The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook

My yoga teacher, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, was famous for saying life is “99 percent practice, 1 percent theory.” Reading about Ayurveda may help you understand its principles, but it is not until you start experimenting with its diet and lifestyle recommendations that you will begin to see improvements in your health. This chapter is full of tips to help you get your kitchen organized, master the Everyday recipes, and integrate Ayurvedic routines into your daily life. It also provides a road map to what you’ll find in part two, “Seasonal Recipes and Routines.”

Part two, which follows, features recipes and routines broken out into five chapters of seasonal recipes and lifestyle practices . . .

HEALTHY LIVING AS A HOBBY

Think of Ayurveda as a hobby. Integrating new ways of taking care of yourself (for example, cooking the majority of your own food) can take awhile. If you were to take up the hobby of knitting, you would benefit by first buying a skein or two of yarn and learning how to make something simple. Otherwise it would be easy to end up with a basket full of yarns, a head full of design ideas, and very little staying power. Once you settle in and feel the simplicity of what Ayurveda is teaching, you can chuckle at what a big deal it may have seemed to get started. Simply begin by getting a few of the Everyday recipes under your belt. Remember, it helps to turn your attention to making new habits with an eye toward exploration, self-acceptance, and sense of humor.

Finding a Flow with Everyday Recipes

The Everyday recipes suggest a three-meal-a-day flow for eating food you have prepared, all year round—ideally a medium-size breakfast to suit your appetite, a big lunch, and a small supper. The suggested seasonal mix-ins provide some variety, but the cooking method doesn’t change from season to season, so you are not reinventing the wheel every time the weather shifts. Think of the Everyday recipes as templates. Once you get the hang of the basics, you can get more creative with what vegetables, oils, or spices you are using to make an Everyday dish. To help you along, I’ve included a number of seasonal recipes that use an Everyday recipe as a template.

If you don’t get bored easily, you could eat solely from the Everyday recipes and enjoy an affordable, unprocessed, manageable diet rich in qualities that promote balance. When you are ready, expand your Everyday fare by branching out into the recipes in the seasonal chapters, and I hope you will find soon enough that you don’t need a recipe anymore to whip up something satisfying.

KEEP IT SIMPLE: Remember, especially when you start playing with mix-ins, that the efficacy of Ayurvedic cookery is in its simplicity. Allow your tastes to gradually favor meals that contain few ingredients. Eat a hearty portion of one dish, rather than a smorgasbord of small bites. Keep it simple and you’ll feel better.

Creating a diet that changes with the seasons is a lifestyle practice anchored in awareness of how your body feels. The recipes in this book suggest food ideas that will ease the transitions, but it’s your job to pay attention to the changing qualities of the months. With practice and a few seasons behind you, your intuition and creativity to change your diet year-round will become second nature. Keep it fun and flexible.

Organizing the Everyday Pantry and Spice Rack

Store your staple grains, legumes, nuts, and dried fruits in glass jars. Using glass jars for storage keeps the pantry neat and pretty to look at. To avoid having miscellaneous plastic bags peeking out from behind each other on your shelves or gathering in piles only to be forgotten, you’ll find it worthwhile to take the time to procure some nice-looking jars that will fit together on a shelf or in a drawer. In any case it’s a good idea to move away from using plastics for kitchen storage, as they are all made from chemicals, and you can’t be sure if these are leeching into your foods over time. You can use canning jars, which come in several sizes and have two-part metal tops for easy cleaning and storage. These can be found at hardware and kitchen/home supply stores.

TIFFIN, INDIAN LUNCH BOX

The word tiffin can refer to a small meal or to the container small meals are packed in. In most parts of India, food is stored in stainless steel containers with latching tops, sometimes stackable for holding separate dishes of rice, dal, and vegetables. It is common to see locals riding bicycles to work with three-tiered lunch tiffins swinging from their handlebars. Tiffins are available at Indian markets and natural foods stores in a variety of shapes and sizes.

KITCHEN SETUP SHOPPING LIST

Canning jars for storage, 16-ounce and 32-ounce sizes

Leakproof glass food storage containers in a variety of sizes

Insulated lunch bag (if you often eat away from home); look for a waterproof one that fits neatly into your work tote.

Glass or steel water bottle (for warm weather)

Drink thermos (to replace water bottle in cool weather); look for stainless steel and leakproof.

