About Me

Share the Nourishment

     In the interest of full disclosure I should admit that while I love great food I also have a few questionable culinary habits. I put sugar free maple syrup on too many things. I suck on lemons, sip on the same cup of coffee for up to 8 hours, enjoy the bitterness of burnt garlic, and secretly love dry vegan chocolate chip cookies. This is not to say that I don’t have my standards. I decline fast food burritos as often as possible, firmly believe that red wine is superior to white, and frown upon the lactose intolerant of the world. I love food.

     For me it is to an extent about the actual food. The textures, the flavors, the colors, the aromas. I anticipate the sharp sting of something particularly salty as much as I wait for sweet chocolate to warm and melt into me. It’s also about the story and the feeling. Recipes are inherited, traditions passed, styles integrated. It’s about the conversations that take place during the preparation, the ingredients that are forgotten when too much wine is shared, and the way you can follow a recipe exactly but yours tastes different from mom’s which is different from Grandma’s. It’s what the thought of Christmas dinner, Easter brunch, or summer BBQs evoke in all of us.

     And then there is the connection and healing. I once read that coffee is one of the most handled food products we have. Through planting, growing, harvesting, sorting, hulling, cleaning, aging, processing, roasting, selling, and preparing a single coffee bean can be touched by 80 different people. People of various cultures, each of which can be partially defined by food and their collective beliefs regarding it. I can’t think of one ethnicity without being able to identify a signature dish or flavor.

 

    Recently, I was told that tea is considered to be calming not only because of its warmth and health benefits but because of the ritualistic method of making it. You have to fill the kettle with water, set it to boil, steep the tea, and then slowly drink to avoid burning yourself. The calm is in the routine, in the patience of waiting.

     It’s so easy to turn an ordinary dinner into something special, to make a simple cup of coffee into something decadent.  Food is a necessity, but it should also be an indulgence. Savor it in every way you can, every chance you get.