Fixes 4 You

The cold seeps in through the window frames, a quiet, persistent guest. It finds the space between your scarf and your coat collar. After a long day, the key in the lock feels like an icicle, and the warmth inside is still hours away from building. In that moment, the pull is for something easy. Something in a crinkly packet, a box from the freezer, a promise of instant salt and sugar and fat that will fill the hollow ache inside.

It is a surrender, of a kind. A white flag waved at the sheer effort of chopping, of simmering, of waiting. And who could blame you? The body just wants to hibernate.

But then, a different memory surfaces, a different kind of warmth. It is the scent of your grandmother’s kitchen, the air thick with the smell of ghee melting into a pan of semolina, the hiss of mustard seeds popping.

It’s the quiet bubble of a pot of dal, slow-cooking for hours, transforming simple lentils into something deeply comforting. This is what the body is actually asking for, beneath the noise of convenience. Not just calories, but nourishment that feels like an embrace from the inside out. It’s the understanding that a bowl of tomato soup, rich with ginger and a little black salt, does more than fill your stomach; it thaws your very bones.

The answers are often in the things we have forgotten to value.

The humble, rugged beauty of bajra and jowar, their dense, earthy rotis providing a sturdy foundation that a slice of white bread could never offer. They taste of the soil, of a time before things were so processed. Think of spinach, not as a limp thing in a bag, but as the vibrant green heart of palak paneer, simmering with soft cubes of cheese.

Or the sharp, electric tang of amla, preserved in a sweet, sticky murabba, a spoonful of which feels like swallowing a small, concentrated piece of sunshine to ward off the grey. The brilliant orange of a carrot, the deep purple of a beet—these are not just vegetables; they are jewels pulled from the cold earth, offering their color to brighten the pale winter landscape of your plate.

For a woman carrying a new life, the season feels different.

The internal furnace burns hotter, but the world outside is still frigid. The cravings become a strange, coded language. A sudden, desperate need for oranges isn’t just a whim; it’s a silent plea for Vitamin C, for immunity for two. The body knows. It knows it needs the iron from a mountain of leafy greens, the calcium from a simple, warm glass of milk before bed.

It understands, in a way the mind cannot quite grasp, that a bowl of dal khichdi is not just a meal. It is the perfect, soft architecture for building tiny bones, for creating a whole new person from scratch, one comforting spoonful at a time. The responsibility feels immense. Sometimes, it is all you can do.

Just eat the dal.

So it is not about denial, or a strict set of rules to be followed with grim determination. It is about listening. It is an act of translation, decoding what the winter body truly wants. It wants the substantial warmth of whole grains, the vibrant life-force of seasonal vegetables, the clean strength of good protein.

It wants to be hydrated with herbal teas that smell of tulsi and lemongrass, reminding you of a garden in another season. The winter asks for a turning inward, a deliberate slowing down. And feeding yourself well, with foods that hold the memory of the sun, is perhaps the most profound way to honor that request. It is a quiet, daily act of optimism.