Learning Ayurvedic cooking was an innocent learning experience of cooking for meditation courses. Ayurvedic Cooking is a natural expression of a balanced nutritional vegetarian diet that supports a more blissful integrated mind body experience. My experience of learning vegetarian cooking started in the late 70s as a volunteer on staff for a non-profit education organization with a special interest in the cuisine of India. My experience of learning to cook came with an enthusiasm that naturally started with the Cuisine of India even before anyone knew anything about the health principles of Ayurveda or Cooking. Also, vegetarian cooking at that time was something new where no one knew much about it. For me it always came as a joyful hobby, never an intended interest as a profession nor something that needed any training from a culinary school.

I also did a lot of traveling and spent many years in India and learned many things about cooking from people all around the world. I seem to have a natural intuition about combining different ingredients in a way that create delicious tasting dishes. I also kept track of the many memorable creations over the years and have put those recipes into this cookbook. I never used recipes directly myself because I was always cooking for larger groups and had to improvise accordingly with what was available at the time and or in season. Recipes always needed some adjustments accordingly to replace ingredients that are not supportive to a more integrated mind body experience. I would always replace tamasic or rajasic ingredients with Sattvic ingredients that support a more balanced integrated experience. (Tamasic, Rajasic, and Sattvic or Vedic Sanskrit expressions for Dulling, Stimulating and Pure or Nourishing).

I was never good at planning things out in advanced anyway, so I would just let the purchasers figure out what was needed, and I would make whatever I could out of it. It made cooking simple for me and allot of fun. So, the actual creation of a dish was always something original, and heart felt from my own spontaneous creative imagination and intuition based on the situation and circumstances, using the ingredients that where available locally fresh or in season.

My experience and growing knowledge of Ayurveda and cooking has come with over 40 years of my involvement with meditation and the cooking traditions of India. Now I would like to share what I feel is a unique experience and knowledge of cooking that has evolved from the Vedic principles of healthy living, a timeless tradition of knowledge that comes from India that will complement anyone's knowledge or abilities as a cook whether they are professional or cooking for a family or few.

My talent for cooking came from my upbringing, because my mother was a good cook, even though I did not learn from her directly, her delicious cooking was the source of my culinary inspirations. With the cuisine of India, and its many tastes, and flavorful dishes, it is an ideal cuisine for a balanced nutritional vegetarian diet. The cuisine of India evolved out of a tradition of healthy living that incorporates a holistic understanding of our relationship with the universe. A few expressions from the Vedic tradition that express our relationship with the universe is “know thy Self”, “The nature of life is bliss”, “The universe evolves out of bliss is sustained in bliss and dissolves back into bliss”, “The purpose of creation is the expansion of happiness”. These Vedic expressions describes the nature of life and our natural desire to be in the bliss that is natural within ourselves and in whatever we are doing. The cuisine of India with all its colorful spices, herbs, and dishes is a perfect expression of that blissful nature of life that is a part of any traditional vegetarian cuisine. This cookbook makes that connection with a smorgasbord of vegetarian dishes from our favorite cuisines around the world.

Scott Peterson