107. What to Eat in Fall When You Don’t Know What to Eat: Easy Ayurvedic Meals

0:00 Hey pod pal, welcome, welcome to today's solo episode with me on what to eat when you don't know what to eat, fall edition 2027. So in this episode, I'm going to share with you the things that I start heading into when it's that warm food time of year. And I know for those of you who really like to eat a lot of salads, it can get confusing when you're used to kind of just throwing everything in a bowl and covering it with a dressing and eating it. Then what do you do when suddenly your digestion is calling for something that's warm, something that's cooked, something that's a little bit soft, a little bit moist. So I've got my usual go-tos. If you know about me, you know that I love to eat food. I love to eat homemade food. I do like to play with food, but I don't like to spend a lot of time. And so I've got a bunch of quickies that are going to download that for you. And I hope this helps you out figuring out what to eat when you don't know what to eat this fall, right after this.

0:57 Welcome to Everyday Ayurveda with Kate, a podcast that translates ancient wisdom for modern lives. I'm your host, Kate O'Donnell. I've been living and teaching Ayurveda, India's traditional medicine for over 25 years, and I've authored four bestselling books on bringing Ayurveda practices into our lives. If you're tired of battling digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, menopause symptoms, or are seeking a deeper spiritual connection and purpose, you're in the right place. This podcast is for you, offering practical, accessible advice to help you heal through diet, optimize your daily routines, and enhance your overall well-being.

1:39 Follow this space for insights on a diet that heals, strategies for better digestion, sleep, hormone health, and direction for finding a deep sense of meaning and purpose. Join me, my pod people, for this empowering journey into self-care and self-discovery. Together, we'll explore how to bring balance and vitality into your everyday life. Let's do this. So as I mentioned in the pre-roll there, the thing that we're thinking about with fall foods in Ayurveda is that they are served warm and cooked. So as the temperature outside gets drier and humidity might reduce, which keep in mind, if you're indoors with the heat on, your humidity is reduced for a lot of the hours, of the 24-hour cycle when your heat is on.

2:35 So we're looking to kind of balance qualities of dryness and of coldness, right? And with that dry and cold, you're going to potentially notice dryness in your hair, skin, nails, maybe your poop. Potentially, you might notice that you're more thirsty. You might notice you start to feel a little bit constipated. So it is a good time when it starts to get drier for those who are kind of sensitive to the dry quality. It's really important that right away, as soon as things start changing, that you start changing what you're eating. And we want to introduce the warm and the moist qualities. So how can we do that in a way that doesn't have you slaving over the stove? That's what you want to know.

3:16 So let me tell you first about a couple of the tools that are going on in the kitchen this time of year. One of them is the immersion blender, the hand blender, right? They're not very expensive. I use that thing all the time for soups. And I am all about simple, easy, fast soup techniques. And I find that if I can warm things up in the pot and then blend them right there on the stove, we don't have the whole back and forth to the carafe, worrying about exploding the carafe with the hot soup kind of a thing. So when it comes to making warm drinks and soups, the immersion blender is my fave. It's my go-to. The other thing I'm really into, and this surprised me, we received a toaster oven as a gift a few years back. And I was like, a toaster oven?

4:00 We have an oven, right? Why do I need this thing on my counter? But because the toaster oven is so kind of small, it heats up in like just a couple minutes. It actually cooks things a little bit faster. And I'm making kind of fresh, small batches of baked things all the time. I'm using that thing all the time, to be honest, in a way that when I have to like kind of heat up the big oven in the kitchen and it takes 20 plus minutes to preheat and then everything is getting hot. You have to move everything that you all the junk you have piled next to the stove out of the way. So I love this little toaster oven and it's really expedited a lot of my kind of baked things, which we'll talk about some of the baking that's going on.

