Happy equinox! Summer is over! As always, I have mixed feelings about summer's end. In the past, my feelings were dominated by fear: fear of cold and flu season, fear of those dreary, short dark days, even a weird fear of wearing jeans and socks again after months of unfettered enjoyment in flip-flops and filmy skirts.

Life experience, coupled with my Ayurvedic and elemental medicine education, transformed my cool weather fears into a protocol of prevention. And appreciation—if we were always illuminated by summer's brightness, lives would probably be shortened by the mania, and summer days wouldn't feel so special. Here in Northern California, our catastrophic drought has wrought a passion for wintry, rainy days, as the past years, stripped of most of those prohibitive-weather relaxers, has colored our communities with a steady, low-level fatigue.

The sun provides so much energy. In summer's brightest days, we feel guided by the light, a robust invincibility. But it's actually that myth of invincibility that sets the stage for miserable winter sniffles and other maladies. Summer's intensity is intoxicating and the bad choices of summery free-for-alls can come back to haunt in the fall and winter, when the sun's firepower is lacking and we are more vulnerable to viruses and fatigue .

But it's not too late, even if you spent your summer staying up all night, eating weird foods (tortilla chips and beer dinner at the river?!), overdoing the drinking or the drugs, and running yourself ragged from the euphoria of it all. Next year, I recommend you take it easier—and don't we all have moments in the midst of summer's overwhelm that we swear we will take it easier next year—but for those who are welcoming fall with a spirit of skepticism, here are some tips.

Hydration: Going with the flow. If you spent the summer sweating, drinking alcohol, basking in the sun, and doing pretty much everything else summery, you may have experienced dehydration. Most people have difficulty staying hydrated in the summer, which leads to fall and winter problems. I believe that many of us don't even know what hydrated really feels like! Dry skin, gas, poor nutrient absorption, constipation and pellet-like stool, anxiety, uneven body temperature, and a dry cough are just some of the symptoms of chronic, systemic dryness.

Moisture is protective to our bodies—for instance, the moist lining in our guts called mucin feed the probiotic layer that enforces immunity; a properly lubricated body has strong protective mucus membranes, like the cilia of the nose and lungs, which filter out harmful inhaled substances; even emotionally, Ayurveda says that a dehydrated person is more likely to have a restless and anxious mind. Moisture grounds, protects, and generally optimizes bodily function.

It's never too late to hydrate—1/2 ounce per pound of body weight daily is a good start, plus more when taking in coffee or alcohol or sweating a lot. Hydration is a whole larger article, but a few recommendations: sip water frequently through the day, don't chug—sips help the body uptake the moisture, chugging can overwhelm a dehydrated system and the water gets urinated instead of absorbed; take in warm or room-temperature fluids—ice water is again, difficult for the body to uptake; supplement with coconut water, a great hydrating tool, but also quite cold in nature—cold-running people should grate ginger in their coco water or avoid it when chilly; fortify your water with electrolyte boosters (like high-quality salts, see Celtic or Atlantic grey) and demulcents like chia seeds, ground flax seeds, and powdered slippery elm, which bolster your water's hydrating power as well as have healing effects on the gut.

Beware over-the-counter meds that harshly dry out the mucus of a cold. These remedies counter your body's natural urge to eliminate pathogens through mucus, as well as leave you bone dry.

Acknowledge when you are tired and act accordingly. This seems like an easy one but it trips us all. I am so relieved for the essential term FOMO—fear of missing out—because it is a description of a syndrome that leads to leaky noses and feverish nights, as well as general, undiagnosed crankiness. Know your limits, know how to say no, be comfortable with the unglamour of staying in when your body says, "No more!" Talk about cheap medicine, this policy will likely save you money!

Know yourself and plan for the future months with that knowledge. Are you like me, and summer's end gives you a trembly anticipation of shivery days, inconsistent digestion and elimination, and probable colds? If you are like me, then you are more on the cold side in your constitution, so your seasonal transition should include phasing out raw foods in favor for oily, spiced cooked dishes; taking in more warm teas like tulsi and ginger; and being extremely vigilant about covering your neck, midriff, and feet on those iffy, kinda-warm, kinda-cool, days.

If you are more on the warm side, and the cooling of fall actually gives you some sweet relief from loose stools and your firey personality, your protocol is a bit different. Warmer people need to beware extending their hot-weather habits into the seesaw temperature days of fall. Avoid iced drinks, melons, dairy products, ice cream, excessive raw foods, and the other cooling-off habits that you turn to in summer's steamiest days. While the heat of summer has been probably antagonizing you for months, keeping those fires healthy and strong into fall will be to your advantage. Be warm, but don't be hot and inflamed. We'll talk more about that concept in time in this space.

