The Ayurvedic Cookbook

"In classical thought, yoga is for the mind and Ayurveda is for the body. What you put into your body is going to influence your mind. I don’t know if you subscribe to that, but yogis do. This is a wonderful cookbook, with recipes for everybody. In Ayurveda, if you go see an Ayurvedic doctor, they’re going take your pulse, look at your tongue, and ask some questions so as to identify your constitution. There are three main types of constitution—Vata, Pitta and Kapha—but nobody is exclusively one. We’re all a mix, but usually there is one predominant or maybe two predominant types and a lesser one. And so then if you want to live Ayurvedically, you will live in order to maintain a balance. You don’t want your dominant type to become exacerbated. It’s all about balance. This cookbook has so many recipes. It tells you which qualities a particular dish will increase and decrease so that you can eat in such a way as to maintain balance. Not necessarily. There’s nothing right or wrong. It depends what your goal is. If you are a soldier, for example, and need to be strong and aggressive to fight, they would advise you to eat rajasic foods. Chilies and meat would be recommended, although I’m not sure that they think the flesh of a dead animal is very healthy. But yes, most of the food is vegetarian . Every product of the cow, in the Hindu tradition, is sacred, so they use a lot of milk and and butter and ghee in cooking—and even cow dung to plaster the walls of a yoga room is considered a very good thing."