4:42 The other absolute non-negotiable for me is the instant pot electric pressure cooker. So I was using a pressure cooker from my learning to cook in India in college was where I learned about pressure cooking and I sort of brought home a pressure cooker. And traveled with a pressure cooker in my suitcase, if you can believe that, for many years. And then the Instant Pot came around. I've had that thing, I don't know, maybe six or seven years. I have the mini, the mini size. So I think it's four quart instead of six, which is a lot easier for me to store or keep on the counter. And again, I'm usually only cooking for two. We don't have a big family in the household. So that makes the mini a lot, just a lot easier to keep it around.

5:23 Comes with a little stainless steel bowl on the inside. So I like, you know, soak and rinse all my rices and legumes right in that bowl and just cook everything right in there. And what I love about that electric pressure cooker is that I can tell it when to turn on. And the other thing I like about it is that I actually put it outside on the porch and then there's a lot less cooking smells going on because depending on what you're making, the brassicas, kale, broccoli, they can smell pretty wild. All the spices that we're using in Ayurvedic cooking, they are aromatic, which the way our house is set up, the bedroom is right off the kitchen. So of course, I closed that door. But there have been evenings where it's difficult to sleep because things smell like cumin or whatever in the bedroom.

6:09 So I actually love that I can plug it in on the porch and just tell it when to go, you know, so you can kind of the way that a rice cooker can be timed. What's fabulous about this Instant Pot is that for folks who kind of have to, be at work, you can put everything in there and put a delay on when it's going to start. So if you're going to be home in eight hours, you tell it to start cooking in seven hours. And then when you walk in the door, your food is almost ready. All right. So I'm going to tell you some of my favorites in the fall that use those three tools, the Instant Pot, the Immersion Blender, and the Toaster Oven. And I just find that those three things, they're in rotation when they're really fast.

6:53 So if you're a smoothie person and your morning has gone out the window, because you don't put a cold drink in your belly first thing in the morning when it's cold out. So warm smoothies, warm smoothies are an amazing thing. And so what you can do is take milk of any kind, plant milk or cow milk, goat milk, whatever you're into, and you put a cup or so of the milk into the pot and you warm it up. And usually when I'm making any kind of blended smoothie type thing, I will throw some chia seed or some flax seed in there because seeds are one of my big friends. They are so nutrient dense. They've got protein. They've got fat. They've got all the things that you need, especially in the vata season, in the vata time of life when things are drying out and we need to maybe work a little harder at staying nourished, at getting all the nutrition that we need.

7:45 That's where I love seeds. So I'm always throwing like seeds, you know, welcome to what to eat when you don't know what to eat in the fall. Seeds, right? So I've got pumpkin seeds. I have hemp seeds. I have sunflower seeds. I have flax seeds. And I have chia seeds. I'm sure I'm missing some, right? And I don't necessarily use them all at the same time. I'm not a fan of that, but I will rotate. I don't like to mix, mix, mix a kajillion things. I don't find that easy to digest. And so today I'll do sunflower seeds and tomorrow I'll do pumpkin seeds. And so throwing something like a sunflower seed, a tablespoon or two, into the pot with the warming milk or chia seeds, flax seeds.

8:28 Just remember that with chia and flax, the omega fats in there, they're really sensitive to heat. So you don't want to bring it to a boil. You can warm it. That's fine. And then I'll add potentially a date or two or a little splash of maple syrup. I will go for something a little bit sweet. Big fan of a natural vanilla, vanilla extract. So I'll put a little bit of that in there. And ghee, a little bit of ghee. So what I've noticed in doing the experiment is that for every teaspoon of ghee that I add to my breakfast, it buys me another hour. So whether you're having a hot oatmeal, which is a fantastic breakfast, or a hot quinoa cereal, if you find oatmeal to be a little too gummy, heavy, a hot cereal, put a spoonful of ghee, a teaspoon, teaspoon and a half in there, and you're not going to be hungry.

