

 

I forget the whole elemental association of it, but you always want to have some non-starchy vegetable or fruit with your meal to balance it out.

 

I like my millet with tons of butter and some sugar. That's how it was served in my childhood. I don't like it any other way. Got to be toasted too before being cooked, makes it more interesting.

 

Buckwheat, on the other hand, is good any which way far as I'm concerned. As versatile as rice, but not being, botanically speaking, a grain or a grass (it's actually related to sorrel and rhubarb), it offers the benefits of two worlds -- behaves like a cereal but is a vegetable -- and has plenty of good stuff nutrition-wise, on top of tasting great if you know what you're doing (if you don't, toast it too before cooking. )

Edited October 9, 2014 by Taomeow

[Aetherous]

http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Nutrition-Therapy-Traditional-Complementary/dp/3131309628/

[Silent Answers]

Thanks for the info Taomeow! Lamb was one of my favourite meats before I cut down to only fish. I'll see if there's anyway to compromise and keep it as authentic as possible, then give you my verdict

[CloudHands]

local veg food, obviously... lol

[C T]

Thanks for the info Taomeow! Lamb was one of my favourite meats before I cut down to only fish. I'll see if there's anyway to compromise and keep it as authentic as possible, then give you my verdict

Being in China, have you had a chance to savour steamed fish with hot yellow-bean paste and ginger?

 

It looks something like this... and really, reaaally delish!

 

[wallum]

Another of my simple favourites....onigiri! So delicious.....

 

Cook 'asian' rice (short/medium grain). Cool. Form into a flattened ball. Sprinkle with furikake. Wrap in toasted nori.

 

 

I like wrapping mine completely in seaweed;

 

[BaguaKicksAss]

Another of my simple favourites....onigiri! So delicious.....

 

Cook 'asian' rice (short/medium grain). Cool. Form into a flattened ball. Sprinkle with furikake. Wrap in toasted nori.

 

 

I like wrapping mine completely in seaweed;

 

 

You are missing the large chunks of sashimi in these photos!