Agni and Ama--An Ayurvedic Perspective on Digestion

I've been immersed in all things herbal lately and haven't been writing much.  Here's a little something to chew on from the Ayurvedic archives.

Agni and Ama 

The concept of agni, or digestive fire, is central to Ayurveda.  The idea is that our digestive capacity transforms food into energy just as fire turns wood into heat and light.  Healthy agni is synonymous with a hearty appetite, radiant skin, enthusiasm and an abundance of energy.  Like other fire, agni needs proper fuel and tending to burn optimally.  Without fuel--food-- the flame of agni will grow small and disappear.  On the other hand, an excess of heavy, hard-to-burn foods will smother the fire, generating unwanted byproducts--picture a fire fed with wet cardboard sending off a plume of thick black smoke.  The physiological equivalent of such smoke and soot is known as ama, and it lies at the root of many types of ill health.  Over time Ama can accumulate and cause a sense of heaviness, fatigue, sticky and smelly feces, foul breath, diminished appetite and a host of other symptoms.  Ama clogs the system and undermines our bodily intelligence.  

When this happens it can change the nature of our cravings, from natural balance-maintaining urges to perverse once that perpetuate imbalance.  For example, a healthy person with slightly high kapha but no ama may crave hot, spicy food and bitter greens, both of which will help to reduce kapha and restore balance.  However if the same person has an ama condition, his natural bodily intelligence may become distorted.  He may crave ice cream and cookies, even though he doesn’t have the agni to digest them thoroughly.      

Agni and ama are two sides of the same coin: without strong agni, ama develops; without ama, agni is free to burn hot and clean.  However, agni is vulnerable not only to ama but also to the three doshas.  

                                                       

                                                   Without agni, this isn't any fun at all.  The yellow stuff is kichari, the perfect fuel for your fire.

Types of Agni

There are four classifications of agni, although most people will experience some combination.  

The idea type of agni is sama agni, balanced digestion.  Those with sama agni can digest almost anything and experience no gas, bloating, or discomfort after eating.  They get hungry at regular intervals but not so intensely that they cannot function if they skip a meal.  Sama agni is closely associated with a balanced state of the doshas and is both a cause and an effect of good health.

Each of the other types of agni is connected with an imbalance of each of the three doshas:

Vishama agni is agni affected by Vata, the airy humour.   Vata affects agni like a wind does a fire, sometimes causing it    to flare up and other times nearly extinguishing the flame.  Vishama means “irregular,” and those with vishama agni may get intensely hungry or may forget to eat for a day or more at a time.  Their digestive capacity is often limited so they may eat more than they can properly digest.  They usually have sensitive digestion, and can feel off if they don’t eat the right thing at the right time.  In general, those with vishama agni should take care to eat a Vata-pacifying diet and to eat regular, small-to-moderate size meals without snacking in between.  Establishing regular dietary habits and controlling Vata are key to bringing vishama agni back to balance.  

Tikshna agni is associated with high Pitta, the force of fire.  Tikshna means sharp, and those with tikshna agni tend to get extremely hungry and burn through their food quickly, as a hot fire that requires frequent feeding.  They are prone to hyperacidity and burning pain during digestion or elimination and are intolerant of missing a meal.  Tiskhna agni can handle heavy, relatively hard-to-digest foods like dairy products and meat and indeed need sweet and heavy foods to cool their fire.  A generally Pitta-pacifying diet is appropriate for them. 

Manda agni is Kapha-type digestion.  Kapha affects agni like damp weather does a fire.  This kind of agni is sluggish, so those with manda agni find it easy to gain weight and hard to lose it.  They can often get by eating only one meal a day, and if they eat heavy, greasy food they may feel like it lingers in their stomachs for hours.  Those with manda agni should eat lightly and sparingly and favor Kapha-reducing foods.  It those with manda agni for whom standard western dietary advice is often most appropriate.  

Stoking Agni

According Ayurveda, a marked lack of appetite and chronic digestive issues are signs that agni is low.  Whatever your agni type (see above), low agni needs to be treated just as you would tend a tiny flame when trying to build a fire.  If starved for too long, any fire will go out.  Yet a small flame cannot handle too much fuel, or too heavy or wet fuel, at one time.  Just as you would build a fire by feeding it increasingly larger sticks, your internal fire needs to be fed conservatively at first, then with gradually more substantial foods until finally it burns hot and clean.  Let your appetite and intuition be your guide as you work on building your agni.  Practice eating light foods in moderate quantities, and stop eating before you feel completely full.  Favor warm, cooked foods, especially vegetables and whole grains.  Soups, stews and other one-pot meals are excellent food for agni.  Perhaps the best possible such dish is called kichari, made of split mung beans (mung dal) and basmati rice stewed together with spices and vegetables.  

          A simple home remedy to boost agni is a home-made ginger pickle: grate a couple inches of freshly peeled ginger and season to taste with lemon or lime juice, honey, and rock salt (use the stinky Indian black salt if you can find it).  Eat a small spoonful of this before meals, or treat it like a condiment.  

Delights of Devon Ave

I have no use for Times Square or Michigan Ave, no business on the lower East Side, and I have never been to Wicker Park. As far as most parts of most cities go, I could take ‘em or leave ‘em. It’s the out-of-the-way quirks and corners, the holes-in-the-wall that I’m charmed by. One of my most vivid memories from Kolkata is of a tea stall so tiny that the proprietor couldn’t stand up in it. It was the size of the lower half of a telephone both but with its own shutters. There was just room enough for a propane burner, a couple of pots, some loose tea and chai masala and sugar. The proprietor could probably have crammed himself in, too, in a case of dire necessity, but his preference was to squat on the sidewalk while tending his chai pot. Needless to say I stopped for a cup of the sweet, milky stuff, squatted there a while on the pavement wishing I spoke some Bengali and slurping up my tea.

OK, so I’m nostalgic for Southasia. No surprise there. This state of affairs has both causes and effects. The causes are apparent enough from the content of this blog, and the effects are predictable enough: I’m already planning my next trip. I intend to head straight for the belly of the beast: to Varanasi, Banaras, ancient Kashi. Strung out along the thrice holy Ganga, it’s the spiritual heart of Hindu North India, a center for Vedic learning from Sanskrit to Jyotish, a mecca for Indian classical music, and one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities on earth. (Plumbing the depths of the Wikipedia article, now) Mark twain said "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together." I can add, based on hearsay and premonition, that it’s also a great place to learn Hindi, to get swindled, to acquire a leaky gut and to choke on tuk-tuk fumes. In short, it’s my kind of city.  (Behold.)

in the meantime, there’s Devon Avenue. Granted, it’s no Jackson Heights (the microcosm of Southasia accessible via the 74th street and Roosevelt Ave 7 stop in Queens). Devon is to Jackson Heights as Chicago is to New York: less concentrated, but with a distinctive flavor of its own. Appropriate to the rest of the city, the predominantly Southasian stretch of Devon is spread out along half a mile or so of low-grade urban strip. And though it may not be apparent to the casual observer, this one-dimensional transcription of the subcontinent has its share of volatile borders: on Devon west of Western, it’s little Pakistan. East of Western, it’s little India, with a smattering of Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan for good measure. On the day of the Indian parade, I hear, celebrants march up Western to Devon and turn right. The next day, Pakistani marchers take Western to Devon and turn left.


