About three years ago, I was in Mexico with a group of graduate students who were studying curanderismo, the traditional medicine practices of Mexico. We had already spent several weeks traipsing around the countryside meeting with healers, doing sweat lodges, and learning the plants. We had been cleansed with big bouquets of flowers and vomited chicharron at 10,000 feet so when our bus pulled up to a little house in Cuernavaca, I was feeling pretty full of experience already and wasn't really sure how much more I could take in.
As we got off the bus, we were greeted in the courtyard by two gigantic young men. They also happened to be good looking, giant young men which perked up our mostly female crew. They led us inside to the kitchen where a spread of jicama and carrot slices accompanied by the requisite cayenne and lime juice as well as big pitchers of fresh fruit juice awaited our refreshment. In the heat of the late morning, we gobbled up the snacks. Then, we filed into the living room to meet their mom, Angelica Flores, a 6th generation curandera.
Her stature was not large like her sons but as soon as she started speaking, we were riveted. She talked about everyday things....birth, death, love...and she talked with compassion and the wisdom of lots of experience. Towards the end of her talk, someone asked her, "What can we do for the young people? What can we do to make it a better world for them?" She replied, "we must return to the fire. The fire is where we come to feed each other, to tell stories, to sing songs, to be healed."
Sitting precariously on the end of a couch, desperately trying to write down everything that she was saying, I sat up straight and dropped my pen. Of course, I thought. So simple. We eat every day, usually several times a day. Of course, this process has the potential to be hugely powerful.
Truth be told, I experienced this moment of revelation, leaned down and picked up my pen from the floor, wrote it down and then promptly forgot all about it. That is until a few months ago when I came across my journal from this trip.
Curiously, even though my conscious mind forgot this moment, after I returned from Mexico, I started spending more and more time exploring and eventually working around the burgeoning local foods movement. First, I taught cooking classes at a camp and then I started working on farms and dabbling in food writing and personal cheffing.
It has become evident in these three years of food work that reconnecting with our food...with where it comes from... how it's grown.... how to prepare it well....and probably most importantly, how to share it.... is just a wellspring of potential wonder.
And when I say wellspring of potential wonder and imagine my little sisters rolling their eyes, I mean that within this process of getting food on our tables, we have the opportunity to explore
- Community Connection
- Creative Expression and Problem Solving
- The Power that Comes from Providing for Yourself aka. Food Sovereignty
- Improved Health and Vitality
- Nature Connection
- A Sense of Meaning and Purpose
- And....Joy. Lots of it.
And so that's what this blog is about. It's about using food as a vehicle for living a meaningful, full, rich, connected life. Lot's of people are doing it. I'll share their stories and mine and hopefully, we'll all inspire each other to Take Back the Hearth and have some fun in the kitchen.
