Fasting and food

And yet another year has passed with hardly any blogging... And it is an interesting moment to restart a food blog as I am currently fasting. But it has made me much more conscious of what I put into my body!

This past weekend, I spent an amazing three days with a group in Sussex, England at the Rasa Retreat created by Lisa Sanfillipo and Das Sreedharan. Lisa is an Anusara yoga teacher- a style of yoga based in the Hatha yoga tradition with a Tantric philosophy (I stole that from the official website!)- which I have been following for a few years. This was a moment of real deepening of my own practice, though, and I am so grateful that I was there. Das is a restaurant owner, philosopher, teacher and genuinely wonderful person. He taught us about traditional Keralan food and his mother's cooking and also about his own philosophy on life, business, and cooking with love. I can't imagine someone more generous than Das...

Lastly, Annie Webb, a holistic therapist, was there. I am always interested in alternative treatments and thought I'd go to her, mostly because I was going through a terrible bout of exhaustion that I couldn't shake. Annie is so cheerful and open and easy to be around that, even when she explained she always uses acupuncture, I felt very comfortable. The amazing thing was that after a few minutes, having not mentioned anything about why I was there, she turned to me and said, "You're must be tired all the time, aren't you?" "Yes!!" I nearly shouted...

How did she know? She had scanned me for energy blocks and then took my pulses (Chinese medical tradition). She felt I had very low energy in my stomach/spleen (and gave me a lot of other info that isn't really to do with the fast) and so when I came home, I decided to begin a fast between 11am and 5pm. This was due to Paul Pitchford's seminal book, Healing with Whole Foods. In this he explains that as each internal organ has a time of day when it regenerates, it needs to not be stressed at this time. The stomach/spleen regenerates between 3-5 in the afternoon so I decided to fast so that my stomach would be empty when the rejuvenation is occurring. Amazingly, I haven't been very hungry and I've had loads of energy!!

I am eating Indian Ayurvedic cooking most evening meals, mostly vegetarian with a little seafood. And this morning for breakfast I made a lovely Indian inspired oatmeal...

Indian oatmeal
1 cup of dry oatmeal (I use porridge oats rather than rolled although the steel cut is best for you!)
2 cups of water
1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients together and bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook, stirring, for about 3-5 minutes, until tender.

Add
a little more cardamom
a teaspoon of rosewater

and serve with
brown sugar or jaggery
coconut milk

I loved this, it was such a calming food to start the day with!