Highly Craveable Plum-Cardamom Jam Toast

I woke up earlier this week to a chill in the air. It caught me off guard; all summer, it’s been well over 80°F in our little mid-century house without air-conditioning. Truly, very hot.

And yet on this morning, as the valley was waking up, the air was crisp, the birds quiet, the deer wandering through the yard, munching grasses as they went. Fall was on the way. I could feel it.

As I made hot water for tea, and quietly moved about the kitchen, I recalled the years of living in Japan and how awestruck I was when I discovered that literally overnight, on a seemingly arbitrary date in the fall, the cold beverages in the vending machines magically became hot beverages. As if the vending machine elves had registered our preferences overnight and already prepared our appropriate refreshment.

My breakfast cravings that morning were no different. After months of craving this loyal, balancing breakfast, I needed something entirely different. And this Plum-Cardamom Jam Toast with homemade sprouted almond butter was what I craved.

Why what we eat must (logically) change with the seasons

As it turns out, we can’t will an apple to ripen any faster than nature wants it to. We can’t beg the chickens or pigs to fatten up. And we can’t grow an avocado tree in a place that doesn’t provide sufficient sunlight and the right kind of soil. But we can use chemicals and synthetics to force these products of nature to ripen, hurry and make it rain for us. And that’s great, if we don’t mind chemicals and synthetics in our foods. But I mind VERY much.

And so, I change what I eat with the seasons. This makes sense on a variety of levels; because as nature changes so does what she provides, and as nature changes so too does my body and the things it needs. I eat what’s local and in season, because it’s the easiest and quickest way to mainline what nature intended into my body. But changing what I eat isn’t about availability; it’s also about suitability. The foods that I eat have qualities to either balance the qualities of my body and the seasons, or to unbalance my body in the season.

As an example, fall is the season of vata dosha. Vata dosha brings qualities of roughness, dryness, mobility, lightness, instability and coolness into the natural world, and into our bodies. These qualities are balanced by the qualities of smoothness, moisture, density, stability and warmth. And so eating foods with these properties as the weather starts to change will help us to keep our balance.

This symbiosis (of our bodies requiring different ingredients in different times of year, and nature providing those things specifically) has all but been forgotten by us normal humans, but it’s evidenced in the ways that modern science has helped corporations to market packaged products to us. My favorite example is the undeniable Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks. The “pumpkin spices” are warming, sweet and grounding from an Ayurvedic perspective, and are highly craveable as the season starts to shift and we feel unmoored, spun, cold…like we need a treat. And lo, in just that moment, when the first chill hits the air, the PSL is for sale. Clockwork.

If you aren’t changing the foods you eat with the seasons, you’re ignoring a primal request for nourishment and balance.

This grounding, luxe toast

So, my craving for a luxurious, dense toast was actually a lovely sign from my inner universe that things were shifting. And it was time to make some changes. I had a massive plate of plums plucked from the farmer’s market the day before, and with a few quick turns of my knife readily turned them into a tart-sweet jam that even little Leo loved. I always have sprouted homemade almond butter on hand (see recipe notes for how I do this,) and layered them all on top of a little slather of ghee, then dug in.

How did this toast balance the qualities of vata dosha? Sweet, salty and sour flavors balance vata, as do warm, smooth, dense, sticky, sticky and stable ingredients. Wheat, plums, ghee and cardamom are all sweet – and sweet flavors naturally balance and reduce vata in the body. Plums are also sour, and a no toast is complete without a sprinkle of flaky salt so my flavors are all on point. Plus the denseness of the toast and the almond butter rooted me back down. When the world starts to spin, one way of slowing it down from an Ayurvedic perspective is increasing the “stickiness” and almond butter + homemade jam climbs right up there onto the list of stickiest substances (I know this because I promptly had to clean Leo’s tiny hands because he placed them IN the toast he loved it so.)

This isn’t a meal that I imagine I’ll be craving everyday….but it is one that helps me to keep my balance. Also because sitting down to a thick slice of slathered toast is good for the soul, the child in us…and maybe even the child that lives with us (chef raises her hand.)

Enjoy this one often, my friends!