For someone in my shoes, there are three reasons to visit a place like Devon: to eat, to shop, and to malinger, soaking up the ambiance of puja samagri (Hindu worship materials) shops and chatting in broken Hindi with the proprietor of a cookware store (a fruitful endeavor, in this case: I got a stockpot for half price. Despite the late hour--it was after 6 o’clock--I was the first customer of the day). On another visit I let myself be talked into getting my ear cartilage pierced by a no-nonsense Indian matron.

On my last visit, Thandiwe had come for all three of the above purposes. We wanted to stretch the evening out, make it last, but we were overcome with hunger by the time we parked the car. There was one obvious recourse: the Indian tea-sweets-samosa shop. Now, I consider it anomalous in the extreme that I haven’t found occasion to revel in syrupy descriptions of mithai (the generic term for Southasian sweets) before this. The topic fully deserves a post of its own, and it may yet get one.

On the occasion in question, however, in order to preserve our appetites, we ordered only tea (served milky but unsweetened, as in the diabetes-conscious fashion of some of the classier establishments in India) and made up a box of sweets to take home. Not so much as a taste of gulab jamun for the moment. Still, the eyes may feast: the display case is jammed to capacity with trays stacked pyramid-wise with sticky spheres and flat, silver-leafed diamonds. Saffron milk-soaked sweetmeats float in their sweet amniotic fluid, flecked with flakes of pistachio. The elephant headed god Ganesh’s favorite, the spherical cookie called laddoo, comes in a dozen varieties, featuring different nuts and sweet spices. A one-pound box fills quickly.
Fortified by the tea and the thought of sweet ballast brightly boxed, we ambled down the avenue and selected Patel Brothers from amongst the five or so sizeable grocery stores on the strip. It was large enough, brightly lit, inviting, and bustling with brown people doing their weekly shopping. We had a modest list, but knew to grab a cart.

Now, the first thing to be said about Patel Brothers and its Patel and non-Patel brethren across the country is that it’s cheaper than you can imagine. I fail to understand the economic situation that allows ethnic markets in general to maintain the low prices characteristic of national currency, but when you’re buying cilantro at five bunches to the dollar and cashews at $2.50 a pound, it’s insidiously easy not to question it. Daal (any legume, from red lentils to split mung beans to white, hulled urad to square horse gram) comes in 1-5 pound bags for a buck or so a pound. Rice prices range from intensely inexpensive to rather pricey, depending on the quality. For a rice-eating culture, this is a matter of status and keenly-felt personal preference. Top quality, well-aged basmati from Dehra Dun or Pakistan fetches almost $2 a pound. (Compared with what, $2.99 for middle-of-the-road stuff in the bulk section at the natural foods store?) Brands in this class include Zebra and Tilda. This is the rice that seems to triple in length when cooked without fattening at all and releases a heavenly and pervasive aroma. The stuff of wedding feasts, fine pulao, first-class biryani. The stuff most Americans manage to make a mush out of because they use too much water and stir while it’s cooking. [As an aside, here is a fool-proof method of cooking rice. Rinse the rice once in a strainer or in the pot you’re going to cook it in. Add cold water until the water level is an inch or the length of the last joint in your pinky finger above the rice level. Turn the heat on high, bringing it to a boil. You can stir it once or twice at this stage if your heart desires. Now for the important part: once the sinking water level has drawn even with the rising rice level, cover the pot and turn down the heat to as low it will safely go. Forget about the rice, don’t even think of stirring, and in 15 minutes it will be perfectly done. Fluff the rice by dragging the tines of a fork across it and serve.]

Back to Patel Brothers. Perhaps the most outlandish value is to be found in the spice department. Cumin, mustard seeds, coriander--the colors of the Southasian flavor palette come in bulk, in half-pound to one pound bags, sometimes for as little as 99 cents. I can picture the monkeys at McCormick buying these things up and gleefully filling their little ounce jars and slapping the five dollar labels on. But it’s not so much the prices that excite me as the variety: I think, ‘here is a culture that knows how to make use of every plant.’ Along with the more familiar spices like cloves and cinnamon bark are pungent, resinous hing (“devil’s dung,” as it was once known), thyme-like ajwain seeds, delicate “royal cumin,” oniony, black kalonji seeds...and interspersed with these, blurring the line between food and medicine, are amla and shatavari powder, two of Ayurveda’s most widely used tonic herbs. The cart is starting to fill up.

Every time I stop in at an Indian market like this one I make a point of checking out the oil selection: along with coconut, sesame, and peanut oils can be found mustard oil. Deeply golden, rich and pungent, this stuff is to Northeastern India and lowland Nepal what olive oil is to the Mediterranean.  Scandalously, it’s been mostly replaced in the homes of millions of Bengalis and others by thin, nutritionally-bankrupt refined soybean oil thanks to evil corporation archetype Monsanto’s strong-arm scare tactics and some shady dealing by certain parties in the Indian government. What? Corruption in India?  See The Mustard Oil Conspiracy.  The impact to Americans is simply that, due to trumped-up concerns over the safety of mustard oil--which happens to be one of the richest vegetable sources of omega-3's--the stuff for export has to be labeled “for external use only.” External?  Mustard oil is a popular hair oil, mosquito repellant, and (as I have just read) a sexual performance enhancer for men when applied topically.   But internal use is where it’s at: pakoras fried in mustard oil, fish steaks dusted with salt and turmeric and fried in mustard oil, any vegetable cooked in mustard oil...this stuff is a key component of Northeast Indian cuisine, especially Bengali food, it’s good for you and cheap to boot. Just make sure you’re getting the genuine article: the ingredients should read “Pure mustard oil.”

