Coaching Cooking

Winter invites feasting Photo by Mary MacIntyre

Go to www.youtube.com and look up Joy Harjo Reading in Berkely 1997.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-R3EBAtnug

Poetry and cooking? If you listen you will see a complete view of cooking.

I hope you watched these videos and see the weaving of culture, word, and yes food! You might even enjoy listening to her other videos. Now go back and make a list of all food related words in these videos.

Ok what are your words? What environment do you want to create with your cooking? “So brave you are crazy!” = by Joy Harjo. Take this to your ingredients. What gifts do you want to share or embed. These meals will be your family’s memories. These foods will nuture life and health. My first story when helping raise a friend’s children was: stop bossing them about. I let go and let them choose to eat. Miracles began, as they’d choose fruit when they were hungry. At supper they would try food and eat only what they needed. They began to enjoy their foods, especially when tomatoes fresh from our gardens could be eaten just like apples.

You may not be eating refired beans, or cooking frybread. “NO matter what we need to eat to live…it is here where children learn what it to be human…perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table…” by Joy Harjo….do watch this last video to its end to hear all that she said.

Food brings vitality to our lives and to our culture. I still remember watching a friend’s elderly aunt prepare potato pancakes. As she worked, she told stories of Poland, and food. All this a world beyond my living, I soaked it up as treasured jewels and special secrets.

My mother taught me how to bake oatmeal raisin cookies, my grandmother from NYC brought real cheescake, and my Dad’s Mom would bake me cherry pies for my birthdays. My sister became the pie master. These woman wove tapestries for all to eat. They never thought would cold scramble egg sandwiches for school lunches imapct my life? (Yes yeck still, I was granted asylum when I went to work selling hot lunch tickets: free school lunches!!!)

Tonight my ingredients were: 1 organic beet, 1 small zuchinni juiced. 1 apple quartered. Strangely, tonight this was filling. I usually eat much more, lunch was a large hearty bowl of homemade vegetable soup, half an avocado, nuts, some tangerine smoothie, and a small bowl of mung beans. Be bold and get ready to explore Bold American Ways for cooking. Namaste.

Also needed are your fav meat recipes.