Yesterday, the women made history here at RedBull Rampage. They actually stomped right through it. It was amazing. Amazing doesn’t actually even cut it.
We all arrived here in Virgin last week, and while they dug, scouted and prepared for these 9 days, I’ve been in the kitchen whipping up meals to serve 4 of the teams. Breakfasts, and dinners, with as many leftovers as I could manage so they could take leftovers for lunch (and avoid the blase catering on site.) On one of the first nights, I made these date bars for dessert – a sensible treat for bodies that needed purposeful fuel, that still tastes amazing. They were devoured. I loved them so much, I made myself a little stash to keep on hand to fuel myself through these 14 full-on days. And, Essential Date Crumble Bars were born.
The RedBull Rampage that you watch on T.V. is a mindbending feat of strength, fearlessness and style. And so much more actually. But the part you’re not seeing is the patience and grit required to actually spend 9 days digging the lines you’ll ride through raw desert, in the sweltering heat. And when you add this component, you have one of the most insane endurance events on the planet, followed by one of the most mindbending daredevil feats. The physical body will be stretched. The mental body will be challenged and ungrounded with the anxiety of (for lack of a better description) throwing ones self off a cliff. And it will all go down in an environment suboptimal for human survival.
From an Ayurvedic perspective, this means for the athletes that vata dosha is running rampant, pitta dosha is highly provoked and there isn’t a shred of kapha dosha to be found in the surroundings, nor in the minds or bodies of the athletes. And so, we have to build grounding from the outside.
For me, it’s not much different. The endless to-do lists, ingredient orders and head counts. Cooking for 6 hours a day, then heading to the venue to sling popsicles and support riders on the mountain – a couple of hours of hiking in the heat. Then back to base camp to serve, clean, organize and prep for the next day. Late nights, too-early mornings, and full days in between means that Vata dosha in my body was at an all-time high, I needed the focus of pitta to get the job done, and the grounding force of kapha was going to have to come from my food.
Foods that are densely nourishing, nutrifying, mineralizing and restorative for the balance of the nervous system and the physical system. Whole grains, root vegetables, plenty of fat are all on the menu. And, of course some vegetables, zhooshed up with the sour, bitter and astringent flavors that help our bodies to process metabolic waste and excrete it. (We don’t want our beings actually turning into trashcans out there.)
For dessert, something simple, sweet and valuable instead of empty. Enter, date bars.
While I’ve been here in the desert, I’ve been drawing deeply on the ingredients that thrive in the farms surrounding this area. When we talk about “local” we are talking about what’s right in our community at the doorstep, but we’re also talking about the foods that are grown in the extended ecosystem – within a couple hundred miles. Some of my favorite ingredients to use here have been beans, carrots, beets and kohlrabi, from the farms north of Virgin. But I’ve also been leaning on pomegranates, avocados and of course, the gem of the desert – dates.
Dates are an incredible food in the Ayurvedic pantry; plentiful in minerals, nutrients and with a moisture content that allows them to be digested without additional water, these superfoods are a favorite when fueling big efforts. They’re sweet, valuable, grounding and one of the most exceptional foods when building ojas (the vitality stores all of these riders tapped into during these desert digging weeks.)
…are a perfect, nourishing adventure food for whatever the day throws your way. The crumble topping is also the shortbread bottom, and so to pull these together you just need to make the dough, and make the date paste. The ingredients were all lurking in my general travel pantry for a cooking trip like this; oats, flour, dates, butter (yes) and coconut sugar; all ingredients that belong on a permanent grocery list in your home too. I couldn’t believe what a valuable treat these were for pretty much anything this week. I nibbled one as I was driving to the store to buy more disposable baking pans, wrapped them up and passed them out on the spectator-packed venue, and will have a few close-by on my drive back home to Colorado tomorrow. They’ll love a pack, a pocket, a place in your regular homemade fuel repertoire.
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