#19 | Connor Sauer: Lessons in Food from the Grandmothers + Kitchen Improv
In this week’s episode, I talk with women’s empowerment pioneer, foodie, wise woman and passionate lover of the natural world, Connor Sauer. Connor shares a bit about her childhood growing up eating close to the land right at a time when convenience foods were also making their appearance as well as her travels around the world and life in the wilderness. Our conversation weaves its way through topics including the natural state of abundance, tending fire and hearth, the nature of the feminine, gardening by the moon cycles, and eating seasonally. Connor takes us on a journey with her stories of learning the Contract with Corn from the Hopi Grandmother, living in a tipi in Colorado, and understanding the power of the moon’s pull in the Mayan jungles. And, oh my gosh, we just LOVE to talk about food, gathering in community, our shared joys in the kitchen and her views on the role of the feminine in humanity’s continuing journey. Along the way, Connor shares her “un-recipe” which is truly a lesson on how to cultivate your own language of flavor through experimentation and creativity so that you can always feel empowered in your kitchen no matter what is on hand or in season. This was SUCH a rich conversation!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
My Favorite Cookbooks List on Bookshop.org (including the Moosewood Cookbook, The Joy of Cooking & Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom mentioned in this episode)
Two Gifts from Connor: (with PDF downloads)
“Compact with Corn” writing about the corn wisdom from Hopi Grandmother
“Walking With Medicine” writing about living in devotion to your unique expression
Get Business Coaching from Missy at: WomenInFood.net/workwithmissy
Become a member of the Women In Food Community at: WomenInFood.Net/Community
Missy’s Farm Website: CrownHillFarm.com
Missy’s Business Coaching Website: SpiritBizPeople.com
In our commitment accessibility, we’d love to offer polished show notes to help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts. However, Women in Food is still a startup with limited resources. So we’re not there yet.
What we can offer are these very imperfect show notes via the Scribie service. The transcription is far from perfect. But hopefully it’s close enough - even with the errors - to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to participate.
DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION or READ IT BELOW
0:00:04.2 S1: Welcome to another episode of women in food. I'm your hostess, Missy Singer Dumars. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things food, business, and the feminine. Each episode, I invite you to sit down with me in my interview guest as we dive into this intersection to spark your food curiosity, share a favorite recipe and give you some fun food explorations along the way. I am inspired by these women farmers, shaft bakers, cooks, writers and food makers who all bring their passion for beauty, nourishment, community, pleasure connection and deep care to others through food. These are women who advocate and take action towards increased food awareness for themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods. Before I introduce today's guest, I have one request, if you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're using to listen and give us a reading in review, it's a simple act. That helps us a ton. Thank you so much. So today, I'm really excited to introduce to you, Connor, are... I can tell you all the certifications and such that she has, but truly the summation of Connor's life experiences gives her a unique perspective as an early pioneer for women's impairment, she's traveled the world from solo tracks and Hamada, to guiding women on the River through the Grand Canyon, she spent five decades training with indigenous elders and mentors from a range of world wisdom traditions, and has committed her life not only to supporting women, but also to protecting the natural world as a part of the National Park Service family, including raising her son in that environment, I've known Connor for a number of years now, and I am utterly blessed to receive mentorship, guidance and friendship from her, besides all of this, Connor and I could talk for days and days and days about all things food, the living world, and the influence of natural cycles through all of life.
0:01:54.6 S1: She's certified in permaculture is an avid food I cook and stewardess of gardens, and I knew at some point I had to have Connor as a guest on women in food, and I'm so glad this time is now. So Connor, welcome to women in food. I'm honored. Overjoyed and excited to have you join us today. Thank you, Missy.
0:02:13.4 S2: I am so honored and pleased. And Alito be here and explore food and nature and the natural world and seasons, and chafing and all things delicious.
0:02:29.9 S1: The wiseau full things. Delicious and beautiful. That is a good summary of most of what we talk about, and indeed... So Connor, I wanna start, you've shared with me some stories of growing up around food and canning and different experiences that were the beginnings of informing this whole journey and path for you. Tell us a little bit about some of those moments.
