Shout Out to The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook by Kate O’Donnell with Cara Brostrom – the 10th anniversary edition has arrived with Spring!
(My writing can be found on Substack now. You can continue to find it here as well.)
Ayurveda is an ancient nature-based system of health from India that offers strong support for getting back into healthy rhythms. Rhythms around nourishment, elimination, sleep, light, rest, and peaceful connection can make a big difference in how we feel and how well we ground into our purpose and choices, especially in turbulent times. Kate O’ Donnell’s Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook 10th Anniversary edition is, as I wrote in the foreword, “beautifully simple and tasty, and easy to use. It is well-suited to meet the needs of these coming years of change. In working with simplicity, we need to have the wisdom to see what is essential and what is extraneous. Kate and Cara (Brostrom) have done this in outstanding ways, and this cookbook continues to encourage us to be wise and simple.” The authors’ deep respect for nature is evident in how they work with plants, foods, herbs, and the world around them. Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook 10th Anniversary edition’s focus on nature, beauty, and balance is uplifting.
One of the features I especially appreciate is Kate and Cara’s seasonal adaptations of delicious dishes, from frittatas to kichadis to puddings to bean pates to nut milks to steamed salad bowls. Color coded and easy, once you’ve understood how to make one dish for winter, it’s simple to adapt it in your own kitchen for spring. So many of my clients have benefitted from this book. Happy anniversary to my sister creators and all of us who’ve grown into a deeper joyous practice of Ayurveda thanks to them.
I’ll be joining Kate O’Donnell for a shared explore in her podcast May 6 about how Ayurveda came to the West and how we’re each learning and applying its principles and practices now. Do join us.
Ayurveda first entered my life as a nutrition educator when Ayurvedic physician Dr. Vasant Lad arrived from Mumbai with his manager Lennie Blank to land in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was 1983 and many of us wholistic educators were fascinated by what Dr. Lad was teaching about this ancient wisdom from India: that each individual has different needs, that balance can be found with food, herbs, breath, yoga, and touch (marma). His approach was in depth and enthusiastic. Fast forward forty plus years and Dr. Lad is still active and mentoring a new generation of practitioners, now in North Carolina. I celebrate him with much gratitude. Thanks to him and other kind Ayurveda teachers, Kate O’Donnell, Cara Brostrom and I have all had chances to engage with Ayurveda, a system previously unknown in this country.
In the passing decades since Dr. Lad’s arrival in the US, hundreds of fine teachers from India and the West have grown Ayurveda into a vibrant accessible system of healing here in the West as well as the East. Kate O’ Donnell is the leading expert of Ayurvedic nutrition for this generation. The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook has been a mainstay for thousands of interested people looking to find their way to a different approach to food and healing.
The National Ayurvedic Medical Association is one of a number of excellent professional associations representing Ayurveda in the US now. It has enabled educators like Kate and me to reach wide audiences. In my years as an educational organization member of NAMA, it’s been a delight to see how much we’ve all grown. So many new and old members with wise perspectives, seeking to genuinely explore this ancient art in an authentic way. If you’re interested in learning more about Ayurveda now, NAMA’s annual conference is coming up soon, May 2- 4, 2025 in the Dallas, Texas area. The theme this year is Ayurveda & the Pursuit for Longevity: The Relevance of Ayurveda in the Digital Age.
NAMA recently hosted a public online talk with my colleague and friend Dr. Ramkumar Kutty, another guiding light in Ayurveda. In his wide ranging explore, he touched on the role of mind in health., as well as in food choices. Dr. Ramkumar heads Vaidyagrama, an Ayurveda Healing Village outside of Coimbatore in South India. In looking at Ayurveda and food, he gently took exception with the way we in Ayurveda are constantly thinking about food, obsessing and planning. He advocated relaxing and eating what’s available to us, not to be so fussy.
I appreciate his perspective. We need to be adaptable and less attached to particular ideas and practices. Yet, there is a range here. Ayurveda helps us stay well. When we’re out of balance and dealing with chronic illness, sometimes we do have to be more discriminating about what we eat. That’s been my job for years, helping people find ways to heal with ordinary food and herbs. That balance between appreciation of foods, engagement with food with love, and non-attachment –or obsessing and clutching – this can be quite a dance! He addressed this well.
As a modern classic, The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook has supported many readers in maintaining and regaining health. With respect to what Dr. Ramkumar Kutty was saying, I think its authors have done a good job of navigating this range, between practical needs and celebration. They instruct their readers about the importance of digestive fire, a key point in Ayurveda, if one does want to eat a wider range of foods.
Non-violent approaches and connections, ahimsa, is a core value in Ayurveda. With each changing year on this planet, non-violence looks to me like the wisest choice. Non-violent perspectives are also key in Buddhism. My teacher Tibetan Buddhist HE Garchen Rinpoche highlights the idea that we can all connect, locally and internationally, in ways that enhance loving kindness, the wisdom of compassion, equanimity, and empathetic joy. These qualities are all a part of bodhicitta, the wish to benefit others. He says, “Love is the only cause of happiness. Its nature is all pervasive like space. Love is the sunlight of the mind.” His words and actions in this life ground and center me.
In these times, creating community with like-minded people as widely as possible, can be extremely important. Non-violent connections are medicine. There are so many of us! We are each one of billions of human beings, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama pointed out in their delightful shared journey The Book of Joy with Douglas Abrams.
I’m glad to welcome Kate O’Donnell and Cara Brostrom’s latest creation The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook 10th Anniversary edition into these times. So many of my clients have benefitted from this book. May many more readers discover its kind and beautiful help.
About the author: Amadea Morningstar teaches about Ayurveda, Polarity Therapy, and yoga. Her most recent book is Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda.
Image thanks fo Iza Bruen-Morningstar