Summer Raw Beet, Sardine, and Pasta Salad
Summer is a time when even cold dry (Vata) types or cold damp (Kapha) types can have little more raw foods. One of the ways to make raw foods more compatible for cold types with weaker digestive energy (Agni/Spleen Qi) is to have it in small amounts with other foods that stimulate digestion. Necessity is the mother of invention. Today I was hungry, lazy, and the cupboard was bare. I had some leftover pasta, a tin of sardines, a can of chickpeas, a bunch of scallions and one lone beetroot in my frig. So I made a pasta salad with those ingredinets, with olive oil and vinegar as...
Read MoreCold Beet Borscht Soup for Summer
Cold Beet Borscht Soup for Summer Let’s call this a soup, even though I grew up drinking it out of a glass, and at Yonah Shimmel’s Knishery in New York (est.1910) they were still serving it on tap, for $1.25, along with home made Kefir, in little plastic institutional juice glasses when I visited last, about 10 years ago. This is the closest I can get to Yonah Shimmel’s cool, sweet, sour beverage, with some modifications of my own that take into account a Russian influence (add dill) and my Ayurvedic background (add black and white pepper). And its so EASY to make, and...
Read MoreRaw Beet Salad Morrocan and Provencal Styles
Raw Beet Salad Beets are super high in betacyanin, a phyto-nutrient associated with their deep red color. Unfortunately, according to what I have read, this anti-cancer chemical is destroyed by cooking. Though Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine do not at all advocate for a raw food diet, there is no reason why you can’t include raw vegetables into an Ayurvedic cuisine. But raw beet alone is relatively unpalatable, with a pretty tough texture, though its color is superb and it gives a bit of zing by its spiciness. One simple way is just to put shredded raw beet into salads, whenever the...
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