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about food
Cooking
We are preparing food in the kitchen in hygienic manner; according to the Satwic diet, with mostly seasonal local food. We do not fry and overcook. We cook on open fires in clay pots, in bamboo steamers and in the oven.We are respecting all kinds of diets and preparing the food for satisfaction of all.
Eating
We eat simple healthy vegetarian foods. We eat together around the Main fire. The eating time is announced by blowing the conch by one who served in the kitchen. We always take great care about food combining, about its freshness and hygiene.
Sprouting
sprouts are serve often for their nutritious quality
Shopping
Most of our supplies are coming from nearby villages. Local seasonal fruits, vegetables, nuts, tofu, goat milk, eggs, honey etc. We buy from people who behave to the animals with respect and keep them free and happy. Local crops are more organic than industrialized produce and it is nice and important to support local farmers and people.
This is our bakery making bread, pizza, cakes etc.
Become a vegetarian
We provide you with a beautiful space, healthy food and guidance in nature to transform your eating habits and learn a new life style which will help with your body, mind and soul.
A general definition of vegetarianism is:
Vegetarianism is the practice of living on products of the plant kingdom, with or without the use of eggs and dairy products, but excluding entirely the consumption of any part of the body of an animal as food (including chicken, fish and seafood). The term "vegetarian" means a person who follows such practice, or describes such a person, creature, establishment or food pertaining to vegetarianism.
The term "vegetarian" comes from "vegetus", the Latin for "enlivened", and has no connection, apart from a linguistic one, with vegetables. This is a common misconception.
There are many reasons why people go "veggo", from health to ecological and religious concerns, compassion for animals, belief in non-violence, for economic reasons or purely because they dislike the taste of meat.
Ahimsa
Ahimsa or non-injury, of course, implies non-killing. But, non-injury is not merely non-killing. In its comprehensive meaning, Ahimsa or non-injury means entire abstinence from causing any pain or harm whatsoever to any living creature, either by thought, word, or deed. Non-injury requires a harmless mind, mouth, and hand.
Very few people could watch animals be slaughtered at an abattoir, watch the carcass be skinned, gutted and carved up, then sit down straight away and enjoy a steak. Most of us have an innate sense of compassion and concern about suffering, it is often just that what is out of sight is out of mind. So we challenge you to visit an abattoir, a local intensive piggery or chicken farm and see some of the cruelty involved in modern livestock production.
Food combining
(1) Eat fruit alone. Acid (citrus), sub-acid (apples, peaches, etc.) and sweet fruits (banana, dried fruits, etc.) should not be combined as they have different digestive times: Acid 15-20 minutes; sub-acid 30 minutes; sweet 1 hour, melon 1 hour. Sprouted or soaked nuts and seeds are pre-digested, and may be eaten with fruit for some individuals; avocado combines well with acid (includes tomatoes) and sub-acid fruits. These additions will increase digestion time. Melon should be eaten alone, and different melons should not be combined.
(2) Eat protein and starch at separate meals. Protein uses stomach acid for digestion and starch needs alkaline digestive enzymes. This means the standard dishes are not good combinations. Beans are notoriously difficult to digest. When protein and starch are eaten at the same meal the digestive enzymes neutralize each other, and it could take 8-12 hours to clean out the toxic undigested food, which may eventually be converted to fat and remain stored in fat cells.
(3) Eat only 1 concentrated food at a meal. Two proteins should never be eaten together as the body will need different sets of amino acids to break them down, using a lot of energy. Two starches may be eaten together, however, because they are easier to digest, although 1 starch is better. The amino acids in vegetables and fruits are more abundant than those in animal products and easier to assimilate.
(4) Have a diet of at least 70% water-laden foods, 30% concentrated. Our bodies function more efficiently with a continual supply of water, so fruits and vegetables should make up the largest part of our diet. No practice will expedite the elimination cycle more than the regular and adequate consumption of high water content food.
(5) Drink liquid 15 minutes before or 2 hours after a meal, unless it is a nutritional part of the meal, like a green vegetable juice, otherwise it dilutes and washes out digestive enzymes.
(6) Eat only fruit until noon. The reason for this is that there are 3 natural body cycles: noon - 8pm for appropriation (eating and digestion); 8pm - 4am for assimilation (absorption and use); and 4am to noon for elimination (of body wastes and food debris). If you begin eating while your body is eliminating, it will stop and store the toxins in your cells. If you eat only fruit, you will not interfere with this cycle, in fact you will promote it. This is especially important if you've combined incorrectly the day before or eaten too late. In the beginning when you adopt this diet, there's a chance you may have gas or other symptoms. It is because your body is detoxifying.
(7) Time required after eating other food before you can eat fruit or another meal: 2 hours after salad or raw vegetables; 3 hours after a well-combined meal without animal products, 4 hours after a properly combined meal with animal products; 8-12 hours after any improperly combined meal or where you have eaten too much food and/or drink.