We’re almost out of the grocery store now, having bypassed the bulk tea aisle (I’m well-stocked from Upton Tea) and even the produce section, except for a couple-pound sack of slightly worse-for-wear ginger priced to move at $1.49. (That’s been turned into delicious ginger candy by now and lies awaiting someone’s sore throat or upset stomach in my freezer.) But there is one unexpected treat in store: back in the mustard oil pressing lands, gur-making season has just come around. After tapping coconut palms for their sweet sap, sugar-makers boil the sticky stuff down into various shapes, colors and consistencies of delicious. Normally gur or jaggery, as it’s also called, comes in hardened fez-shaped blocks wrapped in burlap. But at this time of year, some of the oozy fresh stuff makes it even as far afield as Devon Ave to be packed and sold by weight in clear plastic pint containers. If mustard oil is Bengal’s olive oil, than this is her maple syrup. You can taste the iron and minerals in it, eat it by the spoonful. If it ever snows in Bengal, maybe people will catch on and melt some jaggery to pour over it.  May that day never come.

By now the cart is heaping with dal and rice, spices, oils, and some odds-and-ends. I’ve resisted most of the Ayurvedic products, genuine and otherwise, and passed on various deities and trinkets. I’ve satisfied my curiosity and discovered that the inviting barrel-shaped bulk bins are in fact filled with a dozen kinds of Indian snack mix (namkeen). It’s time to check out and get something to eat.

So far our strategy of choosing places well frequented by Southasian immigrants has been working great. On the way to Patel Brothers, we had noticed an enticing but suspiciously well furnished South Indian vegetarian place (cut to image of paper thin, three-foot wide dosai), and spotted an Indian or Sri Lankan family in the window, eating with their hands. A very encouraging sign. But I had also spotted a sign in the window of a lower-budget, fluorescent-lit tea shop advertizing a special on Makki ki Roti with Sarson ka Saag. Punjabi comfort food, I thought: this is the place. Not a gringo to be seen, and the price is most righteous. We walked up to the counter, admiring the sweets arrayed therein, and placed our order for one Makki ki Roti special and one vegetarian thali. We picked sat down at a table on our plastic chairs, helped ourselves to water from the cooler, and awaited the onset of our feast. Out it came, steaming, on styrofoam plates. Thandiwe’s plate featured a pair of well-puffed poori, a pile of rice, an oily potato dish, some mushy chana reminiscent of packaged masala, and a greasy buttermilk kari. It was all extremely spicy but otherwise not exceptionally flavorful. The main impression was of heat, and of grease (the very definition of Pitta-provoking). ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘she’ll be happy when the Makki ki Roti arrives, fresh corn flatbread with sauteed mustard greens. They’re the real draw around here--we should have ordered two.’ But I bit my tongue when my plate arrived. The roti was a thin, hard yellow disk, dry inside but coated in what seemed to be petroleum-derived oil without, and the saag was a brown puree languishing under a film of chili-infused oil. Now, I’ve never been to the Punjab, but I know this isn’t what the ammas the village are making. ‘Still,’ we laughed, pushing around the grease on our styrofoam plates and eyeing the deranged sannyasin in the corner, ‘we can’t fault it for being inauthentic!’ From the non-decor and the hard scrabble denizens to the unforgettable cuisine, the place called to mind any number of sub-mediocre eateries in India and Nepal. Ah, the perils of authenticity.


Further reading:

Bannerji, Chitra. Bengali Cooking: Seasons and Festivals

This is exactly what I look for in a cookbook, with its emphasis on cultural context. The recipes are suspended in a wonderful web of information on bengali life, with special attention to the play of the seasons and the religious calendar in both Hindu and Muslim parts of Bengal/Bangladesh.

Svoboda, Robert. Ayurveda: Life, Health and Longevity
Svoboda, Robert. Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution

The first of these is my favorite English-language book on Ayurveda. It is suitable as an introduction to the subject without being simplistic, and it avoids the formulaic self-help trap that Ayurvedic literature is prone to. The second book is also excellent and includes more practical information for the beginning student of Ayurveda along with more food and diet-related material.
Svoboda is a link in the living tradition of Ayurveda. He was the first non-Indian Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medical Science and is versed in traditional arts from Sanskrit to tantra, which he has written about elsewhere. Luckily, he is also a witty and incisive author whose prose will keep you reading about the infinite nuances and intimidating depths of traditional Southasian healing and cultural practices.

How Much Coffee is Too Much?

<< Stimulants: Every culture's got 'em. A Bhotia woman's snuff bottle.


"How much coffee is too much?"

I tried to answer this question from last post's comments in another comment, but ran out of room. It's just as well--more people will see it this way.

In typical Ayurvedic fashion, the response is "for whom?" To which I must add, "what kind of coffee?" and "under what circumstances?" There's actually a lot to be said about coffee.

Americans certainly have a love/hate relationship with the stuff. I think the American coffee obsession has two main causes: first and more obviously, coffee stimulates us to gogogogogo. I think of coffee as being like hitting the turbo switch in a race car video game: you go faster, but you burn more fuel. I don't just mean food--coffee actually tends to suppress the appetite--but rather energy reserves. I'm an occasional coffee drinker, and I acutely feel the entire energy curve of coffee: a sharply peaking high, then a slow descent that can turn into a crash. For those with strong reserves of energy, this stimulation (the afterburner effect) can be sustainable for relatively long periods. But coffee is depleting to the system, and even those robust folks who can drink pots of it without getting the jitters would be well advised to take a break from it occasionally. (Green tea is a less harsh, more balanced alternative.)

Trouble arises when people use coffee to go into energy debt, tapping into their back-up reserves (their savings account, if you will). Being a rather sensitive individual, my system doesn't tolerate this kind of use at all. I can only enjoy coffee when I've gotten plenty of sleep and my stress level is low--and even then, a little goes a long way. Otherwise, I find that coffee doesn't actually give me an energy boost but rather scatters my energy. Coffee is light, heady, energy-dispersive, whereas tea can help consolidate one's energy with its astringency.

The second reason I think coffee is such a staple in the American diet is that we tend not to get enough bitter. Most cultures eat more greens, use more bitter spices and herbs, or drink herbal bitters regularly. We drink coffee. The problem is, coffee is not like other bitters. As just discussed, it can be fraying to the nerves. It's also rough on the liver, unlike most bitters that are liver-friendly. Still, coffee does provide some of the lightening benefits of the bitter taste in general, helping to counter the typical richness and sweetness of our diets.

