Ayurvedic Summer Cabbage Salad with Beet and Onion

Ayurvedic Summer Cabbage Salad with Beet and Onion

I am a huge fan of cabbage salad. When I was a strict vegetarian it must have been its hearty quality and chewy texture that appealed. Now that I am an omnivore, I value cabbage both for its delicious, slightly sweet taste, and for its high fiber low calorie ratio. Its a great balance for the heavy quality of meat. That’s why historically cole slaw pairs with deli sandwiches or hamburgers, and sauerkraut pairs with sausages and hot dogs. Raw Sauerkraut, which is a cinch to make at home, and ridiculously expensive at the health food store, is a great source of pro-biotics for the gut.

Summer in Ayurveda: Protect Agni from Cold Food

In Summer everyone’s Pitta elevates.  That makes it a good time of year to eat more light, cooling food, like raw vegetables prepared as salads. Even though Pitta is high in summer, and we need to cool off, paradoxically our digestive fire, or Agni, can be weakened by the heat, so its wise to include flavors like pungent and sour in your salad to stimulate your Agni so it can well digest your cooling food.

Ayurvedic Summer Cabbage Salad with Beet and Onion

Ingredients

• 3 cups grated or sliced green Cabbage
• ½ a Red Onion, sliced
• 1 small Carrot, shredded
• 1 small Beet, shredded
• 1 cup Italian Arugula
• 1 tbsp Fresh Marjoram or Oregano
• ½ tsp Salt
• 1 tsp fresh ground Black Pepper

Ingredients for Dressing

• 1 tbsp Mayonaisse or Veganaisse
• 1 tsp Flax Oil
• 1 tsp Olive Oil
• 2 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar

Directions

• Shred cabbage, carrot, beet, coarsely on a hand grater.
• A hand grater makes less noise, is good exercise, and is less clean up than a food processor. By the time you take the processor out and put it away after cleaning your have actually worked harder, and made life more stressful due to the noise.
• Cut onion in half and then into thin half moon slices.
• Tear the arugala into smaller pieces.
• Now toss the dry ingredients well.
• Now whip the mayo with the other wet ingredients, and mix into the salad.

Enjoy this dish as a compliment to protein and or complex carbohydrates.

Beautiful Food Has Color

I love how the grated beet and carrot color this cabbage salad, and using balsemic vinegar and oil reduce the need for mayo, but I still like the flavor a little bit of mayo gives. You should barely see the mayo, not like the insanely thick mayo in commercial coleslaw. However, if you want this to look like coleslaw, just use mayo, and you can still use less than what you get in a store.

Summer Cabbage Salad with Beet and Onion in Ayurveda.

A dish or a meal with all six tastes is tri-doshic–balancing or tolerated by all 3 doshas.

Vinegar is very cooling, so its good with vegetables in summer. It is also astringent. The balsamic is slightly sweet, as is the cabbage and carrot, whereas the raw beet, herbs, and arugala are pungent and bitter. So this dish has salt, sweet, sour, spicy, bitter, and astringent: all the 6 tastes, which makes it relatively tridoshic.

Only Vata imbalanced folk would want to be careful not to overdo this salad, both because it is raw and it is cabbage. Raw veggies elevate Vata. And cabbage is a Vata elevating vegetable. But, because of the creamy dressing, pungent herbs and black pepper, and finely grated texture, this dish is much more tolerated by Vata than just plain cabbage. A balanced VataKaph or VataPitta in Summer could enjoy this, and any combination of Pitta or Kapha can probably do very well with this dish in moderation.

Enjoy!

copyright eyton shalom san diego ca august 2016 all rights reserved use with permission