For the purposes of Make Room, I would like to suggest that you only think about adding things to your diet.  Although I’m sure that this means different things to different people, the reality is that there is only so much food you can fit into the human body in any given day and so, my thinking on this is that you can create a big shift by just adding delicious whole foods.  If you just really enjoyed a lovely miso soup and a grilled mushroom sandwhich, chances are, when you pass Pizza Hut, you won’t give stopping by all that much thought.  You might consider it, but you will be full.  So, when you get the new newsletter, check out the list of foods suggested and see about adding something that sounds good.  If nothing seems familiar, go on an adventure and try something new.  If there is something you love, go ahead and eat more of that.

A sattvic diet has the following qualities:

• Highest quality, freshness and close-ness to life-force (recently picked, in season, etc.)
• Food categories include grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, dairy and legumes like tofu, lentils, peas, mung beans, and aduki beans.
• Food is recently prepared (not frozen, shrink wrapped, preserved, etc.) and is cooked to perfection, not oily or greasy
• Spices are used in moderation
• The cook was in a mindful and calm state themselves when they prepared the food

Sattvic food is very simple.  In some of our meals, there are over a dozen ingredients and even if all those ingredients are healthy and fresh, this produces an overload of mental and digestive sensory information to process.  If you wonder if this is true for you, try to eat simply for two days.  Then, just notice how your mind and body feel.  If you eat simply for a few weeks, you will likely find that you feel clearer, brighter and stronger and the best energy of your lifetime.

Pritchard warns us that, “The modern denaturing of foods through massive refining and chemical treatment deranges their pranic-qi life force, making them unable to foster Sattva equilibrium and essence.”  The sattvic emphasis on complex carbohydrates and dairy products promotes brain chemistry rich in tryptophan, seratonin, and melatonin.  Your diet is very important.  You can sit in meditation all you like, but following it up with a lunch of Swedish Fish and Diet Coke (I know this from personal experience…….) will make you jumpy and feel strained and low energy.  (Pritchard, page 640-641)

MISO

Whether you have been cooking with miso for your whole life or you’ve never used it before, this miso cookbook has many gems.  Miso is a fermented soy product and it makes for a very tasty sauce for cooked greens, in soups, and many more stews and dishes.  As you try new things, I can’t recommend adding miso to your diet highly enough.  Here is a Miso Soup Recipe with Mushrooms including greens.  Miso is salty and flavorful like a rich broth.  You will love it!

LENTILS

I prefer to use the green “french lentils” for this slow-cooker recipe.  There’s no reason why you can’t just create this dish on your stove-top if you are spending an evening at home and can keep an eye on it.  Also, when I make these Honey Lentils, I like to use half the honey recommended and then substitute another sweetener for the other half.  I have successfully used barley malt syrup and brown rice syrup for the other “half” of the sweetener.  Try it out for yourself, but this is also a great time to experiment with different sweeteners that you may have never used in your cooking before. And, if you are into slow cooker use, then you need to sign up for Stephanie O’Dea’s website newsletter because she sends out great ideas for free in the newsletter and she sells packages of grocery lists and meals that make cooking warm and nourishing meals with basic ingredients pretty much a no-brainer.  Here is a link to her honey lentils.  

REFERENCE

Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition.  Third Edition. By Paul Pritchford. North Atlantic Books 2002.