Eat for immunity. Notice your post-digestive experiences. Foods that are generating mucus should be avoided, like dairy. Mucus is the first sign of imbalance for those of us flirting with a cold. Slicing up some fresh ginger and boiling it with water for about 20 minutes is a great preventative tea for those with the dampness of mucus. Also: Make a weekly broth (bone broth if possible for carnivores) and load it up with medicinal mushrooms (shiitake, maitake, etc.), seaweed like kombu, onions, garlic, and spices like cumin, coriander, rosemary, and asafoetida. Don't forget carrots, celery, squash, and other trimmings. Importantly, add a slice or two of astragalus to your broth—astragalus is an immune boosting herb that won't affect the taste of your broth much, but will make your broth that much more medicinal. Use that broth to make soups, rice, beans, etc. through the week. Homespun medicine, oh yes.

That brings me to today's kitchen medicine action: hot sauce. I spent the weekend preserving symbols of summer's splendors: I canned twenty-five pounds of dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes and started a few batches of lacto-fermented chiles for pickled jalapenos and carrots, as well as hot sauce.

By this time of year, we get kind of sick of seeing tomatoes and chiles, but a few months from now, these fruits will be exotic reminders of bygone summer days. A nice spicy condiment hot sauce made of lacto-fermented chiles, onions, garlic, and spices can cut the cold, warm the belly, and keep the digestive fire stoked to burn up any unwanted invaders.

Lacto-fermented harissa hot sauce

This is less a recipe and more an invitation to play with these inexpensive ingredients. Play around, don't be intimidated, you will likely concoct something that is delicious and a health remedy.

First, assemble your ingredients. I used several jalapenos for heat, Jimmie Nardello sweet peppers for a mild flavor, a handful of garlic cloves, a tablespoon of hot smoked powdered paprika, whole cumin, carraway, and fennel seeds, apple cider vinegar, salt water, and some sugar.

Make a brine: 1 cup of hot water to 1 tablespoon of salt (please use only the best salt—celtic sea salt, Atlantic grey salt, unrefined sea salt, etc. Not Morton salt, or $.69/pound sea salt. Good salt should cost at least $5 or so per pound, and it is so worth it. More on this later.) I made a half-gallon of brine for my pickling projects but a quart would be more than enough for this recipe. Make sure the salt is dissolved and let it cool completely before pouring it on the hot sauce ingredients.

Sterilize a quart jar by pouring a few inches of boiling hot water into the bottom of the jar, and swirling it around, sterilizing the lip of the jar as you pour out the boiling water.

Stuff the sterilized jar full of chopped hot chiles, sweet chiles, garlic, paprika, and a sprinkling of fennel seeds, cumin seeds, and caraway seeds. Now, chiles' heat can vary wildly so it's hard to say how hot it will be! Remove the pith and seeds of the chiles if you want predictably less heat.

Once your jar is well-stuffed, add about a tablespoon of sugar, a dash of unpasteurized apple cider vinegar, a dash of whey or unpasteurized sauerkraut juice if you have it on hand (this will speed the process a bit and get the beneficial bacteria quickly established) and then finish off with the brine salt water. Cover the mixture completely and make sure it's submerged in its own juices. You can use a sterilized rock, or weights like these http://www.culturesforhealth.com/small-ceramic-fermentation-weight.html.

Cover the jar with a cloth fixed with a rubber band and let it sit for several days. A week or more would be best, depending on the temperature of the area around the fermenting mixture. Now, keep an eye on it, and you may find that a fuzzy mold forms on the top of the mixture. This often happens (always!) and in the past, made me panic-stricken—is it ruined? No! Simply scrape off the mold, even if you don't perfectly remove all of it, and let it keep fermenting. The bits of mold won't hurt you, won't impact the flavor—in short, it's completely normal. If your ferment is completely ruined by spoilage, you will know it; it will smell simply repugnant. Normal slight surface mold shouldn't have an odor.

Once you have determined that your ferment has gone far enough (it's up to you, I know it's ready when it has been about a week, it's a bit bubbly, and smells fantastic), pop the whole mixture into a blender and puree. Add a bit of whey, kraut juice, or brine to thin it if it's too chunky.

Taste it: is it the perfect heat and consistency for eggs and greens, or is it so overpowering that just a dash with finish off a pot of beans? Either way, you'll find a way to use it, and you know what you'd do different next time.

Bottle your sauce and stick it in the fridge. It's winter medicine, fresh from the heart of summer.

Keeping summer's fires simmering promotes a more healthful endurance of the chilly days to come.

Bulgarian carrot peppers—this heat will get you through the sniffles.