So it depends very much on the individual. Everyone's answer will be different, but some patterns can be described: dry, skinny, overworked, stressed people (Vata-dominant types) should ideally avoid coffee (and tea) altogether. Failing that, they should avoid it in the morning, until after they've eaten and digested a meal. And they should have it with milk, which will help buffer the effects.
Hot-headed, driven, ambitious folks (Pitta-dominant people) should be careful, too. Coffee will tend to aggravate their already fiery characteristics. But this is the typical type-A profile, and these are the folks who just love coffee. Again, if they're not too stressed, well-rested, etc., they can usually tolerate it OK. For these people it should be sweetened with something wholesome, milk added, and preferably iced. Individual response is idiosyncratic, but in general a two cup daily limit should be observed.
Stockier people who tend to be sluggish in the morning (Kapha-dominant) tend to be least sensitive to coffee, and can actually benefit from its heating stimulation as well its bitterness. Coffee isn't necessarily the healthiest bitter even for them (these folks need plenty of greens and spices in their diets no matter what), but it is often well-tolerated by them for long periods of time. They can often drink it without negative effects as long as stress is low. However, these are the people who are apt to become most intensely dependent upon coffee.

The coffee trade is a problematic one, both in terms of the environment and economic/social justice. Buy shade-grown, fair-trade, organic coffee and support the health of the farmers and the planet--and yourself. Chemical residues in non-organic coffee are particularly nasty endocrine-disruptors and carcinogenic to boot. This is especially important advice for women, who are particularly vulnerable to xenoestrogens.

[Finally, Sam, I'd be happy to do a consultation but am not all that gung ho about Skyping Nepal. How does this sound--let's start with an email exchange--send me an introduction with concerns/questions and a brief health history--and we can schedule a phone date from there.]

Next Steps

Above: Sections of my fast-growing home pharmacy

Hindsight is a useful, if frustrating perspective: even as one appreciates its clarity, one also wishes that clarity hadn't been so elusive at the time! Six months after Nepal, the personal meanings of my time there come into clearer focus.
Alright, full disclosure: the following is mostly lifted from a Chinese medicine grad school application essay I've been writing. And I promise: no more anti-globalization rants for a while.

While in Nepal on a Fulbright fellowship from September 2008 to July 2009, I had a chance to immerse myself in the world of the ancient Southasian medicine known as Ayurveda. Once the initial giddiness of exploring hole-in-the-wall herb shops along Kathmandu’s ancient, winding cobblestone streets and meeting Ayurvedic doctors, shamans, and yogis started to wear off, I grew aware of a gaping and contentious divide in the Ayurvedic world. One on side were the traditional vaidyas, doctors trained in the the oral tradition from one generation to the next. They had no formal degrees, just the accrued experience of their fathers and grandfathers before them and books of Sanskrit verse containing a wealth of information on medical theory and herbal formulations. On the other were the institutionally-trained Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medical Science doctors. Though their curriculum included the Charaka Samhita and other ancient texts of Ayurveda, their clinical practice was heavily influenced by Western medicine. I saw Ayurvedic students learning to use stethoscopes and prescribe antibiotics, and when they took a patient’s pulse it was simply to count bpm, rather than assess the traditional qualities of the pulse.
While this hybrid practice may be an exciting step towards integrative medicine, I could never shake the feeling that Ayurveda was selling its soul for more social prestige and a higher profile. As a result, I ended up spending as much time as I could with the dying breed of traditional vaidya, hearing their stories and absorbing what wisdom I could. Towards the end of my stay in Nepal I met Keshab Kavi Baidya, a generational practitioner of Rasa Shastra, Ayurvedic alchemy. Here, finally, was an embodiment of the living tradition who actually wanted to pass along his art. With none of his children interested in carrying on his lineage, I realized that he looked to me as his heir-apprentice. When I visited him he would quiz me on the uses of different herbs, and I once heard him telling another old man in Newari “this is an American student, he knows everything about herbs.” I was flattered and humbled beyond belief. On my last visit to Keshab-ji before leaving Nepal, the normally youthful-seeming man looked his seventy-plus years of age. His eyes betrayed a weary acceptance of the fact that his lineage would die with him. I was almost overcome by the sadness of the situation. Keshab-ji had put together a kit of medicines at my request: purified Shilajit mineral pitch, incinerated black mica, oyster shell ash--some of the fruits of decades of his labor. He parted with them knowing at least that I would make some use of them. I learned a few months later that Keshab-ji died shortly after I left Nepal.

This experience left me with the sense that it is for me to carry a part of this and other endangered medical traditions’ fire to a world in need of the light and warmth. In the words of the I Ching, I am to “nourish with ancient wisdom” through “subtle penetration,” as water slowly permeates rock and nourishes the roots of the tree of life. To that end, I am now applying to classical Chinese medicine programs, as that seems to me the best fit for me in the US context. I hope to start school again in Fall '10 or '11. You can be certain of hearing plenty more about Chinese medicine, including what the difference between "traditional" and "classical" chinese medicine is, as Illwind and I continue to evolve.

In the meantime, I want to offer what knowledge and experience I have gained in the way of healing and self-knowledge to anyone out there who feels inspired to connect. I am offering free wellness consultations, via phone and email, from an Ayurvedic and more broadly herbal perspective. My toolkit includes nutritional advice and cooking skills, Eastern and Western herbal formulas, and general lifestyle management gleaned mainly from Ayurveda. A consultation includes an assessment of your constitution and any areas of imbalance (excess or deficiency of elemental energies, Ayurveda's three doshas) as well as a treatment strategy based primarily on diet and herbs. I am also open to answering any questions readers may have about health, herbs, or Ayurveda either in private via email or, by your consent and my interest, using this blog as a forum. In our absurdly speedy world, I'm at your service almost instantaneous: jedwardian@gmail.com

I should add here the disclaimer that I do not claim medical expertise and my services are not intended as a substitute for medical care. I do not claim to diagnose or treat any medical condition. Services offered here are rather offered as a complement to competent medical care and as means towards greater self-knowledge and connection with the natural world.

Coming Soon: Delights of Devon Avenue

At right: new digs: shores of Lake Michigan

Welcome to 2010! This is it, definitely: the future.

