Golden Ticket Sauce + A Roasted Cauliflower Bowl

Spring is HERE, friends. Can you feel it in your bones?

That bounce in your step, the eagerness to leap out into the freshness, catching the warmth of the sun on your skin. The extra magic in those late afternoon hours that are technically the same as they were just a couple of weeks ago, but now feel somehow more appropriate for lounging on the still chilly porch with a cocktail, sneaking in a few extra miles in before the sun sets.

 

I’m feeling subtle vibes in my body as well. I’m craving different foods and noticing the way that my system has bolstered against the cold. I feel like I’m lightening up, cracking open, and thawing out after a long winter. And some subtle shifts in my food and lifestyle are helping my body to let go of the heavy blanket of cold weather and getting me ready to spring into SPRING.

 

Spring is the season of Kapha in Ayurveda – the season ruled by earth and water. It’s the time of year when nature starts to shake off its heavy winter blanket, slowly releasing all of the beauty it’s been working on all winter long. (Our well-rested bodies that have spent the winter regenerating are doing the same!) Cool, damp, wet weather dominates as the snow thaws and the rains arrive. And as such, we experience more earth and water in our bodies. Seasonal allergies, colds and congestive coughs, late spring weight gain, and a feeling of sluggishness or sleepiness during this season are all evidence that the Kapha season – the heaviness and wetness of spring – have gotten the best of us. But by tweaking the way we eat and move, or fuel and train, we can ride the wave of this season of renewal into our health and fitness (which can come in realllly handy when summer finally arrives!)  

 

I’m sure that this sounds like a bit of mumbo jumbo for those of you who have long been absorbing the rhetoric of traditional nutrition. “If I just keep eating salad, won’t my body stay light and ready?“

 

Actually, it doesn’t really work like that.

 

Imagine for a moment that before you leave for a ride, hike, run, swim, ski, or big trip you didn’t bother checking the weather. You’d be assuming that the wind, rain, heat, and altitude didn’t impact you at all. It would be pretty challenging to continue to perform your best under those conditions, much less to stay healthy. (Anyone who has been caught on the Peak-To-Peak Highway in a freak July snowstorm over Boulder, or has found themselves frantically pedaling back to San Francisco from the Bovine Bakery without a rain jacket in a deluge can relate!) The weather – the elements, NATURE – has a tremendous impact on our bodies. And the weather isn’t just outside our bodies – it’s INSIDE our bodies too. Changing what we eat with the seasons is just like taking a rain jacket or extra-warm layer with us when we go out to play. We’re balancing the elements. Ayurveda is a study of the elements – in our bodies, and outside of them too.

I’m not sure what the educational track is towards becoming a weatherperson, but if it’s anything like learning to read the biological weather in Ayurveda, it’s a lifelong study. We need tools to bring these principles into our lives to start feeling it and living it. Making yourself a nice jar of this Golden Secret Sauce is an easy tool in that direction. The ingredients in this easy sauce balance the elements and qualities of spring,  warming our bodies, helping to reduce inflammation, toning our cells, keeping digestion and metabolism high and our bodies balanced + lifted, even when the sleepy, soppiness of spring wants to weigh us down. 

 

Read on for the why and how!

Opposites balance

If we’re following in step with the holistic wisdom of Ayurveda, since last fall, we’ve been bolstering against winter’s straddle of Vata + Kapha seasons, where dry, cold, wet, mobile weather blows through. This is the time of year when nature – inside and outside of our bodies – is doing its hardest work under the surface, regenerating and renewing, and our job has been to rest, recover, nourish and honor that process. It’s been our time to hibernate. We’ve been staying warm, taking plenty of recovery time, eating warm soupy foods, cuddling up, Netflixing in, and baking our brains out. (At least I hope that’s what you’ve been doing!)

 

Even though the first peeks of spring are on the horizon, the chill hasn’t shaken off yet and the dampness is going to reach its peak as all of that snow turns into wet weather, watering the gorgeous seeds we’ve planted, inspiring them to bloom. Just like the greenhouses that are helping plant starts to sprout, we need to keep our bodies warm from the inside out, until the sun is strong enough to keep us warm from the outside in.