9:16 You get another hour before you're thinking about what you're going to eat, right? So the ghee goes in there, the seeds go in there, something a little bit sweet like a date or a bit of maple syrup. Not a big fan of throwing a lot of dried fruit in there. You might find that that gives you a bloat, a little bit of bloating and gas. Dates kind of do, I will tell you by Ayurvedic tradition, follow different rules around combining. I shouldn't say rules, but I should say realities, right? Different realities when you combine a date than if you were to put figs or prunes or raisins into this pot that we're talking about, the warm breakfast smoothie pot. So the other thing, oh my gosh, pod pal, let me tell you what I've been doing.

9:58 So that's the basic one, right, with the ghee. And then of course we want our warming spices. So make my spice mix, you know, equal parts of ground ginger, ground cinnamon, and about a quarter part of cardamom. And you're going to find that plus a lot of other inspiring recipes that are very easy to make and follow in the fall section of the Everyday Ayurveda cookbook. So don't forget if you have it or if you don't have it, get it. And then you can just pop right into that fall section and look at your breakfast, your lunches, your dinners, your treats, your condiments, and just get yourself in gear. So that basic pot, right, I'll warm that up and blend it with the hand blender, you know, and you can make it as smooth as you want. You can leave it chunky if you want a little chew.

10:45 You can also leave the seeds out. And that's something I do sometimes. So I'll make it like a thick kind of smoothie vibe. The warm milk, the spices, the ghee, and the ghee is emulsified by the blender, by the hand blender. So you don't have like a oil slick of ghee on top of your cup. I really don't like that. I want it to all be creamy and mixed in. And you'll get a little broth, so you'll get that latte vibe from the emulsified fats with the ghee. So I just drink that and sometimes I'll sprinkle a tablespoon or so of seeds, especially sunflower seeds. I like them that way, on the top. And then you kind of can like eat it with a spoon and be crunching and that sort of a thing, just to add a little bit of texture to your morning routine if you want.

11:26 Let me tell you about this one, though. You're going to love this. Right. So the other one I've been doing is a pumpkin cacao oh yeah so all of the above that i've just described and then i put like a quarter cup or sometimes a half cup of pumpkin pumpkin puree in there, and pumpkin i just will start throwing like, cooked pumpkin into things this time of year. And so i'll do the quarter cup half to a half cup of pumpkin goes in that pot getting warmed up with the milk and the spices. And then I will do a heaping tablespoon of raw cacao. Of course, you can use cocoa as well. But personally, I find that the kind of more brighter, more bitter profile of taste profile of cacao, the unroasted, while yes, it has more of its nutrition left in it than the Dutch processed.

12:19 It's not as black, so the colors are a little bit different. I like that. So you can see the orange of the pumpkin a tiny bit. But there's something about the bitter flavor that just works really well in this particular combination. So I do use a lot of raw cacao. And so that cacao and pumpkin goes in there. And so it's not every day. Some days it's plain. Some days it's got that in it. And if you're somebody who needs a protein powder, something we've discussed in the protein episode, If you just put the word protein into your podcast platform, that episode should pop up for you. This is a great place that you can put that protein powder if you're someone who's having that occasionally as a supplement.

13:00 And then you get your hand blender in there and you have at it and then serve it in some sort of pleasing vessel, like a big kind of mug slash bowl, you know, like local pottery vibe. That's my favorite thing to do with this breakfast. Breakfast and it's it's something you can drink or eat with a spoon depending on how thick you like to make it so between the obviousness of a hot cereal like oatmeal, or warm smoothie number one or warm smoothie number two the pumpkin cacao you've got three breakfast options right there that are all like pretty quick and easy all of them have ghee all of them have seeds protein, all of them have a little bit of the, spices so boom there you go breakfast check.

13:50 Then when it comes to the rest of the day, it's hot food we're looking for, right? So one of the things that's going on in my fall routine is a little more food prep in the morning, right? And so while breakfast is happening, I may also be prepping lunch. And that's huge because if we're baking things, it takes a minute, right? Or if we're like making a soup, it can be something that if you get that kind of part of it already cooked, then you're ready to go. So one of the things that I'll do is I will put a cup or so of some sort of small bean, like a split mung bean or a red lentil. Sometimes you can use a green lentil, like a French lentil. Those work great.

