A perfect vegan soup for the winter

 

Quati ko rus (Vegan spicy soup of sprouted mixed beans)

 

 

Quati is a mix of sprouted beans, lentils, and peas of various kinds. Rus means soup in the context of Nepali cuisine. Jhol is another name for a spicy soup in Nepal, while a mildly spiced soup is called suruwa (broth).  Thus, jhol and rus are used interchangeably for a spicy soup in Nepali cultures. Quati soup signifies a special occasion, called “Janai Purnima” in Nepal. Janai Purnima is explained in detail in my book, Cultural Heritage of the Nepalese by Sasi Kala. 

 

Sprouted beans and legumes are no longer considered  as the “poor man’s meat” even in the Western world. In fact, recent research shows that the enzymes derived from sprouted beans and legumes are far superior to that of meat sources. Sprouts are also rich in vitamins and minerals. Thus, this colourful, healthy, and delicious vegan soup will be a perfect addition on your menu—especially for the winter months when we habitually look for a hearty soup. Since sprouting requires some efforts on your part, I suggest you sprouting more than you require for one meal.

 

Colourful sprouts are hard to find in many cities, but you can sprout your own at home.

To grow sprouts, gather varieties of beans, lentils, and peas. Soak them overnight in a container (any pot or bottles will do). Drain the water, rinse the beans, and shift them in another pot/container with a lid. Set the container in a warm place during the winter months (sunny window-ledge or a mildly warmed up oven) for a day. Sprouts are ready when they grow up to ¼ to ½ inch long. Sprouts longer than that height will lose some of the nutrients in them. If your sprouts aren’t ready by then, rinse the sprout again, strain, and let them grow for one more night. If you need more help in sprouting at home, please refer to A Culinary Journey to Nepal by Sasi Kala and read under the sub-section “Selective Preservatives and Probiotic Pickles”. 

 

 

Ingredients

 

2 cups mixed dry beans (makes about 5 cups sprouts)

1 medium potato (about a cup), peeled and cubed 

4-5 T. mustard or olive oil

2-3 dry cayenne peppers (1-2 for milder soup), broken into pieces for heat if desired

½ tsp freshly ground black pepper 

2-inch fresh ginger root, crushed

3-4 medium cloves of fresh garlic, crushed

½ tsp turmeric for color 

¼ tsp powdered Szechuan pepper (optional)

½ tsp garam masala powder 

½ tsp cumin and coriander powder, each

A pinch of fenugreek and jwano seeds, each 

A small pinch of asafoetida powder or ½ tsp baking soda (optional)

7-8 cups water for soup

11/2 -2 T. salt, or to your taste

1 large plum tomato diced (optional)

A handful of freshly chopped coriander leaves (optional)

 

Preparation

 

Step 1.           Rinse the sprouts thoroughly and drain the water. Set aside. Wash all the vegetables and cut them according to the specifications. Set aside.

 

Step 2.           Heat the oil in a deep saucepan and brown the seeds first, then add the chilli pieces, turmeric, and asafoetida. If you’re using baking soda, hold on to it until the next step. Immediately add the sprouts and potato.  Stirring often, cook for five minutes. Add the spices now and stir again. Cook until the water dries out completely, while constantly stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan. This is a very important step to get the authentic sharp taste in your quati!

 

Step 3.           Add the water, salt, and baking soda now—if you chose this option instead of asafoetida. Stir and let the bubbles of baking soda settle before covering the pot with a tight lid. Lower the heat and let the soup simmer on low heat for 15-17 minutes in a regular pot. If you are using a pressure cooker, let is whistle for 3-5 times. If you use a pressure cooker don’t open the lid until the steam is completely out. This is very important for your safety!

 

Add the freshly chopped tomato and coriander if you’re using them once the steam is out. Stir and let the flavour develop for five minutes before serving with dinner rolls, boiled rice, or roti (pita bread). A bowl of steamy quati ko rus makes an excellent appetizer or a snack for a cold or rainy day. This soup stays good inside a refrigerator for a couple of days. It also freezes well and comes in handy to use in a hurry. 

 

Vegetarianism--is it a trend or a healthy choice?

Vegetarian foods are getting momentum these days for reasons of health or compassion to animal. Whichever the case may be, I think it is a fabulous idea to live a meat-free life!

Nobody needs to depend on meat to get the protein our body needs in this age of "plentiful". There are plenty of natural foods in most all parts of the world to substitute what we get from meat. Nobody need to sacrifice on the taste, either. We just need to be patient and find the ingredients to get the taste we love.

 

Living on meat was okay when there wasn't much growing in the 'hunter-gather' era. Eating meat is okay even now when somebody is forced to eat meat for sustaining their life.

Raising animals/birds/fish for food is barbaric and cruel way to make a living. I felt like throwing up in a conversation with one of my colleague--when she brought up a few  money-making ideas some people in back home are exploring these days.  She told me that people have starting fish-farms, sheep-raising, etc. Then she elaborated how fast the fish grow and fill the pond. The fish are one on top of the other because there is no space for them to swim/live!

