Foods for Autumn
Proverbs for Autumn
“The way of eating is that: Overfilling yourself with food will impair your vital energy and cause your body to deteriorate. Over-restricting your consumption causes the bones to wither and the blood to congeal.” - Original Tao, 4th century BCE
The body should always be exercised; food should always be minimal. Yet even in exercise do not go to extremes; in minimizing food do not go to emaciation.” -Ge Hong 4th century
“The more you eat, the less flavour; the less you eat the more flavor.” - Chinese proverb
“Always feel a little hungry, even when full, a little full even when hungry. And make sure to eat before you get really hungry and to drink before you get really thirsty: the problem being that once you notice you are hungry you’ll be tempted to eat too much too fast; once you notice you are thirsty, you’ll drink too much. -Nourishing Inner Nature and Extending Life, 7th/8th centuries
“Walk a hundred paces after a meal and one can live ninety-nine years.” - Chinese saying
Based on the above, the main group of foods to emphasize in Autumn is foods that moisten and nourish body fluids.
These include rice, sesame seeds, honey, walnuts, spinach, apples, pears, persimmons, and grapes. Appropriate animal foods are milk products, eggs, pork, clam, crab, oyster, and mussels. Beverages that have a moistening effect include boiled water or light teas, soymilk, fruit juices, and cow’s milk.
One of the flavors to emphasize in Autumn is sour. The sour flavor has an astringing function and as such helps protect and engender fluids.
Sour foods include sauerkraut, sourdough breads, pickles, ume-boshi (salted plums), olives, vinegar, yoghurt, lemons, adzuki beans, cheeses, and green apples.
Sour is a strong flavor so the basic recommendation is that a little goes a long way. People who are dry or people in average to good health can increase sour consumption this season.
People who tend to constipation, as mentioned above, need to keep things moving. One traditional recommendation for helping constipation is adequately chewing food so that it mixes well with saliva before being swallowed. Indeed, slowing down how we eat also helps bring calm, and centers us while eating (the appropriate emotional posture of the season). Increasing seeds and nuts in the diet, such as flax seeds, or sesame seeds, helps moisten and move stools. People with ongoing constipation can consider taking psyllium husk each morning.
In the Summer we recommended preparing foods using relatively light and quick methods that mimicked the light and fast moving Yang nature of Summer. As we move into the Yin-contracting time of the year, it is appropriate to use more time consuming cooking methods. Foods should be prepared over lower heat but for longer cooking times; this includes methods such as braising and cooking in crock-pots or slow cookers. These methods do two things. First, they protect the moisture of the foods being cooked. For example, roasting in an oven is too drying a method for Autumn. Second, slow cooking brings are attention into a longer process of cooking thereby slowing down our mind and our pace of life.