Seasonal Shopping List: An Ayurvedic Kitchen List to Print

Choose the season you are shopping for, and a dosha if you like, and this tool makes a shopping list you can print or save: grains, pulses, vegetables, fruit, dairy and fats, nuts and seeds, sweeteners, spices and drinks, each with a tick box. Every item is named on one of this site’s own pages, and the list says which. It is a tradition, not a diet: it gives no amounts and does not tell you what to eat. It asks one safety question first and makes no list if a listed health situation applies.

How it works

The season part of the list comes from the page for that ritu, from the paragraph on food: the foods the classical lists name, and in Grishma the watery foods that modern teachers suggest. The Hemanta page, for example, names milk, ghee, sesame, jaggery, new grains, pulses and thick soups, so those go on the list. Spices come from the spices page, which says that a cook in a hot climate might use more coriander and fennel, while cold weather calls for ginger, pepper and cinnamon; for spring, the list adds ginger, because the Ashtanga Hridayam names ginger water among the drinks of that season (Sutrasthana 3.23, numbered as on the siva.sh edition).

If you add a dosha, the list adds the foods that the vata, pitta or kapha food page lists as favoured. An item named on both pages appears once, marked with both sources, and the mung beans of a season page and the mung dal of the vata page appear as one item. You can leave out dairy, nuts, gluten (wheat, barley, rye and oats) and sesame, and the list tells you what it left out. The dairy box also covers anyone who eats no animal products, so it leaves out honey as well.

The season page also names what it advises against, and the list shows that line under the items as “buy less of”. Where that line names a taste, or heavy, oily or dry food, the list marks each item from your dosha page that the six tastes page or the qualities of foods page names under that taste or quality. The item stays on the list, marked “go easy this season” with the taste or quality, and the result quotes the sentence behind the mark. Vasanta, for example, advises against heavy, sour, sweet and oily food, so a vata list for Vasanta marks rice, sweet potato, milk, ghee, paneer, almonds, walnuts, sesame and the five fruits the vata page calls ripe, sweet and juicy. Grishma advises against salty, sour and pungent food, so a kapha list for Grishma marks six pungent items, such as ginger, mustard and chilli, a vata list two, and a pitta list none. A food the season page names itself is never marked.

Only foods those two pages name are matched. “Nuts” covers almonds and walnuts, “ripe fruit” covers the fruit that the dosha page itself calls ripe or sweet, unless the six tastes page puts it under another taste, as it does pomegranate, and “cheese” covers paneer, a fresh cheese. A food neither page names, such as butter, is not marked, even where it may share a taste or quality. Words about serving, keeping or the meal as a whole, such as cold drinks, raw or stale food and light, drying meals, are quoted but not matched to items, and neither is “very heavy food” in Grishma, because the pages give no examples of it.

Reading the result

The list leads with the number of items. Without a dosha it is short, because the season pages name only a handful of foods: six for Vasanta and nine for Hemanta, for example. With a dosha it is longer, between 27 and 38 items, depending on the season and the dosha. The button above the list prints it, or saves it as a PDF if your device offers that, and the printout holds the list and its short notes, without the rest of the page.

Read it as a list of foods the tradition associates with the season, not as a list of what you must buy. Buy what you would eat anyway, in the amounts you normally buy. Where the season and the dosha pull apart, the list says so in the words of the food page: the pitta page, for instance, says that in the cold of winter its cooling advice can feel unsuitable, and that many teachers then follow the weather.

Where traditions differ

The classical lists describe the climate of north India, and the pages say that schools and regions differ in the details. The Grishma page separates the classical list, with rice, milk, ghee and grain drinks, from what modern teachers usually suggest, such as cucumber, melon and buttermilk, and the list marks the second group “teachers today”. The classical lists for Shishira and Hemanta also name meat soups, and the Grishma page the meat of desert animals and wild game, for those who eat meat; this list leaves meat out and says so. Old and new grains, and Grishma’s grain flour, are named as the pages name them, without a definition the pages do not give; if you leave out gluten, the list asks you to choose grains without it. Outside India, choose the season that matches the weather where you are, as the page on living by the seasons outside India explains.

What it does not do

It gives no quantities or calories and plans no meals; for one illustrative day of meals, see the meal planner, and for recipes, the recipe finder. It does not adjust for medical diets: if diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease, pregnancy or breastfeeding, an eating disorder, a doctor-set diet or a child is involved, it makes no list and points you to your care team, as the seasonal eating page advises. Leaving out an allergen is a convenience, not allergy advice. Please read the medical disclaimer, and see a doctor or a registered dietitian for any health concern or medical diet.

Frequently asked questions