Vegetarian Food

It is amazing to me- the thoughts that go through my head. Today, as I was cooking supper, I realized that I am cooking vegetarian food.  No meat, no fish, no fowl, just things that grow on the earth; not even animal products such as eggs, milk or cheese.

I remembered the time we lived in Red Deer, Albert, Canada. For two years, I faithfully drove weekly to Lacombe 7-Day Adventist College to learn how to cook vegetarian food. I had the best teachers on the planets who followed scientific data gather for years by the best researchers in that field. The 7-Day Adventists are vegetarians, and we ate their foods and learned about their ways during that time. This is where I found out that rice and lentils or beans are the plants' complete protein.

Over time I set that knowledge aside and did not use it again until fifteen or more years later when I hosted some young men who learned to pilot planes in Sidney Flying School. Among them was a 19 years old young flyer from New-Delhi; a Brahmin thus vegetarian.  He stayed with us for 9 months and I loved him as a son. The high school was not too far from me and in there I found oodles of vegetarian receipts for East Indian food. I also found a Baha'i store in downtown Victoria BC where I bought unusual and unfamiliar spices. I learned to cook some of his special foods.  Kindly, he thanked me and told me that the meals were good. After nine months, I learned to cook and he lost 30 pounds (15 kg).

Until recently, I did not need that knowledge.  The best beef is raised in Alberta Canada. The best fish are caught in BC Canada. Chocolate is as synonym to Belgium as Cheese is to Switzerland. But when it comes to vegetables, the best are grown in Israel. After six years in the land of milk and honey I find myself returning to the wonderful recipes I was taught by my vegetarian teachers. What a delight. The taste is great, the smell fills the house and the colorful sight is a rainbow in a pot. We still eat as the carnivores we are, but only once or twice a week; the rest of time it is colorful vegies all the way.

40th day of Praise - thank you God for the love of cooking that you gave to me and the friends that taught me how to cook. Thank you God for your creativity of creating "tender sprouts, the herb seeding seed, and the fruit tree producing fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth".  

Seeing rainbows in my pots,   

Orith