Soup thermos, stainless steel and with a wide mouth for hot meals on the go

Pepper mill

3-ounce glass jars with shaker tops (for Ayurvedic spice mixes and salts)

Mortar and pestle (for grinding spices)

HERBS AND SPICES

You’ll enjoy the optimal medicinal value of spices by buying them whole, which are good for about one year, and grinding up a batch monthly. Once a seed has been ground up, its flavor and efficacy will diminish after about a month.

Traditional Ayurvedic cookery often calls for both whole spices and ground spices in a soup, stew, rice, or cooked vegetable recipe. The body of the dish will be flavorful from the powdered spices, while the whole seeds add bursts of extra flavor and visual variety. In the recipes in this book, the whole spices are sometimes optional. When you’re starting out, it’s best to grind up a batch of seasoning monthly—meeting all your needs for taste, seasonal qualities, and good digestion—and just use that. As you get more discerning with your cookery, you may start to augment the recipes with whole spices as well, for variety and excitement.

Buy spices at a natural foods store that carries bulk culinary herbs and spices, or you can order them from an Ayurvedic supply company (see “Resources,” page 306). One-half pound of each type of spice is a good amount to order.

Storage. Keep your spices in glass jars or, if you are lucky enough to find one, in a spice box (see page 59), the traditional way of storing Indian spices; the flavors meld into a masala inside the box. Pint-sized jars hold a good amount of whole spices to keep around, to be used within one year. Saving and washing glass nut-butter jars from the grocery store is a thrifty way to gather a uniform collection; another option is to purchase canning jars.

For daily use, in the spice rack or on the back of the stove, keep ground spices in a few small glass jars with shaker tops, which can also be found at any kitchen or home goods store. Have a pepper mill filled with fresh peppercorns on the table.

To make the Everyday spice mixes you will need:

• Coriander seed

• Fennel seed

• Cumin seed

The following spices are best bought in powdered form, as they are difficult to grind up on your own:

• Turmeric

• Cardamon (though whole green pods are beautiful in rice dishes and chai)

• Cinnamon

• Ginger

• Pink salt or sea salt

Once you get in the habit of using the seasonal shopping lists, you will buy a few extra spices each season and can vary the mixtures in your shaker jars, making one just for Ayurvedic tastes and another for the Western-style recipes.

Fresh herbs are always best, but they are not always easy to find. All year round, you can grow a few culinary favorites in pots on your windowsill and cut bits for fresh garnishes. Parsley, thyme, rosemary, and mint all grow pretty well inside.

When herbs are fresh in season, you can buy them at the farmers’ market and hang them up in bunches to dry in your kitchen, then store in glass jars. These can be used to make the seasonal salts. Dried culinary herbs can also be purchased at a natural foods store that carries bulk spices. A little goes a long way, so just buy a quarter cup or so for the season. If you are cooking for a family, buy closer to one-half cup.

FRESH GINGER

Fresh gingerroot is paramount and should be purchased weekly and kept outside the refrigerator. Look for roots with small fingers, which will be tender and delicate in flavor. In the latter part of the harvest season, you will find “young ginger” at the farmers’ market. These roots are small, pink, and appear medicinally in classic Ayurvedic cookery. Buy them and use them as much as you can when they are around.

THE SPICE BOX

Also known as a masala box, this stainless steel circular canister is a traditional way of storing Ayurvedic spices. The canister holds a number of small cups for individual spices, both whole and ground, which are then allowed to harmonize their flavors inside the box. Cooks can access the full spice cabinet by pulling out only one container. I love my spice box tremendously, and it holds seven cups: turmeric powder, coriander powder, peppercorns, cumin seed, coriander seed, fennel seed, and mustard seed. I also have a separate box for sweet-tasting chai spices. As you discover your favorite flavors from the lists here, pick the seven MVPs and feature them in your very own spice box.

GRAINS AND LEGUMES

Have fun varying your grains and legumes with the seasonal shopping lists, but keep a few superstars in quart-sized jars for the Everyday recipes. When cooking for a family, you may store larger bags in the pantry, if you find a quart jar goes too fast to keep refilling.

• Basmati rice, brown and white

• Mung beans, whole green and split yellow

NUTS, SEEDS, AND DRIED FRUITS

Seeds are lighter than nuts and appear in recipes throughout all four seasons, while nuts come and go on your seasonal lists. Dried fruits are favored on a seasonal basis and appear mostly when fresh fruits are not available, so just stock them seasonally. Store the following in glass jars in the refrigerator:

• Raw sunflower seeds

• Raw almonds

• Shredded coconut

• Chia seeds

GREAT DATES

Dried dates, usually of the deglet noor variety, are free of pits and convenient for baking. However, Ayurveda tells us “wet” dates are preferable to dried, because they are fresh (more prana) and easier on the blood sugar. If you can get fresh dates, buy them as you would any fruit, but in cooler climates, buy the Medjool date, which is as close to fresh as you will find. If you don’t mind removing the pits, use these instead of dried when you can.

