Spring Cleaning with Kitchari

During the winter months, our bodies crave substance. Warm, creamy, carb-laden food are what gets us through the cold and dark. In addition, our modern lives often do not allow us to slow down and take the rest that we also crave in winter. For many of us, that means we emerge in spring feeling tired, bloated and heavy.

Ayurvedic medicine can help! Ayurveda is big on preventing illness with good nutrition and digestion. One of the most recommended dishes in Ayurvedic cooking is kitchari. Kitchari is essentially a spiced vegetable and grain stew, and it's quite tasty, too!

This meal taken as a cleanse or monodiet will heal your body, especially your intestinal tract, as it's considered to be the most wholesome to put in the yogi’s body. I learned to make this when I studied Ayurvedic Medicine, and it has helped me immensely over the years. Here is my recipe. Feel free to adapt the ingredients to fit your needs. This is a great way to do some spring cleaning…from the inside out!

A note about choosing vegetables: Pick a few of your favorite sattvic veggies: most mild veggies are considered sattvic. Sattvic means “pure” or “balanced” in terms of Ayurvedic eating. Meaning, foods that are not aggravating, irritating, heating, or heavy and weighty. Avoid pungent veggies like hot peppers, shallots, leeks, garlic, onion, gas forming veggies such as mushrooms and/or potatoes.

Ingredients:

• 2 cup brown rice (or mix rice & quinoa, or pick your favorite whole grain)
• 1 cup red lentils
• 3 carrots
• A big bunch of kale
• 1 zucchini
• 1 head of broccoli
• 3 ribs celery
• Ghee (clarified butter) ((or coconut or olive oil))
• 2 T. powdered turmeric
• 2 T. ground cumin
• 2 T. ground coriander
• 5 cups water
• Cooking oil of your choice: coconut, olive oil or ghee
• Sea salt
• Fresh cilantro
• Golden raisins if desired

Method: 

Put rice and lentils into a big pot with the 5 c. of water. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer. Cook until tender.

Wash and chop your veggies into bite sized pieces. I like to do different shapes for each, just for fun. 

Heat a big pan or wok with coconut oil, olive oil or ghee. Add your vegetables in order of how long each takes to cook. For the vegetables I have listed, I use this order: carrot, zucchini, broccoli, celery. You may need to add a bit more oil or water as you stir fry the vegetables. 

Heat a small skillet with a big spoonful of ghee or your oil of choice. Add turmeric, cumin and coriander and stir for a minute or two.

Pour this into the pan with the veggies and mix, then mix veggies with grains in the big pot. If you cooked the grains and veggies together, just pour the ghee and spices into the pot and mix. There will be leftover ghee and spices in the pan-- take a spoonful of grains to soak it all up and place back into pot.

Serving Suggestions:

Scoop a portion onto a plate, add a dab extra ghee in for taste, sprinkle sea salt on top if you choose, garnish with freshly chopped cilantro, add raisins if you wish...and enjoy!

Once kitchari in pot cools down a bit, place in glass tupperware for future eating. If you’re doing a monodiet cleanse, eat kitchari as two meals per day (check with your physician before embarking upon any cleanse or radical dietary change). This recipe should last you about 5 to 7 days.

Golden Yogi Tea

Fresh turmeric root and turmeric powder.

The media is picking up on the many health benefits of curcumin, the active component of the common household spice, turmeric. Curcumin is a champion anti-inflammatory and unlike ibuprofen or other NSAIDS, it will not create digestive distress with long term usage.

The health benefits of turmeric are now being documented scientifically, but they have been known for millennia. I first learned about it when I was studying Ayurvedic medicine and Yoga therapy at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. While Ayurveda encompasses many modalities, healthy lifestyle and prevention are key to its philosophy. About halfway through our first year, I was surprised to be invited to a cooking class.

Fresh ginger root

Food as medicine? Count me in! We learned to make ghee and a variety of Indian dishes specifically formulated to different body constitutions and situations. Guess what ingredient was common to nearly every dish?

Turmeric. As it turns out, the ancients were right…turmeric is extremely beneficial and most easily absorbed by the body when heated and combined with a fat. Black pepper is another helpful addition. With this in mind, nearly all of Indian cuisine is naturally anti-inflammatory! Personally I love Indian food, so this is great news.