Similarly she told me how the sheep-farmers making money from the sheep-wool and meat... I just couldn't tolerate her ideas of making money from such cruel ways.

Silence means approval in many cultures

I’m a business graduate. I had learned in my strategy-course that there is a great advantage in being the “First Mover”. Social system also works similarly. People are praised for their new/innovative ideas that have helped improve the society’s overall welfare. But many great people have also been punished—and even killed—for their new bold ideas, even though the society at large has benefitted from such ideas.

 

We find many example of such great ideas. Socrates and Galileo were two of the wise men whose ideas have revolutionized the world but not without paying the hefty price with their own lives. 

 

For instance, Socrates was the first man to recognize the limitation of human knowledge and believed that people do wrong deed out of their own ignorance. He introduced a new deity—people’s own inner voice or reasoning. Socrates was poisoned to death for failing to consider the gods that others were following. 

 

Galileo’s discovery of the “sun doesn’t revolve the earth, rather the earth revolves around the sun in 1610” wasn’t taken positively by the Catholic churches. The churches were teaching their followers just the opposite. They had said: “The earth is the center of the universe and the universe was created by their god”. Galileo’s discovery proved what the churches were teaching was wrong. Accepting Galilei’s discovery also meant losing their livelihood, since the churches ran from the donations their followers made. Thus, the furious churches asked Galileo to abstain from teaching or defending such heliocentric ideas publicly.

 

Punishments like the ones above have scared many people from sharing their  ingenious ideas/inventions with the public. I can’t compare my difficulties of sharing my own findings about the gods and religions. I am also having difficulties in selling my “universal cultural” ideas with the public. I find most people are like a sheep. They rather sooed (steered) by a rudder, than build/find their own path. These people have no idea what moral and morality mean. This frustrates me immensely sometimes!

 

The people I’m dealing with know so little. They’ve read so little or not at all the worldly stuff. These people know only their culture. Their God. Their traditions. Arguing with them that there are other gods and other cultures and other traditions is like arguing with an arrogant teenager.

Small mind and Bigger mind

 

People’s needs seem to move up when they expand their mind because as they start thinking about others around them, their needs move up to the higher level (charity, spirituality), and they start thinking about others (people/environment). When people care for others passionately, two things happen: Their mind’s horizon expands, and they forget to be selfish!

 

This is why Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs make sense. We always find the needs of the selfish self-centred people in the bottom of Maslow ’s hierarchy. They need to be praised, and they’re always looking for love and affection. They are emotionally insecured and they’re often running after money. 

Who were Gandhi and Mother Teresa?

Gandhi and Mother Teresa were the two revered public figures. Gandhi is known as the “Father of the nation” for India and Mother Teresa was admired as the most charitable ‘saintly’ figure of the 20^th century. But were they really so? Here are a few truths most people rather not know because these truths contradict with their own belief criteria that they’re so comfortable with.
 
People’s belief system works so naturally that they’re not even aware of it (their habitual acts). If someone ask why they’re doing so, they’ve no answer. Self-examination is rare thing among the people who are compliance with their traditions/religion.
 
Now, who was Gandhi? Gandhi was a male chauvinist, raciest, an astute politician and a manipulator. He forced many innocent fellow citizen to be faced the brutal beating or even killing spree at the hands of the British ruler, while he was securely snugged inside of the prison. Gandhi was also class-promoter who wrote white people are "the predominating race” and the black people "are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals”. (South Africa, 1903). He slept in between teenage girls to test his “will-power.” This is the man who developed the theory of Satyagraha! 
 
Similarly, Mother Teresa said: "There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering."  (Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa). There are also many evidences of her taking bribes and money laundering—involving large sum of money!

Think big; think change

 

Some people are born to hurt others—by their words or deeds. Others are born to serve others and take very little for themselves. Some others are not capable of knowing what is right and what is wrong, and there are yet another type of people who may know what is right and /or what is wrong, but they don’t have courage to express their feelings. They don't realise:

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.—Steve jobs

Who is the God and why there are so many?

           Based on what we know, it seems, God is who we consider is worthy of holding such title! Choosing or naming a God acceptable to everyone prove not only difficult but impossible for numerous reasons. This explains why there are so many gods and goddesses, and why the few saints/gurus/monks/rabbis/priests or whoever devoted their life on finding the truth about God left us with their vague messages. They want us to figure it out ourselves who the God was/is. Since the concepts of god and religion are tightly entwined, explaining those ideas were not easy for them, and they did not want to misguide us or take this matter so lightly.

                The problems associated with answering ‘who is the god’ are personal—they did not have to be, but they are for now. For instance, many individuals are emotionally attached with their God that they take a great offence even when someone talks objectively about their Figurehead. These people do not understand other people outside of their faith who do not share the same experience (or the feelings) as they do with their deity. For example, millions of Hindus worship the ‘elephant-head’ deity, Ganesha, with a hope that Ganesha would make them rich and prosperous—as they grew up hearing this deity’s reputation of granting those wishes. It’s natural for these people to worship Ganesha and transfer such belief to their next generation as a family tradition.  This tradition is difficult for people outside of this culture to understand. This is why when a few of my non-Hindu friends made fun of some of the Hindu gods and goddesses, I understood perfectly.

