Green Tara Rice Soup

After ordering to-go food from your fave ethnic restaurant you may have a lot of extra cooked rice sitting in the fridge. You may also have some veggies in the back of the fridge that need to be spared the fate of a science experiment. Green Tara rice soup to the rescue!

This soup is souper easy, creative and nutritious! Here’s what you need:

• 1+ cups leftover cooked rice
• 3 cloves chopped garlic
• veggie remnants (in this case asparagus)
• 1 crumbled sheet of dry-roasted seaweed
• seasonings of your choice. I used powdered ginger, turmeric, black pepper, and one of my fave go-to seasonings: mushroom powder.
• water to cover rice

Place all the ingredients together in a saucepan on medium heat. If you chose really bulky veggies (like broccoli) you may want to steam them first, or just know the cooking time will be a little longer to soften them. Keep an eye on this soup and add water as needed. The consistency of the rice is up to you. The longer it cooks the more it becomes a “congee” (rice porridge), but I don’t like to cook all the nutrition out of my veggies so I only went long enough to soften the raw asparagus.

Initially, this recipe was going to be called “Green Rice Soup”, but when I sat down to create the blog the words “Green Tara” entered my mind. I looked up the name and found she has many wonderful traits, blessings and protections on offer. Here’s a sample from wildmind.org:

“The Green Tara is a Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion and is a protector against the dangers of the material world, such as floods, wild animals and acts of violence and she is often invoked as the saviouress of travelers. Her name means ‘Star’ or ‘Planet’, ‘She Who Ferries across’ and ‘She Who Saves’”. She is also known as Mother Nature, the Green Woman, and according to Lama Palden Drolma, Green Tara is known as, “… she who ferries beings across the ocean of samsara.” (samsara: the cycle of death & rebirth in which the material world is bound)

This soup’s spirit also called to have a beautiful image to represent its nourishment. My gosh! There’s so much amazing artwork out there, but here is the first one that jumped out at me:

More beautiful imagery like this at:
http://www.mysticlifedesign.com/gallery/greentara.htm

About the artist, Willow Arleana:
Willow earned a B.F.A. in fine arts from Boise State University, and a master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology from Naropa University. Her career progressed through many stages, including teaching in the public schools, creating dance costumes and sacred masks, and making wearable art and costume jewelry. She has taught art to many students in many media. Willow also works as psychic reader, archetypal energy psychotherapist, and energy healer. She is the creator of the immensely popular Tarot of Transformation, along with her co-author Jasmin Cori, and she utilizes the deck in her psychic readings.

If you’re enjoying this site and would like to become a supporting member please visit: https://www.patreon.com/ReginaChante