02/25/2024
Piggy backing on my last post, I wanted to share more about .yoga.centre’s impressive dining program.
Biksha (Isha’s dining hall) serves flavorful yogic cuisine. A team of local chefs run the kitchen like clockwork and an army of volunteers help serve the food.
A typical meal includes:
🌾 Rice (my favs are lemon rice with nuts, coconut rice with herbs & sweet black rice)
🍛 Pongal (SO many kinds of millet!) always served with some kind of saucy dish (ie. curry or sambar) And sometimes chutney too!
🫘 Legumes (ie. black chickpeas, mung beans, lentils — usually tossed with with shredded coconut, turmeric and curry leaves)
🥕 A raw veggie or salad (ie. carrot, cucumber, or green pepper salad)
🍠 A cooked veggie (usually a starchy veggie or some kind gourd in a flavorful sauce)
🌶 A pickle (chili lime, tamarind, or ginger)
🍉 Fruit (ie. Baby bananas, papaya, watermelon, pineapple)
😋 Many times a savory congee, kitcheri, or sometimes sweet porridge called Sanjeevini
🫓 Occasionally, instead of millet, they serve homemade bread like roti or idly (Which I love!)
🟤 And sometimes a sweet treat like a sesame ladoo or a mini banana cake
The meals are made with high-quality vegetarian ingredients — many of them grown on site. 🧑🏽🌾 In fact, in the last 10 months the 5-acre organic farm at the ashram has supplied the dining hall with 22 tons of fresh produce! (Pictured is turmeric that I helped harvest last month.)
The dining hall is open for ashram residents twice per day, offering brunch & dinner for thousands of people at a time. 🕖 Doors for dinner open at exactly 6:50 PM and everyone is seated within 8 minutes! ➡️ Then the whole hall gets flipped for the next batch to enter at 7:35 PM. And if that’s not wild enough, we all sit on the floor in silence 🧘🏻♀️ and eat with our hands. ✋
Well, most of us… I broke down and bought a spoon after the first month of struggling to eat hot soupy food by hand. 🥄😜
