What Does Your Body Need This Season? Inside My Ayurvedic Cooking Workshop
There are some days in my work that remind me exactly why I started Vegan-Wise.
This weekend was one of them.
I was invited back by Amanda from wild and free adventures, who I’ve worked with on and off for the last 5 years now, to teach two workshops to her group. We had a morning workshop on building a balanced seasonal meal, followed by a lunch we had prepared together in the first cooking workshop, and then an afternoon workshop exploring Ayurvedic digestive herbs, spices and seasonal tea blending.
Basically, I got to spend a day talking about three of my favourite things: seasonal food, Ayurveda and plant based whole-foods.
Dreamy.
And because it was September, we were also working with one of my favourite moments in the British growing year.
That slightly confusing, beautiful crossover where the courgettes and peppers are still coming in abundance, but the squash has arrived and suddenly your body is quietly thinking…
Hmm. Maybe I don’t want fresh cold salad anymore.
September is a funny little turning point
One of the questions I wanted to explore throughout the day was really simple:
“What does this body need, right now, in this season of life?”
Because for me, this is where seasonal eating becomes really interesting.
We can buy almost anything at almost any point in the year now. Tomatoes in January. Strawberries in December. Asparagus flown halfway across the world.
And while that gives us enormous choice, I think we’ve also lost some of the natural markers that once told us how to eat.
Ayurveda gives us a beautiful way of reconnecting with those markers.
It doesn’t necessarily say, eat this exact thing on this exact date.
It asks us to notice.
What’s happening outside?
What’s happening inside?
Is it hot? Cold? Damp? Dry? Windy?
How is your appetite? Your digestion? Your energy?
And how might the food you’re eating help bring a little more balance?
This was something we explored at the beginning of the workshop.
In Ayurveda, the natural world, our bodies, the seasons and our food can all be understood through different qualities. One of the simplest principles is that like increases like, while opposite qualities can help create balance.
As autumn develops and things become colder, drier and more changeable, our cooking can begin to shift too.
Not overnight.
We’re just gently adjusting the dial.
Then we got cooking
For the morning workshop, I didn’t really want to teach everyone a recipe.
I wanted to teach them how to build a meal.
There’s a big difference.
Recipes are wonderful, but I think one of the most useful skills we can develop in the kitchen is being able to look at what we’ve actually got and think:
Right. What can I make from this?
So we built a seasonal September bowl around what was abundant.
Courgettes. Peppers. Butternut squash. Greens. Grains. Chickpeas. Herbs. Ferments. Seeds.
Rather than trying to make everything look like autumn when summer hadn’t completely disappeared yet, the bowl celebrated that crossover.
And that became part of the lesson itself.
We looked at how to start with a nourishing foundation, add seasonal vegetables and plant protein, then layer in greens, something fermented, something creamy, crunch, herbs and spices.
And then came one of my favourite bits: the six tastes of Ayurveda.
Sweet doesn’t just mean cake!
Ayurveda describes six tastes:
Sweet. Sour. Salty. Pungent. Bitter. Astringent.
I love teaching this because once you start thinking this way, it can completely change how you cook.
Sweet doesn’t mean refined sugar. Grains, squash and root vegetables can provide the sweet, grounding foundation of a meal.
Astringency might come from chickpeas, beans or lentils.
Bitterness from dark leafy greens.
Sourness from fermented cabbage.
Salty flavour from miso or seaweed.
Pungency from ginger , garlic and spices.
Suddenly, instead of thinking “What recipe should I make?”, you can look at your bowl and ask:
What have I got? What flavour is missing?
And importantly, you don’t need exactly one-sixth of everything.
This isn’t another wellness rulebook.
It’s a framework.
Taste your food. Notice what’s missing. Add something. Taste it again.
Cooking!
And then we ate it
This might be my favourite way to teach.
We spent the morning talking, chopping, smelling, tasting and cooking, and then the lesson literally became our lunch.
There is something so lovely about that.
Rather than me standing at the front explaining seasonal eating for two hours, everyone gets to experience what we’re talking about.
You can taste what sourness does.
You can feel the difference between a bowl of cold raw ingredients and one built around warm grains and roasted vegetables.
