Eating and Cooking for Summer — Food, Spices and More

🎙️Show Notes

Summary

This episode explores why summer can feel heavier and more tiring than expected, and offers practical Ayurvedic guidance on the foods and spices that support digestion and keep the body cool through the season.


Keywords

Ayurveda, summer health, seasonal eating, Pitta dosha, digestion, spices, summer foods, holistic health, cooling spices, mung dal


Key topics

Ayurvedic understanding of summer and Pitta dosha
Impact of heat on digestion and energy
Foods and spices that support summer health


Takeaways

Summer management involves supporting digestion and cooling the body.
Seasonal foods naturally align with Ayurvedic principles for summer.
Spices like coriander, fennel, and cardamom help balance Pitta and cool the body.


Sound bites

"Coriander is the best cooling spice for summer."
"Ginger is one of Ayurveda's best ama-burning herbs."
"Saffron enhances digestion and cools the brain."


Chapters

00:00 Understanding Summer's Impact on the Body
04:43 Supporting the Body Through Summer
09:36 Summer Foods for Balance
16:41 The Role of Spices in Summer Health

Resources

Seasonal Food Guide Blog Post

7 Best Cooling Spices for Summer 

Cook to Feel Steady: 5-Day Food Reset 

5 Daily Ayurvedic Shifts To Feel Like Yourself Again

🎁 Get my free guide: 5 Daily Ayurvedic Shifts to Feel Like Yourself Again
 

Practical tips to feel calmer, clearer, and more like yourself — without overhauling your life.
 👉 GET THE FREE GUIDE HERE

🎙️ Rooted in the Seasons is created by Katja Patel at Zest for Yoga & Ayurveda.
 Explore more episodes at zestforyoga.com/podcast

Transcript

Katja (00:00)
Welcome back to Rooted in the Seasons, where ancient wisdom meets modern life with a strong cup of tea and practical tools for real busy women. I'm Katya Patel, Ayurvedic Diet and Lifestyle Educator, Yoga Teacher, and Teacher Mentor.

Today I want to talk about something many of us feel in the summer, but don't always connect the dots around.

There is something that happens in the summertime that nobody really talks about.

You're looking forward to the season, the longer days, the warmth, the lighter feeling that is supposed to come with it, which it does,

But then the heat arrives and the body does something unexpected.

It feels heavier, stiffer. The energy that should be there is not quite showing up. You feel a bit sluggish or flat, and you cannot quite work out why. Because it's summer, and the summer is supposed to feel good, right? If that sounds familiar, you are not alone.

This episode is for you. If you have been wondering why summer feels harder on the body than you expected, and what you can actually do about it.

So first let's talk about why the body feels different in the summer.

In Ayurveda, summer is governed by Pitta dosha, the dosha of fire and water. And when the heat rises outside, the body has to work hard to manage that heat on the inside. Now, here's something interesting.

The body redirects its energy outwards to the surface to cooling, to keeping your temperature steady in the warmth. And in doing that, it takes energy away from your digestion. The digestive fire, what Ayurveda calls agni.

quietly steps back.

This is your body communicating with you. It is prioritizing what matters most in the heat.

But it does mean that digestion is working with less than usual. And when digestion is working with less, the body struggles with heavy food, rich food, large meals. Things that felt fine with in the winter now sit heavily.

You feel full quickly. bloating might creep in,

Energy after meals drops rather than rises. The heaviness and stiffness in the body that you feel in the body is part of it too. When the body is managing heat, everything slows a little. The tissues feel denser, the joints can feel less fluid or retain fluids.

This is Ayurveda's understanding of how the body responds to the season. And it has observed this for thousands of years. And once you understand this, the question becomes simple.

How do you support the body

Through what the season is asking of it.

The answer sits in two places: the food on your plate and the spices in your kitchen. Let me take you through both.

What to eat in the summer?

The tastes that keep the body balanced in summer are sweet, bitter and astringent.

And here is what I love about Ayurveda and nature in general, because these are precisely the tastes that the summer harvest provides. Nature doesn't make you work this out from scratch.

It just offers you what the season needs. So, what does it look like on the plate? Grains that work well in the summer are light and cooling. Barley is one of the best. Light, cool, sweet, and astringent. Barley is good for the skin and the kidneys.

White rice is cooling as well and easy to digest. Pearl millet is another good one.

If you love your oats, they still work in the summer too. Their slippery quality keeps the body hydrated and the sweet taste supports

The nervous system, which can run a little hot in the heat. For legumes, summer is a wonderful time. All legumes are suitable, particularly when sprouted. Sprouting makes them lighter and easier to digest. Mungdal, in all its forms, is my favorite.

Split yellow

Mongal is the lightest and the most digestive of all.

Vegetables and this is where summer is genuinely generous. Time of abundance, the season gives you cucumbers, zucchinis, fennel, avocado, although that's a fruit, leafy greens, artichokes, beetroot, sweet potatoes, carrots, all cooling.