14:33 And I will just put a cup of that, two cups of water and have that boiling. Right. So I'll rinse it and maybe I soaked it overnight. That would have been smart. And then I'll have a bean, right? Like a bean puree, basically. Like once you cook those small beans, they just kind of turn into like a mush that then can be added to other things. And so I'll often be doing that just kind of on the back of the stove. The other thing I'm doing a lot of in the fall is baking squashes, winter squashes and or sweet potatoes. And so at any given time, I've got like that prepared squash flesh, right, or sweet potatoes. And you can go in, you know, the winter squashes could get pretty big.

15:17 So, you know, depending on how big it is, right, how much you want to cook, but I'll just cut those in half. I put them face down in a glass Pyrex with a bit of water. And I do have an 8x8 that fits in the toaster oven. So many of the squashes I buy will fit in there. Some of them won't. And then I'll have to move over to the big oven. But I will slide that squash in there and it kind of steams. So it's like a moist cooking technique as opposed to like a roasting, which can be dry. So I put a little water in the pan face down and cook it. And then it's really easy to scoop the seeds out of the hole when it's done. And I just put it on for, I don't know, 50 minutes. And then, you know, it's on, what is it on? 375 probably.

15:59 And then I just walk away, go do something else. And I just leave it in there. And it's just going to sit there until lunch or, dinner or whenever it is. And the same is true of the sweet potato. So I just kind of, I do like to eat the skins on the. So I'll just soak them in a big bowl of water, give them a little quick scrub, and I will stick those. Sometimes I rub them with a little coconut oil, and then I'll just lie six of them on a baking sheet, poke them with a fork, and boom, same thing. It's about 375, 50 minutes, and I just leave them in there, bake them until they're nice and soft. And then it's so easy to just scoop the insides out and do all sorts of things with them like add pumpkin to a smoothie right so sweet potatoes in a lot of my soups it's in a lot of my baked goods so I'm baking with the butternut squash muffins you might be baking sweet potato you know if you look at the treat recipes in any of my books you're going to find like sweet potato thing a squash thing a lot easier on your gut than using bananas when you when you take a ripe banana, mash it up and use that as the moisture in baking, you might find that you burp up banana. That's what happens to me.

17:10 If it doesn't happen to you and you're feeling fine, great. But squash and sweet potato are fabulous other options for baking. So then I have that flesh and I do a lot of soups, right? A lot of squash soups. And hey, I've been known to just like scoop out some of that squash and throw it on whatever. Like I might fry a couple of eggs and be like, hmm, I need a vegetable. And I'll scoop out, you know, half a sweet potato. And I will just throw that thing on the pan frying in the ghee with the eggs. And it's just face down. And so it kind of sears the half sweet potato. Love to do that.

17:51 And then I'll sprinkle some fresh parsley on it. I still I'm going to have parsley growing in my garden for, gosh, who knows, last year it kind of lasted all winter. And that's something easy that you can also just keep in a jar of water like a cut flower and always have some fresh greenery that you can add on top. I do the same with oregano, thyme, any of those hearty herbs like rosemary, but that one really is too hard, you know, to eat. It's better for roasting. But with thyme, those tiny little leaves, I will just like sprinkle those over, you know, eggs with a sweet potato, that kind of thing. And I feel like that's giving me some bitter taste, some astringent taste. It's giving me a green color for the eyeball and really adds a lot in terms of flavor, not just your six tastes, but also the flavor profile, right?

18:39 So fried eggs with a little bit of squash or seared squash or sweet potato on the side, a little green, a greenery of a fresh herb. Wonderful meal any time of day, right? That one. The other thing I'll do with the flesh from the squashes, the sweet potatoes, is do a pureed soup, right? So I already told you that I've put my red lentil or my split mung bean and cooked that. So that's already done, which if you soak that overnight and then you boil it for 20 minutes and then just cover it and leave it, turn the burner off, just leave it, go do something for a couple hours. When you come back for meal making, it's done, right? It's done. That time that it's sitting in the hot water, even with the stove off, it's still softening really nicely.

