Breakfast Recipe, Dietary Tips for Vata Season & Zoom Cooking Class Reminder

 

We are full into Vata Season, with the qualities of cold, dry, mobile and light.  To keep ourselves healthy and our immune system robust we need to balance these qualities with their opposites. For our diet this means incorporating foods that are warm, oily, solid and heavy.  We should favor warm foods, warm water and herbal teas. For those of you who are attached to drinking ice water, can you try to reduce how much you drink? 

Include more healthy fats in our diets like ghee and avocados.  Root vegetables are good for this season and make stews and soups.  If you would like additional soup recipes, I have posted 2 different lentil soup recipes, if you cannot find them, let me know.  Start your day with a hot cereal, consider letting go of cold cereal and cold milk. 

 

Attached is a simple breakfast recipe: Rice Porridge.  It is good anytime and especially if you are doing a kitchari cleanse.  In the fall, a short cleanse of a few days helps us recharge our body and prepares us for staying healthy in the winter.    In the cleanse, we eat kitchari for lunch and dinner along with seasonal vegetables.  Kitchari is a delicious dish of mung dal and basmati rice with spices.  I have it at least once a week when not doing a cleanse.   During the cleanse for breakfast we can have oatmeal or the rice porridge.

If you would like to learn how to  make a good kitchari for the fall, come to my Zoom Cooking Workshop on Thursday, November 12th from 5 to 7! Contact me to register, and then you will receive the recipes and other handouts about staying healthy in this season. You can choose to watch me or cook along!

 

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions, dhelfeld@starpower.net

 

Rice Porridge

(Adapted from a recipe of Kripalu Center)

This makes a good breakfast serving for one person. It is designed to have during a kitchari cleanse, but it is good any time.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup of organic basmati rice, soaked for about 15 minutes

1 Tablespoon of ghee (may use coconut oil)

1 medjool date

¼ to 1/3 teaspoon each of cardamom, ginger and cinnamon, to taste

1 ½ cups of water, more or less depending on desired consistency, may use ½ cup of organic whole milk or almond milk toward the total amount of liquid (optional, but not during a cleanse).

¼ t salt or to taste

Soak the rice in water to cover for 10 or 15 minutes. Rinse the rice a few times until the water is nearly clear, and then put in saucepan with salt, water or water and milk/almond milk and bring to a boil. Add the chopped date, cover and cook on low heat until done. Stir occasionally while cooking.

Melt ghee in small frying pan, and add the spices. Stir for a minute or so until fragrant. Add to the rice, stir to mix and serve.