autumn ayurveda cleanse

Fall is a time of year that signals change. According to the ancient studies of Ayurveda the energies around us are shifting from pitta to kapha. Our bodies have stored up so much pitta from the fiery summer, and we need to cleanse it out to prepare our constitutions for a slower, cooler, sweeter winter. 

There are so many cleanses out there, but what I’m going to introduce you to today is an Autumn Ayurveda cleanse. This is not a starvation diet. It will not make you skinnier. Instead, we’ll focus on slowing down the digestion to allow the body to rid itself of toxins. We’ll take a minute to be with ourselves, to slow down, to be selfish; so that the rest of the year we can be active and giving. 

Twice a year, as we move into spring, and as we move into fall, it is healthy to allow yourself this time. Read on for a description of an Autumn Ayurveda  cleanse. This routine can be followed for anywhere from 3-10 days. 

Kitchari

While on the cleanse, you are going to eat a diet of kitchari for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Kitchari is made with mung beans, basmati rice, and a special herb blend that includes turmeric, fennel, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, ginger, natural mineral salt and asafoetida. 

Each evening, make a batch for the following day. When you go to eat your kitchari, make sure it’s always warm. All throughout this cleanse, you want to consume only warm foods and liquids. You’ll start with a little bit at breakfast to kickstart your digestion, and then you’ll have your biggest meal at lunch. In the evening, consume a smaller portion for dinner. At lunch you may pair the kitchari with steamed vegetables or a soft/hard boiled egg if you wish. Just make sure that you’re not cooking anything in fat ie. olive oil, butter, coconut oil, etc. If you’re hungry, eat more kitchari. You should never feel starved while on this cleanse. 

Here is how to make your kitchari.

Ingredients

1 Cup split yellow mung dahl

1/2 Cup basmati rice

1-2 Tsp kitcharee spice mix

1 Tsp grated or minced ginger

Cilantro and lemon to garnish

Salt to taste

Directions

Wash the rice and beans to remove extra starches

In a large soup pot, add beans, ginger, and chitchat spice mix with 10 cups of water. Let cook for about 15 minutes.

Add rice and cook for another 15-20 minutes.

Skim off any foam that produces at the top while you’re cooking your kitchari

Mornings

In the mornings, you’ll use a tongue scraper first thing. Scrape from the back to the front of your tongue seven times to remove the residue that has built up overnight. Then prepare a warm drink of water or herbal tea. After you’ve had your tea, indulge in 15-20 minutes of gentle yoga. Nothing crazy, you want to take it easy while you’re on your cleanse. Just stretch it out and move with your breath for a short time. This will get the prana moving. Once you’ve had your yoga time, fill your belly with some kitchari, and go about your day.

Abhyanga

While your cleansing internally, you can help activate the process from the outside as well. Either in the evening or in the morning, you will practice Abhyanga, a form of self massage. This helps release toxins held in the muscles, so that your internal system can flush them out. To perform abhyanga, first heat some water on the stove top. Then immerse a mason jar of sesame oil in the water, so that the hot water can warm the oil inside. To perform the massage, start at your feet and hands, massaging toward your heart with the warm oil.  On joints, massage in a circular motion, and in between the joints use long linear strokes. Massage your scalp, around your nostrils, your ear lobes, get every crevice, but don’t massage over your entire face. After you’ve done your massage, let the oil sit for 20 minutes before hopping in the shower. This is a great time to journal or meditate. Once you’re in the shower, just rinse the oil off, don’t use soap. 

Warm Liquids

Throughout your cleanse be sure to drink warm liquids. Heat your water, drink herbal tea (not caffeine!), or sip down warm organic unsweetened almond milk. You want everything that goes into your body to be warm.

Triphala

In the evenings, you’ll take a slight laxative and powerful antioxidant called triphala. You’ll want to take this supplement on an empty stomach, so its suggested to do so right before bed. Heat up some water, like you would for tea, and stir in 1/2 teaspoon of triphala powder. Let steep for 15 minutes and then drink down, dregs and all.

Ghee

On days 4-6 of your cleanse, you will practice therapeutic intake of fat (ghee). This treatment is designed to mobilize fat soluble toxins stored deep in the tissues. Thirty minutes after waking up, you will drink down warm ghee on an empty stomach. Each day, you will increase your dosage by two tablespoons, starting at with two on the first day. After you’ve taken your ghee, do not eat until you feel absolutely hungry. 