OILS

Consuming fresh oils is important. Oils go rancid, and the body cannot metabolize them in this form, which results in ama, undigested toxic matter in the tissues. You do not want to have cooking oils around more than a few months. The seasonal shopping lists will guide you to buy seasonally appropriate oils so you can use them up, then shift into the next season’s variety. For example, some oils, like sesame, are heavier than others and therefore more appropriate in cool weather; coconut oil has a cooling quality and so is recommended in warm weather. However, Everyday Ghee (see page 114) is beneficial all year long and keeps well for one month outside of the refrigerator and up to three months in the fridge.

Remember: ghee and coconut oil have the greatest heat tolerance (they don’t turn rancid at high heat) and are used in all the baked goods recipes in this book. Other cooking oils, such as olive and sesame, can tolerate medium heat and are acceptable for stove-top cooking.

Using the Seasonal Shopping Lists

Celebrate the changes in seasons by spending a little time “seasonalizing” your pantry, in the same way you change out your seasonal clothing. Rather than keeping only the same oils, grains, nuts, dried fruits, and legumes stocked all year long, get excited about the foods and flavors you haven’t seen for a while. Taking the time to appreciate the variety nature gives us will feed your soul and your senses.

Each recipe chapter contains a seasonal shopping list designed to guide you into buying foods that will balance the qualities changing in your body at that time of year and that will keep your diet pleasantly varied. When you use the list for stocking up, you will be prepared to make most of the recipes for the season.

As the qualities in your environment begin to shift, phase out the foods that do not appear on the new season’s list by using up what you have. Take a few hours to prepare or purchase items from the new season’s shopping list, then return home to get things organized in the kitchen. Change out what’s in your glass jars; the varieties of legumes, grains, nuts, and oils you are stocking; and make up some fresh, seasonally appropriate spice and salt mixes. You are then ready to make the recipes featured in the new season’s chapter and to balance the qualities in your body by gently attending to your diet.

You will find many suggested fresh fruits and vegetables on the shopping lists. Don’t buy them all at once! Only buy enough fresh fruit and vegetables for one week’s meals at a time. Buy just a couple varieties of fruit and veggie in one trip considering how many you are cooking for. Buy more vegetables than fruits. To keep it simple, try rotating the fruits and veggies you buy each time you go shopping so that you can try all the varieties. Buy only as much as you can prepare and eat in a few days or a workweek, to ensure you keep eating fresh produce and avoid spoilage. As a rule, if something looks great to you, your body probably wants to eat it. (We are not talking about brownies here.) Buy a new vegetable that attracts you and try it in one of the recipes. Each time you experiment with unfamiliar produce, you expand your cookery skills.

Remember, the Everyday recipes are meant to guide you to prepare meals simply from the staple ingredients you keep around all the time. If you don’t get around to rotating the pantry right away when the season changes, it’s OK—just keep cooking!

Recipe Yields

The more complicated a recipe is, the larger the recipe yield. The logic of this is simple: If you are putting a lot of time into cooking a dish, you likely want to have more of the final product to enjoy. Most of The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook recipes are uncomplicated and will yield two servings, whereas soups and stews that need to simmer awhile generally serve four. (Note: This could be four demure bowls, if the soup is a side dish, or two big bowls, if the soup is your main meal.) Rather than teaching you to get fancy in the kitchen, make large amounts of food, and eat leftovers often, The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook seeks to get you cooking more simply and more often. More fresh foods equal more vibrant health.

Some of you will be cooking for yourselves alone and will eat half of a dish at one sitting and keep half to use for the next meal or to take to work. If you are cooking for two, double the recipe so both people can benefit from a packed lunch tomorrow.

Cooking for the Family

If you are cooking to feed a family, you will want to double or triple most of the recipes. However, one of the joys of this book is that it shows you how simple it is to cook something just for yourself. Your body might not be calling for the meat and potatoes or mac ’n’ cheese that is typical American family fare. Instead, you might parboil some fresh greens, use an immersion hand blender to process half into a simple green soup for you (Everyday Cleansing Green Soup, page 102), and serve the other half of the parboiled vegetables as a side dish for the rest of the crowd. You can augment your soup with a little meat and eat much less potato than you would have without your side soup. Teaching you to stay true to what you need, without feeling overwhelmed by cooking several meals at once, is one of the aims of this book.

