Ginger is spicy too, but being a root, it is more contractive( see Expansive-Contractive Chart, this page) and helps hold the heat; hot peppers, on the other hand, are expansive and disperse it. The effects of ginger appear to be consistently warming if we are to go by the personal experience of those who try it. One of my students, for example, discovered recently that adding ginger and garlic generously to her soups and stews helped her overcome a feeling of inner chill that had plagued her for years. Contractive foods, as a rule, hold the heat and thereby are warming. Heat, however, expands; and we need to eat something hot when we’ re too contracted from the cold, so as to expand into balance. Expansive foods disperse the heat, and therefore are, as a rule, cooling. But when we get too expanded from the summer heat( plus expansive foods), then we may require something as drastic as a frozen dessert or a chilled drink to contract toward balance again. If we eat only moderately expansive foods in the summer( cool blanched vegetables, bean and grain salads), we won’ t need the chilled dessert. Sugar and salt are both warming and cooling. Their crystalline structure holds the temperature applied to them and even intensifies it: Hearty, hot soups are more so when properly salted; and ice cream is made at home with the help of ice and salt. Curiously enough, cold foods taste best when sweet or sour, hot foods when salty or spicy. COOKING TECHNIQUES
WARMING Boiling Sautéeing Frying Baking Dry roasting
It’ s a good idea to learn to use foods and cooking methods to regulate body temperature and to counterbalance the weather of the season. Notice that we have several warming-cooling elements to consider: the actual temperature of the food; the intrinsic subtle“ hot” or“ cold” energy ascribed to it by Oriental culture( see preceding pages); the temperature of the environment; and the law of the pendulum, which turns everything into its opposite, a phenomenon very clearly noticeable in the matter of temperatures. As the sensation of body temperature is highly subjective, you have to explore slowly and carefully your own reactions to what you eat. BUILDUP AND BREAKDOWN There is one very obvious set of opposites that occurs not in foods( although it is affected by them), but in our bodies: the buildup and breakdown activity of our metabolism. Both Chinese philosophy and Western physiological science note that well-being results from the harmonious interaction of the buildup and breakdown forces in the body. An excess of either one checks the excesses of the other; the body exists at the conjunction of the two. ‖ During the metabolic process, we use the foods we eat to create more cells, repairing and building up our bodies; this is called anabolism. Much nutritional advice revolves around how to get enough material to support this process. But, lest we turn into giant blimps, we must also have an effective breakdown activity, known as catabolism: This process will ensure that used cells, waste matter, and metabolic by-products can be split up, broken down, and eliminated from the body. Buildup uses or stores energy, and breakdown releases it. Thus, we grow and repair while we rest; and we break down and release energy during our daily activity and movement. The metabolic cycle is as follows: Breakdown needs rest as a balancer, rest promotes buildup, buildup demands activity as a balancer, and activity promotes breakdown. Proteins, carbohydrates, and fats are the major building materials of our metabolism; buildup foods, therefore, are meats, dairy, eggs, beans, and grains. Fruits and vegetables will support the elimination processes in our bodies and help in the breakdown of our cells and the expulsion of waste matter. Water plays a role in both buildup and breakdown. It must be retained in the body and circulated, and at the same time it must wash out waste matter and dead cells.