Getting all six tastes into your breakfast routine and balancing your dosha
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about breakfast and how to re-design my routine to be more cooling but also include all six tastes of Ayurveda. I’m Pitta, therefore I need to focus on the cold, light foods. I absolutely love to have a bowl of cereal or an English muffin with sour jam in the morning, but those things will ultimately cause an imbalance in me. So, I am striving to find ways to enjoy food that doesn’t allow a ‘flaring up’ of my heartburn and my Pitta imbalance.
You can take this quiz to find out if you’re Vata, Kapha, or Pitta. But no matter which one you are, you will benefit from the following recipe that incorporates the six tastes of Ayurveda. Once you know which dosha you are, you can start to alter your recipes like this one to favor the tastes you need. But the most important thing for now, if you’re just starting out, is to try to get all six tastes in every meal so that your digestive process can handle breaking down your food every time without leaving toxins undigested.
In this recipe, I’ll list out the tastes of each ingredient, but this recipe does lean toward the sweet taste primarily. For Pitta, sweet, bitter, and astringent tastes are best, so you’ll see them well represented here:
Smoothie Bowl Recipe
1/2 cup blueberries (sweet and sour)
1/2 cup strawberries (sweet, sour, and astringent)
1 lemon (sour)
1/4 cup or a few leaves of spinach, kale, or chard (astringent, bitter)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon or to taste (astringent, pungent, sweet)
1/4 cup granola (sweet, salty)
1/4 cup almond butter (sweet, salty)
1/2 banana, sliced (sweet)
1 tablespoon coconut flakes (sweet)
1 tablespoon cacao nibs (bitter)
- Place the berries in a blender (they’re best for consistency if frozen) and you may need to add a dash of water or almond milk to blend it to perfection. Add a squeeze of the lemon juice and the greens. Blend until smooth.
- Pour the mixture into a bowl.
- Add the granola, coconut flakes, cacao nibs, and almond butter on top and sprinkle with cinnamon.
Enjoy!
If you liked this recipe, you might like my Ayurvedic chai recipe to go with your smoothie bowl breakfast!
