Kitchari

Kitchari is a wonderful spring cleansing meal to make. Especially good on a cool spring day like today.

My main yoga teacher, Shiva Rea, often makes kitchari on a hotplate in her hotel rooms when she's traveling (which is often). She turned me on to the kitchari tradition, a soupy meal made from mung beans, basmati rice, and Indian spices. Kitchari, in the ayurvedic tradition, is eaten to improve your digestive fire and eliminate ama (toxins).

If you have a pressure cooker, I did a little experiment on Wednesday and it worked: I combined 1 cup whole dried mung beans, 1 cup basmati rice, and 6 cups filtered water in the pressure cooker. Sealed it, brought it up to high pressure (on high heat), then lowered the temp to keep the pressure up (around low-medium heat) and cooked for 10 mins. I released the pressure by running cold tap water over the top, opened the cooker, et voila, instant kitchari. I didn't add any spices - we just had it with a pat of butter on top. Delish.

Here's a kitchari recipe from Yoga Journal.

Combine some kitchari with a steady diet of hot yoga (which I practiced while my friend Elise was in town; hadn't done that in a while) and you'll be releasing toxins left and right!

I did a teacher training with Shiva back in January 2004 in Venice, CA. She took us out to her house in Malibu and we spent some time on her deck with an incredible view out over the ocean. Gosh that was fun. She's doing a 'pranafication' retreat for past teachers this summer ... a week long. I'm tempted.