 

Like increases like. This is to say that if you found yourself eating ice cream and salads all winter, leaping into the snow in your bathing suit, you probably are experiencing cold extremities and a general chill pretty much all the time. You might be noticing that you’re constipated often, or that your sinuses feel dry.

 

BUT, since opposites balance, choosing foods wisely and making lifestyle adjustments mindfully, we can balance out all this wetness, coldness, and dampness that’s likely to chill us to the bone, steal our motivation and our fire, preserving it for when summer arrives and our it’s time to let our efforts shine.

 

By balancing the opposites in the foods we eat (ie: not eating foods that are cold, damp, wet or heavy in this spring season) we can help our bodies to bioalign – to connect with nature and to perform at their peak.

Favoring the flavors is favoring performance

The easiest thing we can do to balance the qualities of spring – to bring the opposites into our bodies and lives, is to do so with our foods. We’re eating at least three times a day, and what we’re eating BECOMES our bodies, alters the qualities of our beings.

 

Eating foods with warming and lightening does refer to the temperature and weight of what we eat, but it also refers to the energetic values of what we put on our plates.  As you’ve all been learning in the “Flavor notes” portion of this newsletter (below!) flavor isn’t just about fun or enjoyment. The flavors of our foods indicate the energetic impact they have on our bodies, and that’s REALLY important. By emphasizing, or minimizing, different flavors in our diets, we can impact our performance, weight and health in incredibly powerful ways. For spring, we want to emphasize the following flavors:

• Pungent: Pungent is a spicy, hot flavor like that found in chilies, radishes, turnips, raw onions, and most spices. The pungent taste is light, hot, rough, and dry—all beneficial for Kapha. In essence, if you like spicy or fiery hot, go for it. And even if you don’t, favor a wide variety of milder spices in your dishes—things like cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, garlic, paprika, and turmeric. The pungent taste cleanses the mouth, keeps circulation strong, clarifies the senses and warms the body. It stimulates digestion, liquefies secretions, clears the channels of the body, encourages sweating, and thins the blood.
• Bitter: The bitter taste predominates bitter greens (like kale, dandelion greens, collard greens, etc.), and is also found in Jerusalem artichokes, burdock root, eggplant, dark chocolate, and in spices like cumin, saffron, and turmeric. The bitter taste is rough, drying and light but it is also cooling, so it’s important to add some warming spices to bitter foods. Bitters cleanse the pallet and improve the sense of taste. They tone the skin and muscles, improve appetite, support digestion, and help to absorb moisture, lymph, muscle fat, adipose tissue, and sweat.
• Astringent: The astringent taste is basically a flavor of dryness—a chalky taste that dries the mouth and may cause it to contract (picture biting into a very green banana). Legumes like adzuki beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, kidney beans, lentils, pinto beans, and soybeans are classically astringent in taste. Some fruits, vegetables, grains, baked goods, and spices are also astringent in taste—things like apples, cranberries, pomegranate, artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, popcorn, rice cakes, crackers, basil, coriander, dill, fennel, parsley, and turmeric. The astringent taste is dry, rough, somewhat light, but like the bitter taste, it is also cold, so it’s best to add warming herbs and spices to astringent foods. In some cases (as with pomegranate), simply enjoying these foods in the warmer seasons makes a lot of sense.

These flavors help support all bodies to function well, but as athletes, we enjoy an added benefit of eating them. Because our extra activity and training require more cellular turnover, more fuel, and the fastest digestion, detoxification and rebuilding processes our bodies can offer, eating these foods in the spring helps prevent our bodies from getting bogged down under the loads we put upon them.

 

And, The Golden Ticket sauce is an easy way for us to bump them up in our meals.  Even if your meal doesn’t emphasize pungent, bitter or astringent flavors, you can weave them in by drizzling this sauce on. AND, if your meal does accentuate pungent, bitter and astringent, the secret sauce pushes it over the top (plus makes everything taste delicious!)