0:02:58.0 S2: Oh, that's a wonderful question. And inquiry, I will say that fundamentally, my relationship with food, I owe to my parents, my mother was devoted to nutrition and balanced eating, and both of my parents were... I guess I'd say food is actually my dad more than my mom... My dad grew up with parents, he grew up in Vermont and his mother would can on a wood stove, if you can imagine that, his grandfather grew food up into his 90s, he grew potatoes and grew them to share with people who needed potatoes and food. Till he was 96. So food has been, I would say, pretty predominant in my family for a long time, and when I was only a middle school, going into early high school, my parents had a group of three other couples and they were exploring World Food. So four times a year, they each would host a dinner and they would research the food and the wines and everything about that culture, and then hosted dinner, and I learned to eat with chopsticks from my parents 'cause they did a dinner in Asian food. So my relationship with food goes way back, and when I was in my late teens, early 20s in particular, I lived in Vermont for quite a few years, I was renting a farm house on a 1000-acre dairy farm, and that's when I first started gardening for myself growing food and cooking from the garden, harvesting it.
0:05:09.1 S2: And cooking it myself. So throughout my times in different chapters of my life, you know, I garden in Vermont and then I Garand when I was living in a remote area in the middle of the North Cascades as part of the Park Service family and Stein, and had some amazing gardens there and then my big gardens where I grew not only vegetables, but had a small orchard, and then I had a huge herb garden where I also was growing herbs and plants, 'cause I was doing a lot of work in aromatherapy, and I wanted to explore what the signature of that plant was from my own experiences, I had just humongous Gardens, and I would say that's really where I dove into the use of herbs and experimenting with different... I guess your term with your work would be farm to table and where I experimented with some of the things I used in practical application from some of the indigenous antis grandmothers that I learned from grandmother Carolyn and hope when I was living on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, she taught me how to sing to the plants, how to call them forth, how to nourish them like children, my time with the antis and believe they taught me how to really harvest and work according in accordance to the moon cycles.
0:06:59.4 S2: And why you would harvest certain plants in the new manto, the full moon, and other plants... From the full moon to the new moon. I could go on, I just...
0:07:13.6 S1: I can go on with you, I have a list of 30 things.
0:07:20.3 S2: So that's just a taste. I've had phenomenal influencers in my life and have just received gifts of wisdom and experience from just an array of people and who taught me the love of good food, quality food, and I've remained true to that.
0:07:45.5 S1: Well, it was funny when you first said your relationship from food goes all the way the beginning, I guess it does for all of those, 'cause we all need to eat is thinking at... I was thinking that Ferrell, we all have a very long relationship with food, but different kinds of relationships, and it's interesting to me about growing up connected to the land and food, 'cause I believe that was kind of a time period where more, I guess, convenience style food and canned and packaged things were becoming more available, I guess, or more the culture and fat in the United States, and I feel like this... I was listening to you and thinking about reading the autobiography of also potters and talking about having grown up in with those foods being considered the privilege and cool food and then re-discovering real fresh from the land food. So it was interesting how you... Your family stayed connected to real food, which obviously influenced everything else going forward for you...
0:08:57.9 S2: Well, they did, and they were... I would say I experienced the juxtaposition of both, I had summers where I would be with my brother and I would be with our mom after having a day outside and we would be driving home and we would stop by farmers fields, happened to love corn on the cob, and in those days, farmers would have a stand and they'd have their produce on a bucket for money, and it was just the honor system, and so we could go by and by fresh corn on the cob that had been harvested not long before that and go home and cook that, and the availability of food was different then, and he was my generation really, that had the advent of TV dinners, the corporations developing processed foods, just the whole movement into the technology, crafting a technology of life. I still remember the first TVs, what I'm saying. So in that time, there was this juxtaposition of real food and artificial food, and my dad actually was a young executive with Procter and Gamble, and he created... He set up all the test kitchens for Duncan Hines. So on the one hand, I was eating all these fresh food and my parents were exploring World Food Hasan, I had that, and at the same time, I had the experience of having cakes come home from The Test Kitchen divided in half and what that food was...
0:10:56.6 S2: It was, I think back now is kind of a bizarre juxtaposition, but my parents discovered my love of food or experimentation early on, and when I was 10, my mother would set out all these things on the counter so after school I could go home and create these concoction of food out and then write little recipes. I still have them.
0:11:25.4 S1: Oh my gosh, that's so amazing.