The new year has brought a rather abrupt change for your faithful blogger: I moved to Chicago exactly a week ago. It’s incredible how quickly it’s come to feel like home. Not that I love this city, though it does have character. But there is a sense of rightness, of inevitability, to this latest coordinate shift. I’m not quite sure what it is I’m to do here, but I’m here to do it.
I suspect, as confirmed by a recent session with the I Ching, that this time is about building inner resources, of biding my time and working behind the scenes. Of laying foundations. Of being inconspicuous, flexible, and patient. Not exactly a recipe for excitement, I admit. But thus spake the oracle, the venerable Book of Changes: “Hide your light. Voluntarily do what is beneath you.”
And so yesterday I found myself--Swarthmore alumnus, Fulbright scholar, blah blah blah--at Kennedy-King Community College, registering for a class. It just happens to be within 2.5 miles of my new address and has the advantage over the other nearby places of being 1/10th the price. I may not learn a great deal of organic chemistry, but as the only white face on campus, I may learn a lot else. My first lesson came early on, during registration, and put crudely runs something like this: black folks don’t expect good service. Registration was set up in such a way that hundreds of new students had to wait while one at a time squeezed through an advising bottleneck. The striking thing was not so much the inefficiency of the system as that no one seemed the least bit surprised or annoyed. A second lesson was harder to digest, and it had to do with my own discomfort in the situation. After 10 months in Nepal I’m not unused to being the only white person in a room, so it wasn’t that. It’s that I’ve been socially conditioned with some success to see black skin and baggy pants and think ‘alert, alert.’ After a few minutes I mastered myself and was able to recognize that this was a potentially valuable cross-cultural experience. More on that as the semester unfolds, if my under-enrolled chemistry course isn’t cancelled.

Living on the edge of the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, I find myself on a very different sort of campus frequently, and the differences couldn’t be more striking. ‘No Hats or Headgear of Any Kind’ signs to discourage gang behavior at Kennedy-King; Hogwarts-style banquet halls with stained glass windows at U of C. (Oh, life of contradictions.) It was in this gothic study hall that I sat myself down this morning with a stack of periodicals in order to gauge which might welcome writing submissions from the likes of me. Instead, I quickly got caught up in an incisive essay by Curtis White in the midwest journal Tin House called “A Good Without Light.” (The piece is available in its entirety http://www.tinhouse.com/mag/issue41/current_nonfiction_white.htm) It was one of those moments where I went “I could have/should have written that!” The last time I had such a feeling was when I read Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. But this time as that one, the writer goes farther and deeper than I’d have been able to in pursuing his devastating and essential thesis.

White starts by calling our attention to the fact that the term ‘sustainability’ has been adopted by the corporate world, and he for one is not fooled. Much as we might like to believe in the possibility of happily “greening” the status quo, the radical change that is in fact necessary is also incompatible with the workings of our culture and economic system. The new marketers of sustainability (who are, lest we forget, last decade’s marketers of the Hummer) and the vast forces that stand behind them are fundamentally unwilling and unable to challenge the most basic assumption of all: that what it means to be “free” and “prosperous” and “developed” is to consume, consume, consume.
The corporate movement for sustainability will never be geared towards creating a society that is sustainable in the true sense of being able to replicate itself indefinitely without, say, exhausting any of the resources it depends on. Rather, this is one more chance to sell us something: to sell us the preposterous assurance that not only can our way of life continue, but that is must, and that it will save the world in doing so.
White delves into the roots of our collective psychology, and comes up with a nasty little pearl of insight.
He identifies the “Barbarian Heart” of our culture. The barbaric in us assumes implicitly that might makes right. Ours is cult of violence; specifically, of “artful violence.” Thence comes our continuing worship of athletes, marines, the president himself: all are victors over some field of competition, warrior figures in some sense. “For the barbarian, so long as someone suggests to him that he can continue to be violent and willful but mitigate the self-destructive consequences if he’s shrewd about it, well, he’s more than willing to listen and believe. And that is what the logic of sustainability does” (Tin House No. 41, 81).
So much for our moral context, which White reduces to “violence masquerading as virtue.” What about our great hope, that technical expertise--science, engineering, enlightened economic or public policy--will save us? But science is incapable of delivering us a shiny technological answer to global warming, just as modern medicine can’t find a magic-bullet cure for the cancer that is one of the quintessential (by)products of modernity. White again: “What I want to suggest, not to put too fine a point on it, is that the act of trusting these experts--whether economists or scientists--to provide us with a sustainable future of ever-growing capitalist enterprise is not to place faith in the subtle capacities of the engineer but to indulge in the primitive longing of the barbarian in his moment of despair” (80-1). And finally, and most devastatingly:

“We are a culture dominated by a rationality that is the equivalent of thoughtlessness. We are dominated by a form of logical intelligibility (science) that insists that what is not intelligible to it is not intelligible at all. Strangely, what is most dramatically unintelligible to science is itself. Especially hidden to it is the degree to which its own habit of logical orderliness prepares the way for the progress of the Barbaric, just as Rome’s system of roads proved a great convenience not only to its own legions but to the barbaric armies that for once didn’t need to “swarm” but could proceed in an orderly and direct fashion to their bloody destination: the final sacking of Rome” (83).

I could go on. White, for his part, ends his piece with a reminder of what lies at the other end of our gallon of gas or sirloin steak: hand-grenades into an Iraqi home; underpaid workers standing in a pool of blood. The fact is, it’s easy and sometimes even fun to critique modern corporate culture. But what’s at stake here is nothing less than our way of life. Mine and yours and Curtis White’s. Whether it is beloved to us or not, it’s all that most of us know. Despite my sojourns abroad and interest in alternative lifestyles, I am an American. I drive a car and use lots of energy. It’s lifestyles like mine that have to change, but we seem powerless to effect this change on an individual level as much as on a political one. Of course, sustainability as a concept is much more profound than the current marketing buzz-word realizes: sustainability means that which can’t continue indefinitely will die eventually. The question is, can we bring it to a timely and transformative end, or must we watch in horror as our culture only grows fatter and fatter, finally expiring of a massive heart attack only after it’s eaten up all the food, breathed up all the good air and destroyed the last patch of habitable ground.

To sum up: out there in the world at large, things are Not Good. Whether by the standards of justice or of life expectancy, things may never have been good--that’s the good news, I guess. But now our Not Goodness is multiplying exponentially in scale. There are a lot more of us Not Being Good. Or--and this is what’s so frustrating about being a relatively conscientious and informed participant in the modern affluent world--even if we try to be good, we know that it doesn’t much matter. We can assuage our bruised consciences by buying recycled paper towels, growing our own potatoes, turning off the water while we soap up in the shower, giving some money to charities that buy goats for struggling subsistence farmers in Africa; we can do what we believe to be the good work all day long, and not only does it not matter on global warming’s all-consuming scale (or that of genocide, war, etc. etc.), but, despite our best reasonable efforts, the chances are we’re each doing just as much to promote 450 ppm of atmospheric carbon and oil-driven blood frenzy as to forestall it. In this sense, in order to be ethical citizens of the modern world, we would have to drop out of society. I’ve flirted with this idea, but even the commune-esque off-grid sites I’ve lived on don’t go nearly far enough to set a sustainable standard. Not to mention that dropping out remains a prerogative of the privileged classes. (And let it be said: in a meaningful sense, privilege is the perspective of this blog: culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, education--short of being a Rockefeller, I’m about as privileged as they come.)

