Thanksgiving spices are afterthoughts to the big day 🦃… after deciding where you’ll be, how you’ll get there, and even scoring the turkey food table star.
The weeks before Thanksgiving builds up anticipation. And even the day before, it’s still not too late to craft up an Ayurveda beneficial and spice-filled menu for a Happy Thanksgiving, created with an inspired rainbow color and variety tasty feast in mind. 🌈
That can linger on year-round after the holiday week has come and gone.
I’ll never forget the memories when I had family come over and there were very few recipe sites. Today, it’s completely different!
I still reference Martha Stewart. She used to have a television show… I don’t know if you remember or know about it, but I was a fan. 🎉
I’m still a fan, but the show has long moved onto YouTube and Instagram videos! But back in the day, my raving fan energy was elevated when I got to actually visit the live television set.
The crew even sent us home with one of the show guest’s cookbook… Clinton Street Baking Co. Cookbook (that has become a big deal in the Big Apple).
How did they know that was the perfect gift for moi? They must’ve known I was coming 😅
And that weekend, they opened up Eataly (the first in the U.S.) in the Flat Iron NYC district. Those were the days when I was working in marketing and event planning for a popular Spanish restaurant chain in my area (La Tasca owned by a large U.K. restaurant company). Some good foodie memories there 🍽 and so fitting for my attendance as I had spent years in hotel catering and restaurant food party planning.
This year, is completely different. Your Thanksgiving plans may have changed but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a meal that knocks it out of the park! You can have punchy flavors using Thanksgiving spices you may not have considered.
And even in the Martha Stewart days, it was still traditional thyme and rosemary spices.
Since Thanksgiving is usually a home food event, so it’s a good excuse to crank it up a notch if you want, and maybe even try different, healthy Thanksgiving spices that pleases your tastes and creative desires. And wows your family and guests. 🤩
I know you’re probably like this… you have your favorite Thanksgiving foods and can be a ‘lil scared to try something new.
But I’m hear to encourage you to rainbow spice it up and I have some original blend ideas below!
So let’s go!
First, here’s a way to get your food senses heightened the week before turkey day (this Happy Thanksgiving). For starters, you can test and sniff your spices in your spice rack or cabinet. This will give you a week or two to get the ingredients you need as Thanksgiving spices become less potent or pungent.
And you can sit on which ones could work with you. Probably any of them, since they are in your cabinet. 😁
Remember, most Thanksgiving spices (and year-round spices) have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits (preventing free radicals that can spike disease/cancer growth), so whatever you use, you and your guests will be healthier.
Thanksgiving spices (ground or whole from seeds) and herbs (plants) can be the secret ingredients you add to a new dish. And how you can create your own spectacular eye-pleasing food art at the end as some have some pretty cool colors like purple and red. I love how spices and herbs have unique colors that you can find in a 96-Crayola crayon set.
Here are 11 Thanksgiving spices (listed in rainbow color order). I also have dish enhancement ideas from my party planning experiences below.
1.Red: Saffron (bitter, sweet pungent):
The thin strands are good-looking and tasting on ooey-gooey honey desserts. Did you know saffron is a mood lifter? …so if you have an imbalanced Kapha to feed (…maybe yourself?), this is an amazing addition.
GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) is no fun. It’s when acid comes back up. But GERD is treatable with food as I learned in my journey.
Because high acidic foods and wrong combination of foods (according to the gut if it could speak) are causes.
They can wreak havoc on your daily gut-feeling life that impacts your day and productivity.
If you’re food shopping and trying to make choices for your grocery cart, adding a stomach-friendly GERD and mood foods (Ayurveda) grocery list can enhance your eating life.
Lowering stomach acidity and finding enhancing foods for balancing your body is fun, healthy, and sometimes what’s needed.
If you have a condition like high acid (or more severely GERD) in your stomach, whether you’re a Vata, Pitta, or Kapha (or have any of these imbalances), you’ll be interested in what you select for your refrigerator and pantry.
And, you’ve come to the right place for a list below of safe foods to reduce GERD (or lower acidity) and increase balance (further below…)
Having a mix of fresh and pantry foods can give you a sense of calm, and especially if you have a backup supply of your favorite items because you leave any food comfort panic thoughts to rest …just in case you can’t make it to the store because of inclement weather or broken down transportation.
…Or there’s a run on a certain item that everyone and their brother needs. If in America, you may remember the toilet paper pandemonium during the pandemic crises?
