Kitchari Cleanse

Picked up the essentials for a kitchari cleanse yesterday. Kitchari has been around forever. Considered one of the best foods in Ayurveda, kitchari is a simple dal of rice, yellow mung beans, and selected spices. The spices are warming and soothing (perfect for the kapha dosha), the rice and beans are easily digested and nutritious, and a week-long diet of kitchari is effective in cleansing the body after, say, a holiday season where too much of everything has been offered and eaten.

I’m guilty of that. I love good food. November and December give us solid excuses to overdo it in every area, and I embrace that clemency. But the consequences are real: come January, I feel drained and bloated and unhappy with myself. I’ve done water fasts and juice fasts after January 1, but this will be my first time doing a kitchari cleanse.

In fact, I plan to try it starting this weekend, a few weeks before Christmas. The past month has been a stressful one. Everything has turned out all right, all is well and I’m happy, but the journey depleted my energy and actually ended up in breakouts on my face, something I rarely have a problem with. Let’s see what kitchari can do for my dosha.

Finished Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ last night. A wonderful, emotionally intelligent account of grief. Tonight, I start ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’, Didion’s observances of San Francisco in the 1960s. That era has always fascinated me. I think I’m really going to enjoy this book. It’s turning out to be an all-Didion winter at the homestead.

Barbie xo