Week 8 TCM
5 Flavours -Eggplant Salad
Forum Discussion Questions:
- In relation to the recipe that you prepared for your activity; do you think that you will prepare it again? (Why or why not). Could you adapt this recipe to accommodate special dietary needs (such as a vegan or dairy diet)?
This was delicious, I really enjoyed it. The preparation is vegan (eggplant salad) and full of flavour. It feels nourishing. The flavours blended together well, although I think I put too much lemon juice in. I did modify the recipe. I had fresh baby spinach, parsley, eggplant, and lemon only, but no fresh tomatoes, chilli, oregano, garlic, or cumin seeds. I substituted them with tinned roma tomatoes, and mixed dried herbs and minced garlic It was easy to put all ingredients together as a salad.
Between Heaven and Earth (BHE) states: ‘Cooked eggplants are dark rich purple, rich, pungent, gelatinous, and moist. Eggplant is eaten to enrich and move the Blood and especially benefits the Kidney and Liver…’pg.332
- According to the Chinese philosophy of foods, is dairy food damaging our health? You may want to discuss what impact dairy foods have on our health according to the five elements, flavours and tastes.
Dairy food isn’t isn’t good or bad, rather the way our bodies receive and process the food is the underlying factor in Chinese dietetics. Also, the organs may be affected by different internal climates, for example, BHE states:
‘the stomach may be hot, and the spleen cold, the stomach dry and the spleen damp, then each needs remedying without exacerbating the other…combinations of patterns such as hot-damp and cold damp, can occur within the same person…Someone who is congested and agitated needs to avoid sticky and rich foods (dairy foods, fats, casseroles)’pg. 331
Excess dairy isn’t a great choice of food if a person is experiencing congestion. The type and amount of dairy would be modified according to the person’s individual condition.
There are many examples of choice for eating dairy foods. If you’re warm and congested, you might choose cooling dairy foods in smaller amounts e.g cottage cheese or yoghurt – depending on the constitution and condition. BHE 335.
See examples of cooling and warming dairy foods from pg. 336- 341 BHE Properties of Food below:
- ‘Supplementing Qi: Bland, Sweet, Starchy foods’
- ‘Supplementing Blood: Sweet, Sour, Astringent Foods’
- ‘Decongesting Qi: Spicy, Bitter, Salty foods’
- ‘Decongesting Moisture: Bitter, Bland, Salty Foods’
- ‘Decongesting blood: Spicy, Sour, Bitter foods’
- BHE: ‘Yin: Cooling, moisturising, decongesting, relacing’
- ‘Yang: Warming, drying, supplementing, stimulating’
Properties of Dairy Foods:
Warm:
- Milk (supplementing qi, moisture, blood essence)
- Butter (supplementing qi, blood essence)
Neutral:
- Milk (supplementing qi, moisture)
- Cheese (supplementing qi, moisture)
- Egg yolk (Supplementing blood essence)
Cool:
- Cottage Cheese (supplementing qi, moisture)
- Yoghurt (supplementing qi, moisture)
- Egg white (Supplementing moisture)
Teacher Feedback
‘About the nature of food, as you said, it need to be understood based on the condition of the eater. For example, the milk, the nature of milk is Yin and cold side. That’s why it’s the proper food only for children. Children’s Yang qi is quite strong, so they can digest the cold-nature milk and transfer it into nutrition for the body. So after taking mild, baby’s body (Yin) will grow fast. With the age, Yang qi is declined. So milk is not the good food for adults. When adults take milk, it will not be digested properly. One condition, milk will change into phlegm and stay in body. That’s one of the origin of big tummy, nodules under skin and also carcinoma. But when the phlegm just accumulates, it will produce heat. Just like when we put a lot of hay in a hill for sometime, heat will be produced. So at the beginning, the person feel stagnated heat. But in the root, the cold-nature pathogen is produced’.