Steam Cooking with Sarai

Sutra 48 - Wheatgrass

Drink wheat grass juice once every week. Described as "green blood", it removes iron deficiency and helps build damaged cells. It is an excellent restorative tonic if you are recovering from a weakening disease.


Many organic food stores have dried  wheat grass powder for convenience. Else it takes very little effort to grow wheat grass at home. Soak ordinary wheat grains until it sprouts and put it in a tray for about 7 days. When it about finger length, it is juicy and soft. Pluck a handful and put it as part of the vegetable juice described earlier or chew if you can.

There are several wheat grass suppliers as well in Bangalore and other parts of the world after reports of cancer remissions with its use.

Sutra 47 - Steam Cooking

Steam cooking retains nearly 90% of the nutrients. I use a three tiered one, where I steam vegetables, soaked dals and rice in one go. It makes a complete meal. The vegetables taste better when steam cooked. You can buy stainless steel steam cooking vessels or even a full steam cooking unit with the electric stove built in. Steam has more heat than fire and cooks faster.

Pressure cooking takes away 50% of the nutrients. I will write more about charcoal or slow cooking in my later posts after I have experimented it myself.

If weekdays are a rush, make it point to eat steam cooked food over weekends.

Related : Award Winning Sarai Cooking System from ARTI

Sutra 46 - Coconut

Include coconut in your meals. Adding freshly grated coconut in your meals helps reduce weight, reduces bad cholesterol and prevents heart diseases.

Coconut oil is cholesterol free and can be used in moderation. It is better than animal/dairy fats or hydrogenated transfats.  Prefer FILTERED coconut oil instead of REFINED coconut oil. Refining removes many of its micro nutrients. I often get it fresh from a local mill where it is not treated chemically.

Tender coconut water is rich in minerals and can be had twice or thrice a week during summer months. 

Provision List - Bring health home

Dals - Preferably unpolished (INCLUDE)

• Green Gram
• Ground Nuts
• Pumpkin Seeds
• Til Seeds
• All Dal Items

Grains (INCLUDE)

• Unpolished Rice
• Whole Wheat
• Corn
• Ragi
• Bajra
• Jowar

Fats (INCLUDE)

• Filtered Til Oil
• Filtered  Mustard Oil
• Filtered  Cocounut Oil
• Cow / Desi Ghee

Beverages: (INCLUDE)

• Green/Herbal Teas
• Tulsi Powder
• Neem Powder
• Dried Rose Petals

Salt (INCLUDE)

• Saindhava Salt or Rock Salt
• Black Salt
• Sea Salt

Sugars (INCLUDE)

• Jaggery (Brown Sugar)
• Dates
• Raisins
• Fruit Sugars
• Honey

Processed / Packed Foods (AVOID):

• Processed Supplements
• Chips
• Biscuits
• Jams
• Ketchups
• Pickles
• Noodles with MSG (Aginomoto)
• Baked Foods

Refined Foods: (AVOID)

• Polished Rice
• Maida
• Refined Sugar
• Table Salt
• Refined Oil

Beverages: (AVOID)

• Health Drinks
• Coffee
• Packed Juices (Replace with Plain Fruits)
• Packed soups with preservatives

Sutra 36 - Soaked Nuts

Here is a way to give more proteins to your growing children. Soak nuts overnight and include them as part of the breakfast or give them as snacks at schools. The soaking ensures that they are easily digested. My guru calls nuts and sprouts as 'long-life batteries'. They digest slowly and supply the body with energy over a long period of time.

You can replace expensive health drinks with this and soon you will see that they work much better because they are direct sources of growth from nature and free from preservatives or additives.

Here is an easy recipe for nuts and sprout Puttu for breakfast. Share other recipes that you know of with the Vivafive community.

Related: Sprouts

Sutra 37 - Don't manage your time, manage your energy!

A constant excuse for not caring enough for our health, our family and things that are important to us is - 'lack of time'. Philosophies of the East including Zen insist that one should maximise the amount of energy we give to a piece of work to get the maximum result. This is also what the Gita says. If you consciously participate in every waking activity, from brushing your teeth to writing an Email to answer a question to chewing food, you will soon see that you are doing more in less time.

On the contrary, if you are less attentive, our energies decrease, and it takes longer to meet the demands at the office or at home. The result is chronic fatigue and poor results. Like a famous person said, "A busy person is someone who has time for everything."

If you have some interesting insights about managing time better, please share it for others' benefit. Sharing is growing.

Sprouts and Nuts in Puttu

Steamed rice puttu makes a great breakfast in Kerala. Add some sprouts and peanuts (soaked overnight) into the steamer when you are making the puttu. It will make for a nice crunchy breakfast and ideal for helping children get extra proteins. You can also add grated coconuts, grated carrots into the puttu to make it a complete meal.

Sutra 34 - Eat when hungry

"One-quarter of what you eat keeps you alive. The other three-quarters keeps your doctor alive" - Egyptian Proverb

Throughout this week, wait for your body to ask for food. When you feel hungry, your body is ready with the enzymes for digestion. You will notice a small warmth build up in your stomach in preparation for the digestion.

Over time we have 'trained' our body to eat at timely intervals without respecting its ability to complete the digestion process. When you eat when you are not hungry, it takes longer and the food that you eat does not get digested properly.

Do not stay hungry for a long time though. As you become more aware, you will notice a marked improvement in your digestion and even start losing weight as metabolism improves.

Sutra 31 - Avoid Dals at Night

Avoid protein rich food like dals or meat during dinner. They take a long time to digest and take a lot of energy that should otherwise be used for repairing your cells during your sleep.

