Here’s Your Holiday Guide for Every Five Element Taste for Food and drink!
Well. They’re here. The Winter Holidays!
They arrive at the same time every year, and yet, every year I act surprised.
Why didn’t anyone tell me they went from slowly creeping up to practically landing on my doorstep unannounced. Every. Year.
My favorite part of the holidays is getting together with loved ones and friends to eat, drink, and make merry.
Everyone feels special (or relieved!) when their favorite foods and libations are on the table. Luckily, I know the food and drinks each of the Taoist Five Element personality prefers.
If you’re having a gathering of a few to more than a few celebrants, you can make sure to have a little of all of the Five Element favorites.
If you’re making a special dinner or celebration for two or even three people, you can tailor the menu so that each of you feel as though you are the one being celebrated!
If you’re making a very special meal for one special person, you can go all out and plan a menu that will make them swoon with delight.
Here is a guide to each of the Taoist Five Elements favorite foods and drinks to take the guessing out of shopping, menu planning, and serving a perfect treat for everyone. Have fun!
Wood Element Fare & Libations
Hearty, filling, tasty foods fuel Woods’ high energies and satisfy their robust palates. They go for healthy portions, strong flavors, and texture. No pablum for them. The more layers in a sandwich, and the stronger the cheese, all the better.
Wood carnivores are partial to wild game such as venison and wild turkey. Vegetarian Woods like hearty dishes with strong green flavors.
Serve Woods robust and straightforward drinks. Nothing fancy, just good quality. The darker the libation, the fuller-bodied it is and that suits Wood just fine.
Fire Element Fare & Libation
Cooking and eating are ways for Fire people to connect to others. For them, the experience is best if it is fun or romantic. If it can be both, all the better.
Wide-ranging and diverse appetites and styles suit Fire, especially if it has a bit of a kick and a little sweetness. If you are enjoying a dinner of spicy Thai noodles paired with a dessert of flaming Bananas Foster while seated at a table set with bright Middle Eastern table linens, you are at a typically eclectic Fire Element table.
Sparkling wine is just so Fire. It’s bubbly; it’s effervescent; it’s lighthearted, refreshing, and fun. Just like Fires!
Fire drinks are bitter. Dark coffees from rich espresso beans; dark, unsweetened hot cocoa; bubbly tonic and quinine waters; beers from bitter hops.
Earth Element Fare & Libation
Earth Element people have an innate bond with food, no matter their privilege, culture, or upbringing.
Earth people take time—sometimes a long time—to digest their thoughts, ideas, and emotions. The same applies to their food. They benefit from warm, cooked foods that are easily digestible over cold and raw foods that take a while to process. Slow-cooked foods are good for them, more so if those dishes include earthy root vegetables and late autumn fruits. Thanksgiving dinner is manna from heaven to most Earths. They live for pureed, mashed, and creamed potatoes, yams, carrots, turnips, and parsnips followed by hot apple pie, and soft, warm pear tart. Those pies and tarts go beautifully with Earth’s best-loved (and sometimes only) cold food, ice cream.
Sweet is the Earth Element taste in Taoism and Chinese Medicine. Nearly every Earth I know is sweet on candy, mainly milk chocolate, cream-filled or jelly-filled bonbons, and jelly beans. Frosted cakes, deep-dish pies, warm tarts, and of course, ice cream, are the ideal end of a meal or a snack in between.
Metal Element Fare & Libation
Food is primarily a fuel. Not that Metals don’t appreciate good food. They very much do. More correctly, they appreciate excellence in quality, taste, and preparation. If that is not possible, they would just as well do without.
Simple, clean, crisp, light, and delicate. As with so many things in their orderly world, that’s how Metals fancy their food. Stews and casseroles look too much like messy globs to their refined visual palate, and the aromas are too heavy. Food must be aesthetically pleasing. The presentation, impeccable. Avoid a clash in taste, fragrance, and appearance. Portions should not be large or unsightly. If one thing bothers many Metal people, it’s to have their food touching on the plate. You won’t find them mixing up their mashed potatoes and peas with their meat and heaping it onto their fork for one big juicy bite. They would as soon not find you doing so at their table, either, thank you very much.
Water Element Fare & Libation
As you might expect, Water people savor foods that come from the water, particularly salmon, trout, tuna, cod, eel, lobster, shrimp, prawns, and mussels. Further, they prefer their edibles to be cooked in water—simmered, boiled, poached, steamed—rather than fried, oven-roasted, baked, or grilled over a flame.
Salty is the taste associated with Water Element in Taoism and Chinese Medicine. Clams, crabs, caviar, seaweed, and anchovies get their saltiness naturally from the sea. Those that get their briny flavors from being brined, pickled, or fermented such as cabbage, kimchi, and olives, are also Water favorites.
Black is the Water Element’s color, and plenty of Water foods are black or darkly colored. Black beans, black soybeans, black sesame seeds and oil, black mushrooms, kidney beans, and cooked dark leafy veggies nurture the kidney, the Water Element associated organ. Waters like meat and fowl that have a potent, even gamey taste like lamb and duck, and they are partial to smoked meats, fish, and poultry.
Now Have Fun!
I hope you have the best time on each of the Winter holidays celebrating with loved ones, family, friends, furry friends, and maybe even taking time by yourself. Whomever, wherever, and why—have the best food and libations to celebrate!