I have discovered electricity! Have you had giant potato? How about Indian gooseberry? Long pepper? Bamboo manna? Spreading hogweed? Indian purple trumpet? One bite of Chyawanprash has all these and more.

I buy this tub of black sludge at Bombay Grocery, just before rifling through the clearance rack at Blue Ridge Mountain Sports. It’s got more stimulating spices in it than you’ve ever put in your mouth at once. Based on that description, you’d think it would be hard to choke down and that no one would ever do it twice. But, the stuff is actually very sweet. The combination is like cold fusion. It will make your every taste bud pop and then it will smolder like a hot coal in your belly.

From Wikipedia:

Chyawanaprash, is an ancient Ayurvedic herbal preparation, widely used in India, as a rejuvenative, energizer and immunity booster. It is often called “the elixir of life” due to its alleged nutritional properties.Chyawanprash is a brown-colored, sticky paste called an avaleha in Sanskrit, and has the consistency of jam, with a sweet, sour and mildly pungent taste.

There are a multitude of alleged health benefits to Chyawanprash and I believe them all. The family who runs Bombay Grocery (home to Richmond’s best samosas) swears to me that a table spoon every day will change my energy level and overall wellness within a week. There’s also a study that says it reduces cholesterol (something my doc told me I need to fix, even though I’m a vegetarian).

This sticky paste is the stuff double dog dares are made of, so consider the gauntlet thrown down. (anyone who dares is the winner, in my book). Ya see, these are the types of things you wind up with in your cupboard when you shop like I do, always bringing home one bizarre item that peaked my curiosity. Only this time, the adventure has a happy ending… or at least an ayurvedic bliss.

Namaste?

We all know finicky eaters. Maybe you are one. Can you explain why? Wait, I don’t wanna know. I just wanna throw “exotic food” at you. Okay, this isn’t ALL about pointing fingers (although my pet peeve is fueling this post, for sure). Some would argue that food-snobs have the worst kind of food-tude. Personally, I get bent out of shape when people won’t try new things, but then I go and turn my nose up at every plastic tub of cole slaw and potato salad I see at the potluck (pot-yuck!).

I share an office with someone who won’t eat the following things and gives the following reasons:

• soup (“no hot liquids”, “weird to not chew your food”)
• avocados (“taste like lotion”)
• anything Vietnamese (“that summer roll thing looked like a condom stuffed with idunno what”)
• seafood (“smells funny” some fillet of fish is okay, but no crustaceans: “weird texture”)
• lamb or rabbit (“tastes bad” and/or “cute”)
• Indian food (“went to an Indian festival once and tried it and didn’t like the spices”)
• meat off the bone (“that’s just nasty”)
• eggplant (“all because my parents always said ‘eww’ about that vegetable”  …  until she had eggplant parm pizza from Arianna’s… )
• fruit in a dessert (“there should be nothing with nutritional value in a dessert”)
• anything spicy (“I don’t think eating should be painful”)
• Cafe Rustica (“It wasn’t normal enough, so I left.” “I don’t really like a bunch of weird shit together”)
• blue cheese (“It’s moldy, but I finally tried it when I was 22 years old” still thumbs down)
• steak (“it’s usually grizzly and fatty”… “only fillet Mignon”… “I tend to like processed meats more, because then I don’t have to see all the nastiness in it.”)
• nuts in a hot food dish (“no cashew chicken, pad thai, yech” “not a big fan of nuts in the first place”)

What do you say? Can you relate? Can you explain how people get this way? I think my coworker has been a good sport about this and provided some useful insight (for psycho-analysis!). In fact, she often tries the kitchen creations I bring in (not without crinkling her nose). However, one day I brought some healthy vegan muffins in and her throat swelled closed after two bites. Well, a few hours at Patient First later (steroid shots), she was more weary of foreign foods than ever before.* Oh, well. Two steps forward, one step back…

*She went to the allergist and it turns out that she’s “class 4″ allergic to flax seeds – ground flax seeds, that is. The oil in the whole ones are sealed up in the shell and they “pass right through”. So, now she’s gonna be doubly afraid of hippy-dippy foods, since flax is in everything these days. Darned, Omega-3s.