Ayurveda, Food & Cooking

AN EVERYDAY PRACTICE

Ayurveda was around me before I knew its name.

I grew up in Punjab, where food was never only about following a recipe.

You learned by watching. How much cumin went into the pan. When the mustard seeds were ready. What to cook when someone wasn’t feeling well. Which foods felt right at different times of the year.

But much of what stayed with me wasn’t taught as a system. It was simply part of everyday life.

As I grew older, I became curious about the understanding behind those things: the relationship between food, digestion, season, constitution and how we feel. And how all this connects to our Doshas.

Today I bring some of that understanding into cooking experiences and retreats. Not as a prescription for how someone should eat, but as another way to become curious about what nourishes us.

Some things are learned before they are explained.

CHOOSE

What is fresh? What is in season? What are we cooking, and for whom?

TOUCH

Washing, chopping, grinding and preparing brings us into direct contact with the food.

SMELL & LISTEN

Spices change in the pan. Seeds begin to crackle. An aroma tells us something before a timer does.

TASTE & ADJUST

A little more sour. Something warming. Perhaps nothing more at all. We taste and respond.

Food changes again when it is placed in the middle of a table and eaten with other people.

The recipe can guide us. Attention does the rest.

A PERSONAL NOTE

Some of what I know began in my grandmother’s kitchen.

My grandmother, Tulsi Bai, practised Ayurveda. But as a child, I didn’t think of what happened around her as a practice or a philosophy.

It was simply part of life.

Food changed with the season. Spices had a purpose beyond flavour. If someone wasn’t feeling well, what they ate might change. And much of the cooking happened without measuring anything.

I think that is why I still prefer to cook this way. I use recipes, but I also watch, smell, taste and adjust.

As I grew older, I became more curious about the understanding behind what I had grown up around.

I don’t bring Ayurveda into brid9e as a set of rules about how someone should live or eat. I bring some of its attention to food, digestion, season and everyday life and a way of cooking that has travelled with me for a long time.

Some knowledge is passed from hand to hand.

YOU CAN BEGIN HERE.

Curious? That’s enough to begin.

You can come with a question, a feeling, a pattern you keep meeting or simply with the sense that something needs attention.

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Some wisdom is learned around the kitchen.