Castor Oil

The second to last evening of your cleanse, you will drink a detox tea before bed. Then when you wake in the morning, mix 2 tbs of organic castor oil with 1/2 cup of hot water and the juice of one orange. Drink it down, and like with the ghee, don’t eat until you're hungry. 

Journaling

Throughout your cleanse, take the time to reflect. You allocate this time for yourself, so be sure to pay attention. What thoughts and emotions come up? What differences do you notice in your body? Be slow, thoughtful, and introspective.

grilled shrimp & apricot risotto

Note: This post was previously published here as a part of my freelance work, and was written by my darling boyfriend, Adam. 

Risotto is the king of rice dishes.  Fried rice, paella, curry—they got nothing a proper risotto. The difference is in the rice grains. Proper risotto is made with arborio rice, a super-starchy, creamy variety cultivated in Italy.  

But it’s more than the grains themselves that distinguish risotto from other rice dishes. The unique method of cooking the arborio is truly what makes risotto special. Hot vegetable or chicken stock is added to the cooking arborio grains one ladle at a time.  When the rice absorbs all the liquid, another ladle is added. This process, along with constant stirring, extracts all the starch from the grains, giving risotto its characteristic creaminess.

For this version of risotto, we cooked in this week’s apricots form Beechwood Orchards.  We anchored the savory element of this dish with John Glick’s sweet onions and finished it with mint and basil to really drive home the summery flavors.  And because it’s grill season, we figured, hey, why not throw some shrimp on the barbie too. 

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

10 large shrimp

1 cup arborio rice

3 cups vegetable stock (approx.)

1 large sweet onion

1 lb apricots

1/4 cup cream cheese (as per Naomi’s Italian grandma’s secret recipe)

3 sprigs of mint

3 sprigs of basil

1 cup chopped parsley

2 lemons, juiced and zested

1 Tbl smoked paprika

1/2 cup olive oil

Salt to taste

Directions:

Begin by shelling and deveining the shrimp.  Transfer them to a medium mixing bowl and pour in the half a cup of olive oil. Toss in lemon zest, parsley, paprika and a dash of salt. Mix thoroughly, ensuring the ingredients are evenly distributed over the shrimp.  Refrigerate for at least an hour to give the marinade time sink in.

Bring the three cups of vegetable stock (or water) to a simmer in a small pot.

Dice the onions and sweat in olive oil in a large stock pot over medium heat until they become translucent.  Add the rice and toast in the pan until it begins to pop and crackle.  That sound is the shells of the rice grains splitting, which will allow it to cook more quickly and evenly.

Add the simmering vegetable stock one ladle at a time, allowing the rice to absorb the liquid incrementally.  Stir the rice almost constantly to agitate more and more starch from the grains

While the rice is cooking, slice and pit the apricots, cutting them into eighths.

After about 15 minutes the rice should be close to finished.  Check its doneness by chewing a small bite.  If the grains of rice stick in your molars, the risotto needs more time.  

When the rice is close to finished, add the apricots; they don't need much time to cook.

Turn off the heat, and stir in the cream cheese, mint and basil.  The risotto should be very creamy and loose enough so the grains don’t try to clump together.

Meanwhile, throw the shrimp on the barbie and grill away. 

vegan creamed corn and stuffed cabbage

Note: This post was previously published here as a part of my freelance work, and was written by my darling boyfriend, Adam. 

Stuffed cabbage is the epitome of Eastern European comfort food. From Kensington to Krakow, every Polish grandma has this dish in her repertoire. Traditionally, cabbage leaves are wrapped around ground beef or pork and baked in tomato sauce (and heaps of butter) to create this beautifully simplistic staple.  If you’ve never enjoyed the traditional, rustic-style stuffed cabbage, try this recipe.

Indeed, it’s hard to improve upon such a time-honored classic, so we simply adapted it to what’s available in your recent CSA pick-ups.  In place of tomato sauce, we used last pick-up’s Winter Sun Farms frozen corn to make a creamy corn sauce. Normally we’re averse to frozen food, but this corn—as apposed to the factory-farmed institutional variety—was harvested locally in August at it’s apex of ripeness and flavor.  It’s delicious.  We pureed it with coconut milk and man, it’s a knock out.  The richness and subtle sweetness of the coconut milk sings a beautiful harmony with the corn’s summery-sweet melody.

We also uncovered some Winter Sun Farms frozen edamame (from many CSA’s past) in our freezer and decided it would work well to round out the dish.  Any type of hearty bean will work just as well.  This vegetarian stuffed cabbage, like its more traditional cousin, is deeply flavorful, filling, and, most importantly, comforting.

