Amazing cooling-the-heart-fire salad for the medicinal cooking challenge!

This is my entry for the Medicinal Gourmet Cooking Collective Challenge initiated by eco-alex of the eco-train.
In this first week we are cooking for the Fire element, the heart.

Here's what I'm making I know it doesn't look very red like Alex requested for the fire element of the heart, but if you read on you'll know why...:

I am very interested in cooking for medicinal purposes as I see food as medicine.

It is how Rudolf Steiner also referred to it. If I remember correctly his vision on food was that it can rebalance the imbalances caused by your day to day events and is meant for that. A simple example of that would be that when we are really hot because of being in the sun a lot, we need to eat or drink something cooling like watermelon juice, which takes heat out of the body because it is considered a cold food in nature, in Chinese medicine. Or if we have a lot of stress and all the energy has rissen to our head because we are overthinking things, we then benefit from something grounding like beetroot.

Anastasia's advise in 'The ringing ceder' book series is to fully trust on instinct when trying to find out what would be beneficial for our health to eat at each moment.

She suggests to have a good look at all that is available for you in your fridge and cupboard for example and to really feel in to what you are drawn to most. We have to learn to really listen to our bodies signals that are motivated by wanting us to be healthy and not just let the habits of our taste pallet guide us there. Taste is also really important though. I do believe it helps digestion and the happiness of the heart when we eat foods that are tasty and have been prepared with a lot of love.

Rather then just going on instinct I feel it's beneficial to also have some knowledge on what effects certain foods have on us, so I am happy to be investigating which foods are beneficial to the heart.

This first week @eco-alex has chosen to write about what is good for the fire ellement of the heart. This is wonderful and I am sure many people actually need increasing of their heart fire, but I think for me, cooling of the heart fire would be more appropriate right now.

According to Chinese medicine summer is ruled by the fire element.

It is summer time in Holland right now and that means lots of heat from the sun, or at least this summer. My heat rises up to my head quite quickly which is a symptom of too much fire altogether.

SUMMER HEAT Heat in the body hastens metabolism, dilates blood vessels, increases circulation moving upward and outward. Excess heat can cause inflamlation, swelling, rapid pulse , thirst, dryness, constipation, difficult urination , agitation, high blood pressure, skin eruptions, nosebleeds, heat exhaustion. A sign of excess heat in the body is a red face or red eyes, a bright red tongue with either no coat or a yellow coat. In Summer some people will experience heart fire manifesting as restless dreaming and insomnia which according to Chinese medicine is an imbalance between the kidney and heart or the fire and water elements. This can be confirmed by a red tip on the tongue.
( http://www.kansha.com.au/Images/Summer%20LR.pdf)

So, having read I'm chosing to focus on cooling the heart-fire.

To cool the heart fire we need foods that are cold in nature.

That means that they take heat from the body instead of give off heat to the body. This has nothing to do with wether you heated the food or not. It is just the nature of the food that either takes away or adds heat to the body.
Cooking foods can have an effect on the nature of the food. Frying foods in general adds heat quality to them. Steaming however tends to add to the cooling effect.

Bitter foods foods have a yin quality to them according to Chinese medicine, which is also cooling, descending and contracting.

bitter foods remove excessive heat from the liver, lowers blood pressure and eases inflammation. Bitter foods also removes damp mucus from the heart arteries. Altogether good for the heart.

I went in to my garden and was happily surprised to find so many foods that are cooling or have a positive effect on the heart:

Letuce, a cooling food. And Nasturtia antibacterial and high in vitamine c (I added that for colour balance 😉):

cucumber, a food cold in nature:

Not yet 😉 but in a little while I can use one from the garden instead of from the fridge.

celery, a bitter food:

mint, a food cold in nature:

dandelion, a bitter food:

apple, a cooling food:

wild chamomile, a bitter food:

borage, a food that is said to gladden the heart, I found it growing upon a little hill, not sure where it came from:

It makes me so happy and proud to be able to get all this from the garden! It's more then I thought.

Things I got from the fridge and cupboard for my salad:
cucumber, a cooling food
avocado, a cooling food
and sunflower seeds: promote cardio vascular health.

For the dressing I used:

olive oil
apple cider vinegar
mustard
honey
pepper and salt

It was deliciously fresh and reviving.
I had a haring with onions on the side to give me some protein.

For desert I had a little bit of coconut ice cream ( based on coconut curd and agave syrup) with raspberries and local honey, both the raspberry and the coconut are also cooling foods.

Brrr, I feel a little cold right now...😆

I hope you felt a bit inspired by this post to look at foods in a medicinal way and to search your garden if you can find anything edible that can help you medicinally . There's more then you think. I lot of what I found and used came up in my garden spontaneously, like the wild chamomile, the dandelion and the borage.

If you liked it please upvote and consider to follow if you want more.

Lots of appetite for you,

Undrach-Clara @wombloom

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See you!