Can a prison be a home for someone?

Something we read/hear/experience sticks in our mind forever. The "Shawshank Redemption" movie is one of these memory that I can't forget even after so many years.  

The plots in this movie are great and I like most everyone playing major role in it. Beside the two main characters (Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins), there is a third character--a long-term prisoner--who returns to prison with his own will even after completing his sentence and was free to go wherever he wished. 

I had almost forgotten his reasons to return to prison until three days ago. My experience of what happened three days ago helped me understand the reason. I had never thought this way before, but now that I've read a quite a bit and thought about it a bit,  it is true that  a prison can be a safer home for someone who has spent most of his/her life inside of it.

Shankara's explanation of the Brahman.

 

Who is the Brahman?

The fool thinks, "I am the body"; the intelligent man thinks, "I am an individual soul united with the body." But the wise man, in the greatness of his knowledge and spiritual discrimination, sees the Self as the only reality and thinks, "I am Brahman." 

Source:

https://www.onelittleangel.com/wisdom/quotes/saint.asp?mc=60

 

If god exists, evil is not comprehensible

I just finished reading Simone de Beauvoir's short novel Inseparable. Knowing Simone, I expected the major characters in this novel (the inseparable girls) would be rebellious in nature and utterly courageous. However, I hadn’t imagined them to be frighteningly bold and naively dutiful -daughters (one of them) struggling to break free from the conventional Catholic traditions of their time.  One of them more dutiful than the other, obviously, tragically sacrifices her life after tormenting herself between her love and her duty to her family. Living a life of a woman was, and still is, not easy in many developing countries, but I didn’t think having ‘temptation’ even after being engaged with your partner was considered as sin in the 1950s in Europe.

The book mirrors religious hypocrisy in France during Beauvoir’s formative years. Her expression of “If god exists, evil is not comprehensible,” is totally opposite of the wildly held belief that “We’re only the instruments of God” and “Its’ prideful to want to understand everything”.

Mother can be overwhelmed with love

We've tall and very handsome son. He is an artist and we're proud of him. He is making his own living and don't want to do anything else. He is a singer, song-writer, plays several instruments and manages his own band. This can be seen as a dedicated artist--no reason to worry about him, right? 

 

Well, we're worried about him sometimes because most artists work hard, but earn very little income. He was born a day before the Mother’s Day in May. Thus, everyone used to tell me that “He is my Mother’s Day gift”. But he was more than any gift a mother could ask. He was a happy child, easy on his approach to everything. He mimicked his elder sisters and created his own games if nobody was around. He was a perfect child anyone could imagine!

 

While growing up, he did everything we wanted him to do: He was in sports, in music, was in a math competition, and a debater. He helped us in shoveling snow in the winter and mowing lawn in the summer. He was respectful, honourable and never talked back at us. Our girls used to tell me “Mom has a soft spot for him” but who wouldn’t have for such a child?

 

The matter is, we both (my husband and I) know the value of Freethinking, and we're happy that our children are using their own mind to choose the career of their choice--not the career path we wanted for them to follow. Yet, I felt a sharp pain when I read our son explaining his experiences of  being a young brown artist struggling to survive amongst his white counterparts, and at the same time feeling abandoned by his parents when he dropped off from McGill a quite a few years back. The interview was a great exposure of his talent and look, yet I felt bad knowing his not-so-happy past! 

 

True, we didn't care about our young son as much as he needed in his earlier art career, but we were hurt and felt betrayed when he quitted one of the most prestigious colleges we had sent him to. However, he was only 17 years old, and my mind couldn't agree even with all this justifications. He was too young to leave home unattended and free.

 

To be fair, I never abandoned him. I cried many nights to sleep, and I’m sure my husband felt the same. We’re both too disappointed, but I begged with my husband to visit him. Thus, when he said his parents abandoned him--not his father abandoned him, it was hurtful. 

 

My husband is a 'successful' man and so am I. We've 'achieved' much more than many of our counterparts. But we didn't walk on the paths our parents showed us. We used our own mind and created our own successes. We're freethinkers!

 

We're advocating others to use their own head--instead of following the conventional thinking--believing in gods and heaven and hell stories. 

 

Our son is doing the respectful thing: He is pursuing his interest (singer, son-writer, and band manager), while working to support him financially.  Nothing wrong here!

 

So, why are we creating this double standard? I'm asking myself this question again and again.

Mother's Day Messages

Dear Mothers:

Wherever you’re, please take charge of your own happiness. Don’t wait until it is too late to enjoy your Coming-of-Age (old age). Don’t spend all your resources on your children only to depend on their mercy later on.

I hope your family made you feel loved and proud today. 

Please take care of yourself!

          

There’s no heaven or hell

 

 

Changing the widely held beliefs about religions and gods is not easy. But I think taking the courage to convince people that there is no heaven or hell is worth all the trouble. I wish I was this sure before my mother died—she often talked about her place in heaven and worried.

I think “The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so” (Robert Ingersoll). 

Mother's Day

2021