Buying real estate in New York was complicated, the closing date (when the house was actually ours, or at least ours to occupy and care for) shifting. We stayed with family, in an upstate inn, in friends’ apartments who had left the city. I practiced grounding everywhere. I imagined roots growing out of my feet down into the concrete sidewalk. I sat on the subway, feeling people’s energy close, connecting myself to the metal of the car and rails that once were elements under the crust of the earth. I practiced early morning yoga when I couldn’t sleep in whatever floor space was available wherever we were.

We returned to California, the closing date fixed for a few weeks out. We spent our time with friends, not goodbyes but feeling all the same like a part of us would stay with them. Love. Community. People we show up for and who show up for us. I went through the house ferreting out items that we wouldn’t need in our new house or that we couldn’t take on the truck, like my pantry stocked with open containers of beans and grains and spices or flammable unsealed bottles of booze. Feeding ourselves anything nourishing that wasn’t takeout became challenging.

And then an old friend arrived. We had texted about him stopping by for lunch but I admitted defeat -- I had prepared nothing and had no ingredients that seemed like a meal to me. I told him he was welcome to come but that cooking would need to be participatory. He agreed and asked me to pick up a few potatoes and beets and some ginger. He brought the rest, or we found it in what was left of my pantry.

I always thought of kitchari, when I thought of it at all, as an obligatory food, served at the “Buddha bar” of meditation retreats. Offending no one but not enticing the senses at all. This was different, grounded in the context of his family’s history and South Indian culture. He fried the spices in ghee, added water and salt and rinsed rice and lentils (mung dal is best but split red lentils or other pulses you don’t need to soak will do; I can say from experimentation that French de Puy lentils don’t work nearly as well to bind with the rice) and the beets and potatoes cut to bite size. He stirred at first and then left it to simmer, the air pockets formed by bubbles providing structure for everything to steam.

When enough water evaporated to leave the surface of the rice looking almost dry, we put the lid on and waited two minutes, then turned off the burner and left it to steam for 20 minutes more. We gave thanks, and ate it with our fingers and some yogurt and crispy plantain chips. He made, intentionally, twice as much as we could eat that day, and it fed us (me, really) the rest of the week. The beets and turmeric had turned the dish into the color of a sunset, not the drab brown I had seen before. The spices and salt gave it balance, and the vegetables and rice and dal melted and clung together, tasting like sweet sticky soil. It grounded and nourished me in a way I had been craving, and gave me the energy to take the next steps and the next of our move.

I’ve made this dish several times again since then, most recently this past weekend with new friends in our new home and again today with a friend in her home. Undergoing this huge transformation -- like many people are experiencing right now -- I am still hungry for grounding. This is a good dish to make when you want to ground yourself, when you need nourishment, or better yet make it with a friend. The timing of making this dish is particularly relaxing, because you cut the vegetables while the rice soaks, and you can clean up everything as the pot steams, so when you sit down to eat, your work is complete.