 

Important note: Spring is also a good time to minimize sour, sweet, salty flavors in general, with the exception of specific cravings you may have for these flavors while on a long effort. The craving for something sour, salty or sweet when you’re training is important to attend to, as it’s a sign that the body is in need of these important flavors to stay balanced, to keep electrolyte levels and hydration in check, and to keep the bodies naturally occurring detoxifying and anti-inflammatory processes moving well!

Balance the qualities

Beyond just flavors, balancing the qualities of our foods helps us to keep our bodies balanced in any season.  Ayurveda suggests keeping our bodies + beings in tippy-top shape in the spring with small tweaks in our foods:

• Light, cleansing, airy over heavy or dense. Foods that embody the light quality are the antithesis to the heaviness of this season. Lightness refers to the sheer weight of our foods and actions, but also to the density.  Fruits and vegetables are typically wonderfully light, so a diet that is built around a tremendous abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables—preferably cooked—is a great start. In general, foods that are heavy and that will “increase like for like” this spring are hard cheeses, puddings, nuts, cakes, pies, wheat, most flours, bread, pasta, red meat, and deep-fried foods, all of which are more appropriate for winter. Emphasizing “light” also means being careful not to eat too much in one sitting. (Here’s my tip on how to prevent overeating – hint: it’s in your hands!) 
• Warm or hot over cool. We can balance the cool of the season by eating warm foods, consuming warm beverages, and enjoying foods that have a warming energetic effect on the body. This means favoring cooked greens over raw salads, and warm grain bowls, like this one! Cooked foods are also preferred because they’re easy to digest and allow our digestive systems to stay at their peak, and to dedicate more of the body’s energy to cleansing, detoxifying after winter, and of course to our training. Staying warm also refers to beverages, and this is still the time of year to enjoy room temp or warm things to drink. If we can wait a few more months to dive into frozen foods, cold and iced drinks, ice cream, etc our bodies will thank us for this summer when we can enjoy galore!
• Dry over moist or oily. Kapha (the dosha that dominates spring) is oily and moist, and when nature serves up these qualities in excess, we can balance them by enjoying foods that have a drying quality.  Beans, white potatoes, dried fruits, rice cakes, popcorn, and an occasional glass of dry red or white wine are excellent for the body right now. Use less oil and fat when cooking in these spring months than you do in the wintertime, and minimize oily foods like avocado, coconut, olives, buttermilk, cheese, fried eggs, cow’s milk, wheat, nuts, and seeds.
• Rough over smooth. There’s a reason that fruits and vegetables are sometimes called roughage; their fibrous structure gives them a very rough quality. This is why Kapha responds so well to eating large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables. That said, these foods are often much easier to digest when cooked, so be careful not to overdo raw foods, and adapt your enjoyment of them according to the season.  Some foods, like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, dark leafy greens, and many beans, are exceptionally rough and are therefore wonderful for spring.

Examples of foods perfect for spring: tender greens, micro sprouts, asparagus, fennel, artichokes, radishes, steamed broccoli, fresh berries, citrus fruits, steamed vegetables, rice, millet, amaranth, lentils, chicken, beans and other legumes, sunflower seeds, and sunflower seed butter, turmeric, ginger, black pepper, cumin, mustard, fresh herbs, ghee, olive oil, almonds and almond butter, poached eggs or soft-boiled eggs.

Now, a Golden Secret Sauce + Roasted Cauliflower Bowl…

…is basically springs’ perfect meal. Warm, drying, cleansing grains with astringent and bitter vegetables, served warm with an energetically warming dressing that’s tangy, pungent, spicy and SO good over top.

 

But really, the bowl could contain just about anything. Roasted vegetables, grains, eggs, salads, or all of those things combined. The real power is in the Golden Secret Sauce (it’s always in the sauce!)

 

No matter what you’re eating this spring, keeping your system energetically warm and cleansed with this super-charged, super tasty dressing is a WIN. It’s a low-oil, super-flavorful, power-packed, nutrient-rich, energetically balancing way to make anything you’re eating really shine for you. Drizzle it everywhere, anywhere, and make it on repeat. It’s what I’m drizzling on all of my salads, grain bowls, even over eggs.