Carrots are a little heating as well, but all nourishing and all easy to digest. Leafy greens every day if you can. The bitter taste is particularly good for the liver, which works harder in the heat. A word on the tomatoes though, because I know they are everyone's favourite.

And they are everywhere in the summer, right? And if you grow your own, please enjoy them. Tomatoes are in the nightshade family. So they are naturally a little more difficult. They're also heating, acidic, and they increase Pitta

If you grow your own, like I said, and you enjoy them, have them all in smaller amounts at lunchtime. If you can remove the skin and the seeds, because these are the heating parts of the tomato.

But if you're noticing any Pitta signs like skin flaring, acidity building up, inflammations, it is worth stepping back from them for a few weeks. For fruits.

Also there's abundance. The berries are wonderful in the summer. Raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, currants, sweet, juicy, hydrating. Strawberries are cooling and strengthen the heart. Notice the shape of this strawberry.

I have a full summer food guide in a blog post with everything listed clearly. I will link it in the show notes. Keep it somewhere you can come back to it. You don't need to memorise any of those details here.

Now the spices, because this is where so much of the practical support lives. And this is where Ayurveda is really quite brilliant.

Think rhythm, not rules here. You do not need to use all seven of these. Pick one or two that feel accessible, or maybe you already use them and start there. That's enough. The spices that support summer digestion are also the ones that help the body stay cool.

The same spice does both jobs at once. It can cool down some of the other food items that are maybe a little bit more heating.

We start with coriander. This is the best cooling spice for the summer. It calms inflammation in the digestive system and the bladder, supports the nervous system and pacifies pitta. Soak a teaspoon of coriander seeds overnight and drink the strained water in the morning.

Simple and very effective for managing heat in the body and when the temperatures outside start soaring. The next one is cardamom, and I love this one because it does something most people don't even know about.

It neutralizes the stimulating effect of caffeine and reduces the acidity of both coffee and tea. So if you add cardamom to your joy or your coffee, you are already changing what the cup does in the body. This is traditional herbal wisdom.

That has been used across Ayurveda and Middle Eastern cooking as well for thousands of years. Cardamom also clears foggy thinking and strengthens the digestive fire. Chew a few seeds of the green cardamom when your mind feels sluggish or your stomach feels a little squeezy.

Fennel is one of the few spices in Ayurveda that works for all three doshas. So it is tridoshic. It enhances digestive fire without increasing the heat. Exactly what summer calls for. It is also sattvic

means it is not aggravating the mind. It brings clear and calm to the nervous system rather than stimulation.

Chew a few roasted fennel seeds after meals. That helps with bloating, or make the famous CCF tea, cumin, coriander, and fennel, one of Ayurveda's most reliable digestive remedies. You can drink a cup of that after each meal.

So, cumin, also part of the CCF tea, is slightly more warming, so it plays a different role. It stimulates digestion, it regulates the microbiome, your guts, and cleans the blood. In Ayurveda, it is considered as an antidote to potatoes, also a nightshade and not so easy to digest, but

Tempered with ghee, with cumin, they become much easier for the body to manage.

Then there is fresh ginger. This is one of the spices I always have at home and you should too. For nausea, heaviness, bloating, low appetite, ginger tea works really quickly. It is also one of Ayurveda's best ama burning herbs.

ama

Is the half-digested food that circulates around your body and puts itself into weak spots and creates issues from there onwards. But use ginger in moderation if pitta is already dominant for you and always reach for fresh ginger rather than dry ginger powder in the summer.

Then there is licorice. So licorice is one surprises people. Are you using licorice at all? It moisturises the mucous membrane, supports the respiratory system, and prevents the body from drying out in the heat.

It is also excellent for the voice. If you have a day of teaching, lots of talking, long meetings, singing, or chanting ahead, licorice tea is a simple way to prepare the throat. Half a teaspoon of licorice powder simmered in water for a few minutes, five to ten minutes.

then strained and then drink it

It really works wonders.

The last one is safran, the most expensive spice in the world, and in Ayurveda one of the most extraordinary. It is also known as Yoga Vahi. It enhances the qualities of whatever it is taken alongside.

strengthens digestion, cools the brain, very important. And it has a strong affinity with the female reproductive system. A little goes a long way when it comes to saffron.

I have all seven spices written up in detail on the blog post with full how to guidance. Also, here link is in the show notes. So if you remember nothing else from today, the body needs different support.

In the summer, like in all other seasons, too. The food you choose and the spices you reach for are not small things. They are the practical daily ways you work with the season. Seasonal food is the best to stay healthy.

Nothing here requires perfection. Small steady changes matter. One spice in your chai, a few fennel seeds after dinner. Coriander water in the morning. That is where the steadiness comes from.

If you want support

Building a way of eating that genuinely fits your body and your day. Cook to Feel Steady is a five-day food reset built around exactly these simple food, Ayurvedic principles, and a rhythm your body can follow. You will find the details in the show notes.

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Until next time, stay rooted in the seasons. Bye bye.