Chaitra Navratri 2022: 3 Expert-Recommended Food Tips To Plan Your Routine This Festive Season

Chaitra Navratri is one of the most important festivals celebrated by the Hindus. The nine forms of Goddess Durga are worshipped in a span of nine days. Many devotees observe vrat on all the nine days of Chaitra Navratri. Nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar shared three food tips that would be helpful during the festivity. In the caption, she wrote, “In terms of foods, upavas is a time-tested method of adding diversity to our diets around the change of the season. Diverse diets are known to improve health outcomes and well-being. Spotlight is on the neglected or under-utilised foods and recipes.”

Rujuta shared three tips to help you optimise diversity in your diet. We have also attached some recipes alongside.

1) Start your day with a combination of nuts and dry fruits like raisins and almonds, dates and walnuts, figs and cashews or apricot and pista. You can pick a different combination every day. Having these combinations every day during the festivity will help you stay healthy.

You can make a delicious date and walnut kheer for your sweet cravings. Since we usually prepare kheer on special occasions, a festivity like this could give us all the more reason to make this healthy dessert. You can also make anjeer kaju roll, which has a combination of figs and cashew nuts. This is a festive dessert made with all things healthy and tasty. The added benefit is that you can make it and store it for a few days to have it later.

2) Include one of the time-tested fasting foods such as rajgeera roti or thalipeeth or sabudana khichdi. Even kuttu poori or sama chawal would do. You can have one dish per day.

Sabudana khichdi is a light spicy dish made with sagu or sabudana typically savoured on Navratri or in general while fasting. This dish is made with roasted peanuts and a host of spices. Usually, it is served with fresh coriander leaves on top and some curd. Kuttu ki puri is another easy recipe. You don’t have to spend much time in the kitchen to make it. These crispy and tasty puris are prepared with buckwheat flour and fried in desi ghee.

3) Don’t forget the legumes – sundals, amba dal and chana poori. As per the tradition of your region, you can choose a new legume every day and cook up dishes accordingly.

Sundals are rich in proteins. So, don’t forget to include them in your diet this Navratri. You can make sundal with any legume of your choice —kidney beans, chickpeas, green gram, black eyed peas etc. One of the easy sundal recipes would be chana dal sundal.

When it comes to kala chana, there are various ways to make it. One of the recipes could be kala chana rasedaar, and you can pair it with pooris

Take a look at Rujuta Diwekar’s post:

Also Read: Chaitra Navratri 2022: 6 Foods You Can Still Eat While Fasting

In the end of her post, Rujuta Diwekar mentioned that apart from the traditional recipes, you can also include foods such as makhana, jhangora kheers, halwas of alu, pumpkin, sweet potato and sooji.