It’s amazing, every three or four months I go through a re-awakening to the story I’ve just been relating. It’s partially that it’s too heavy to keep in the forefront of one’s mind all the time: we are talking about the essential fucked-upedness of our time and place in history, after all (or, if you prefer, of the entire history of the world). Gradually the outrage, anger, confusion, despair fade in the face of mundane concerns and the necessity of not being a huge downer all the time. But remembering, re-realizing the facts of the world we live in, serves as a jolt out of the featherbed of complacency and helps reset my orientation in the world. May this vitriolic rant do the same for you.

Happy new year.

Image at right: learning to perform a Newari style blessing on my last day in Kathmandu in July.

I’ve spent enough time overseas at this point that I often find myself watching events here in my motherland with the conscious distance of a foreigner. So while Hindu pujas may have lost their exotic veneer, ostensibly familiar ceremonies strike me conversely as peculiar: the intricate social dance we enact with polite acquaintances, for one, or rituals of restaurant decorum. Certainly the episcopal Christmas eucharist I found myself at today (thanks to my girlfriend, a divinity student) struck me as about as strange as any of the festivals I was privy to in Southasia: eating the body and blood of Christ actually seems much stranger than eating actual meat that has been first been sacrificed and offered to a god.

Part of me is most at home when I am out of place, for in not atypical modern fashion there is no one place I truly belong to: I’ve never quite felt like a New Yorker, though I drive like one when I’m in Manhattan, jaywalk like one anywhere, and I’ll fiercely defend my old neighborhood pizza joint, Sal and Carmine’s, as the best slice on earth. Meanwhile, living in Caledonia county, VT this fall, lovely as it’s been, has held constant reminders that I’m an unusual breed in those parts as well, if not a flat-out flatlander in most eyes. In Nepal, at least, I’m obviously “from away,” a bideshi, which status begets a certain amount of tolerance towards me when I fail to act in expected ways. Perversely, for someone like me it becomes easy to feel at home in a place where one is an acknowledged outsider. Perhaps this is why I felt so at home last night, Christmas Eve, at the home of a high school friend and his first-generation Polish immigrant parents: an American most at home elsewhere, at the home of foreigners who had made America their home, and for whom (I surmise) Christmas serves both to connect with traditions from the old country and to reground themselves in the new one.

The venue was the Moore residence (the name is an Ellis island substitute for an original I can best approximate as Zbienievski), a neat house on a quiet street in Riverdale. Gathered there were Kate and John Moore and their son David, Kate’s twinkly-eyed grandmother who speaks not a word of English, Kate’s sister Margaret and her two sons, the pregnant wife of the older son, and a two couples of family friends. I arrived with my girlfriend Thandiwe and my mother; my father, who lives in a dementia care facility in Manhattan, was with us at the Moores’ two Christmases ago, just days before we “placed” him in his first institutional home.

Christmas eve dinner has been a mainstay of the Moore family for years, presumably ever since John Moore arrived in this country from Poland via an Austrian refugee camp with his wife, a few hundred dollars, and two or three words of English. And though no word is spoken during dinner about the provenance of the dishes shortly to be described, the meal smacks overwhelmingly, deliciously of tradition. I mean, would any single person acting independently come up with the idea of serving five different cold fish dishes as part of an appetizer course? The reasons for this single-minded extravagance lie in Catholic observance and long family practice accommodating it and now, in this generation, standing in for traditional religiosity: somewhere along the line, the operative question was “what is the most enormous feast we can have without eating any meat?”


The evening begins with a breaking of bread: wine glasses wielded, everyone mills around the kitchen breaking bread with everyone else and wishing them a merry christmas in a series of quick face-to-face encounters. This simple practice has the effect not only of introducing or reacquainting everyone but also of building a feeling of fellowship: we’re all here together, doing the same thing, with the same sorts of wishes and hopes. Then it’s to the table, where we sit at assigned places marked with slips scrawled in Polish-inflected phonetics: to my left sat Yvonne, once she deciphered the slip marked “Ywon” on her plate. The Maestro, John, has already set the cold appetizers out along the length of the table he and his son had expanded with a new leaf just for the evening: two kinds of pickled herring (one in cream sauce), cod with a tomato and onion “Greek sauce,” a fresh tuna salad with roasted red peppers, a canned tuna salad wrapped in lettuce leaves, a salad of diced vegetables, peas, apples and pickles dressed in mayonnaise, a wild rice pilaf, and bread and butter. By any normal standards, this is already a meal in itself, and a generous one. But the guests know what’s coming, and each seems to have a strategy in mind for how to cope with the onslaught of delicacies--some have primed their metabolic pumps with cannabis brownies, and at least one guest is taking a power nap on the couch.

Now, gentle reader, be advised: the appetizer of would-be lofty rumblings on sense of place has been cleared, the soup of interpreting traditions has been supped, and the main dish to come smacks of a different flavor entirely. This essay is about to devolve into a sort of carnal blow-by-blow description of a meal that simply deserves to be commemorated. Let the food porn commence.

An hour after the meal has begun, half of us have migrated to the kitchen, where John is heating up pierogis he’s made with chanterelles from his woods. It’s not hard to coax everybody back to the table, the axial center of the universe on this night, where the delicate pierogis are followed at a leisurely pace by a light, pure-tasting mushroom soup made from dried boletes (porcini). Matt, the older of Margaret’s sons, mentions in his understated way how he looks forward all year to this soup, and how it always tastes the same. Dave admits that he always dreaded it--apparently he spent his formative Christmas Eves eating bread and butter. In one of the evening’s more self-conscious moves, Dave has been called upon to record some of the recipes for posterity, but it hasn’t happened this year.
More milling follows the dumplings, along with plenty of wine and a brief jam session (electric guitars and drums) by a few of us downstairs. In the kitchen, John calmly sautees breaded scrod and amasses the tower of fillets, teetering, on a platter. Into another pan goes sauerkraut with yellow split peas, and mashed potatoes are in the works. Somehow everyone finds the appetite to fill their plates once again: fish and kraut and buttery, golden mashed potatoes, along with a salad of shaved cabbage, onions, parsley and vinegar. I a point of saturation with food and wine--not overindulgence, for I have been mindful and even up to now restrained--but fullness, a brimming over of contentment and good will. I catch the bright eye of Babcha, a grandmother “out of central casting” as my mother puts it, and someone mentions with a wink that she’s really in it for the sweets. Sweets. Course number five, and it’s nearly midnight. But a really good dessert makes room for itself, and without forcing it I sampled all four confections: first thick, rich chocolate cookies that resembled burger patties and rolled cookies with apricot jam, lemon zest and walnuts--Sarah’s creations. Then John’s poppy seed roll, a handsome labor of love. Finally, along with the last drops of coffee from the tall, ornate porcelain pot, comes Babcha’s contribution: a poppy seed cake laced with what I can only assume is chocolate ganache, dotted with golden butter frosting, and soaked in spirits. It’s sheer soft, heady, sumptuous pastry heaven. I catch Babcha’s eye and make what I hope is a universal sign of dessert appreciation. I go back for seconds, finally tossing in the white flag with a single bite of cake left on my plate. We’ve been sitting (and standing, milling, drumming, napping) for nearly 6 hours.