So with a pantry, you can feel a sense of peace when you have an extra pasta box or evaporated milk on hand.
There are also so many gluten-free and vegetable options these days. You can whip up a fast meal… and this is vitally important for Vatas that can get low blood sugar quick when snack bars aren’t appealing or handy.
How You Can Use Ayurveda Next Time You’re Grocery Store Shopping
With Ayurveda living, you can enhance your current diet, with additional flavors and being healthy, such as building up your immune system with spices, mushrooms, and onions and lowering body inflammation (that can then help boost your mental health).
I come from over a decade of experience in my first career, orchestrating hotel and restaurant parties and events that focused on many Mediterranean ethnic dishes (Middle Eastern, Spanish, French, Greek, or Italian).
In those environments, daily food talk and language rolled off my tongue in conversations with past clients and friends.
Speaking of food plates that included curry, cumin, cardamom, cayenne, cinnamon, mint, cilantro, almonds, pine nuts, and pistachios. And hearing proper pronunciations to exotic ingredients such as za’atar.
…Maybe you’re not familiar or these are all your favorites, but can you imagine how these small additions could transform and bring a zestier life to a first or second course, or salad? You could be an inventive cook so then you know exactly what I’m talking about!
Additional ingredients can also add a dash of inspiring color and interest to an otherwise boring plate. A plate that is as much art as flavor, can wake up a Kapha imbalance.
Popular dishes have a common theme: unique and palatable flavors.
Those tastes are made with third dimension complex flavors. Sometimes a dish is just missing a ‘lil sea salt, but usually, a dash of spice will make the dish come alive.
Love is in the spice (and spices) of life. ♥
If you’re aware and knowledgeable, then you can add a flavoring taste that has healthy benefits and part of your daily routine.
Being Ayurvedically mindful is a way to add a “come alive” foodie-tasting experience with spices and pungent ingredients like garlic that are also known to be heart (and all-around) healthy.
On the softer and sweeter end of the spectrum, you can also add more exotic fruits into your smoothie or super sweet fruits like pineapple loaded with Vitamin C. And elderberry for immune support.
When you’re more focused on your simple yet sophisticated, balanced food diet (what would be good for you to eat), then you work on your body balance that affects your better moods and quality of life.
Eating and savoring your favorable foods can leave a smile on your face and remembrance of a good day you had.
11 Combat High Acidic Foods Must-Haves For a GERD Ayurveda Grocery List:
These are super balancing combat high acidic foods for Vata, Pitta, and Kapha doshas. And also for toning down (alkalizing) a high acid stomach.
Bananas
Strawberries
Apples
Almonds and Most Nuts
Avocado
Carrots
Mushrooms
Peas
Most Veggies
Bell Peppers
Flour-less bread (spelt, millet, sprouted grains)
Modern Wisdom For a GERD or High Acidic Foods Day
You can prepare for days where your stomach (or somewhere along your GI tract) is irritated if that’s a tendency you face.
Vata bodies especially have nervous stomachs and sensitive stomach linings. Is that you?
Compound that with acid reflux (GERD), and this adds discomfort from the top to bottom (throat down).
You may even have a gritty taste from stomach acid bubbling up like baking soda reacting to lemon juice or vinegar.
That’s when you want to be cautious about the foods you intake, avoiding specific combinations, like yogurt and pizza (eaten together within short time frames) that can aggravate an already sensitive stomach.
And you have your unique body’s sensitivities you learned through trial-and-error and connecting-the-dots.
If you are leaning too much into your natural way or dosha, that could be a reason for your GERD episodes where you want to lower the acidity in your stomach (and cut down on high acidic foods).
Depending on the severity, you may opt to add small doses of your favorites in moderation for convenience’s sake. Ayurveda doesn’t require a strict diet, but health problems can.
Better to be disciplined for a few days in your diet to prevent a larger outbreak of symptoms or where all you can do is takes sips of water or broth. If you’ve been there before, you know what I mean!
A healthy action step (good for prevention), is taking in a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (ACV) mixed with water (1:1 ratio).
The best kind of ACV has the ‘mother’ milky substance inside that you shakeup. You can wash the unpleasant taste down with water and lemon.
Or you can also wisely drink teas such as ginger, cinnamon, Kombucha, herbal tea, and green teas. If you have certain imbalances you’ll definitely prefer one over the other. For Vatas (many of us are): you can learn more about how to restore your Vata type.
And you can choose to switch from espressos to yerba mate or cold brew coffee.
