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We booked a lunch date with Enso Kitchen on Sunday. The place wasn’t very hard to find but probably a poster or some more prominent signage at the entrance would be better. It would not only create publicity but might bring in more bookings? (They only do pre-orders.) The restaurant is a typical Japanese one. It isn’t Enso Kitchen’s but they use it on Sundays to serve Shojin Ryori lunches and dinners.
Right, let’s talk about food. And before we start, my Japanese friend taught me to say… Itadakimasu! (I gratefully receive!) First, we were served with a refreshing cup of hot green tea. Next is a small appetiser tofu made from ground sesame, soy beans and mineral water. On top of it was a small pinch of wasabi and radish mixed together. The tofu was placed on soya sauce on the small plate. Sorry, but it looked too tempting that we forgot to snap a picture of it before tucking in. Oh, and it’s supposedly good for digestion. And the chef actually ground the sesame and soy personally. (The chef recommended taking some sips of miso to warm the stomach before tucking in.)
Following is a full course ‘platter’ with…
1. Sweet sushi rice with seaweed, carrots, beancurd, sweet beans
2. Gingkos, lotus roots, carrots, lily bulbs, water chestnuts and burdock
3. Radish with sour plum sauce
4. Miso soup with winter melon cubes and white sesame
5. Salty fried beancurd filled with tofu and bits of water chestnuts, decorated with a slice of carrot and two stalks of green vegetables. (It’s very delicious.)
6. Turnip cut halfway with red string, which is used with chopsticks to slice it into quarters
7. Cold dessert with lychees, red dates and rock sugar.
And it cost S$45 for each person with 10% GST and service charge. So, the lunch cost us $99. :bandit:
The chef of Enso Kitchen told us he changes menu every month. Next change will be on the 8th of March. He creates three different sets for each season. Yes, Shojin Ryori by Enso Kitchen, which is really vegan fare, serves seasonal vegetables (flown in from Japan), which are believed to be more nutritious in the corresponding season. Which means there are 12 different sets of Shojin Ryori for each year! What we featured here is probably the second winter set meal. It’s light yet filling. It’s definitely different from any Chinese vegetarian food out there. I feel healthy just by looking at it!
And after a hearty meal… Gochisosama (deshita)! (Thank you for the meal!) 😀
Info on how to book: http://www.ensokitchen.com/event.htm
hi, do your 2 vege friends have health probs to begin with, since the supplement improves their health?
I share most of crystalbymail’s concerns, especially the part about human mindset and nature.
I can also understand the part about the ‘invisible’ gap in advocating vegetarianism and spreading dharma.
A better way, would perhaps be to show those who you interact with on a daily or constant basis, how one can start and maintain a healthy vegetarian lifestyle. When your colleagues or friends start to get interested, you can patiently explain what it is about and address individual concerns.
Word of mouth is definitely more effective than flyers (people can reject taking them) and websites (the content may not be detailed or interesting enough to some), in my personal opinion. There is trust involved in such personal testimonies. Of course, this is not to say flyers and websites should not be used. We just need to understand who our target audience is and what are the kinds of people that are approaching us. If we address both their common and unique concerns patiently and skilfully, they will feel more like trying it out on their own. The key is to be willing to allocate time to guide such friends, colleague and family members on a long-term basis, and also taking care not to come across as being imposing, impatient or indifferent.
Personally, I think vegetarianism can be promoted without emphasising too much on animals’ welfare and religious ideals or concepts. Let’s advocate it mainly from the point of ‘vegetarian can be both pleasurable to eat, convenient and affordable to cook on your own or purchase from food vendors, and leads to better and more long-term health benefits compared to a lifestyle which relies on heavy meat consumption’.
hi esse,
Shi’an asked me to share my experience on taking usana essentials. i have been a vegetarian and regular blood donor for 12 years. i don’t have any illness. just that i felt less energetic as years went by. when i was 18 years old serving my national service, i could do 18 chin ups. when i was 33 years old, i could only do 10 chin ups despite training hard for it. i thought i needed more protein to build muscle. when i ate more tofu and bean, i had pain at the heel because of higher purine from protein. the first month i took essential, i felt no difference at all. after 3 months taking essentials, i was gradually able to improve my chin ups. at the current age of 34, i can do 25 chin ups, which surpass the max i did when i was 18. reflecting on this experience, i realised my personal degeneration and other degenerative disease such as cancer, stroke, arthritis so widely common these days are largely due to lack of minerals. the lack of minerals applied to both vegetarians and non vegetarians.
“In 1948 you could buy spinach that had 158 milligrams of iron per hundred grams. But by 1965, the maximum iron they could find had dropped to 27 milligrams. In 1973, it was averaging 2.2 milligrams. That’s down from a hundred and fifty. That means today you’d have to eat 75 bowls of spinach to get the same amount of iron that one bowl might have given you back in ’48. ”
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=335945
in the past, many people can die without illness 善终. now there are hardly any. on one hand, we have higher levels of free radicals from pesticides, air pollution. on the other hand, we have lower levels of antioxidants from fruits and vegetables to neutralise the free radicals. that’s why there is need to supplement to bridge the gap between what we are getting from food and what we need. this applies to vegetarians and non vegetarians. non vegetarians are even more nutrient deficient than vegetarians.
