Fine Dining at the Olive Branch Ashram
Sep 12th, 2007 by Siri Ved Kaur
When I moved into the Olive Branch Ashram, I had been to only a few weeks of yoga classes and to a "feast" at Guru Ram Das Ashram in West Hollywood. I had leaped in, without really knowing what I was headed for, knowing somehow this was right for me. To read the prelude to this story, see My First Morning Sadhana. …On an ending note, I can say "the food got better."
The Olive Branch Ashram
West Hollywood, CA - March 1, 1971
It’s my first day at the Olive Branch ashram. After an amazing morning sadhana I am looking forward to breakfast. We all gather at the big low table in the dining room (this is also my “bedroom”; I sleep on the floor in a corner) and Diana starts introducing me to everyone. There’s Dale Sklar, who looks a few years younger than me with a knot of beautiful thick brown hair on top of his head, Peggy and her husband Michael, Janet, Hari Arti, her little sister, Craig, and a few others. Except for Dale, they all seem so much older than me and I am a little intimidated; half of them are even married.
Janet has set the table with mismatched ceramic dishes and proudly brings out the breakfast she has made for us all. After a long bus ride last night, getting lost, getting to bed quite late, and rising early for sadhana… I am hoping for pancakes, or fruit salad, or granola…. I look at the plate and see several long yellow log-shaped things and have no idea what they are. Cookie dough? But, Janet announces, “Hey, I made some cornbread for everyone. It’s really good.” No one else seems to notice that this does not look like cornbread at all. Janet serves a plate for me and I look down and it is just a glob of what looks like corn mush maybe with some onions or peppers or something in it.
I take a bite and wonder if she realizes that she forgot to bake it. It has a sweet grittiness to it that I do not find pleasant.
As it turns out, Janet is experimenting with a raw food diet and I am eating raw corn bread.
What have I gotten myself into? What am I doing here? These people are crazy to eat like this! I keep taking bites until I am done. I join everyone else in telling Janet how good it is, asking how she made it (she mixed it up yesterday afternoon and let it soak all night and then formed it into “loaves” this morning).
Evidently, Janet is on kitchen duty all day, since it turns out she is making dinner too. But the dinner sounds like it will be pretty good. She said she is making carrot salad… and cornbread.
The evening comes and we sit down again at the table, and together chant “Saaaaat Nam” to bless the meal. Then, Janet serves up the meal she’s prepared. The carrot salad is at least 50 percent raw onions, and the rest carrots, some honey, raisins and lemon juice or something. I can hardly even eat it. Each bite and my eyes fill with tears and I feel like I am going to wretch. All around the table, people are saying, “Janet, this is soooo good! This is amazing! The onions are great!” and so on and so on. How can they eat this? Again, these people are all crazy to like this food. Or, actually, they have been doing yoga a lot longer than me and maybe I will start liking this kind of food too. I don’t know. I don’t know if I made a mistake moving into this ashram with people I don’t even know or know anything about at all. But I have no place else to go. Maybe the food will be better tomorrow!
Just when Dharam Singh and I arrived at the Tucson ashram in 1973, where we had traveled all the way from Swami Satchitananda’s Yogaville East ashram in Connecticut, it was announced that the ashram was beginning a 3-day water fast (this was before the Siri Singh Sahib put an end to water fasts). For the first two days, Dharam Singh and I were job hunting during the day, while trying to stick to the water fast and keeping up the intense yoga classes. On the third day, we were dragging into town with the want ads in hand when we passed our first ever Taco Bell. We looked at each other and nodded, then raced in the door and pooled our change for the best bean burrito imaginable!
Dear Siri Ved, Well, I have to comment again, since I was at those two memorable meals!! I do not remember the food, but I so fondly remember Janet. Our very own Janice Joplin is how I remember her, with her granny glasses, easy smooth relaxed demeanor and her guitar and lovley songs. I was pregnant while I lived at Olive Branch and I remember cooking potatoes, slicing them thin, dribbling with olive oil and baking them on a cookie sheet to make my healthful version of french fries because I was craving ketchup!!
Diana was eating only things green to try to loose weight. I remember we gave her a surprise Birthday Party which we put together while someone took her over to the Southwest Indian Museum (she loved all things American Indian) It may have been me who baked a carrot cake. The memories are flooding back. This is a sweet time now. Today I am going to Golden Bridge with my 5 month old grand daughter to to take a Mommy and Me yoga class Sat Nam! Wahe Guru. How grateful I am that Yogi Ji came to us and gave us so many gifts that continue to enrich our lives. Back then, in the late sixties, so many were running off to India, and we were so blessed that India came to us, in the form of a large happy man!!! He told me it was my birth right to be happy and I am!! Thank you for your blog. Keep up! Love, Peggy