By nature, coffee is acidic. And adding that ontop of high acidic foods in your gut can cause daily issues. Switching over to cold brew coffee will be less abrasive on your stomach if you don’t want to give up.
You could get creative and find teas that have half the amount of caffeine as an average cup of coffee. Your favorite chai or black tea cappuccino with frothed almond milk and a touch of Dutch-processed (non-acidic) chocolate cocoa or vanilla dusting, could hit the spot. Yummm to a Vata!
If you’re health-conscious you may have evolved your food balanced diet, added a few carrots, learned to love lean proteins like fish and chicken, or maybe even turned more vegetarian plant-based.
You used new healthy knowledge and let your environment’s resources help shape a better version of you.
Naturally, from your food experiences you can love pasta, bread, sugary floury foods (and maybe have an emergency stash, uh-huh. Vatas love to store up sweets like squirrels with nuts).
And if you stay on my blog journey with me week to week, I’ll share how you can make delicious (as-good, I think) sweets without all the calories or refined sugar (but definitely refined ingredients.. and organic-inspired!).
You may even be a cheese or cheesy-salty food addict if you don’t have a dairy-allergy. (I know my peeps… your pantry is my paradise too). 😊
And you change those ways as you have desires to make changes.
Reduce High Acidic Food Meal Ideas to Consider For your GERD Ayurveda Grocery List
You may find better low acidic grocery food options along your food journey, such as breads inspired by the Biblical ways to make flour-less bread, from ingredients such as millet, spelt, and sprouted grains.
You could make a smoothie with veggie green powder, spirulina, banana, avocado, apple. You can use healthier juices (V8 Healthy Greens is relatively lower in sugar), make your own low-sugar orange juice, or skip the juices altogether.
Or you could keep to the blending basics such as whole bananas, apples, pineapples, and berries.
Plenty of food and drink options to choose from. And our bodies naturally prefer variety and biodiversity.
But what about proteins (to add to your GERD Ayurveda grocery list)?
A safer bet for high acidity is chicken, eggs, or tofu. To get creative, you could make a chicken salad with mustard, grapes, celery, and curry, or an egg salad with mustard and alfalfa sprouts… or dreaming up a stir fry with tofu, mushrooms, and favorite veggies.
To make a savory (alkalizing) soup, you could consider a cauliflower/beet soup with ginger, curry, cinnamon, and organic unpasteurized milk (or almond milk if you like). And then when the high acidic foods level in your stomach goes down, you can consider adding or using coconut milk. …Just a few ideas to get you thinking. 💭
Vata body mind is a way to define a body and mind type. As a Vata, I know most of us are naturally thin and have worry tendencies.
Are you a Vata?
If so, this article post is all about you. And if you don’t know what a Vata is, you can discover more below.
You have several identities in this world. I’ll share a few of mine…
Some are fun. You know those personality tests you can take (to learn about yourself and your friends).
Well… in the self-taking Enneagram test, I’m most closely a 7. We’re the happy enthusiasts. …Hoo-ray!
Maybe that’s why I created this place for others to glean off of my happy aura 😊.
By the way, all the Enneagram types 1-9 are great (you’re still a complex individual and have potential traces of all the types). If you’re not familiar, Enneagrams are based on your general life motivations.
Any one enneagram type is not better than another, but I like to cheer mine on (and be happy for the happy type). As an Enneagram 7, we’re known to be the optimistic and positive people in this world.
This makes sense because I naturally gravitate without hesitation towards life’s pleasures enjoying beauty, fashion and gourmet foods.
…Which makes people that know me wonder, how I can be so deeply spiritual? I think of this combination as my superpower… being in this world, but not entirely of this world.
On the outside, like all of us, I’m just a person having a daily spiritual journey.
I found better answers inside from life’s challenges and life’s non-answers. In other words, in the silence.
I was actually born 90% Vata. “A who?”, you may ask if this is new to you.
That’s right, I identify as the Vata body-mind type in Ayurveda.
There are 3 types: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. We all possess traces in varying degrees of each of these types and any of us can get off balance (irritated, anxious, lethargic, etc.) from these types.
Today I’m just focusing on the Vata type…
As a Vata, most of us are naturally thin or slender. A Vata can eat and eat and eat, and gain little weight.
There are people you hate or envy because of this (not really… but you get my drift). On the flipside, Vatas have thin bones and usually a more sensitive body.
We can take a warm bath and still feel cold especially in the winter.
Each body type has special features.