0:11:27.5 S2: Yeah, they were pretty odd things, and my parents were very supportive of testing and eating concoction, I realized that I had the unusual experience of both worlds, and TV dinners were not something we ate regularly, and they were part and parcel of that culture coming in, so that generation, my generation was kind of bizarre. Pivotal generation in those times.
0:12:01.4 S1: It's interesting, 'cause I feel like we're in, at least in the food world, we're in a bizarre pivotal moment now with technology and food... Yes, in this kind of in an interesting way where technology is trying to solve all these food problems, but I feel like a lot of the food problems were created by technology... Food in the first place. Yes, and it's like fixing a problem that was created by trying to solve a problem in the first place, and maybe we need to go back to the beginning, but it's interesting to me to see such a ride in food tech companies here in Buffalo, we just had... The start-up, the annual startup competition, and there were more than one food tech business that were in the finalists, and I'm kinda like, let's go back to the year. Let's go back to soil. And where food actually comes from. As opposed to me, and there's so much like lab made me, some lab made milks that technology is creating on, it's like another round of that kind of... Revolution. Evolution. Yeah.
0:13:15.5 S2: When I look at all of this through the lens of my experience growing up in the generation I have and am part of, and the advent of certain things, the advent of technology, what is true for me is that the artificial making is really more about profit hearing than it is. Proper abundance. And what I say in a lot of my work is that nature doesn't produce profit, it prefers abundance, and we've taken the abundance that nature produces it, you plant a seed and then you have all these fruits of it, whatever it is, and contained in that is the potential for 10 to rights. The difference between the natural world in the digital world, so the natural world unfolds from within, so the world you and I love, and people who love the earth and gardening and farmers who do the work of that, we love the life that is given from within, so nature unfolds from within itself, and the digital world is a built world, it's an artificial world that's constructed and built, it cannot unfold from within itself. Does that make sense? Absolutely, yeah. And so that's the world that we are being moved in to, and as best I can see, and based on my growing up years, it's a creation that's built around profit rather than abundance.
0:15:08.8 S2: Yeah, the motivation is different.
0:15:12.4 S1: Yeah, and it seems to be... Nature is naturally sustainable, whereas you see these digital things that are built to create sustainability, but when it's built from without, it's not... Self-sustainability is sustaining. I'm using that word in a weird way, but it's like you said, from within a sustainable farm or a sustainable garden produces all the inputs it needs for itself, that's true sustainability as opposed to a buzz word that's stuck on a label, kind of the different... You're talking about...
0:15:49.6 S2: Well, you sustain is a curious word for me, sustain to me, connotes and undo stress to maintain something, whereas nature, when it's allowed to what I call live as itself, it's a durability of expression, so it's not about sustaining anything because the natural world that's like saying... There's eternal form away, so the trees grow leaves and they're just always producing leaves. They're sustaining that life. But the leaves fall in the fall. So it's not a constant sustaining of growth, it's a durability of life expression, so there's cycles of growth and diminish ENT, and that's part and parcel of what's being removed and being created or officially, so it's just their official versus natural.
0:17:00.1 S1: Right. Well, our listeners are gonna learn that you and I also like to be intentional in our use of words, I wrote something recently on my farm website and to my email folks about preserving such as canning, like you were talking about earlier. And yes, I was thinking about it in terms of savoring as opposed to preserving similar energy to what you're talking about with sustainability, like something about preserving... It feels like it's clinging and holding on and trying to hold something in a place where canning and things like that, you're holding... I guess you are holding it in a place to a degree, but to me it's about so I can continue to save or something, as opposed to... Hold it, stuck somewhere. Yeah, similar thought to what you're talking about, I wanna go to corn, we go to corn. Absolutely, we do.
0:17:55.9 S2: Or
0:17:56.0 S1: Whatever you'd like to go to fun. Careful with that. Careful with that offer. Court, it was fun hearing you talking about picking out corn, I live well in eat in here, we have the corn festival every summer. It's a big community agriculture and Corning Community, and my neighbor across the street will not eat corn and that's older than 14 minutes picked.
0:18:19.9 S2: Oh, I love it.
0:18:21.0 S1: And so he's like a total corns now, but I know you've shared with me some writing and you alluded to a little bit, I'd love for you to share more with our listeners about corn and some of the corn teaching that was passed to you, or you would do so.
