Cleanse Day #5

  In Ayurvedic medicine the digestive tract is the heart of the physical body.  Everything is digested -- what we read, eat, smell, feel, see -- everything that our senses deal with.  Food is fuel. Food from groceries, and also what we bring into all of our senses, including the sixth sense -- the mind.  There is a lot here to digest (no pun intended). After three days of green smoothies and falling off the food wagon only to finish the evening off with a cup of miso soup, I had to get something substantial in my belly. In Ayurveda, as in Spain, France, Italy and so on, the noon meal is the most important event of the day. It should be big and there should be rest afterward.

So, today I got into the real meat (in a vegetarian sense of the word) of the Ayurvedic cleanse -- kitcherie. I'm not sure what the real definition of kitcherie is but I can describe it and you can go from there.  Kitcherie involves boiling some variety of mung dal (bean), steaming some rice, sauteing some veggies in ghee (clarified butter) and making a chaunce of herbs (sauteing herbs in ghee to open the flavors -- it's like an herb sauce - fabulous!)

I boiled some small little round green mung beans. I've never made them before, I usually use the red lintels (they are actually yellow). They have the best flavor to me. I also steamed some rice in the steamer and added a tablespoon of ghee and lots of shakes of tumeric.  I love, love, love tumeric rice.  When the beans were done in about an hour- fifteen I added the steamed rice and mixed them together like rice and beans.

I sauteed yellow squash, carrots, collard greens, and added some of the butternut squash I baked the night before.  I did not cook them very long.  While they were sauteing I made a chaunce of black mustard seeds, dried cilantro, and fresh ground corriander with a dash of Celtic sea salt. To make a chaunce let the ghee heat and then add the spices. Very quickly you will smell them, that is their flavors opening up. Then you can pour this into the veggies.

I served the veggies on a bed of the mung dal and tumeric rice. I may have added a little chicken broth to the veggies to help them steam. I'm not a vegetarian, I just eat like one.  I topped it off with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and a touch of the crunchy sea salt. Viola! Se magnifique!

Words cannot describe how good this food makes me feel. It is the ultimate comfort food, better than mashers and gravy -- even Granny Pearl's gravy.