Food is energy. We might think that vegetables are vegetables, but this isn’t the case. Each vegetable in a dish attracts certain aspects from the other vegetables. This is similar to how it is when you meet someone. You have a certain kind of conversation, a certain feeling between you. Then if you meet someone else, you have a different feeling, a different exchange, a different conversation. If two people are talking and a third person comes, the dynamics of the group totally changes. If a fourth person comes, the dynamic shifts again. If you leave that group and go and talk to another group, there is a different dynamic. Each one is drawing something out. Everyone knows that we act a certain way with some people and different with others.

We like to be with certain people rather than with others. Some people bring out things we don’t like too much. Others bring out things that we really like. We are more upward with those people, more happy or outgoing or creative. Others seem to block our energy.

With vegetables it is the same. When you make a combination of vegetables, each one draws out from the other and you end up with something unique, different from either of the original ones. When you introduce a third vegetable, it is again different. If you put onions and carrots and cabbages together you have a different dynamic. Onions, carrots and broccoli is yet a different one. Put lotus root in there and you have a totally different dynamic.

Each combination has a different effect. By each combination you make, you actually change the nutrition that you get. When we select our foods, we have to select according to the energy. First, from the quality of food, then, depending on what type of effects we want from the food. But after that, the dynamics that come into play from the combinations make endless possibilities and that is a great deal of where our uniqueness comes from.