0:18:38.0 S2: Yeah, well, I was privileged in my late 20s and early 30s to be living on the south room of the Grand Canyon, which put me in proximity to the Hopi people, and for me to spend time with one of the old ways, grandmother, Carolyn, Temagami and Carolyn had huge fields of the blue corn, which was the corn of her people, and because they were in the desert and received little rain, they had to enter into a consciousness, a relationship with corn. It was very subsistence by most measures, but had created a durability and a way of relationship that allowed them to call forth life-giving corn in the middle of the desert, and I wrote a piece is called compact with corn. And basically, what I learned from Carolyn was that she would go out in the morning and when she planted corn, of course, she would plant with a prayer that it would grow up in mature and bring abundance, and that she would do everything in her power to assist in reaching its full expression of life and fruiting and beauty and sustenance, right. And that at the moment of its Bounty, she would harvest it, then in return, this exchange that would then nourish her family, herself and her family reaching their full expression of beauty and sustenance, and so there was this exchange that I will water and weed and send you alive, and when you reach your full bounty, then you will basically water and seeing my life alive by giving of yourself and because of where they live, they would harvest and dry corn, because they would have to make it through a season as a main food source and then that became a basis of their spiritual practice and...
0:21:18.9 S2: Yeah, so when I would go visit her, she would give me with ears of corn that she had grown and harvested and dried, and then she ground her horn on very ancient mutate, and I will tell you that the corn mail she gifted me, which I actually was used for ceremonies, like weddings and whatever, she would... She would grind it, it was almost as finest Talon powder, it was the most amazing corn meal, and she would hand grand it on her mutated, then they would make it for their celebrations, like a... Like a wedding, she would mix it with a water and make it in a very fine, thin gruel, and then she would spread it with her fingers on a thin manner, on a heated stone, and then when it reached a certain consistency, would roll it up and make these rounds of what's called PIKE grad, so I just learned how to have a... Which for me became a very spiritual relationship with plants, where the gratitude of being invested in their well-being and how gratitude that their life gave me life, how to treat it as something worthy of my attention, and by virtue of me being personally involved in its growing it's harvesting and then how I cooked with it, or what I used it for, it's really how I expressed my love for life and food, and how I gifted people around me with that.
0:23:21.3 S1: Can you describe for our listeners what meat is so they can picture it in... Are listening and might not have heard that word.
0:23:29.0 S2: A... Well, it's a grinding stone with a rock or a stone, that's that, so you put the corn kernels, the dry core kernels on the stone, and then you take the stone in your hand and you begin to grind back and forth the dried corn kernel, so it's hard work, yeah, yeah.
0:23:58.2 S1: That's... Before, there were things like stone mills that...
0:24:03.1 S2: But even a well, it's the precursor of a stone mill... Absolutely, it was done by hand. And the Hopi elders that live the old ways, they continued to live without all the amenities and do things by hand. Yeah.
0:24:24.3 S1: And I imagine the taste of anything made with that Cornish... Unbelievable, unbelievable. Thinking that was the word, I couldn't find the word as like something indescribable and blue.
0:24:35.6 S2: Yeah, yeah, and I think that's also part of the conversation of mature food and lab food.
0:24:43.6 S1: Yeah, I've been told that my eggs taste... They don't know what's different, but my eggs taste amazing like no other eggs people have tasted, or sometimes the same with vegetables, I kind of sometimes feel like that myself, but since I live with it every day, I don't always notice it as much, and I always use the moniker or the phrase mindfully grown, because it is that what you described, that mindfulness... To me, I do my best to... We plan things in the ground, and then I lay my hands on the soil and wish for my blessings and prayers and gratitude, and I talk to the plants and Oh my gosh, when I have to send something like carrots, I apologize. Every single one I pull out 'cause I feel so bad when I'm choosing seeds to sell, it's like which one of you is gonna live and who's gonna look like what... Like you said, their children, and that feeling, and I think that does add to not just the flavor, the goodness of the food, but also that that genuine, actual nourishment from the... Absolutely, absolutely.
