Autumn Eats! Eat for the Autumn Season

The goal of living in harmony with nature and her cycles is to maintain a level of wellness that keeps chronic disease from developing. In ancient medicine, lifestyle is created around each hour, each day, each month, each season and each year, as each has an associated organ, sound, direction of movement, color, temperature and taste. In a time when trust in modern medicine is low, we can adopt the secrets of the past to help us steer as clear as possible of the medical cartel that rules public health.

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Autumn: Mid September through late November. (I could write an entire chapter on the subject, but this is a blog post, so I'll spare the gritty details. If, by chance, nerding out on ancient health systems is your thing, I'll leave a couple of great book links below.)

Cool and drying. Consider the habits of the wild - plants and animals pulling energy, including food, into the ground to protect it until the coming Spring. Our Autumn lifestyle should reflect that tendency.

The Organ: Lung - "The princess" organ, it is said, because it is the organ that has direct contact with the atmosphere and most susceptible to pernicious environmental influences - heat, cold, dryness, dampness and wind.

Its color is white, and as the uppermost organ in the body, its action descends. Grief and sadness damage the Lung and often precede disease conditions. The dietary strategy is to protect and purify affections of the harsh external (climactic) and internal (emotional) influence.

The Diet of Autumn - Lung Season: The foods of Autumn serve the purpose of keeping the Lung moist while cleansing it of phlegm - moistening and slightly astringent. Although you don't have to build your meals out of this short list of predominantly sweet and/or pungent natured foods, it is good to include some with each meal. This list could be further broke down into cool - warm, depending on your own nutritional profile, so ask me for an explanation if you care to look deeper.

Asparagus, black pepper, black bean, carrot, cheese, duck, garlic, ginger, goose, grape, herring, honey, loquat, milk, button mushrooms, mustard seeds, nori, oat, live, onion, peanut, pear, persimmon, pine nut, quinoa, radish seed, sweet rice, swiss chard, tangerine, walnut, water chestnut, watercress, whitefish, yam

Autumn Recipes - Autumn cooking is mostly drier, lower and longer. Turning the oven on for hours becomes a pleasure-inducing notion!

Number one on any seasonal eating list has to be the perennial Congee!

Congee is nothing more than slow-cooked and somewhat watery rice porridge. What you add to the congee is what makes the seasonal magic.

1 c. rice, try sweet rice in the Autumn

7 -10 c. water

Add whatever you like from the list; maybe a handful of walnuts and chopped grapes or chard, garlic and pepper, or try sesame seed, yogurt and honey, or delicious gomasio (sesame, salt and seaweed condiment) Consider it the soup course of your meal or breakfast cereal.

Easy Black Beans

2 c. dry black beans, soaked overnight, then cooked in 3 1/2 c. water OR use canned black beans.

Add sautéed mix of 1/4 chopped onion, a clove ( or more) of garlic, a teaspoon of cumin and coriander, a couple tablespoons of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of cayenne, a tablespoon of lemon or lime juice. Cook until beans are done or for 30 mins if canned beans are used. Salt to taste. Serve with a dollop of yogurt and warm tortillas.

Autumn snack ideas: Pears with warm honey, tea made with ground radish seeds, dip sourdough bread into garlic-infused olive oil, honey ginger chews, grapes

Hopefully, these two recipes will help get you on your way to protecting your "princess" Lungs! There is a mountain of theory behind this brief blog post and if you'd like to take a deeper dive, check out Cathy McNease's " The Tao of Nutrition" for a start, and Paul Pitchford's "Healing with Whole Foods - Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition."

If you have specific concerns about this topic, reach out with the contact form. I'm here to help. Have fun learning how to Eat for Autumn!

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