Over a long period, this kind of eating can lead to lifestyle diseases.

You also may end up with a lot of undigested food, gas and toxic residues the next day. You can well avoid a lot of these uneasiness by opting to eat just plain rotis and cooked vegetables at night.

Sutra 28 - Fruits Before Food

Fruits require very little time to digest (about 20 minutes) while food takes about an hour or two. Eating fruits after meals can leave it undigested for a long time in the crop before it enters the intestines. This can make you feel uncomfortable. Always eat the fruits first and then follow it up with your meals after a few minutes.

Sweets too hit the intestines directly as there is nothing to break down. So having a dessert is an invitation for bad health.

Sutra 26 - Food Diary

Keep a diary or a whiteboard where you write down what you eat every week.

Many spend extra to get the best grade of petrol for the car. But spend extra to get the worst food for themselves and their children.

List every time you eat some junk food or drink sodas. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. As you become conscious of the disservice you are doing to your body, you will make better choices.

Switch to food that helps to energize your body and supplies it with life. The calories will take care of themselves. The Gita calls it as Sattvik Food - food that energizes not only the body, but the mind, the intellect and the spirit too.

Sprouts in Dosa and Idly

Just before you make the traditional Idli or Dosa for breakfast, you can put a handful of sprouts into the blender and mix it with the batter before steaming the idlies or making the dosa. The dosa will come out crisp with a golden colour and your children will not resist it.

Sutra 30 - Herbal Tea

Suffering from constant colds. Sun dry Tulsi leaves and rose petals and add them to your bottle of tea. You can also add elaichi into the bottle after removing the skin of the cardamom. The flavour of your daily tea would improve manifold. Tulsi is a divine plant (the only plant that releases oxygen day and night). Tulsi is also an excellent medicine for controlling phlegm and relieving cold. It boosts immunity.

You can also switch to trying a lot of herbal teas and black tea instead of the milk chai that is common in India. Tea is rich in anti-oxidants.

A common replacement for tea in the Ayurvedic tradition is having lemon with warm water and honey. It acts as an excellent detergent to clean your liver, which can save you from a variety of diseases in the long run.

Sutra 43 - Millets

Include millets like Ragi, Bajra and Jowar as part of your staples at least thrice a week. Called miracle grains, they are packed with energy and are an excellent source of minerals, vitamins and fibre. Regularly alternating rice/wheat with millets is an excellent way to maintain health. Include these as part of multi grain atta as well for good results.

As millets are rain fed and don't require extensive irrigation, they are not only economical, but also help the environment by reducing the dependencies on only few staple food grains.

Here is a link to the millet cookbook

Sutra 25 - Start your day with more than a litre of water

Let the first thing that touch your tummy in the morning be water. Though widely known, many people find it difficult to follow this advice. If you are averse to drinking cold water, you can choose to drink warm water.

Your tummy is like the vessel in which you have cooked your previous night's meal. So before you do further cooking, it is essential to wash it. Dumping food continuously into the tummy without cleaning it often results in the fresh food mixing with half digested food inside the tummy.

Drink about 6 glasses of water to start your day. You can drink about 3 glasses and give a break before you have your next 3 glasses.

Many people start their day with a bed coffee or tea. They also give children milk as soon as they get up. This is not a healthy practice. I have seen several children's health improve including my own, after we started this practice of starting the day with a few glasses of water. This is a golden tip for parents who want to see their children's health improve. Make it a point to share this simple tip with as many parents and teachers, they are the architects of the world's future.

Sutra 23 - Avoid Coffee after 4 PM

Coffee interferes with your sleep cycles and can leave you tired and with less focus, the next day. Avoiding coffee or sugars after 4 PM ensures that the body can prepare to wind down. If there is work pressure and you need to stay awake, make sure you drink warm water with some lemon instead of coffee.

Another simple trick to increase your alertness is to stretch your ears with your hands. This helps to increase circulation around your forehead and increases alertness.

Sutra 21 - Reduce Dairy Products

Dairy products like milk, butter and cheese should be eaten in moderation. Man is the only animal on this planet that depends on milk for food after growing up. Dairy products make you sluggish and creates excess phlegm. It requires extra 'prana' or life force to process dairy.

Ayurveda recommends buttermilk (yogurt after removing the fats) and ghee (clarified butter) highly as digestive aids. These are rich in lactobacillus and can help in the absorption of food easily.

Sutra 20 - Eat Local

Do in Rome as the Romans do is true for health as well.  There is an increasing desire to import health foods from around the world. People are looking for the elusive seaweed from Australia or a berry from Africa or an oilseed from Greece to restore their health. But this may always not be a wise thing, but just a passing fad. The local cuisine of the place that you live, including the local vegetables, fruits, millets and grains are well suited for that place and would have stood the test of time.

Ayurveda recommends eating food that is available within the vicinity of the place that you live to be healthy. This automatically ensures that you eat freshly available seasonal fruits and vegetables that can be easily digested and absorbed by the body to convert into energy.

Sutra 19 - Silence during meals

Food is supposed to nourish the body, intellect and the soul. Distracting yourself during a meal by talking, watching television or while reading a newspaper can lead to poor digestion and acidity.

Saying a grace before food or respecting the food we eat as a culture had a health significance. Focusing on the food, its taste and chewing every bite helps the body to produce the right amount of enzymes to help break down and absorb food better.

Eating food with your family in silence is not an ‘uncool’ thing, but a great way to health for the entire family.


"Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food." - Hippocrates