Nam Singh's cooking with Chinese Herbs

Nam Singh, is a teacher of mine, a fellow student, and a friend. He is a fantastic and creative cook.

A good cooking class should do the following:

1. Really get you familiar with the ingredients. In this case the qi qualities of the ingredients-- What they do, how they are nutritious, and where and when to find the best quality. But all cooking classes should teach you how to know the best ingredients, what they do and how to use them.

2. Teach cooking methods. Deep knowledge of the basic methods is essential for experimentation.

3. Teach preparation and presentation.

4. Teach you great classic recipes, and how to vary them according to ingredients, taste, and appetite.

Probably the most important thing about learning to cook is that it refines your appetite. Being able to really trust your personal appetite to tell you what and how to eat is the definition of health!

Nam Singh teaches through these organizations:

CCD Innovation, Pacific School of Herbal Medicine, The Academy of Healing Nutrition.

Since practicing internal martial arts and qigong will likely improve your digestion, you will have to learn to eat less. At first it won't make much difference but if you are over 35 and have been practicing for 10 years you will likely balloon up unless you learn to eat less.  The best way to do that is to really learn the qi qualities of the foods you are eating.

In this context, we could drop the term qi because any good traditional cooking class will teach you detailed information about the qi qualities of food.  In depth traditions of cooking all over the world are storehouses of knowledge about how to combine and bring out the best nutrients from local ingredients.  And since nearly everything is local now we have a lot of choices.