To personalize the Everyday template recipes, family members can choose their own mix-ins to add to each basic meal. At breakfast, for instance, serve a batch of Everyday Creamed Grain Cereal (page 78) cooked with slightly less water than the recipe calls for and offer, as an addition, cow’s milk for one person and almond milk for another. Or serve Everyday Steamed Salad Bowl (page 88) for dinner, but offer two or three of the dressing choices and several different toppings on the side—one person can have meat, another can have toasted seeds.

Notes for the Family Chef:

• Keeping spice mixes handy in shaker jars invites each eater to spice the meal according to his or her tastes.

• Keep a jar of ghee or coconut oil available, along with a clean spoon, for those who need to add more oil to a meal.

• Most Indian households have a pressure cooker. If you are willing to learn how to use one, this is a speedy way to produce butter-soft beans and vegetables. According to Ayurvedic cooking, pressure cooking is the best way to ensure digestibility of dry, hard foods. Slow cooking is another method that requires more planning but softens foods nicely as well.

• Kids need sweet taste, and naturally sweetened cooking will build taste buds that don’t demand white sugar. Dates or raisins cooked in Everyday Kichari (page 94) are sure to go “down the hatch” easily, as my dad used to say.

• Make up new batches of chutneys, sauces, and spreadables every week. If someone at the table doesn’t instantly love the meal you’ve served, maybe she or he will love it with mango chutney on top.

• Kids are in the building phase of life and so need more of the heavy, dense foods, like dairy products, eggs, sweet potatoes, and nut butters. The muffin recipes in this book could be a lifesaver for you, the family chef, and are good in the lunchbox. Don’t tell them what it’s called, but Winter Rejuvenating Tonic (see page 265) is also ideally nourishing for children and grounds their energy after a school day.

• Growing children generally need to eat more often and to consume less at each meal than adults. But even if you feed your children five times a day, try to stick to eating three meals yourself.

Adapting for Different Climates

Take a moment to review the table “The Ten Builders and Their Opposites” (see page 14). It is important to feel for these qualities as you notice your daily sensations and watch for any early symptoms of imbalance. Once you understand how the recipes are using foods to balance the seasonal qualities, you can modify the recipes to balance the qualities at work in your own body. When in doubt, reach for the neutral foods suggested in the Everyday recipes.

The following qualities form the basis for the seasonal recipe chapters.

SPRING: heavy, oily/damp, slow, cloudy, stable

SUMMER: hot, sharp/bright, oily/humid

FALL: cool, light, dry, rough, mobile (windy), clear

WINTER: cool, very dry, light, rough, mobile, hard, clear

YOUR INDOOR ENVIRONMENT

Remember, if you spend a lot of time indoors, you will need to account for the environment inside, which may be the same all year long. Both air-conditioning and heat are dry, dry, dry. Some workplaces, like office buildings and retail shops, may be kept very cold, so adjust for that when planning food and drink for your workdays.

Spring foods are drying and warming, as they are meant to melt winter residue, and they call for very little salt. If spring in your area is generally less damp and cool than a typical spring environment, you can enjoy a bit more salt and a bit more oil in the recipes.

Summer foods will be light on the oil and cooling in nature. If your summer is dry instead of humid, you can add more fats and oils to the recipes.

Fall recipes favor warm, cooked foods, though without any ingredients that are too heating, like chilies. The foods will be building, grounding, well oiled, and deeply nourishing to prepare the body for a long winter. If the winter you expect is not so long as in a cold environment, consume building foods for a shorter period. With a longer growing season, you will also enjoy adding more fresh vegetables to the recipes.

Winter recipes favor slightly heating foods, served warm, watery, and oily, with a bit of spice. If your winter is not very dry and cold—for instance, if you live in a climate where it rains all winter—you may favor the winter recipes for their warming effects, but cut back a bit on the oils and heavy fats. In this case, reduce the sour, salty tastes as well, as they cause the body to hold water.

Understanding Internal Climate

In actuality, you have two climates to consider when making your food choices: that of your external environment and, more important, your internal climate. Each body contains a unique makeup of the five Ayurvedic elements. It is possible, for example, to be born with a propensity to be cold and dry, even during seasons that present warm and moist qualities.

