The GAIA Health Blog

Some Healthy Food Fun: The Wanderlust Food Diaries (of a chronic daydreamer)

"Back to Nature"
(...with India Arie,   on St. Lucia Island, West Indies)

 

On the menu  Grilled Vegetarian Kabobs
Video How to make vegetarian Kabobs
Music By  India Arie

“Where we’ll go, I don’t know,  we should just let nature run the show”
--India Arie (from the song "Nature")

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I must admit, back in the late 1990's, when India Arie came on the scene with the new generation fresh, young, soulful singers, I call it "Neo-Soul", I really wasn’t into, or perhaps, wasn't ready for her music. However, because I thought it was the “hip” thing to have, I purchased all her CD’s and had her entire collection. The reason being, when company came over, and asked me to play some India Arie, I would grab my Bang & Olufsen remote with the digital LED screen and pipe her sounds through my $9,000 Bang & Olufsen stereo. Trying to act like I was "hip". I’m glad I got that off my chest.

 

So, for this journey in “The Wanderlust Food Diaries” of the chronic daydreamer, that part of me I embrace as a badge of honor, having relative purity of thought and consciousness in a world of progressive chaos and darkness, takes me down to the Caribbean, to the island of St. Lucia.

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I have done my research, and I know that India is a vegetarian. She has said that she likes Thai, and also curry. I try to be dynamic in my food arsenal, so to create a vegetarian dish for India is a challenge that I am easily up to.

I'm "Wanderlusting" about India and myself on the mopeds, shopping for the most fresh fruits and vegetables we can find in St. Lucia for this divine vegetarian creation. Similar to me, India said that she is very picky about what she puts into her body. So I suggest that we hang out in the kitchen and cook together. You know, rinsing and cutting vegetables and just chilling, listening to a little reggae, feeling that cool Caribbean breeze, just "vibing".

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Grilled Vegetarian Kabobs

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Button Mushrooms
Ear of organic corn (AVOID GMO CORN!!!!)
Organic Olive Oil
Pink Himalayan Salt
Half Lemon
 

Organic Colored Bell Peppers
Organic Scotch Bonnet Pepper
Organic Coarse Ground Black Petter
2 Clove Organic Garlic
Fresh Organic Tyme
 

Juice from Organic Lemon
1 leaf shadow beni (goes by other names)
fresh organic parsley

any other organic veggies of your choice

skewers soaked

....see video at above right for instructions

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I guess I’m a late bloomer, because currently, I find her sound so deep and personal to me, almost like I can hear a deeper essence in almost all of her tracks. But I'm in a great mental place these days, unlike a decade ago.

I will also admit that I always had a crush on India. She seems so unpretentious, in a business that promotes hype, vanity, and the like. Her soulful look takes my mind back to a Nefertiti, or a Queen of Sheba, as she is so unabashed and free in expressing, what I call, “Unforgivable Blackness”.

This fantasy food journey is inspired by a trio of India Arie songs. They are part of a playlist I play every morning as I am preparing my fruits and veggies for my morning Power Smoothie. Enjoy!!

These songs are immersed together into my almost daily morning mental journey down to the Caribbean. In her song “God is Real”, she gives an awesome description of swimming in the water down on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, enjoying God’s creation. I have had the same experience myself several times on Caribbean trips, so I can definitely feel that.

The second song, “India’s Song”, is very close to my own essence, in that it is a song that keeps me thinking about that day when I can pack up and leave this frigid weather and move to the Tropics. The third song, “Nature”, I find interesting because she is almost challenging a man to stop and smell the roses, and enjoy nature and creation.

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These vegetable kabobs are a celebration of nature's never ending bounty, and is best prepared if you take your time, the experience of hanging out with a cutie pie, finding fresh herbs, spices, and vegetables, prepping them, making that ultimate marinade.

Not to get too deep, but it seems, my vegetarian kabobs are essence the process of nature itself. And since those vegetables are going to hake a few hours to marinade, there is plenty of time for us to take a swim, to see those “fish shaped like trumpets” like she mentions in song "God Is Real", while enjoying God’s creation, which is unmistakably all around us, and is us.

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India would have to be well aware that I am well up the challenge that she throws out to men in the song "Nature".

Perhaps as with any woman, a skeptic at first, but once India has a taste of my vegetable kabobs......

.......I'm sure I will have made my case. ~dw~



"Sail Forth. Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all." --Walt Whitman




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