Recently, I decided to integrate more turmeric in my daily routine. I'm not always in the mood for Indian food, so I chose Golden Yogi Tea. This tea is recommended for daily intake by yoga practitioners by the Kundalini Yoga tradition. It combines the health benefits of curcumin with another powerhouse, ginger. Ginger is used for a whole host of digestive issues, to relieve pain and to reduce inflammation.

Golden Yogi Tea

Guess what? Inflammation is a major risk and causative factor for most disease! From cardiovascular issues to autoimmune conditions, it all starts with inflammation in the body. Inflammation comes in with injury, inactivity, poor diet, and unmanaged stress.

But back to Golden Yogi Tea - this is a great tool to combat inflammation as well as promoting healthy digestion. As it turns out, it's quite easily made. The medical study referenced above was performed using "powdered curcumin", but I don't know if they produced a powder from the extracted curcumin itself, or whether they used the commonly available powdered turmeric. Fresh is always best, so if you can find it, use fresh turmeric root.

Tip: Look for fresh turmeric and ginger root at your local international grocery store or Indian market. Triangle folks, Around the World Market has both fresh turmeric and ginger root for a reasonable price.  The ginger root (and most culinary spices) are much cheaper there than at your local supermarket!

Here is how I made my Golden Yogi Tea:

1. Slice up 1-2 inches each of turmeric and ginger root, leaving the skin on.
2. Place the root in a quart saucepan filled with water.
3. Bring to a boil.
4. Simmer for 30-60 minutes.
5. Cover and set aside overnight.
6. Strain out the root and store the concentrate in a glass quart jar.

When you are ready to drink your tea, dilute the concentrate to taste. I used about half concentrate and half water. You may drink it hot or cold. Sweeten with stevia or honey. 

Tip: If you use honey, be sure that you have purchased it from a reputable source. Some grocery stores stock honey from China, which can be contaminated with pesticides. Some honey on the market is also adulterated with corn syrup. The safest route is to buy it from a farmer's market or a beekeeper. 

Enjoy your Golden Yogi Tea in good health!

The Healing Power of Silence

I’ve been thinking for quite a while now about one of my superpowers: silence. Doesn’t sound too impressive, does it? Perhaps you’d rather be able to teleport, have x-ray vision or some other flashy power. Me? I’ll stick with silence.

Consider what happens when we are silent: introspection, listening, presence in the moment, rest, receptiveness, focus.

In our fast paced modern lives, how often do we stay silent to truly listen to our partners? Or are we really formulating our next sentence?

How often do we talk on the phone just to drown out the thoughts and feelings inside our minds?

How often do we turn on the TV, stream media over the internet, or zone out in front of a smartphone…attempting to “rest” by overstimulating our senses?

And how often do we actually stop talking, doing, running, consuming…just stop and be with our inner selves?

If you’re like most of us, one or more of the above questions will strike a chord.

As a Yoga Therapist and Instructor, I teach people techniques like asana (yoga poses), pranayama (breathing exercises) and meditation. Like many people, I was taught that these practices are valuable and healing.

Which they are. Each has a different effect on our bodymind, and those effects are wondrous.

But as it turns out, part of why they are effective is that many of them invite us into silence and bring us into calm, quiet environments.

I’m also an Environmental Educator, and today I led a hike into some lovely woods. One of my participants repeatedly remarked on how quiet it was, and I could see that it was having its subtle effect on her.

Modern science is catching up with the ancient wisdom of Yoga on this topic. Research published online in European's leading cardiology journal, European Heart Journal, links exposure to chronic noise with an increased risk of heart attack.

Just recently, I was reading an Ayurvedic text, and was struck by how it talks about meditation. Meditation is not just helpful because of the practice itself, but because it gives us a few minutes of complete silence every day.

Yoga teaches us that silence is healing because the reduced stimulation allows our nervous system to rest and regenerate. This is why a good Yoga teacher will tell you that savasana or corpse pose is the most important pose of the class.

Time in nature has the very same effect. In fact, the sounds of nature may be even more healing than just plain silence, but that's a topic for another blog post!

Why not add a few minutes of silence into your day? Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Sit quietly in your backyard
• Take a walk outside
• Meditate
• Practice Yoga
• Journal
• Take a “silent fast” – set aside some time, from a few minutes up to a day or even a weekend, in which you turn off all electronics and remain in silence as you do whatever calming thing that you like, or nothing at all.

Remember, the goal is to reduce noise, become aware of the present moment, and be present with your Self.

I’d love to hear about your experiences; please leave a comment with the results of your experiment!