More than just a bunch of fruits, nuts + flakes.
Jump to RecipeI’ve entered the speed round, friends.
With just a few weeks left before graduation from Ayurveda School, the case studies, client work, reading, studying, classwork, and integration are running at a full tilt. To be sure, I love school, and I’ve always been pretty good at studying new material, staying organized and “being a good student.” But a new challenge faces me with this medicinal system I’ve been studying so intensely for the past couple of years, figuring out how to share this ancient wisdom in a modern way. In a way that helps my athletes, clients + everyone to understand just how deeply divergent our modern food + lifestyle ways are from the way nature intended. Specifically when it comes to nutrition, fueling our bodies + approaching food. It’s really important – for our health, for the health of the planet + for the future of our own exceptional performance for us to get back to that natural state, somehow.
How do I use modern language (and not necessarily the Sanskrit terms) to describe these complex concepts that start with us taking small steps in the way we eat and live?
Slowly but surely, I’m unpacking massive concepts into small bites, and I’ll be over the moon to share them with you in full force when the homework, papers, tests, and classes are over early this summer but for now, I want to tell you about granola. Yep – this Spring Granola Reboot with Raspberries + Fennel is a great place to keep this conversation rolling.
We all know that the little things matter. That they make UP the big things. Even in the times when the big shiny challenges + and triumphs of life distract us, we know that the tiny things comprise them.
The foods we eat, and specifically this granola, is no different.
Nearly all granolas are made with fruits, nuts, flakes and seeds, and bound with sweetener and oil of some kind. But the specific ingredients MATTER. Not all granolas are created equally, and when you have the power – in your own kitchen – to make a difference, it is my personal philosophy that it’s a good idea to take that invitation + run with it.
You might recall that two weeks ago I dropped a big fat newsletter with a Roasted Cauliflower Grain Bowl and the Golden Ticket Dressing to go with it, and in that newsletter, I shared alllll the ways to make small tweaks to align meals with the season. (If you don’t, scroll back through Patreon + and read it! It’s a GEM!)
In it, I mentioned that bitter, astringent and sweet tastes were the foods to favor right now to help the body melt away the heaviness of winter, cleanse the systems from the inside out, and prepare for the summer adventures, challenges, and heart-pumping efforts on our horizons. If you’re striving to realign with yourself to unlock your bio-individuality (and thus, performance potential!) striving to balance the damp, heavy, chilly qualities of spring with lighter, brighter, elevating foods is the way to do it. It’s time to gently warm, lift, and lighten and enliven our meals and our moods….and it turns out that most granolas do the opposite of that.
What makes food lighter, brighter, and elevating? THE INGREDIENTS. The energetic properties of the foods and the flavors they hold are the magic. Yes, a salad is light, bright, and elevating. But so too are foods that are easy for the body to burn and absorb, that aren’t too oily, heavy, dense, or sweet. And that sounds like lots of granola (and basically cookies parading around as breakfast), ya know?
Nuts are heavy and dense, maple and sugar are very sweet, and the oils that are added to make granola chewy and clumpy are rather challenging for the body to burn off. They can decrease our digestive fire, weigh us down, and make our systems sluggish instead of stoked.
And so, as I’m priming my own body for a full-on summer, I set out to make a lighter, smarter, granola that would not only burn clean but stoke my digestive fire and keep my energy up at the same time. To do so, I made some smart swaps to a favorite granola recipe and this delicious ditty is the result.
The reason to make THIS granola right now is that:
Eager to hear more about why THIS is the granola to bake + nosh on stat? Read on!
Before we dive into the deep meanings in our granola ingredients, a little reminder about the holistic wisdom of Ayurveda, how I use it to develop recipes, and how this ancient science applies to the way we eat and live.
In Ayurveda, the season of spring is associated with water and earth, and all of their qualities. Depending on where you live, spring for you is either airy, fresh, light, wet and chilly, or liquid, heavy, dull, moist, cold, static, oily, cloudy, soft. No matter where we are, as the sun starts to melt away the blanket of winter, and spring starts to sprout, moisture and the seeds we’ve planted all winter begin to bloom.
NOW. Like increases like. Opposites balance. And because our modern lives are in constant threat of keeping our balance with our own well-being, and with nature, it’s important that we balance these spring qualities in our bodies by eating the opposites. Doing so will help us immensely to stay healthy and well during this time of year, to progress towards our athletic and personal goals, and to amplify our body wisdom in this season of transition.
In spring we want to emphasize the light, elevated, warm (not hot or cold), energetic qualities in our foods and lives, to balance out the heavy, earthy, static qualities of the season.
But granola, made with dense grains, heavy nuts, oily fats and (often) extra sugars are the opposite of those qualities. Yeeeps.
For this particular granola recipe, I wanted to get away with all that heft and instead, invoke a recipe that would lighten our spirits, invoke our digestive fire to help keep appetites up, energy levels high, passions and prowess burning bright.
Granola, by most definitions, is a crunchy, chunky, and sweet element in the “healthy food” vocabulary. Regardless of whether they’re so over-sweetened that they’re basically cookies masquerading around as breakfast, OR whether they’re the unfortunate victims of dried cranberries (the horror!) is somewhat beside the point. Nearly all granola is comprised of nearly the same ingredients: toasted grains, nuts, seeds, baked and bound by a sweetener, a fat, and sprinkled with some spices. (And, maybe adorned with dried fruits.)
This granola is actually no exception to this rule. It’s also made with fruits, nuts, flakes, sweeteners, oil, and spices. BUT, know that the ingredients aren’t arbitrary. They weren’t picked out because they were what I had, or even what I like. They were picked out for what they would offer our bodies in THIS season:
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