Yellow Zucchini, Tomato and Basil Stew (Greek Lady)

If you are still with me (and I don’t know how I have deserved such loyalty being a lousy food blogger), you have noticed that last year this space was not too lively. Most of my cooking remained behind the scenes at my restaurant kitchen, and I kept most of the thoughts to myself. Now I can tell the truth: after we left Istanbul I knew my cooking, teaching and this blog were not going to be same. Posting my Aegean updates on the blog called Delicious Istanbul did not make sense, and my heart was not fully into the Turkish vegetarian cooking you know me for. And yet I felt I had not arrived to my next destination. The transition took a long year and a half, but finally I am ready for the next step. Will you come along?

As you may know, my recent cooking and eating have been informed by the principles of Ayurveda, the world’s oldest holistic healing science. My aspiration has been to follow the ancient treaties of the Ayurveda masters who studied how food affects not only our bodies and mind, but first and foremost - our conscious.

Since the beginning of the year I have been primarily choosing foods that belong to the mode of goodness (or sattva). Such foods include grains, mung beans, dairy, nuts and seeds, most vegetables and fruits, honey and other natural sweeteners as well as spices. It is worth noting that not all the vegetables are considered pure in Ayurveda: for instance, onion and garlic are strong stimulants that tend to compromise the clarity of our conscious. After only a few months without them I discovered their smell and taste to be off-putting. Other stimulating products that I have been staying clear from include coffee, black tea, alcohol, chocolate, refined sugar and flour. Pure, sattvic food contains most life force, nourishes our bodies and keeps our conscious clear. Vedic philosopher and yogi Bhakti Vijnana Goswami Maharaj says that you can immediately tell the good food - it satisfies the mind even if you ate very little.

Once you focus on the pure products, remove anything out of season or not locally grown, discard anything that does not suit your dosha (mind-body type in Ayurveda), divide it by the favorable food combinations and suitable time of the day to eat them, you are not left with too much choice. But I am not scared. Not as much as I was when I stopped eating sugar and did not understand how I could continue being a culinary educator without the ingredient I heavily used in the past. Leaving something previously important might be frustrating at first, but the remaining space - however small - proves more than sufficient in the end.

You might ask, “Why are you so picky about your food, Olga?” Well, in a rather obvious and not always pleasant way my digestion told me just that since I had started giving it a chance to speak. For a year I have been observing what, in which quantities and combinations gives me strength and what deprives me of energy. As a result, a lot of things had to go and the remaining ones got in order.

Being happy with simple and small while leaving behind greed, excess and constant stimulation has been a key theme in my relationships with food. Eventually, food got the right place in my life - important, but not critical.

I got to understand that food is sacred. It must be cooked with love and devotion and enjoyed with gratitude, no less. Such food is nourishing not because a yet another trendy diet calls it healthy, but because it is a divine gift. That is what makes food important, but not on its own right. Food becomes a way to welcome divinity in our lives. And this is what I want to share with you on the blog - pure vegetarian recipes, thoughts on cooking as a conscious act of love as well as my experience of eating and living consciously. Let me tell a few words about each theme.

What is pure vegetarian food? When I gave up meat about eight years ago, I thought being vegetarian meant just that. Sometimes I ate fish and without any remorse indulged eggs. Now I understand that real vegetarianism is not about giving up meat, but rather about certain standard of purity in diet and lifestyle. Food may seem physical rough matter. However food affects our mind and through that defines the clarity of our conscious. What we eat ultimately determines our ability to understand our own nature and that of the world around us - as they are, not as we please. Keeping our food in sattva, or the mode of goodness, we give ourselves a chanсe to live more consciously, to grow and in the end - to realize and fulfill our purpose in this world.

I don’t mean to say that giving up onion and garlic will automatically open your third eye. I mean that you could start living consciously by choosing what to eat - the food that nourishes and elevates or the food that ties you to the rough, lustful and lethargic. Pure vegetarian food has no nationality and always based on that is available to you this season in the region where you live. Moreover, it is informed by the principles of Ayurveda that apply to any geography and any culinary tradition.

Another theme that excites me is the conscious process of cooking. High quality ingredients, trusted recipes, mastery of cooking techniques and appropriate equipment all matter, however there is another key component you will not read about in a cookbook or learn from a cooking course. That is the conscious of the cook.

When we cook in a good mood with positive thoughts, our food comes out delicious and brings joy to the near and dear. And I do not need to tell you what happens when we cook in a rush while rewinding the events of the day or meditate on the unpleasant situations. Put on the TV with an ever-cheerful news report or call a friend to share a gossip, and here is your recipe for the inevitable culinary fiasco. The dinner still may come out fine, but it will not have the nourishing energy you could have added with a loving thought. Ultimately, cooking is not about feeding hungry family members, it is an act of love and service, and conducting this act calls for the right mindset. How to acquire and maintain that mindset? This is what I am exploring right now and will be happy to share my findings with you.

The third theme I am going to cover here is conscious eating and living. Our modern lives allow less and less room for consciousness. Many things are automatized and require less first-hand attention. Huge volumes of information leave less time to process it. Abundance of opportunities makes us pursue many of them at once instead of taking our time to reflect and meditate.

Same goes for food. We eat in a rush before an important meeting or gobble the breakfast while running late to work. We eat by the way as we chat with colleagues at lunch break. We eat to keep company when we are not hungry. We eat while looking through the newsfeed on Facebook not to loose time. We eat after a fight when we are upset or angry. Ayurveda says that such behavior leads to the compromised digestion, accumulation of toxins and in the end - to a disease. All because of our habit to navigate this life on autopilot.

As we discuss conscious eating we inevitable come to the overall consciousness in our lives. I ran a three-week conscious eating challenge for my Russian Instagram followers during which I had many chats with the participants about understanding one’s nature, accepting oneself, realizing what you are after in this life. So food is more than food. It is a fine matter, and this is what I aspire to convey with each recipe I share.

Soon my blog will be moving to the new address; I will let you know once everything is set up. It is time to say good by to Delicious Istanbul the way I conceived it. But for the time being I will keep sharing my overflowing summer inspiration with you here.