19:23 And when I cook the beans like that, I'll usually add half a teaspoon of turmeric in there as well and get the turmeric in the food. And sometimes I'll add like a spice mix as well if that works, like one of my Ayurvedic mixes like cumin, coriander, fennel, ginger powder or something like that. I'll add that in there as well. So then that's like done. That's ready. I've got cans of full-fat coconut milk in the pantry at all times. I would say potentially all year long. I probably don't eat a lot of it in the spring, but at any other time, you will find soups made with coconut milk in the house. But you can use other plant milks, etc. I like the coconut milk because it's really got that high heat tolerance.

20:03 It's going to stand up to a good boil. And so I will take those lentils or mung beads. I will take some fresh ginger. I will throw these in the pot along with some... Coconut milk, like a whole can of coconut milk that's going in there with like a half of a winter squash, maybe a whole squash, depending on how big it is. If it's the size of my head, then I'll use a half. If it's not the size of my head, it's like the size of my arm, then I'll probably use the whole thing with a can of milk and a cup of the cooked legume. And the fresh ginger is really one of my favorite flavoring agents for this kind of soup.

20:47 You can also do like a pumpkin pie spice, you know, a nutmeg, a little bit of cinnamon, that sort of a vibe can work here. And then get out that hand blender and you just bring it all to a simmer and hand blend that and you are done. You are good to go. So boom, there you have this like amazing hearty soup that's got the good fats. It's got the legumes, which are incredible detoxifiers. They also have all this soluble fiber, all this protein. They're astringent taste. So when you mix them with the sweetness from the squash, from the coconut, you get this really balanced, amazing soup. And I do that, gosh, at least a couple times a week.

21:28 So that's the version that's going on on the stovetop that maybe happened in a couple different portions. I might even have taken half a squash from the refrigerator that I baked yesterday, all right, and put that in, warm it up with the legume, the coconut milk, etc. So that's happening all the time. But you can also do this with greens. You can also parboil like broccoli, green beans, cauliflower, any kind of, you know, spinach, baby kale. You can just like boil them till they're just a little soft and then add the legume, add the coconut milk and the ginger and you are good to go. You can play around with the Herbe de Provence and that's sort of a thing or use fresh herbs if you'd like as well.

22:14 And obviously some pink salt. Don't forget to salt it. And then I'll sprinkle a little bit of seaweed on top, right? So I have dulse around. I have toasted nori. Either of those can really easily be kind of crumbled onto the top of the soup. And that's going to give you a lot of those C vitamins, right? A lot of mineral content in there. And that also gives a little color, a little texture. So that's going on. The seeds are out. I love the pumpkin seed. Toasted pumpkin seeds are my favorite on these orange squash soups and they also look green so that adds a nice a nice flavor as well i had an old friend who had an amazing trick where he would he'd give everybody a hearty scoop of wasabi peas with this squash coconut soup and which was brilliant and amazing so the wasabi pea is a wonderful addition as well if you're looking for a crunch right, and it's like oh wasabi peas they're processed they come in a bag they're dry i know but we're using like, a spoonful right it's not like you're in front of the TV, Netflixing, eating like three cups of wasabi peas.

23:18 So that's the difference in using something as a condiment versus a snack or a main. Okay, so you don't have to be afraid of something that's a little bit dry. That's also very salty and tasty if it's being used as a condiment, because then this lovely soup that you made, if you're feeling unsatisfied eating just a soup and you need something like crunchy, then a little bit of that kind of thing, some crushed up tortilla chips, but even some crushed up snack thing. On top of that soup goes a really long way to get everyone in your family to enjoy it, including yourself. So I would say, That kind of thing works. And the seeds, the pumpkin seeds, the roasted pumpkin seeds, the roasted sunflower seeds, hemp seeds. Hemp seeds, they're a little buttery.

