By Elizabeth Herman | Posted: July 19, 2019
Do you enjoy the flavors of onion and garlic? Even though these two can be good for common colds and extremely popular with many vegetarians, as a meditator and vegetarian, I have found other bold flavors just as delicious in foods. For instance, ginger, chilies (green and red), mustard seeds, turmeric and lemon make my taste buds extremely happy.
Foods for different health purposes
In the ancient healing science of Ayurveda, food serves humans as natural medicine. In this context, unless you have a bad cold, garlic and onions have been found to arouse negative emotions, increase the firey and airy doshas (pitta and vata), and bring on lethargy and restlessness (tamas and rajas, respectively). Most Ayurvedic diets eliminate onion and garlic, while most readily available vegetarian fare constantly includes them.
You won’t find most pre-prepared salsas, if any, without onions, at least, and they usually contain both garlic and onions. So I’ve been making fresh salsa without onion or garlic for the groups at our local Art of Living Center, while they’re experiencing deep meditation, often for the first time. The need for this recipe takes place every Saturday, when Latin dishes like vegetarian ACP (arroz con pollo) and mock chicken fajitas are the main features of the menu.
Salsa recipe
Here are my suggestions for making your own fresh salsas without onions and garlic at home, with nothing more than a food processor or blender, a knife and a cutting board, and your favorite varieties of the following basic ingredients, the fresher the better:
Tomatoes
Cilantro
Chilies
Carrots
Lemon Juice
Olive Oil
Salt (to taste) (actually everything’s done to taste here)
You can practice adjusting the proportions of ingredients based on your preferences.
The following amounts and instructions are based on the batch I most recently made. Use about 5 round tomatoes, a large handful of cilantro with the stems, 5 jalapeno chilies (3 of them with seeds and 2 with seeds removed), 2 handfuls of pre-shredded fresh carrots, about a quarter cup of lemon juice and the same amount of olive oil, and a generous sprinkling of salt.
Rinse all the vegetables, remove the cores of the tomatoes and chilies and cut them in chunks.
Roughly chop only the green and fresh cilantro leaves and stems, sorting out any damaged ones.
Place all ingredients except the salt into a food processor and blend them until all the large chunks disappear and a somewhat coarse saucy mixture appears.
Put the salsa into a bowl and sprinkle salt to taste over the top and stir well with a large spoon.
Serve your own unique onion and garlic free salsa with chips or on top of tacos, enchiladas, burritos, Spanish rice, nachos or any other Latin style dish.
You can find my evolving onion free fresh salsas on the lunch buffet on Saturdays at Art of Living Retreat Center for the time being (this may change eventually), while you’re enjoying a Happiness Program, Sahaj Samadhi Course, or Art of Silence Program, or any of the other wonderful programmatic offerings at the center.
I hope to see you there soon!
By Elizabeth Herman - PhD in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Composition, and Literature, she offers writing support to clients, teaches locally, lives in Boone, NC, and volunteers for a better world.