A cold individual might feel the strongest and most integrated during the warm months and can relax a bit on keeping warm and oiled at this time, but this individual certainly doesn’t need to seek out cooling, drying foods at any time of year. He is likely to experience cold hands and feet most of the time. He can get away with having some favorite cool and dry foods more often in the warm weather, should the mood move him. Eating too much from the spring recipes is likely to make this person uncomfortable and perhaps cause dry skin or gassiness. Simply by adding some good fats and oils to his meals, he will experience relief.

Another person might experience a hot internal environment, which could manifest as acid stomach or a feeling of toastiness, even in winter. Perhaps the internal heat is worse in summer. She would do well to reduce the intake of such sharp items as coffee and alcohol. Instead, focus on summer drinkables and enjoy cooling condiments, such as Cilantro Mint Chutney, all year round.

Yet another individual gains weight easily all year long, particularly in winter. Although it is light and dry outside in winter, this body holds heavy and oily qualities inside. The winter diet may prove too rich for him. Favoring some of the drying, astringent grains and vegetables from the spring chapter will help make some of the winter recipes lighter for this person.

The truth is that eating simply and noticing how different foods make you feel or what qualities they present (Comfortably warm? Aggravated? Heavy after eating, or energized?) informs your understanding of how to modify the recipes for your internal climate.

THREE CASE STUDIES IN INTERNAL CLIMATE

Some Don’t Like It Hot

Cindy’s least favorite weather is that of a steamy summer day. Her rosy complexion turns bright red when she gets hot, she has a tendency toward burping, and she often gets acid indigestion from spicy food. Cindy also notices she is prone to acne before her menstrual cycle, especially when she has that second iced coffee in the afternoon every day and indulges in the habit of postwork cocktails. When things get stressful at the office, sometimes she has to run for the toilet right after meals. Not surprisingly, winter is her favorite time of year, and the cold weather makes her feel energized.

Cindy’s natural preference for winter and her tendencies toward overheating, acid stomach, acne, and quick digestion all suggest a hot internal environment. She is likely to notice these tendencies fire up in humid weather, when sharp, oily, heating qualities predominate. Eating recipes from the summer chapter will ease the symptoms of internal heat at any time of year. Cindy might enjoy a bit of spicy food on occasion in the cold weather, but she knows better than to go for it when it is hot outside. She is fond of having Cardamom Limeade and Cilantro Mint Chutney with her meals all year round. She loves coffee, but she can tell when she is drinking too much of it—her stomach tends to be more acidic, and she gets hungry—so avoids having it on an empty stomach.

Sticky Stuff

Frank is always trying to lose a little weight. It seems like if he has a piece of pastry (which he is always craving, especially when he isn’t on his exercise regimen), he can’t burn it off. Once he gets started exercising, he has great stamina, but if he doesn’t get to it in the morning, he will feel sluggish and unmotivated all day. His skin is often clammy and cool to the touch, though he wouldn’t tell you he feels cold. His least favorite time of year is spring, when he is often congested and can’t taste anything. Warm, dry weather makes Frank feel lighter and more apt to go outside.

Frank’s natural aversion to damp weather and his tendencies toward weight gain and congestion suggest a damp, cool internal environment. Though it seems to come to a head in late winter or spring, for him congestion can result from eating a big dinner or an ice cream cone at any time of the year. If Frank chooses light, dry recipes from the spring chapter whenever he feels sluggish or congested, he can alleviate these symptoms of a damp internal environment. He really likes the autumnal Cranberry Butternut Muffin recipe all year round, but he has learned to go for the spring recipes of Breakfast Pho Soup or Berry Buck-Up Cereal if it’s a rainy, cold day, or else he feels heavy all morning.

A Big Chill

Phyllis is always cold; she can’t go anywhere without a sweater in her bag. If she drinks iced water at a restaurant and has only a salad, she will have trouble getting warm again. She might order hot soup even when it’s warm out—but not with beans, because they give her gas. She always has a hard time in winter, gets very dry skin, and isn’t likely to eliminate daily. Phyllis is happiest in a warm bath or on vacation in the tropics.

Phyllis’s love for warm bathing and hot soup suggests a cold internal environment. She is likely to feel better eating fall and winter recipes most of the time. The grounding, moist qualities of these foods will help her stay warm and comfortable. She knows to wait for hot weather before enjoying a salad, and even then, she takes care to eat cooked food more often than raw, because she finds she has less gas and bloating this way.