24:05 I find they don't keep a crunch. So I tend to use those more in like a hot cereal or that morning smoothie than I do with soups. Because they just kind of like disappear texture wise. But try the pumpkin seed. Try a toasted pumpkin seed. If you're toasting them yourself, then please toss them with a little bit of tamari and let that dry. And then put those out as the condiment with the squash soups. And it can be a green soup as well. So you're following the same vibe there, right? And of course, this can also be done in the Instant Pot, right? So if you want to, this is the case where I will buy kabocha squash, because kabocha squashes, you can eat the skin. Unlike a butternut.

24:47 So the kabocha squash, they come and they have the green outside, the ones with the orange outside, which are now being called red curry squash. I know I sent this out of my newsletter last year. It was one of my five fall favorites, the red curry. It's still on my list. So you can just chop that up into chunks, throw that into the pressure cooker along with the beans, just dry, right? Add two cups of water, a can of coconut milk, some fresh chopped up ginger. If you're ultimately lazy you can use the powdered ginger but it doesn't taste quite the same, and you can just throw all that in there and pressure cook that thing for, five minutes you know with those small beans it's not going to take that long especially if you're going to pressure cook it and then go away and come back like several hours later right and then boom there you open up that pressure cooker put the hand blender in there blend it up serve it with the seeds and you are good to go with that.

25:43 Of course, I do kitchery in the instant pot all the time. And I do squash kitchery. I do sweet potato kitchery. So when I'm doing my legume and rice combinations in the instant pot, I'll be working with that squash and sweet potato flesh that I'm roasting kind of several times a week on the regular. And the orange food, like it just keeps me happy in the fall. So that's going on all the time. We already talked about apples last time. If you missed it, go back, listen to Apple Madness, all the things that we can do with apples, right? So we'll stay away from the fruits this time. However, I will say that pomegranate juice is a fabulous russa or fabulous combination of taste this time of year.

26:27 It's sweet and quite astringent. So I do, when I need something bright, I'll do a diluted cup of pomegranate juice. So I'll take a half a cup of palm and a half a cup of hot water and mix them together. If you want to get fancy, you can put a little pinch of cardamom and ginger powder in there. And that's a really nice drink when I feel like I need a pick-me-up and that sort of like fits my fruit vibe because a lot of our fruits are out of season as the fall moves on. So we're not having a lot of berries, but if you really need that flavor, you want that pink food. That's a fun drink. Speaking of pink food, beets. So I do the things with the squash, the sweet potatoes, but I'm also baking beets, right? Or pressure cooking them.

27:15 Depends on what I want to do. I really dislike peeling beets because it's so sloppy. So what I will do is I chop the greens off the top. I soak those in a big bowl of water just to get the dirt off. And then I'll chop them up and put them with eggs or I'll put them in a they don't look really nice in a green soup. So I try to avoid putting them in soups because they'll turn everything brown, the combination of red and green. So I usually just kind of chop them up and like fry them in a little ghee alongside, you know, an egg or a seared sweet potato or whatever it is. And, oh, did I mention when I serve those seared sweet potatoes that I drizzle them with tahini? Yes, please, friends. Tahini is so in the cupboard this time of year, and it's getting drizzled on all kinds of things.

28:02 And also a nice scoop of that can go into your morning oatmeal or smoothie to give you that nice roasty taste, as well as real heavy hit of nutrition, minerals, protein. So don't forget the tahini and all of the above, right? But back to my beets, because beets, they're cleansing, they mobilize the digestion, which is something that can, at the change of season, start to get a little sluggish. And then when we change the clocks, it gets dark out. Sluggish is the name of the game. And those of you who do live in climates where it gets really rainy out or it's getting really cold, you might find you're not outside as much as you were. So we need to keep the energy bright and moving, right, mobilized.

