My friends took me to an Ayurvedic cooking class at one of two main Transcendental Meditation offices in Honolulu (aka TM). The workshop was set at one of TM's retreats, located in a beautiful neighborhood of Palolo Valley, green and rustic and deep inside a verdant gorge that was below the normal road level. The house was tranquil and designed to maximize the outdoor setting, with a large screen protecting residents from mosquitos while allowing for the fresh air to penetrate most of the interior, big windows and skylights to see the gorgeous landscape, and places to sit where you could regard the scenery around you bathed in the natural light of Palolo's rainforest. I'd imagine it would be the perfect place to sit and simply be in peace. This is one of two relaxing TM centers in Honolulu town (the other is in Manoa), where this spiritual organization holds meditation sessions, retreats, and other activities.
The workshop began with a lecture on the meaning of Ayurvedic dosha system, including handouts and a simple test for people to figure out their doshas (a combination of body, personality, and physical/emotional/spiritual constitution types, from what I can tell), then followed by a summary of what this system means for food selection, menu design, meal preparation, and eating practices. Many handouts--actually, a whole folder--were given out, including information on this system, facts on types of rice, and lots of recipes including those the demonstrator was to make in about an hour, after the lecture. There was Q&A both before the cooking part of the workshop and afterwards, which my friends--health nuts who are vegan and also often raw foods folk--took full advantage of, asking lots of specific things and expanding the conversation to real-life, practical food and cooking practice. Then we all proceeded to the kitchen to observe the cooking demo.
That part, the longest of the workshop, went around 2-2 1/2 hours, because we basically watched the woman, assisted by her husband as the sous chef, cook the full lunch, almost from the ground up. She explained each of the ingredients and included other techniques on what you could do with them and how to prepare them (for example, how to grow sprouts from beans), each time re-referencing the dosha system to get back to her earlier lecture, and then prepped and cooked with them. She did not come across as a professional chef or food industry person--rather, more like a fairly knowledgeable auntie who loves to cook, and does it from her gut--but put a lot of heart into the work, and didn't stop the whole time to take a breath.
She made from scratch (not counting the prepackaged TM brand spices): basmati rice, chickpea pancakes, two types of dahl (lentil curry, one with green veggies such as Malabar spinach and ... I want to say broccoli but I can't recall the other, but it was substantial), cucumber salad, kale salad, mango chutney, blueberry and raspberry and almond/cashew cluster salad, and rosewater lassi. I didn't expect it to be so well balanced and delicious (the woman was messier and more chaotic than I tend to like my cooks to be in the kitchen, despite her pleasant personality and the volumes of information she shared), but it was truly tasty, textually excellent with good mouthfeel, and quite nourishing. We all ate in the garden which was covered by a roof but which was also semi-outdoors, set in the back side of the house, as we sat at the picnic tables looking around at the scenery on both sides of the property and the trees and plants around us. The eating part took about an hour, involving more casual conversation between the hosts and their visits, which was good, but making the workshop an hour or so behind schedule (we were supposed to start the overall workshop at 10 and finish by 1, but--with the second servings--everyone got done with eating around 1:30, and the last Q&A took us to after 2:15; however, the environment was one that screamed relaxation and calm, so I was probably the only one pinching for time, like an insane busy person, in the retreat-type environment).
Three of us -- me and my friends -- were Asian American, two of whom were raised here. The others, including the woman and her spouse and the three other TM practitioners, were from the US continent. It was an all-female group except for the demonstrator's spouse. Not sure how many locally raised Hawai'i people go to this type of workshop or TM retreat. It felt more like a Bay Area, Northern Cali, "left coast" kind of thing, but not in a bad way. More like a group of thoughtful women trying to find alternative medical and spiritual paths to the crazy unhealthy ones that America puts everyone onto. I am not a TM practitioner, but appreciated the love and effort that went into this, and was inspired that this small handful of professional women work hard to find ways to make their lives meaningful and healthy. read more