“Creamed” Corn:

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 medium onion, diced

2 cups (1 bag) Winter Sun Farm frozen corn

2 cups coconut milk

2 Tbl white wine vinegar

1 Tbl thyme

1 tsp red pepper flake

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

In a large sauce pan, sweat onions in olive oil over medium heat until they become translucent.

Add in frozen corn, vinegar, thyme and pepper flake and cook for about five minutes or until the corn is thawed and tender.

Pour in the coconut milk and bring it to a simmer.  Let the corn cook for about 10 minutes.

Puree using an immersion blender, adding more coconut milk if necessary to achieve a creamy consistency.

Season to taste with salt in pepper and reserve for later.

Stuffed Cabbage

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 45 minutes

Yield: 6 stuffed cabbages

Ingredients:

2 cups brown rice, cooked previously 

1 medium onion, diced

1 cup shelled edamame beans

1 head of cabbage

Directions

Blanch edamame in boiling water for 1 min and shock in a bowl of ice water. Sauté the onions on medium heat in olive and cook until tender, then mix in the blanched edamame. Mix onions and beans with rice and reserve as the stuffing for the cabbage

Remove the outer most leaves of the cabbage and discard.  Gently tear a few leaves off and trim any large stems or veins away.

Blanch cabbage leaves in boiling water until they become soft, pliable and translucent, about 2-3 minutes. Transfer them to a bowl of ice water to shock them.

After blanching about 10 or so leaves, place them on a clean towel to dry.

Lay a cabbage leaf flat on a cutting board and spoon about 1/4 cup of rice and edamame onto the center of the leaf.  Fold the leaf’s right and left sides vertically over the filling, then roll the leaf horizontally like a burrito.  Repeat until all filling is used.  

Place the stuffed cabbages into a 11’x7’ baking pan and top generously with the “creamed” corn.

Bake in a 350F degree oven for about 45 minutes or until browned.

acorn squash and brown rice with pomegranate, pistachio, and kale

Note: This post was previously published here as a part of my freelance work.

In fall we welcome comfort. Cooked soothing foods fill our stomachs with happiness and warmth on a crisp day. Acorn squash and spices like cinnamon evoke memories of a time when things were simpler, when all our cares drifted on a breeze with autumn’s falling leaves. This, is a dish to take you there.

Warm acorn squash mixed with fresh local yogurt provides a creamy earthy balance to this dish’s modern additions: pistachio, pomegranate, and kale. Seasoned with cinnamon and ginger, the spice-derived flavor allows it to be a healthy kickstart for your new season. No butter, no cheese, no large amounts of fat needed. Now how is that for comfort food?

Ingredients:

1 acorn squash

1 cup long grain brown rice

2.5-3 cups water

1 small white onion, chopped small

2 cups chopped kale

1 bouillon cube

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 inch peeled ginger

1/2 cup yogurt

1 lg. garlic clove, chopped into large pieces

1 pomegranate

1/2 cup shelled pistachios

1 tbs rice vinegar

olive oil for sautéing

salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Cut your squash in half, gut out the seeds, and set to roast. You can either roast it at 350F for approx. one hour, or if you’d rather set it and forget it, bake the squash at 200F for 3-4 hours. Remove and let cool.

2. In a small stock pot, sauté onions in olive oil. Once slightly see-through, add rice, and stir it around for a minute. Add 2 cups water, kale, bouillon cube, cinnamon stick, ginger, and garlic. Stir thoroughly, cover, and let cook.

3. In the meantime, gut out your squash and mix together with yogurt. I used Pequa Valley, a delicious local yogurt sold at Greensgrow. Cut open your pomegranate and remove seeds from the white flesh innards of the fruit. Set seeds aside.

4. As the rice cooks down, continue adding water until the grains become fully cooked. Once it is finished, let sit for 5-10 minutes.

5. Stir in squash, pomegranate seeds, pistachio, and vinegar, along with salt and pepper to taste. Let cool a bit more before serving to deliver fullest flavor.

pickled cabbage spring rolls

Note: This post was previously published here as a part of my freelance work.

I love spring rolls. They’re fun to make, they’re healthy, and they’re delicious. Half the fun is that you can fill them with whatever your heart desires. This particular combination was born when we received a giant head of cabbage in our CSA. It’s not something we eat a lot, so we took to chopping it down and throwing it in jars. A week later, our fridge was full of delicious pickled cabbage, and thus, this yummy hors d’oeuvre. I encourage you to get creative with your spring rolls down the line, but if you’re looking for a solid, fool-proof delicious recipe, here is the perfect one to get you started.