Hi penpal and all,
I used to have very frequent sore throat/ flu/ fever too. And I had quite bad gastric problems.
When I first switched to a vegetarian diet, I still had quite frequent fevers and colds, I was quite baffled initially, but after a while I realized that it was just my body doing detoxification. Like what zzz said, during the initial stages of diet change, we’ll experience many cleansing reactions.
Now I seldom get colds like I used to. I’ve not had sore throats for a long time too. And when I do get colds, I don’t go to the doctor’s now like I used to. Sickness is the external manifestation of our internal built up toxins, my body is trying to heal itself by ridding itself of the tons of toxins, and when the toxins are coming out, naturally I’ll experience discomfort. By taking more medication I’m only suppressing the symptoms, I would be doing it a great dis-service. In Chinese we say that 是è¯ä¸‰åˆ†æ¯’, all medicine is poison to a certain extent. This saying referred to traditional medicine, so one can imagine how toxic modern medicine typically is. I do a juice fast when I’m sick, that is, I only drink fresh juices (no canned or bottled juice). When we’re sick we usually don’t have much appetite, that’s our intelligent body telling us to stop feeding it so that it can divert its energy to healing itself. By consuming food, our body is forced to use its energy to digest the food, that means we’re depriving our body of the chance to detox. And, I simply rest. I used to still go to school/ work even if I was sick, that was very foolish, when the body is sick, all it wants is rest. Be kind to it. That is, just sleep lots, and drink lots of fresh juices or just plain water. Juices are good coz at such times they give the body the minerals it needs without burdening the digestive system, they are absorbed in minutes.
I wouldn’t say my gastric problems are totally gone, but it’s been a long time since I had a gastric pain attack, which could be really so painful. Now it’s just occasional feeling of bloatedness, but no pain. I used to be unable to skip any meal, because my gastric attack would come, and I had to eat REALLY a lot for breakfast. Now slowly I don’t feel that I need so much food anymore. Just a glass of juice and some fruit would last me for the whole morning till lunch at one plus, after constant talking as a teacher. (Talking consumes a lot of energy! ;-( )
After a long fast last December, now I hardly get headaches too. Headaches used to be weekly affairs for me, and they were often severe, and could last for days.
And my periods which had never been regular have become much more regular now. No more period pains either.
The most important thing is to stick to a healthy diet, go for whole grains (organic, coz you’ll be taking in lots of pesticides if you take non-organic whole grains) and salads, try to give junk food a miss, I hardly touch the usual snacks that people eat, many vegetarians stuff lots of junk food like crackers, chips and sweets, it’s like as long as it’s vegetarian it’s ok to eat them. I don’t take soft drinks either. I avoid deep fried stuff and mock stuff too. I think that as vegetarians, it’s a responsibility to eat healthily and wisely. If vegetarians fall sick, people make a big hoo haa of it and say that vegetarianism is bad.
I didn’t intend it to write such a long comment, sorry :p
Another note about going to the doctor’s and fasting though. If you’ve not done much research about these and not confident about fasting, please do go to the doctor’s and don’t attempt fasting. I’m not a doctor nor am I trying to play a doctor’s role. I just hope that my personal experience is of benefit to others. You can try to eat less and have occasional meals that consist of only salads or fruit. Go slowly. Do fasting only after learning more about holistic methods and gaining enough confidence. Because fasting would speed up the detox process, when you’ve not enough confidence, you won’t go far coz you’d start doubting this method the minute all the symptoms surface, you might end up doing yourself more harm. Not taking medication also means that your symptoms might stay longer, as detox can be a really long and difficult process.
Oh I’ve just got to add another one. Running used to be so tough for me, I had the longest legs in class but was the slowest, and I always felt kind of like I was going to drop dead anytime. But after my diet change, now I can run and talk at the same time, it’s no longer such a tough chore. Though I still am very slow since I don’t train up. Vegetarians have more energy.
All the best! 🙂
Thank you Jilexin, JooHeng & Yega,
for your inspiring & detailed sharing! 😆
Amituofo
A good guide to fasting/detox could be to attend the detox prgramme by Kg Senang – http://www.kg-senang.org.sg/ where they will impart knowledge on healthy eating, etc.
Thank you so much, crystalbymail & Yega for your advice.
I will read up more on my part and trial and error on what suits me.
I’m not sure about consulting a GP about a vegetarian diet though. I have come across some doctors who are not very encouraging when i told them i do not take meat.
May all vegetarians and those who are aspiring to become vegetarian to be healthy (and look healthy) and in turn, inspire others around us to consider adopting a vegetarian lifestyle….a kinder alternative to ourselves, other beings and our planet.
I’m afraid the vast majority of doctors are still against vegetarianism. Kampung Senang is a good start if you want to try detox as suggested by ilovevege, I did my first juice fast with them. James and Joyce, the founders, are always ready to share tips and give advice, they have classes on healthy cooking/ eating/ living too. I’ve some books that I can lend you too if you’re interested.
How could pay $50 for a meal? That’s just sad. Someone is ripping you off x 20!!!
Haha.. could be because most of the ingredients are air-flown from Japan and it’s more than a meal, it’s an art. :DD