The Green Heart: Peas, Pears & the Ivy's Embrace
A Note on Eating Green
This week we're opening the Heart Chakra (Anahata) with green food — spinach, peas, watercress and the last sweet pears of the season. The Heart Chakra is the bridge between body and spirit, and it asks for air, green and gentleness. Green is the colour the kitchen can least afford to skip, and mid-October, when the leaves are at their brightest, the green table is the richest. Here's this week's green table:
Download This Week's Resources
Download this week's Recipe Card (PDF) and Shopping List (PDF) to take with you to the kitchen or the shops.
Welcome to Cook in Colour — Series 3
Four weeks in, and the wheel turns green — the exact colour of the year right now, as Edinburgh's limes and beeches go gold and the grass stays stubbornly emerald. The green table this week is a world tour: a Greek greens pie, a British classic soup from the British Heart Foundation's own recipe file, an Iranian cold yogurt soup, and a peppery autumn salad. Each week brings four colour-themed recipes, a cold soup from somewhere warm, a seasonal brew, medicinal herbs in bloom, and a Celtic tree to sit with. The Ivy (Gort) month continues, and this week the ivy does something wonderful: it flowers.
The Heart Chakra (Anahata)
The Heart Chakra is the bridge — the meeting place of earth and air, body and spirit. Its element is Air, its colour is emerald green, and its seed mantra is YAM. Affirmation for the week: I breathe in green. I give and receive love freely, beginning with myself.
This Week's Recipes
Breakfast: Spinach, Feta & Herb Omelette
A soft green omelette folded over wilted baby spinach, crumbled feta and a tangle of chives, parsley and dill. Five minutes, one pan, and the greenest start to the day the kitchen can offer. Get the recipe at thegutexperts.com
Lunch: Pea & Mint Soup
Frozen peas simmered briefly with onion and stock, then blitzed bright green with a fistful of fresh mint. For Heart Chakra week it had to be the British Heart Foundation's own version — a soup that loves you back. Get the recipe at bhf.org.uk
Dinner: Spanakopita
The great Greek greens pie: spinach and watercress with spring onions, dill and feta bound in eggs, wrapped in crackling filo and baked until the top shatters and the middle stays soft and green-hearted. Serious Eats' version lets any greens you have take the lead. Get the recipe at seriouseats.com
Supper: Watercress & Pear Salad
Peppery watercress and rocket with sweet conference pear, toasted pumpkin seeds and a sharp balsamic dressing. The green salad of early autumn, when the pears come in and the cress still has its fire. Get the recipe at whatdadcooked.com
This Week's Brew: Hawthorn & Rosehip Syrup
The herbalist's autumn cordial, and the most Heart Chakra brew of the whole year: hawthorn berries and dried rosehips simmered gently, strained and sweetened with honey and a little lemon. Hawthorn is the great heart tonic of the hedgerow — herbalists have trusted its berries, leaves and flowers for the heart for centuries — and the berries are hanging red on every haw tree in Edinburgh right now. Take a spoonful in warm water in the evening, or over ice with sparkling water. Get the recipe at frenchbroadfood.coop
Cold Soup of the World: Abdoogh Khiar (Iran)
From Iran, the greenest of the world's cold soups: cucumber, dried mint, dill, chives, raisins and walnuts folded through chilled yogurt and water, served over crushed ice with torn lavash. Abdoogh khiar is what a hot country knows about cooling — and eaten outdoors on a bright October afternoon, it green-shocks you awake in the best way. Get the recipe at cookingwithsamira.com
Medicinal Herbs in Bloom
Hawthorn is the heart herb, and there is no better week to meet it. The haws are at their ripest now, glowing red on every hedge and city park tree, and they carry the medicine the old herbalists called 'food for the heart': preparations of hawthorn berry, leaf and flower have been used for centuries to steady the heartbeat, soften stress and strengthen the whole cardiovascular system. In Celtic tradition the hawthorn was never cut — it was the faerie tree, the May tree, the tree of the heart's protection. Modern herbalism still reaches for it first when the heart needs tending, physically or emotionally. Rosehip is its companion in every autumn gathering basket — the fruit of the wild rose, and one of the richest sources of vitamin C in the northern hemisphere. Rosehip syrup is the classic Scottish autumn remedy, a spoonful a day for the immune system as the dark comes in, and its seeds and skins are full of the compounds herbalists use for joints and skin. The hips are softest after the first frost, but mid-October is the moment to gather them. Together, hawthorn and rosehip are the hedgerow's answer to a loving heart and a strong winter.
What the Land is Offering Right Now
Mid-October and the hedgerows are at their reddest: hawthorn berries heavy on every tree, rosehips fat on the wild roses, sloes blackened for gin, the last brambles still darkening on the Blackford lanes. Apples are coming out of every garden at once — this is the week neighbours leave bags of them on walls — and the mushroom season is properly under way in the beech woods of the Pentlands, if you know your chanterelles from your chantrelles-don't. This week's brew and both our herbs come straight off the hedge: hawthorn berries, rosehips and honey. Take a basket, leave plenty for the birds, and pick above knee height, and well away from the roadside.
Where to Meditate: Heart Chakra
The Heart Chakra asks for air and green. Element: Air. Colour: emerald green. Seed mantra: YAM. Start your week with Lorna's Sunday morning chakra workshop on Instagram: @lorna.mckey — the perfect place to open the heart before the week begins. For a green meditation, sit under the old elms of the Meadows and breathe with the falling leaves, or walk the chestnut avenues of Inverleith Park slowly enough that your heartbeat sets the pace. The Royal Botanic Garden is the green heart of the city — find a bench in the Rock Garden and let the year's last green work on you. The Hermitage of Braid follows the Braid Burn under alders and old ivy, and Dean Village keeps the Water of Leith lanes soft and green even in November. And because the Ivy (Gort) month continues, the map below keeps the full living calendar wheel of Edinburgh's Ogham trees turning.
Tap any pin to get Google Maps directions. Open the interactive street map →
The Ivy (Gort)
The Ivy month deepens, and this week the ivy gives its great gift: it flowers. Ivy blossom is one of the last nectar feasts of the year — bees, wasps, hoverflies and late butterflies crowd it in the October sun, and the dark berries that follow feed the blackbirds through the winter. The old tradition says ivy is the tree of binding and connection: it holds the green when everything else lets go, which is exactly the work of the heart in the dark half of the year. You still won't find ivy in the council's street-tree register — it climbs, it doesn't stand — but it's flowering on the walls of the Old Town right now. The ivy heart of Chesil's Court is still on its wall, photographed below by Sharon. Go and stand under it while it hums with the last bees of the year.
A Sacred Table in Green
Spanakopita is the picnic piece of the year — it eats beautifully cold, cut into slabs from the tin, filo still shattering. Bring the pea and mint soup in a flask and the watercress and pear salad in a jar, dressing in the bottom, shaken at the table. Abdoogh khiar travels chilled in a thermos, walnuts and raisins separately, lavash wrapped in a tea towel. Leave the omelette at home — that one is strictly for the pan and the moment. Take it to Inverleith Park under the chestnuts, or up the Braid Burn, and eat your greens while the leaves come down around you.
Until Next Week
Next Sunday the wheel turns blue: the Throat Chakra (Vishuddha), with the Ivy still climbing and the first frost close behind. Recipes land here every Sunday at 9am, selected each week by Sharon for thenofussgourmet.com. Recipes selected each week by Sharon for thenofussgourmet.com
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