You can see how a spoonful of fermented cabbage, some miso-tahini dressing and a scattering of seaweed can completely change a meal.
And then you sit down and eat it together.
That, to me, is how food education should feel.
Eating through the seasons isn’t about four different diets
This was another idea I really wanted everyone to leave with.
Seasonal eating doesn’t mean having a SPRING DIET, then waking up one morning and switching to your SUMMER DIET.
Nature doesn’t work like that.
And neither do we.
Instead, I like thinking about turning a dial.
-Spring might begin bringing lighter, greener and more stimulating foods.
-Summer becomes fresh, juicy and hydrating.
-Autumn starts introducing warmth, grounding and more cooked foods.
-Winter brings deeper nourishment, roots, beans, whole grains, soups and stews.
But the transitions between those seasons are just as important.
They’re an opportunity to ask:
How did that last season actually feel for me?
What happened to my digestion?
My energy?
What did I naturally crave?
What worked?
What didn’t?
Because there is another layer to all of this that I find endlessly fascinating.
The seasons repeat. We don’t.
Autumn at 25 may not feel like autumn at 35, 45 or 65.
Our circumstances change. Our bodies change. Our hormones change. Our energy changes. Our responsibilities change. This refers to the Season Of Our Life- are we in our, summer, autumn or winter?
So eating with the seasons also means paying attention to the season of our own life.
After lunch, we put the kettle on
Which, frankly, feels like the correct way to spend an autumn afternoon.
Our second workshop moved away from bowls and into Ayurvedic digestive teas and Spice Blending.
And this brought us to Agni.
In Ayurveda, Agni is our digestive fire, our capacity to digest and transform what we take in.
And I love bringing digestion into conversations about healthy eating because we can become so obsessed with what we’re eating that we forget to ask how we’re actually experiencing and digesting it.
So before creating our teas, we checked in.
Do I feel hungry?
Heavy?
Bloated?
Cold?
Dry?
Comfortable?
Sluggish?
Overheated?
Again, we’re noticing before prescribing.
Building an autumn digestive tea or Potion Making as I like to refer to it.
Out of my basket came all my Spices, Herbs and Dried Flowers...
Fennel. Coriander. Cumin. Ginger. Cinnamon. Cardamom.
Our autumn blend was intentionally warming and aromatic without being ridiculously fiery.
We used:
Fennel + coriander + cumin + fresh ginger + cinnamon + cardamom
The whole spices were gently crushed, simmered in water and strained.
Simple.
But, just like the bowl, the recipe wasn’t really the lesson.
The lesson was learning how to adapt it.
As autumn moves towards winter, perhaps we increase the ginger or cinnamon. Maybe add a clove or a few peppercorns. Maybe turn it into something more chai-like with plant milk.
When spring arrives, perhaps we dial those deeply warming spices back again.
Same cupboard.
Same basic knowledge.
Different season.
Different you.
I came away wanting to do so much more of this
I genuinely love catering.
I love weddings. I love retreats. I love creating huge tables of colourful plant-based food and watching people tuck into them.
But teaching scratches a slightly different itch for me.
Because I don’t just get to feed someone for a day.
I get to potentially change the way they look at their kitchen.
And that really excites me.
I want people to feel confident cooking whole foods.
I want people to get excited about the vegetables growing around them.
I want them to understand that plant-based food can be abundant, colourful, filling and deeply satisfying.
And I want to share Ayurveda in a way that feels accessible.
Not complicated.
Not another list of things you’re doing wrong.
Not “You’re this dosha, therefore you must never eat that.”
Just another beautiful lens through which we can understand food, nature and ourselves.
I’m increasingly realising that cooking workshops, demonstrations and food education are something I want to make a much bigger part of Vegan-Wise.
More seasonal cooking classes.
More Ayurvedic workshops.
More fermentation.
More whole-food plant-based cooking.
More groups gathered around chopping boards asking questions.
More slightly chaotic jars of spices.
More eating together.
Definitely more eating together.
Because if I can leave somebody with one thing, I think it’s this:
Look outside. Check in. Cook what’s growing. Taste as you go. And keep adjusting the dial.
The seasons will provide the rest.
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