The Future of Food
May 21, 2007
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A molecular gastronomic cocktail served at yet another ‘future of food’ event last week in Amsterdam
The next two days I’ll be venturing even farther into the Polar Circle to speak at the Poker Club and visit the Six Cities Design Festival. I’ll be speaking with Dr. Peter Barham (who will hopefully not be offended if I describe him as a British Harold McGee) on the Future of Food.
By the way, that’s poker for poking a fire and wagging a finger and not poker for gambaleering although one of the evening’s sponsors produces single malt scotch. Fill’er up!
debra at 9:16 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
A yogic diet is not for me
May 18, 2007
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My Aunties preparing an oddly sattvic picnic for our family in Paris’ Jardin de Luxembourg
It’s slightly troubling to learn that my ancestral diet and a yogic or sattvic diet have little in common. I’m a lover of leafy greens, an initator of a sprout restaurant and I’ve been known to be inordinantly open-minded about experimenting with ways of eating - including not eating animals whilst ample assed middle-aged sheep scamper happily on the thyme scented hills surrounding the Occitanian kitchen garden. But a diet low in fermented foods? That’s just treading on Gawd’s own work…
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And the ritual is complete!
This text has been lifted from Yoga Diet, the Three Gunas by Jennifer Bagus not exactly a primary source, but not necessarily a bad point of departure - if you want to get yer ire up or feel holier than moi.
Sattvic foods
The Sattvic Diet is the purest diet, the most suitable one for any serious student of Yoga. It nourishes the body and maintains it in a peaceful state. And it calms and purifies the mind, enabling it to function at its maximum potential. A Sattvic diet thus leads to true health; a peaceful mind in control of a fit body, with a balanced flow of energy between them.
Sattvic foods include:
- cereals
- wholemeal bread
- fresh fruit and vegetables
- pure fruit juices
- milk
- butter and cheese
- legumes
- nuts
- seeds
- sprouted seeds
- honey and herb teas
Rajastic foods
Foods that are very hot, bitter, sour, dry or salty are Rajastic. They destroy the mind-body equilibrium, feeding the body at the expense of the mind. Too much Rajastic food will over-stimulate the body and excite the passions, making the mind restless and uncontrollable.
Rajastic foods include:
- hot substances, such as sharp spices or strong herbs
- stimulants such as coffee and teas
- fish
- eggs
- salt and chocolate
Eating in a hurry is also considered rajastic!
Tamastic foods
A Tamastic diet benefits neither the mind nor the body. Prana, or energy is withdrawn, powers of reasoning become clouded and a sense of inertia sets in. The body’s resistance to disease is destroyed and the mind filled with dark emotions, such as anger and greed
Tamastic foods include:
- meat
- alchohol
- tobacco
- onions
- garlic
- fermented foods such as vinegar
- stale overripe substances
Overeating is also considered tamastic, as are leftovers!
debra at 19:17 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us
Dike break at sunset
May 16, 2007
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Each time I leave my Occitanian kitchen garden to go back to the Polar Circle, my neighbour Sidi ElGouche agrees to water for me a few times a week. Although he just has to divert the pipe between our allotments, let ‘er rip and redivert once my garden has had a good soaking, it’s a generous gesture and is both a testament to my absence and his presence down at the gardens. Right before I go I usually test the irrigation to see how my channels are holding up though testing without the time or intent to fix is stupid as you can readily see in the above photo. In the most optimistic sense this image reveals that I have come to embrace my life the Netherlands down to the very marrow of my bones. But on a more basic level, it reveals a break in the dike of my kitchen garden nearly 1200 kilometres away.
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Granted, it’s uncommon to commute such great distances between kitchen and garden but the upside is a self-invented form of gardening which I call permaculture, after a fashion. In the spirit of ‘whatever works, works’ I still have two food and seed-producing plots that on some level and de temps en temps can be managed with minimal input on my part. I said on my part. The potager works in no small part due to the fact that I have a generous neighbour, a flowing river rushing with free water, and a well-intended irrigation system, leaky though it may be.
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You can get a lot done in five days of gardening, but that doesn’t leave a lot of time for rumniating and fancy planning. I devoted an entire day to the borders of the upper garden in the hope of infusing them with shots of colour and activating the berm with self-seeding annuals and perrenials. But there was simply no time for coherent garden design. It still takes me ages to imagine how to plant the spikey and bushy foliages, how to group the edibles with the perrenials and mostly edible annuals, and to decide where the vertical gardening should happen. And I know what I don’t like more than I know what I do. For example, I know that I don’t like pink. Good planning aside, it’s not for nothing that Kristi and I coined the saying, Pink Happens. Depending what pops up this year, we’ll probably be extending that to include, White Happens and Pastels Happen.
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On the brighter side of irrigation, I did manage to replace the white clover with bergamot and mint as a way of lining the watering channels. It’s going to be a perfumey summer in the waterways, picking strawberries and flowers, inadvertently stepping on the leaves and stems of the mint and bergamot, while my garden sips Earl Grey tea.
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debra at 14:28 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