28:44 And beets do that really well. They're colorful, they're flavorful, they're primarily sweet, but also there's some astringency there, some bitter as well. But since I don't like to peel them, what I do with them is I pressure cook them. I put them all in a pot of water, let them kind of soak, give them a little scrub, but not a deep scrub because I'm not going to eat the skins on the beet. That would be really not tasty at all. So I'll put a pound of beets trimmed into the bowl of the Instant Pot, the pressure cooker, and you can do this on the stovetop as well. I cover them with water. I pressure cook them for five minutes. Or if you're boiling, you do have to boil them for a good 45, 50 minutes until they're absolutely soft. And then what you'll find is I just pour the water through a colander and leave them there to cool.

29:35 So this is something that the boiling of them, the pressure cooking of them is probably going to happen earlier in the day. And then after they cook, I just leave them out to cool. And then you'll find that those skins slide right off. And that's so easy. So you've got these cooked beets. They're all prepped. They're soft. They can be added to things. I do like a beet and coconut milk soup, actually. They can be added to a kitchery. But my favorite thing is to pickle them. And you'll find beet pickle recipes. It's in the fall cleanse. It's in a book. It's a big one. And of all my recipes, I would say this is the one the most often that the fall cleansers will come back to me and say, my partner ate them all.

30:17 Right? So it's something that like everyone in your house will also enjoy these. So the skins are going to slide right off once you've cooked them. And then I'll cut them into sticks or half moons or whatever you want to do. Put them in a 16 ounce jar with equal part apple cider vinegar and water, pinch of salt, couple pinches of salt. And that's kind of it. And then you give it a good shake and stick it in the fridge and you'll have pickled beets and they will stay good for like two weeks. So I'll usually do like two 16-ounce jars, which if you start with a pound of beets, that should get you there. They're going to get eaten. But they're a great condiment to have a couple of those sticks on your bowl of kitchery or next to your soup or with your eggs or whatever it is, right, that you're eating.

31:02 So don't forget the pickled beets. It's just an easy way to do beets. Easy, easy. Again, they're cooked in water. There's more moisture there. And then that sour taste of the vinegar, a little bit of apple cider vinegar, in the cold weather, it is a digestive, right? So you, along with the kind of natural digestive capacity of beets, you've got a real awesome combination right there. I do a lot of, I do bake tofu, right? Those of you who eat the meats. That's probably easier for you in the fall because it's more of an appropriate food. And then you're baking and your stove's on, you're cooking these kinds of things, serving them hot.

31:45 With vegetarians, I find it's the tofu is the when I don't know what to eat thing that comes up all the time. And so I will cut a block of tofu, I'll squeeze the water out of it, I'll cut it into slabs and I'll just baste the slabs like with a baster brush with, oh geez, all kinds of things. I've done tahini on there. I'll melt ghee. So while the oven's preheating, if you're going to do any kind of roasting, put a big spoonful of ghee in a ramekin, put that in the oven while it's preheating and it'll warm it up. It'll warm up your ghee and melt it because if it is cold in your house, one thing you'll notice is that your ghee this time of here is hard.

32:25 It's a little harder to work with. So you might be tempted to roast with olive oil, which is a fantastic food, but you don't want to go over 350 with that. So if you're going to roast at high heat, better to use coconut oil or ghee, which do need to be softened when they're at room temp. So do the ramekin trick. And then please don't forget to put an oven mitt on before you reach in and grab the ramekin. I promise you it will be hot. And so then I'll baste, I'll baste the tofu with ghee. I'll sprinkle nutritional yeast on it and then I'll sprinkle tamari over that and that's it. And I'll bake it. I also do, I just do ghee and then tamari. I do that a lot. And I just kind of rub the ghee on it with the brush. And then I pour a little tamari and move that around with a brush.