Use the “Seasonal Signs and Symptoms” table often to review the signs and symptoms of imbalance and the qualities at work in each case. This will help you to recognize what qualities are in need of balance and whether they correspond to the season at hand or are present only in your body.

SEASONAL SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS
SEASON	QUALITIES OF THE SEASON	SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF IMBALANCE
SPRING	Cool, heavy, oily (damp), slow, cloudy, stable	Congestion, seasonal allergies, weight gain, water retention, lethargy, sadness
SUMMER	Hot, sharp (bright), oily (humid)	Acid indigestion, reflux, loose stools, pimples, rashes, swelling, irritability, headaches
FALL	Cool, light, dry, rough, mobile (windy), clear, erratic, early fall is also hot	Gas and bloating, constipation, dry skin and scalp, itchy or burning rashes, cold hands and feet, insomnia, anxiety
WINTER	Cold, very dry, light, rough, mobile, hard, clear	Constipation, dry skin and scalp, cracking joints, cold hands and feet, anxiety, fatigue

CITY LIVING

The prevalence of sound and light (even at night), billboards and other advertisements, the vibration of electronics, the movement of vehicles—all of these elements of urban environs increase the mobile quality of the mind and the activity of the sense organs. Both of these effects require some balancing. Regardless of the season, city dwellers need to nurture stable, dense, slow, and soft qualities. For example, meditation, oil massage, or gentle yoga will help cultivate these qualities, as will seeking out contact with the natural world (grass, leaves, flowers, even a pet) and taking a few moments to feel the soft quality on the skin.

Taking It on the Road: Travel Tips

If you travel away from home to a different climate, you will notice in a day or two how the qualities of the new environment affect you. If you are suddenly surrounded by humidity and you aren’t used to that, it will feel especially moist and warm to you, and you will crave dry and cooling qualities. Be prepared to change your diet while you are in this new place, the same way you would for a changing season. Also, be aware that the qualities of air travel are incredibly dry and light. If you’re flying, make it a point to eat warm, moist food and oil your skin upon arrival—these simple practices will balance the effects of air travel.

You needn’t lose your Everyday Ayurveda routine when you travel. Again, the key is to be prepared. You’ll run into trouble when traveling when you don’t have any oil for oil massage, when you forgot your thermos. Keeping a travel kit ready in a clear plastic bag for flights will help you maintain your routine while you’re on the road. It should include:

• A tongue scraper (see page 274)

• A three-ounce, leakproof plastic bottle of massage oil. Before your flight be sure to put some of the oil inside your nose, inhaling deeply. Or purchase a nasya oil for your travel kit (see page 277). A shower and oil massage (abhyanga) after you land will do wonders to balance the drying effects of flying (see page 278).

• Rose water hydrosol. If your eyes get dry, spray or drop rose water into them.

• Ginger tea bags. Do not have iced drinks or alcohol on the plane; ask for hot water for tea.

• Triphala, if you tend to get constipated

TRIPHALA

Triphala (pronounced “tri-fuh-la”) means “three fruits.” It is a mild, cleansing formula made by compounding three dried fruits: amalaki, haritaki, and bibhitaki. Available at most health food stores, triphala is great for establishing regularity during travel and times of stress. This compound repairs and soothes the organs of digestion and elimination, and it contains five of the six tastes. Triphala is generally appropriate for most body types. Consult an Ayurvedic practitioner for dosage and usage.

Pack a thermos or glass or steel water bottle. If you’re flying, ask the flight attendant for warm water in your bottle.

Sometimes it’s hard to find unprocessed foods when you’re traveling. The good news is that an Ayurvedic diet at home improves your digestive capacity, so if you end up having to eat at a diner once in a while, your digestive fire will get right to work. But if you find yourself eating processed foods every night of your trip, you could end up experiencing signs of imbalance, such as bloating, gas, acid stomach, or irregularity. When eating out at restaurants, request hot water with lemon or mint tea to drink; focus on eating grain dishes and roasted and steamed vegetables; and ask for real olive oil and lemon wedges or balsamic vinegar to dress your salads. Remember, you have a choice about what you put into your body, even at a restaurant, and if you ask for vegetables, the kitchen will always come up with something.

Now Is the Time

Integrating the Ayurvedic diet, lifestyle practices, and wisdom into your life may take some time. It is most enjoyable—and effective—to start with something simple, and remember that small changes are lasting ones.

So, friends, let’s get cooking. Turn the page and begin to change your life, one meal at a time.