Welcome to Chi Friendly Eats! This is where you can find a collection of vegetarian/vegan recipes and products that are chi friendly. My name is Kelly – I love food, I love technology (I’m an engineer), and I love helping others. Thank you for visiting and for joining me on this journey!
What is chi friendly?
My Taiwanese grandmothers, whom I each called “Amma,” taught me at an early age the value of living a compassionate life through their Buddhist ways. They were both vegetarians that refrained from the 5 pungent spices – onions, garlic, chives, green onions, and leeks. Not eating meat was a practice of compassion, and avoidance of these 5 spices was to help maintain a peaceful mind.
Through silent observation, I saw that there was a sense of calm about my grandmothers and they both lived long and healthy lives – one passed at the age of 86 and the other at 100. They were practicing this way of life long before clean eating became a trend. I think they were onto something!
It wasn’t until I became a teenager and met my best friend that I started to gain a better understanding of what my grandmothers were teaching me through their actions. This was the first friend I encountered that ate like my Ammas! So one day I asked, “Why are you a vegetarian?” She simply answered that she didn’t want to kill… Her words were so basic, but they resonated deep within me, and I found myself looking at my food differently. All those years, I had no idea that there was killing involved in the food that ended up on my plate! Soon after, I talked to my parents and younger brother about not wanting to eat meat anymore, and to my surprise, they were supportive. In fact, they all joined in. I couldn’t believe that a traditional Taiwanese family that heavily relied on seafood and all kinds of meat was open to the idea of becoming vegetarian! Perhaps it was the influence of my two grandmothers that made it easy for us to change our ways, but now my family can’t even imagine turning back.
Being vegetarian is now more widely supported than the days we first started in the late 1980’s, but being chi friendly and avoiding the 5 pungent spices has been challenging at times. That’s the drive behind this blog – I want there to be a resource for those that wish to follow a chi friendly lifestyle. All the recipes on this blog are vegetarian without onions and garlic, but for those that aren’t restrictive with their diets, please feel free to add/adjust the flavoring to your liking. So by combining my 3 loves – food, technology, and helping others – my wish is that this blog serves to have something useful for everybody.