Another for Vata is, we epitomize the saying, “cold hands, warm heart.”
Our skin and hair stay on the naturally dry side. We use deep moisturizers and conditioners. And adult eczema can arise that’s manageable.
Outside of appearances, the Vata body-mind type naturally holds onto worry and anxiety. An area that I did not care to hold onto so I learned to transform.
In pure Vata fashion, we naturally bounce from task to task (sometimes too much), as multi-taskers are our middle names. We also prefer variety as the spice of life.
We have or like more than one type of any product or food type.
Based on all these descriptions above, I’m 100% Vata.
You learn in life though, you adapt to situations and can balance or counterbalance any natural body type, especially with all the resources and great products we have in the world at our fingertips.
So why am I sharing all of this?…
Because I believe you have a choice to make changes in your life for the better.
I wanted to get up 10 times while writing this, but I forced myself to stay put. I also wanted to wonder what you would think reading this. I chose to not worry about anything that’s not helpful, and just be productive despite natural tendencies because I learned the better way.
But I still care about feelings and how I come across with thin skin, that I learned to toughen up over the years and through life’s situations.
There’s a part of me that still wants to be the reserved person who doesn’t want to share who she is, but I put myself out there anyway as I know I can help others.
I challenge myself to be fearless. Because I know that there’s no personal growth without bringing light to weaknesses, and places I’d rather suppress.
Then I see dynamic people in this world and I couldn’t even begin to do the things they do in their physical abilities and skills.
And I naturally want to believe they are happy.
But they’re not, inside. And despite all they have.
They weren’t wired that way. But I was.
They live on what they know and their comforts. That’s not better or worse, it just is.
They have a choice to change parts of their lives if they choose.
As we all have choices relative to our lives and opportunities.
As long as we support one another as humans, and don’t judge one another, we can learn from each other and grow.
And that can be the greater world we are becoming in collaboration efforts.
If you’re a Vata (or think you’re one from my description above), high five and a big hug to you. I get you.
We naturally have anxious tendencies that can show up in the form of overwhelming feelings, heart palpitations, or nervous butterflies in the stomach.
You don’t have to live that way, as a regular way of being based on your thoughts and situations you can’t control.
I know this from my own learned past experiences.
Without anxiety awareness, you’re putting on a band-aid to calm the symptoms.
Breathing deeply and drinking plenty of water are super important habits to help soothe anxiety.
If you think you have anxiety in your life, confirm with this quiz, and get quick restoring tips and ongoing healthy and happy life balancing tip advice.
You too can change what’s not fully working. (Let it be easy… why live another day not being or feeling like your whole self?).
We live in an evolving world that changes whether we want it to or not.
…And there are lots going on.
But, I believe each of us can get ahead of anxiety and learn to manage and prevent anxiety in a healthy way.
Each situation is a teacher and a chance to find a remedy.
The statistics show our depressed society is growing.
Most women in America and maybe the world, don’t currently do or take the time to learn how to live healthy and happy in life’s busyness, despite all the resources available.
And, that’s where I hope I can shed light with my positivity, encouraging vibes, and sharing self-transformation lessons to help in this cause.
I encourage (and challenge you) to be your change for your life’s happiness.
You can learn all about the Vata, Pitta, and Kapha in this in-depth balancing mind-body article which btw, as an example I’m dominant in Pitta mind (in addition to a Vata mind) to add fuel to the fire.
And very likely, you have more than one dominant mind type. That’s what makes each of us complex, unique, and alike in this life. It’s as simple and complicated as that. 😊
First of all, why care if you’re feeling anxious vs. irritated?
Because you will use different healthy ways to combat and soothe each.
Anxiety can be based on fear, worry, feeling (or being) attacked, threatened, stuck, or overwhelmed.
Irritation can come from situations you encounter or people who do things that offend you. Or if you’re in an environment that frustrates you.
The easiest way to tell the difference if you’re anxious or irritated is by your bodily functions. The body tells the story truth. It expresses with your being balanced or imbalanced.
Orange candle is the type of scent that can change your anxiety.
With one sniff and you feel more calm. Nice and easy!
So when you’re out shopping for candles in the sea of candles, your orange candle choice can be easy.
Yes! All Candles are not created equal to soothe and calm anxiety. Orange candles are special. Some candles have deeper scents like the Yankee Candle.
I found one that I love. It’s the Village Candle Orange Dreamsicle (creamsicle). If you flip to the back, you’ll see I bought at HomeGoods for a fraction of the price.
