Sourdough sandwich with fried egg, lentil sprouts, cucumber, carrots, sunflower sprouts and lettuce
Foods for Spring
Foods for Spring start to look much different from winter. Now is the time to gently “cleanse” the body from the rich, heavy foods of winter. Cleansing the body does not have to be painful, include a fancy kit or be hard. Simply eat the foods of spring. Slowly let the slow cooked foods of winter fall away. Replace them with sour and fermented foods and more fish and vegetarian dishes than meat. Leafy greens are especially nourishing to the liver blood. Cilantro and other green herbs have a detoxifying effect on the body. Start the day with warm lemon water or a dash of apple cider vinegar and warm water. As the weather ebbs and flows from cold to warm and back again so can your diet. Let the way you feel and what the weather looks like dictate what you eat right now as we transition to spring. You can balance the lighter foods of spring for example by having a salad that is brought to room temperature from the fridge and cooking half of the veggies and leaving the remainder raw. Proper chewing allows your body to receive the most benefit from food, especially raw food that is harder in our climate to digest. This is a more gentle way to harmonize with Spring that to do a radical “cleanse” and completely change your diet overnight.
You might pick a food or two that nourishes the liver energy of spring each day and slowly into each meal.
Eat foods like the season:
- young plants
- fresh greens
- sprouts
- immature wheat or other cereal grasses.
The salty taste of winter should now be avoided as it has a sinking and descending quality that is the opposite of spring. Instead add sweet and pungent foods to create a “spring within”.
The classics say the sweet and pungent flavors have an expansive, rising quality. Green is the color of the liver and spring and should be a big part of the spring diet. Dark leafy greens like Kale, Chard, Spinach, Arugula, Dandelion, Watercress nourish the liver blood and cleanse the liver. Romaine, lettuce, asparagus, amaranth, quinoa, alfalfa, radish leaves and citrus peel are all great to add to your diet in the spring. If you garden asparagus is one of the first vegetables to come out of the garden in the spring and have quite a detoxifying effect on the body. You can tell by how your pee smells after eating it! Enjoying the young sprouts that are thinned from the garden are ideal nutrient packed spring foods.
Recommended cooking herbs include: basil, fennel, marjoram, rosemary, caraway, dill, bay leaf, turmeric, cumin, ginger, black pepper, horseradish, rosemary, mints, lemon balm.
Sprouted grains, legumes and seeds have many benefits to the body especially now as they represent exactly what is happening in nature. Raw and sprouted foods are both cleansing and cooling and can now be added to the diet.
Food is best cooked for a shorter time but at a higher temperature. Coconut oil is an ideal oil for this kind of cooking. Light steaming or minimal simmering is ideal. Eat largest meal for breakfast, second largest meal for lunch and a small dinner. Ideally be finished eating for the day 12-14 hours before your next breakfast. A 14 hour break between dinner and the following breakfast is sometimes referred to as a yogi cleanse as this gives the digestive system a rest.
Recipes for Spring
Italian Baked Chicken with green lentil mash
Garlic Lime White Bean Soup with Arugula
Scrambled Meat with Cabbage and Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes
Ginger Garlic Bok Choy Stir Fry
Spring Beverages
* Honey used sparingly is helpful when craving sweets and has a detoxifying nature. Mixed with apple cider vinegar can have a stronger effect ( 1 teaspoon of each to 1 cup of water). This is a good way to start your day before breakfast. Use warm or room temp water. If vinegar is too hard on your stomach you could also start the day with warm water with lemon or lime instead. Or alternate between the two choices. This is a nice way to start spring but it is not advised to do long term as its not necessary.
* Honey/mint tea is great in the spring as it helps to cool the body and eases digestion.
*Lemon, lime, grapefruit is bitter/sour and cooling and is delicious when added to water.
*Dandelion leaf tea for liver cleansing. Check out all of the benefits here.