“I’m calling it a Chutney”

I’m Calling It a Chutney

Some recipes don’t quite fit a category, and that’s what I love about this one. It’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and very grounding. It began as a “throw-it-in-the-pan” kind of experiment and turned into a fall ritual I now crave.

Ingredients

• 1 apple, cut into small chunks
• ½ cup raisins
• ¼ cup walnuts
• ¼ cup almonds
• 1 tablespoon ghee, olive oil, or butter
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon turmeric
• A few shakes of cayenne
• Pinch of salt

Method

In a small sauté pan, toast the cinnamon and turmeric for a minute or two until their aroma wakes up the air. Add your ghee (or oil or butter) and stir to incorporate the spices. Then toss in the remaining ingredients. Let them mingle on low to medium heat until the apples soften and the raisins plump up. Serve warm.

I eat this chutney as a side to Indian curries, or just as a spicy dessert — it walks that fine line beautifully.

Why This Works So Well in Fall

As I’ve written before, fall carries the Vata qualities: cool, dry, and mobile — think wind, rustling leaves, and shifting light. Ayurveda teaches us to balance these qualities with their opposites: warmth, moisture, stability, and continuity.

This chutney is the season’s antidote. Cooking the fruit instead of eating it raw makes it easier to digest in cooler weather. Cinnamon, turmeric, cayenne, and salt all stoke Agni, our digestive fire, so that food becomes nourishment instead of Ama — the undigested residue that can fog body and mind.

And then there’s the ghee — that unctuous, golden medicine that adds lubrication to the tissues and stability to the nervous system. It’s both grounding and deeply nutritive, a balm against fall’s dryness.

A Practice in the Kitchen

I rarely measure. I let my senses lead — a little more cinnamon on a day that feels cool, a bit more cayenne when I need warmth, less turmeric if I want it mild. Ayurveda is an art of attunement as much as it is a science.

When we cook this way, we practice listening — to our body, to the season, to the moment’s needs. It’s the same principle I teach in movement: rehearse awareness, override habit, and find ease.

You can’t rush chutney. You stir, you wait, you smell, you taste — and in the process, you cultivate warmth from the inside out.

The Spontaneous CORE Connection

In the same way this chutney warms from within, Spontaneous CORE begins with digestion — not just of food, but of experience. When the belly feels safe, the breath deepens, the mind steadies, and movement becomes more responsive. This is the foundation of the responsive core — a body that doesn’t brace, but listens; a nervous system that doesn’t pre-load, but adapts.

Cooking, like practice, is rehearsal. We gather ingredients — spices, breath, awareness — and we learn how to bring them into relationship. What begins as a recipe becomes a ritual, and what starts as nourishment for the body becomes medicine for the whole self.

Note: these ingredients will only help you if you are able to digest them. It is not a one size fits all.

Lyndsay Savage Lamb

Spontaneous CORE