Cooking with Intention

Cooking has always been enjoyable for me, a way to connect and share with others as well as a way to express my creative side. Over the years, my cooking has deepened; I've accessed and harnessed a greater knowing beyond what can be articulated or quantified. This isn't just an understanding of what-goes-with-what, of how much salt, acid, or fat, of knowing scents and ratios from experience; this is an ability to tap into something beyond myself. You can call it intuition, you can call it inspiration, you can even call it magical.

When my younger brother was born, my grandmother came to stay with us for over a year. She was devoted to us, offering constant affection, endless patience, and lovingly homecooked meals that she fed us from her fingertips. We were lucky enough to know what real food was, with whole, fresh ingredients. My mother, too, cooked traditionally; she made all my baby food from scratch. But once she had two school-aged kids exposed to American food, and a full-time job, the dinner plate changed.

With my grandmother a continent away and the cost of travel somewhat prohibitive, we saw my grandmother only a handful of times before she passed away. But the memory of her stays with me, and when she died (after a long, full life, surrounded by children, grand-children, and great-grand-children), something inside me emerged. I felt the need for greater integrity and greater kindness in my cooking. I developed a passionate love affair with vegetables, trying out the myriad of options available at the markets, getting to know them, and combining them in ways that were unfamiliar and surprising.

Grief left me with no appetite for meat. While loss is hard, I am grateful that mine brought about a shift - not only in my palate and my heart, but in my worldview. The plant kingdom has enormous diversity and despite what many people believe, eating whole foods is neither boring nor expensive. My relatives come from an agrarian background: vegetables are in my lineage and in cooking and eating this way, I feel connected, aligned, and alive. I carry my mother, and my mother's mother in my fingertips. It's powerful stuff. It's also healing.

While it might sound trite, the secret ingredient is indeed love. My cooking has come full circle, I have returned to the food of my family, which is also the food of my heart. I believe this food has the power to nourish us, body and soul.