(End of explicit content)

Today I found I hardly needed to eat anything, but to call it a fast would be ridiculous.
I don’t know quite how to wrap this up. A final nod in the direction of tradition? Ah, tradition--a word I find myself using a lot these days, and one that has taken on an almost hallowed aura in my own mind. But what separates beautiful, wise, sustaining, and nourishing traditions from rigid, unyielding, repressive and lifeless ones? Is there any clear distinction, or way to cultivate the one while shedding the carapace of the other? To be continued, perhaps.

Notes from a Cookbook to be

I'm finally doing it: throwing together my obsession with food and my increasingly arcane views on health into a sort of manifesto, masquerading as a cookbook. The project's still in its early adolescence, but I see no reason not to provide a taste of it here.

* * *

Guidelines for Cooking and Eating Well:

Base your meals around what’s fresh and in season.
Use all your senses.
Don’t be Afraid of Salt and Oil.
Use Good Ingredients and Be Generous with Them.
Be Mindful of Balance.

Together these add up to a formula for good eating and, through it, satisfaction and health. The first guideline may seem obvious, but the point is often lost on folks: you’ll eat better if you head to the market with an open mind and let yourself be moved by what looks, smells, feels, tastes, and sounds good. That’s where the second rule comes in, obviously. Engage with your ingredients on a visceral level. Then as you head home with a bag full of whatever called out to you, let inspiration for how to use it all come to you. Or if that’s too abstract, start planning your meals as you roam amongst the garden rows, market stalls or aisles. Just don’t let preconceived notions of what you’re going to cook dictate your choices completely. You’ll miss too many delights that way.
My third and fourth rules may come as a surprise, since I’m advocating a certain level of indulgence and claiming to offer a healthy approach at the same time. The idea is that food should be about pleasure, not guilt; depriving ourselves of what satisfies us now is only likely to lead to overindulgence in less wholesome ways later. True, we first need to discern what is truly wholesome and nourishing. And the answers here may be counter-intuitive. After all, we have been trained for a few generations now to avoid so many of the foods we naturally gravitate towards. Nutritional science has by turns steered us harshly away from fats, carbohydrates, sugar, and meat. Every two weeks, it seems, there is a sea change in what is allowed to count as healthy. And partly as a result of this indecision, we find ourselves in the midst of what Michael Pollan calls a “national eating disorder.” We are simultaneously obese and starved for nourishment; record numbers struggle with anorexia. It’s probably not a coincidence that fewer and fewer people spend time cooking, or even feel comfortable in the kitchen. For the question of what to eat is a remarkably simple one (and one that applied science has done more harm than good in trying to answer). Michael Pollan again: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
The heart of the answer is incredibly simple: eat food. Real food. The sorts of things people have been eating for millennia. We all know at some level what this means: real, crusty bread that you have to chew; vegetables that aren’t jetlagged from their red-eye flight from another hemisphere; fragrant nut and seed oils and sweet yellow butter; and, yes, meat, from animals that lived happily and healthily and were slaughtered humanely.
Lest this sound too good to be true, there is a mounting movement to support exactly this kind of traditional food and reveal the dangers of modern, industrialized diets. The work of the early 20th Century dentist Weston A Price has been championed by Sally Fallon and others to show that people living on traditional diets tend to be in excellent physical condition and don’t suffer from the degenerative diseases that plague modern Americans. “Traditional diets” means exactly what Michael Pollan does: real food. But some of the details are surprising, because it is often exactly those foods which we’ve been warned against most severely that turn out to be most supportive of good health. A prime example is fat. Fat itself has been demonized, which is absurd since fats are an essential class of macronutrients that we need to produce everything from cell membranes to sex hormones. Simply put, without fat people go crazy, wither away and eventually die. The key, however, is getting the right kind of fat, and this is where the biggest surprise comes in. Because the saturated animals fats that we all “know” are bad for you turn out to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Butter, lard, tallow--all of these are life-supporting lipids, provided they themselves come from healthy animals. In this sense the authorities are correct, for most of the butter on the market come from cows raised away from their natural pasture and in factory farms. But real, sweet, yellow butter is out there, too, and worth every penny you pay for it. This kind of butter actually concentrates the nutrients found in green grass, providing a rich source of the omega-3 fatty acids that have emerged recently as so crucial to good health. Lard from pastured pigs is similarly healthy, in proper proportion. Of course, it’s not just animal fat that’s good for us: plant oils are great too, if they’re unrefined. This is what makes extra virgin olive oil so healthy as well as so flavorful. What most people don’t realize is that tons of other seeds and nuts are equally healthy and delicious, if we can get a hold of them in cold-pressed forms. Sunflower, mustard, hazelnut, almond--every edible seed has precious oil locked within.

...But for whom? What the Weston Price/Sally Fallon school of traditional diets tends to gloss over is that not all people are the same. Some of us struggle to keep our weight down, while others can’t ever seem to put on a pound. Some are prone to acne while others have perpetually dry skin. Some people do indeed have to watch their salt intake and blood pressure, while others have to make sure they’re getting enough iron and other nutrients to keep from becoming anemic and having fainting spells.
Almost everybody has an intuitive sense of what’s right for them. Haven’t you ever bitten into a radish or a cucumber and felt unreasonably good? Or eaten a supposedly healthy meal only to find it’s given you gas, or that you’re hungry again 90 minutes later?
A one size fits all approach doesn’t work. This is where traditional ideas from both Eastern and Western traditions can help immensely... (to be continued)