Ingredients:

Fixings:

1 cup brown rice

1 cup chopped parsley

1/2 cup rice vinegar

1/4 cup sesame oil

2 tbs miso paste

1 package spring roll wrappers

1/2 block tofu

1 red pepper

1/2 avocado

Pickled cabbage:

2 cups water

1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup salt

1 mason jar chopped cabbage

Directions:

1. At least a week before you want to make the spring rolls, throw chopped cabbage into a mason jar with the rest of the makings, and stick it in the fridge to begin the pickling process.

2. When you’re ready to make the spring rolls, cook off the one cup of brown rice.

3. Once the rice is cooked, stir in parsley, vinegar, sesame oil, and miso. Then let it sit and cool for at least 30 minutes.

4. While rice is cooling, thinly slice tofu and fry the pieces in some sesame oil over a hot flame. Remove and set on a piece of paper towel to absorb the extra grease. 

5. Thinly slice red pepper and avocado, set aside.

6. Now you’re ready to start making the rolls. Fill a bowl or tray with luke warm water. Immerse a rice paper wrapper for about five seconds, so that the entire thing gets wet. Lay the wrapper out on a flat surface, fill with makings (rice, tofu, pepper, avocado, and pickled cabbage), placing ingredients like an oblong mound in the center. To roll it up, first roll the top edge down, then fold in the sides, and roll it towards you, the rest of the way closed. Keep it tight as you do so.

7. Continue until ingredients run out.

china part 1: playing in rice fields

As I packed my bags for China I dreamt of rice fields. I'd stumbled across so many photos, eaten so much rice, but never actually seen a real live crop. When my brother told me that we'd be heading to rural China I knew that my chance was finally here. We ventured to Hubei province by air and then drove into its depths, ending up in Mengxi where we'd be making our home for the next week. More to come on Hubei and the town, but for now I want to start off my China recap with the fields. 

While we were in Mengxi, we drove past the growing rice every day. I told my brother that my only request before we left was to go walk by the fields in person. I wanted to see them up close. I wanted to physically visit and spend time. Our last day in Mengxi my dream came true. We spent the afternoon walking around in muggy heat exploring the fields. Farmers worked away, water buffalo patiently waited tied to the ground. There were big drainage systems to fill and empty the plots with water. It didn't matter that we didn't own the land, we were welcome to wander the pastures. 

To me those field represent a rustic and primitive way of life. People working the land. Going home to concrete building full of family members, and all eating one big dish. Comfort isn't something they find much of. What makes them happy are no bumps in the road. The same meal their whole lives, thriving crops,  that's what they need to get by. 

Extending for days, the rice fields were one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I will never ever forget the experience nor the culture they represent.

salmon wild rice

Easter Sunday rolled around. I am not a Christian, but I wanted to make something nice. After all, it was a holiday, it was Sunday, and I had the time and ambition to cook something good. To get started, I picked up salmon, peas, and chives at the grocery store. I paired it all with wild rice whose dark color would allow for the pinks and greens to pop. I treated it like a risotto, although not Arborio, and cooked the rice slowly with a stock. To make it creamy like risotto, but in a healthy way, just add in some almond milk and coconut oil at the end. Finally, everything gets a nice drizzle of lemon juice to brighten up the flavors. It's a healthy, tasty, and let's face it, beautiful!, spring-time dish.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Wild Rice

2 Cups Water

12 oz Salmon

1 Cup Frozen Peas

1 Vegetable Bouillon Cube

2.5 Tbsp Chives, chopped

2 Garlic Cloves, minced

3/4 Cup Almond Milk

1 Tbsp Coconut Oil

Juice from 1 Lemon

Directions:

1. Add your wild rice, water, and vegetable bouillon cube to a pot and bring to a boil.

2. Reduce heat and let the rice cook down. 

3. Once almost all of the water has evaporated, add a spoonful more. Do this three times or so. On the last time, add almond milk and peas, then let everything finish cooking down.

4. Stir in chopped chives, minced garlic, and coconut oil, then set rice aside. 

5. Heat up oil in a skillet, and quick cook your salmon.

6. Tearing the salmon apart with a fork, stir it into your rice mixture. Squeeze lemon over it all and finish stirring.