Eat, Pray and Atmic Love

Finding and eating the right food can be a challenge for the newly arrived Sai Graduate. I mean newly arrived on this western side of the ocean. I hesitate to broach this subject because I personally have so many problems with food. With diabetics I cannot eat the mainstay of my diet, ice cream and as a veggie, meat chicken etc. is out. I did use to enjoy a tuna fish sandwich at lunch time. Now of course everyone is talking about fish oil being so good for the brain. The temptation is there.

I caved in to eggs. 30 years without an egg but now I eat them. At first I did feel that eating eggs was a hindrance to my meditation but my meditation is pretty much hindered to begin with. Just about everyone I know eats eggs and so when Dr. Tirupathi found that I was anemic I decided to do everything I could to remedy that and help my amnion system.

So now I eat fried egg sandwiches....once a week. I may try deviled eggs next as I used to really love them.

The idea is to push protein I think. My friend Carol reminded me that the soy products are really very good, you know like soy burgers and even soy steaks and stuff. I think they have soy pretend bacon and I could try that. My sister thinks those things are pretty repulsive. My sister eats her 'glog' every single day of her life and for the first three months here I did too. Glog is brown rice, some sort of black beans or faber beans, turnip greens and whatever. My taste buds get sick of eating the same old thing all the time although we have all heard our Precious Swami say....the best way to control your food intake is to bore the taste buds to death. I'm not sure that He had actually tasted my sister's glog when He said that. I mean maybe on the astral He did but not in a bowl right here in this house. Anyway its hard for me to get the stuff down now without a few changes like for instance you can add veggies and take out the beans. Course now we don't have a complete protein but at least we have lunch,

I find food to be a bloody bore now that God took away my ice cream. Its hard to see the point in eating at all. Life sucks. Oh dear, I'm getting too western.

I had problems in India too because chilies seem to eat away at my stomach. That meant I couldn't eat in the South Indian canteen or even at the North Indian canteen I use to pig out on pasta and had potatoes every day, some kind of potatoes. Not exactly the best diabetic diet. Potatoes, or pasta and two kinds of vegetable from the western canteen brought to me by sweet precious Nagamuni. Ah, those were the days. And sometimes I'd get Sathyapa to bring me five rupees worth of palack or spinach. Five rupees would be five bunches which was a huge amount. I would cut off the stems and soak them in grapefruit extract while I was at darsan, before putting them in the pressure cooker. They were so good and that amount would last two days. Do you know how much we have to pay here in the west for palack? I think it is closer to five dollars which means 200 rupees. Imagine that. Anyway you have to be so careful In India with palack because our precious Swami told us that many people grow spinach in the sewers. That's why I soaked it so long,

My sister took me to a new market the other day called, 'Save a lot' and you really do. I bought about ten packages of frozen vegetables so now I'm set for awhile. I can eat brown rice but I have to parboil it. So now I'll add the frozen veggies and maybe a few beans. NO TURNIP GREENS, My sister seems to like eating bitter things. I like ice cream.

When I had cancer on my back I was in the Super Specialty Hospital for one month. It was simply heaven and as a matter of fact, I think it was heaven. Maybe I'll write about that one of these days. In fact, I wrote a little story about my adventure there so I'll just include it now if I can remember.

Where was I? Oh yes, every day I ate rice in the hospital. I didn't realize that I was allergic to it but the gas in my tummy kept accumulating until when I left they simply tied me to the top of the rick shaw and I floated home. OK I'm exaggerating but it did take me DAYS TO GET RID OF THE GAS. SO NOW I PARBOIL IT AND....NO GAS.

By the way, I'm on a crusade now to try to get youall to add things to this blog. To be honest this blog is the only seva I can do here at this time, being 75 and all. It's a pretty easy way to do something for humanity...a little something....a very little something, and youall could get a free seva ride by sort of encouraging Sai devotees to advise one another about this very strange place we are trying to live in. I'm not at all sure that humanity was benefited by this blog but....I think we get graded on our intentions.