Hooray for Spring (and Spring Greens)!
Time to spring into action with spring greens!
A pinch and a punch for the first of the month! (no returns).
It’s pretty hard to think of something fresh to say about the start of this new season.
… At least that’s what I thought, until I paid a serendipitous visit to my acupuncturist Melissa (who is excellent, by the way, and just down the road in Windsor.
Turns out that the flurry of floral (and faunal) activity at this time of year is nature’s way of giving us exactly what we need in order to clean out the cobwebs of winter and embrace the sunnier days ahead.
According to traditional Chinese medicine (or TCM for short), more than ever, spring is the time to go green. This means leaves (like spinach and rocket), shoots (like asparagus and broccoli) as well as young green vegetables (like peas, beans and fennel).
Lucky for us, all of these are in awesome abundance right now.
Just taking a quick wander around your favourite fruit and vegetable stall should be enough to get your creativity and chi flowing.
Reliable is full to the brim with local greenery against their back wall, Paddlewheel’s Koo Wee Rup asparagus stores are just begging to be plucked and the peas at Pino’s are just hankering for a souping.
Spring is also the time to seek out sour foods – particularly anything pickled or fermented – reaping the fruits (and/or vegetables) of a winter’s labour.
If you’re looking for some ready-made stuff, Ripe Organics’ new “Ripe, Raw, Alive” stall is full of fermented fare with your name on it (well… not exactly, but you know what I mean)!
Fermented foods don’t just taste great, they’re full of probiotic goodness, which helps populate our guts with good bacteria and gets the system moving like it’s never moved before. Incidentally, green leafies are full of prebiotics, which help to encourage better uptake of the funk.
“Spring cleaning” doesn’t just mean tidying out the pantry – it’s also the perfect time to whip your insides into shape. So, when it comes to the shopping basket this spring, bust out the cobwebs by getting funky and going heavy on the spring greens!
