By now it’s surely no mystery that, when I travel, I do most of my “souvenir shopping” at the local farmer’s market.
And our trip up to Whistler this past week was no exception.
After a slow wake up, listening to the rain trickle and watching the fog swirl over Whistler Peak and the Fitzsimmons Range through the windows of the kitchen, we headed down to the village to wander and sponge up the first peaks of peak harvest in this special part of coastal British Columbia.
The colors! Reds, purples, greens, reds, and golds. There were just-ripe tomatoes in all shades, colors and shapes, early apples and pears, artichokes, carrots and beets. Foraged chantrelles and knobby fresh ginger. There were juicy blackberries, delicate raspberries, perky strawberries and, the most adorable little Italian plums. My eyes turned to hearts.
This moment of collision – when late summer berries and stone fruits, and early hard fruits collide – makes my heart sing. It feels like the most precious tiny window of time when nature is flexing her hardest. And so, I brought home all that I could carry.
I had plans for all of it. BLTA sandwiches with the tomatoes, roasted mushrooms with thyme, lemon and fresh cheese to top sourdough from down the road as pre-dinner snacks. We steamed the roots and ate them in grain bowls with crackle ghee on a rainy night, and steamed the artichokes, dunking them in more ghee and hummus as we made fresh linguini alla vongole with crabs picked up down the road. The berries were more of a background fixture to be enjoyed as we shredded loamy mountain biking trails, wove our way through the alpine, waited out gentle rain storms and cuddled up with dear friends, we nibbled through the stash of precious fruits; popping berries as a pre-ride snack, tossing a few in bowls of fresh granola. Whatever was leftover I would turn into a breakfast crumble for our last morning in coastal alpine paradise.
The plums had a very special project. These Plum-Cardamom Muffins with Pistachio Crumble. I love it when an edible dream comes true. The muffins came together easily and we ate them on a chilly morning as the overnight rain clouds were clearing, and our bodies were asking for something comforting, supportive, sweet and gentle. Medicine in a muffin.
If you’ve been following along for a bit now, you know that there are a few tenants of Ayurveda that are so easy to follow, and will make a massive difference in the well-being of every human, regardless of their constitution. Eating a warm breakfast is one of them.
Most of the time when I think of a warm breakfast, I think of a bowl of porridge. Something simple, creamy, grounding and – innately – cozy and warm. But this isn’t the only way to have a warm breakfast.
Anything that isn’t an ice cold smoothie, crunchy energy bar straight from the package, iced coffee or chilled bowl of yogurt, granola and berries can be made warm. For example, a warm mug of golden milk or hot chocolate, a slice of sourdough with ghee, or even nut butter and jam. Heck, it could even be a bowl of cereal with warmed up milk.
A warm breakfast doesn’t need to be a bowl of soupy porridge, but it can’t be from a package, pulled in haste at the last minute, an effort to sidestep the sacred act of nourishing ourselves. If we want to feel well in our bodies,. It needs to be touched just moments ago, prepared and consumed with intention (even a shred of it.)
All over this library, you’ll find little places where plum and cardamom meet to make magic. This isn’t an accident. It’s a capitalization on nature doing what she does: providing just what our bodies need at just the right moment.
Plums hit their juicy, ripe peak in late summer, right when pitta heat is highest and the body is asking to be cooled. That juiciness isn’t incidental — it’s the fruit becoming ripe at precisely the moment when a ripe, sweet, juicy thing is exactly the cooling, hydrating medicine our late-summer bodies need. “Eating Ayurvedically” is rooted in this principle of seasonal correspondence: the right food shows up at the right time, and if we want to eat in alignment, we eat that thing at that moment!
Cardamom’s job is different, and just as practical. It’s a tridoshic spice — one of the few warming spices that supports all three doshas rather than provoking one to soothe another, cardamom included in a dish this sweet without tipping pitta into aggravation. Its real work is carminative: it stokes agni, the digestive fire, easing the gas and sluggishness that can follow a sweet, dairy-based bake. Pair a cooling fruit with a warming, agni-stoking spice and you get balance, not a fight — the plum cools, the cardamom keeps digestion moving through it. That’s the real magic here —two ingredients doing complementary jobs at the right moment in the season.
The plums I brought home were Italian plums; small, deep purple plums with golden flesh inside. They’re some of the earliest to arrive on the scene as plum season starts and they’re the most poppable snack! When you cook them, the tannins in the skin turn both the flesh and the plum a brilliant red color (hence the streaks of red in these tender muffins.) As plum season marches on larger, juicier plums arrive on the scene. Elephant hearts, Santa Rosas, Green Gage, Shiro and Bubblegum plums all are wonderful varieties, each with their own unique flavor profile, and all would be marvelous in these muffins.
…are straight divinity.
Chunks of juicy plums stud a tender crumb of cake, the jam makes a convenient little package that asks for nothing but a bit of butter, and the pistachio crumble is perfection – be sure to make a little extra to sprinkle on all sorts of things you make this fall. The recipe uses maple syrup exclusively (no refined sugar!) and full fat yogurt to achieve the most tender crumb.
Yes, I want you to both chop up some plums and make a quick jam with them. I promise it’s worth the extra step!
They’re juicy, moist and comforting, and wonderful pulled straight from the oven OR cooled and rewarmed gently with butter or ghee the next morning. I’ve dropped some additional notes about how to boost and tweak them below in the Recipe Notes. Enjoy them!
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