If you aren't active, you may need more time between meals. Listen to your body. You know when something you ate wasn't right and there's burping, gurgling stomach, gas, heartburn, reflux, you feel tired, you're gaining weight or getting sick.
Raw food
1. Raw foods are better quality than cooked food, therefore you eat less to satisfy your nutritional needs. The heat of cooking depletes vitamins, damages proteins and fats, and destroys enzymes which benefit digestion. As your percentage of raw foods increases you feel satisfied and have more energy on smaller meals because raw food has the best balance of water, nutrients, and fiber to meet your body's needs.
2. Raw foods have more flavor than cooked foods so there is no need to add salt, sugar, spices, or other condiments that can irritate your digestion system or over stimulate other organs. By restraining the spices the Taste becomes again sensitive.
3. Raw foods take very little preparation so you spend less time in the kitchen. You will have more time for your Sadhana (spiritual practice), family, hobbies and joy.
4. All inedible parts go directly to the compost pile. Full recycling.
5. Eating a diet of raw foods can reverse or stop the advance of many chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer. Remember, cooking creates free radicals, which are the major cause of cancer. When you lower the number of free radicals your cells are bombarded with, you lower your risk of cancer.
6. A raw food diet can protect you from acute diseases such as colds, flu, measles, etc. Raw foods maintain a healthy body and a healthy body will not become diseased.
7. As long as you combine raw food properly, you will soon reach a level where you no longer suffer from heartburn, gas, indigestion or constipation.
8. It is environmentally sound. With humanity on a diet of raw foods, the food industry would close up shop and take up organic gardening. This would save us enormous amounts of natural resources used to produce power for these industries. Nuclear power would be clearly unnecessary. And think of how many trees and oil reserves could be saved without the need for the paper and plastics used in packaging our processed foods. There would also be less carbon dioxide released in to the atmosphere when all the cooking stopped and more oxygen produced from all the new orchards and gardens, thus helping to reverse the Greenhouse Effect.
9. Eating raw saves you money on food, vitamins, pots and pans, appliances, doctor bills, drugs, and health insurance.
10. Raw food is digested much faster than cooked food which is necessary for yogic life. Physical practice and meditation with food in stomach might be harmful.
So don't waste your food, yourself, and our planet by cooking what you eat.
Satwic diet
It is food that decides out attainment high or low and it is the food that goes to make up the gross, subtle and causal bodies. So it is perfectly logical and spiritually true that the single most important factor in individual transformation is to pay priority attention to the food taken.
Foods which increase life, purity, strength, health, joy and cheerfulness, which is oleaginous and savory, substantial and agreeable, are dear to the satwic people. Bhagavadgita chapter 17, verse 8
The foods that are bitter, sour, saline, excessively hot, dry, pungent and burning, are liked by the rajasic and are productive of pain, grief and disease. Bhagavadgita chapter 17, verse 9
That which is stale, tasteless, putrid, rotten and impure refuse is food liked by the tamasic. Bhagavadgita chapter 17, verse 10
In context to people the word satwic is applicable to one who is pure or aspiring to be pure, who is doing good and is of a higher consciousness, a rajasic person is one who is passionate, lustful, full of desires, who gets angry easily, who is restless, selfish and who has an active temperament, and a tamasic person is one who is dull, lazy, inebriated, slow, and of a low consciousness...
Satwic foods
Nuts, fruits, fresh vegetable (except onions, garlic and herbs that inebriate), legumes, cereal, lentils, products from whole-wheat flour, sprouts, raw milk etc.
Rajasic foods
All disease producing foods or satwic foods in excess, salty, sour, pungent, burning foods, spicy, condiments and stimulants like tea, sugar etc.
Tamasic foods
All stale, tasteless, putrid, fermented food, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, meat, fish, eggs and all food that slow down physically and mentally. Overcooked food. Wrong combining etc.
Both tamasic and rajasic foods should be avoided so it does not really matter much about which foods are tamasic or rajasic. What is important is that one should eat more and more raw satwic foods until dependence on the other two are overcome gracefully.
Veganism
In a nutshell, "veganism" may be defined as a way of living which seeks to exclude all animal products for food, clothing, or any other purpose.
Veganism is a way of living on the products of the plant kingdom to the exclusion of all products from the animal kingdom. A vegan is a total vegetarian who consumes no animal by-products.
Vegans go even further by avoiding both animal derivatives and animal-tested products in their whole lifestyle. This means an avoidance of meat, milk, eggs, butter etc., as well as leather, wool, cosmetics, soaps and shampoos derived from animal ingredients or tested on animals.
Why? Most people who have chosen a vegan lifestyle have done so because they have become aware of the cruelty and exploitation involved in the making of animal products. Vegans choose to act positively to reduce this cruelty by abstaining from animal-derived products and thereby reducing the demand for them. Vegans realise that it is unnecessary to inflict suffering on animals in order to lead a healthy, happy, normal life. Indeed, avoidance of animal products usually results in enhanced, natural good health. Coupled with compassion for animals is the awareness that animal production is a grossly inefficient means of producing food which our heavily populated world can no longer continue to support.
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