33:11 Sometimes I'll add like a tablespoon of tahini to each slab, you know, and then I just brush it and then I bake them, you know, for, I don't know, 45 minutes or so. And again, I just, the ovens, the toaster oven, what I love about it is it turns itself off. So it comes on, I set it for 45 minutes and then I go off and I do something else and I come back whenever and there's tofu there. And so that's something that I do to make sure that when I don't know what I'm going to eat, I'm going to at least have some tofu. Right and it's roasted it's it's delicious and that was really easy you know i'm not marinating i don't marinate anything i'm, i am not i'm not i want to say i'm not organized enough i guess or maybe i just don't care enough because i think it tastes great the way that i do it, so the other thing i'll do with the tofu is instead of slabs i cut it into cubes and toss it in a mixing bowl with any of the above that i just mentioned, and uh then i just put the cubes on parchment paper I always use a piece of parchment paper with that cooking in the toaster oven because it's just so much easier to clean.

34:15 So that's the tofu, right? So then you've got squash, you've got tofu, you know, I might make a little rice or quinoa or something like that. And then I'm sprinkling seeds on everything for the crunch. And that's kind of my, that's kind of my flow. I do a lot of baby spinach and baby kale because those can just be wilted into any like soup or kitchery right before you eat it. Can also be kind of mixed in with eggs or tofu scramble or that kind of a thing. So those I'm buying when I'm busy those are happening a lot and when I don't know what to eat I will grab for the box of baby kale right and just boom throw that in there and I'm good to go and one of the great things about these baby greens is that.

34:58 It's likely that, depends where you live, of course, but that's the kind of thing that can be grown really easily indoors or in alternative environments in the winter. And so I can get fresh local baby kale and spinach all year long in Maine, which is pretty cool. Pretty darn cool. So I am eating that. The last thing I want to tell you about that I'm really into Brussels sprouts. I chop them in half. I just warm ghee in a pan and I put them flat side down and sear them in the ghee. And then I sprinkle tamari over that. And I do the tamari and then I'll add a couple tablespoons of water and cover them. So they sear and steam at the same time.

35:41 And they probably need to stay there for a good 15 or 20 minutes. And then when I take them out, my new thing is I will grate a little bit of fresh parm on them. And those are a fabulous side that I might have with kichari. Like I'll have a big scoop of those kind of on the side of my kitchen bowl. I'm totally into that. Last thing is ditch the water bottle and move into a thermos. So this time of year, I carry a thermos around with me and I throw a spoonful of CCF of mixed cumin, coriander and fennel seed into the bottom of the thermos. Then I put in the hot water, and then it's making a tea.

36:26 And I've found that when I pour, because you know how the thermos, like an old kind of Stanley thermos, when you undo the top just a little bit so that you can pour it out the spout, I'm finding that the seeds, they're not clogging the spout, and they're not ending up in my cup. And so it's like a natural built-in strainer here. And then when I'm around the house, I have this cute little teacup that I stick on top of the thermos instead of the kind of plastic cup that they want you to drink out of that's usually on the top of your thermos. I love my little ceramic cup and so that sits on top and I just can have hot water anytime I want. And it's also not too hot to drink because when you put it in that little cup, it will cool down to what you want it to be pretty quickly.

37:08 I'm not in the habit of making like a cup of tea and a mug because I don't drink it all right away and then it gets cold. And so an hour from now when I'm looking for my sip of something warm, it's not there, right? It's cold. And so that's why I use a thermos with a little cup. And then I can have warm throughout the day, not piping hot throughout the day. I think a lot of you will find that that actually dries you out. Just warm slash hot will do it. And drinking warm slash hot water or spiced, a little bit of spiced water, if you like, that improves motility. So it's good for your stool. It also dilates all the cells in your body. It makes it easier for that water to get in there. It's like you're in a bathtub, right?

37:53 So moving away from the cold water when it's cold out and into something warm is great for your digestion. It's great for hydration of your body in general. So don't forget to get that awesome thermos in circulation this time of year. And this is what's happening in Kate's world this fall when she doesn't know what to eat. So I hope that's working for you. Let me know if I missed anything, what your tools are, and I'll look forward to seeing you next time on Everyday Ayurveda with Kate. Thanks for being here with me today.