Cooking and Eating with the Seasons--why's, whuh's, when's and how's

Food is the most direct way we connect with the natural world: we ingest some of our environment a few times a day and make it into us. Eating what’s in season is the best way to stay in tune with external cycles and promote good health. It’s also the most sustainable way to eat, since locally-grown foods don’t require long-distance shipping. All this has become familiar green-movement mantra by now, but I want to contribute another perspective on why it matters what we eat when. I know it’s fall now, but I just wrote this for another purpose and the most natural starting place is in the spring, so work with me!
In the spring, our systems are as ready for a good cleaning as our closets tend to be after a long, dark, heavy winter and its typical dearth of fresh food. Nature supplies the antidote for wintry stagnation in the form of fresh, bitter greens that are among the first things to grow, often as early as late March. Dandelions, nettles, cleavers and dock leaves are some of the classic spring greens, and their lively bitterness will probably taste wonderful with minimal dressing up. Just saute or steam them briefly, adding a sprinkle of salt or some garlic. They’re great en masse on their own, or as part of soups, casseroles, pasta dishes, whatever.
Later in the spring asparagus makes its appearance, and praise the lord. This is one of the most delicious foods there is if it’s fresh and well-prepared, and it’s both highly nourishing and detoxifying. It’s perfectly suited for everybody, all the time: tridoshic, in Ayurvedic terms. One of my favorite ways to prepare it is to broil it: Snap each spear where it breaks naturally and discard the fat ends. Lightly coat the spears with oil, place on a tray, sprinkle with salt and perhaps some garlic and broil them for a few minutes. The same basic technique can be done in a large skillet. You’ll want at least half a pound per person.
Besides bitter green things, the other flavor that does us right this time of year is pungent: anything with some spice or heat to it. Another classic “spring tonic” food that falls into this category is ramps, the wild leeks that pop up in damp, rich woodlands in late spring. They help expel any lingering dampness in the system while replenishing us with their abundant vitamins and minerals. Some other classic springtime rejuvenators: sassafras, dock, nettles, and chicory.
As the weather warms up in June, the focus turns from our springtime preoccupation with ridding ourselves of wintry sludge and loading up on fresh bitter things to simply keeping cool. This of course is the season for cold food (or, at least, room temperature food), cucumbers, watermelon, and lemonade. It’s a good time to avoid heavy, greasy or fried things, too much salt and much alcohol and instead focus on all the wonderful produce that’s out there in the garden or at the farmers market. In addition to light, fresh vegetables, either cooked or in salads, seasonal fruit and berries are ideal food at this time of year. So are all the multitudes of wild edibles waiting in the fields and forests: milkweed buds, chanterelles, _____.
With the first hint of a chill in the air, it’s time to think about nourishing ourselves for the upcoming fall. Along with cold, autumn brings dryness. It’s a time of motion--think of wind and swirling leaves--and contraction. Our bodies tend to tighten up--we ourselves contract to maintain our warmth. The key to transitioning happily into fall is then to nourish, ground, and warm ourselves. Late season vegetables like cauliflowers and potatoes are appropriate, cooked now instead of in salads, and more lavishly furnished with oils and cheeses. Nuts are a great food for the fall, as we build up our bodily stores for winter, and whole grains are a must. But the kings of autumn edibles are the true root vegetables: beets, turnips, rutabaga, onions and leeks, celeriac, parsnips, sweet potatoes and carrots. They provide nourishing starches and building protein along with rich stores of vitamins, and they are all warming. They’re also infinitely versatile: roasted, stewed, sauteed, or mashed. Winter squash is almost like a root veggie in its qualities and can be treated similarly--like them it needs some butter to balance out its roughness and bring out its full nourishing nature. This is a good time to cut back on stimulants like coffee or tea, which tend to counter the slowing, building, grounding process we need to cultivate at this time.
Now is the most appropriate season for heavier, fattier meats like pork, beef and duck. There’s a fine line between nourishing ourselves generously and clogging ourselves up with too much fat, however, so keep portion sizes reasonable and cook everything well. Meat is easier to digest when stewed slowly with herbs and spices (think crock pot). The same holds true for vegetable and grain-based dishes: it’s all less burdensome on our digestive systems if we do some pre-digesting by means of cooking. This helps us reserve energy and blood circulation for other things, like keeping us free of the colds and flus that start to circulate this time of year. A great technique to keep in mind during flu season is kichari, an Indian-style one-pot meal of grains, legumes, and vegetables. The original version uses rice and split mung beans (mung dal), but local versions made with barley, beans, etc. can be equally delicious and more appropriate for Northern bodies.
Even though apples and pears ripen at this time of year, they’re more balancing for most people when cooked. As winter comes on, however, the fresh crispness of a cold-stored apple can be just what the doctor ordered (or didn’t have to).
Winter is in many ways the hardest season to think about eating locally during, at least until one remembers the variety of vegetables that keep for months in a cellar or even outside, under the snow. Besides root crops and squashes, there are hardy greens like collards and kale, and even fresh things like belgian endive to provide that missing crunch. (Belgian endive can be grown in a dark room, in a box of sand, and will keep producing its blanched young leaves for salads all winter). The summer’s garlic crop is as welcome now is it was during the fall, for improving digestion and immunity and adding some life to bland starchy foods.
Once the days start to lengthen again, the natural imperative shifts from staying warm and nourished to lightening up a bit. Before those first spring greens appear, you can start the lightening process by making sprouts out of alfalfa, fenugreek, mustard and other sprouting seeds. Adding pungent herbs and spices--most anything aromatic, from mustard and horseradish to black pepper and cinnamon and oregano and rosemary helps with digestion, which can be sluggish after months of eating heavily. Soon enough you’ll be blessed with the sight of those first spring greens again.

We're long overdue here for post, but the truth is there ain't quite as much to write about as there once was. Life is pretty quiet for your trusty, ill windy bloggerman. I suppose the day-to-day in Northern Vermont is every bit as weird and wonderful in its way as any Himalayan sojourn, but it will take fresher eyes than mine to see it. But perhaps I can interest you cosmopolitan readers in tales of Chem Lab at exotic Lyndon State College? Midadventures of doggies Mabel and Cyrus? Smitten, slightly impatient accounts of long distance romance?

What I'm more likely to hit you with in the coming weeks is pontifications on traditional medicine. I'm spending an ungodly proportion of my time studying and working with herbs, and once the lid comes off there may be no stopping the botanical ranting. I'm currently trying to envision the next stage of my (re)education--naturopathy, Chinese medicine, Western herbalism? everything I can get my hands on is more like it--so I have an ulterior motive for sparking some dialogue about these things. I've also recently finished an article for supposed, eventual publication in a Nepali journal about the forms of Ayurveda I observed in Kathmandu. Partly, I admit, it's a platform for me to rage against the dying of the light, as traditional lineages of Ayurveda dwindle and disappear (See also my May 30 post, Endangered Species of Ayurved). Anyway, it's too long to post here, but I'd happily email it in pdf format to any interested parties.

In other news, and probably against my better judgement, I went and joined facebook. There's no place to hide any longer.