0:25:52.6 S2: For me, it's not even mindfully grown, it's grown with love and presence, and
0:26:02.7 S1: I... I just sent my neighbor a picture of this falls carrots, I'll send it to you or just... They're starting. And she wrote back, so, wow, those are beautiful. And I said, I was just realizing as I'm looking at the pictures and looking at the care, how it amazes me every single time I... Six seasons in, and it's still a miracle and such beauty and incredible ness every single time, and like you were talking about before, the abundance, it seems like, Well, it's just one little road car, it... But there are so many carrots and they keep coming out of the ground and I can wait... I got... Everyone was committed to feed, and there's more wait, there's more... IT kind of amazes me. It does not kind of... It doesn't ease me every... Every day here on the farm, it's really... And I think that's the relationship you're talking about that on wonder and understanding of that cycle.
0:27:00.9 S2: Well, it is, and tying it in with the theme of your podcast is also the understanding that the feminine is the world of form, and form in the biological world is what we're talking about, and that's... Part of what's disappearing is an understanding that the natural world, the natural cycles, the natural life, which to me, I just marvel that life exists at all, that's why marbling at a sunset or marbling at a baby, anything, a raccoon or a bird, or the human baby or a little sprouts coming up is just such a miracle, it all starts in the darkness, it all starts in a mysterious, dark wound place, and that's the treasure world, it's life unfolding from within itself, and what is that within itself? Well, in the earth fear, it's the feminine expression of life in for that's been my devotion to the what's now popularly called the feminine, and it's quintessentially the world of... For
0:28:35.8 S1: The world of form. Yeah, so I've talked about the feminine and food a number of times, and in relation to that, we've also talked about the feminine role in the horse, which is related to food. And my listeners know I mentioned heart and heart craft many times in these interviews. Because to me, that is a core piece of the feminine role and heart being more than cooking a meal, but tending community and relationships, and all the related crafts of gathering around the heart and nourishment and norsemen, not just being a body, but of mind, spirit, heart. So I'm curious what you've shared with me a little bit, share with our listeners your perspective on the feminine and as tending.
0:29:42.5 S2: Well, I will say it's one of the more favored parts of my material life over the years and decades, raising a son, living in more community-minded, Bardeen Ironmen. When we lived in Orange, Los, when we had a small orchard and gardens that could have fed the whole city and my herb garden and also part of the National Park Service family, we hosted a lot of community events, and I will say I just loved tending my family HART, as well as holding the heart for community gatherings, and every fall this time we would have Sierras-ing day, we used to hand press and crank press.
0:30:46.0 S1: You have to one in my garage right now that are gonna be pressing this weekend...
0:30:50.2 S2: Yeah, and rather than a mechanized one, 'cause it was about the community experience, and so families would bring apples and pears and different kinds of apples, and I would have a big pot of stew or chili or whatever in corn brand and big salads and food to feed. Everyone in my kitchen, and it really was my turf, I didn't say that my family didn't come in or help, but I just loved it being sort of like my shop, right, where my tools were and all of that and cleaned. Dom, your domain
0:31:35.9 S1: In my family knows I kick them all out of the kitchen, Thanksgiving, they're all like, Can I help with this? Like, No, maybe in my Zen love boys face, my art, my joy in my meditation, it's all those things.
0:31:50.3 S2: Yeah, absolutely. And not everyone has designed that way... My brother is the same way. He loves cooking, huffing. He loves making things. We grew up doing that. So keeping heart to me, is about keeping the flame of heart-centered life, that people can come and gather around and be restored, to be regenerated, to be refilled, to be in life and to be deepened, and we would often have a fire in the backyard and people would sit around the fire and tell stories and share things, there were a lot of different aspects to that, and learning how to tend fire as part of the heart, and how to partake of the foods and the offerings of the life where we live on, living in Port Angeles, Washington in that time, we could still buy flash frozen off the boats to Cana and all these amazing plums and dry it, and it became like candy for all the kids that would come in and hang out after school in the winter. For me, just to provision quality, lovingly, grown, harvested cared for in whatever way it was, as you'd say, preserved or whether it was dried or canned or frozen, whatever the way we harvested and set aside for the winter months was such a pleasure and it became a gathering place, people will always go to where they are welcome out of heart on even a modern apartment city party, everyone's in the kitchen.
0:34:11.9 S2: It doesn't matter how I see living room or dining room, Vitter one is handing around the kitchen with a comparable or something in their hand, talking, sharing, it's such...
0:34:23.1 S1: What thoughts do you have about... I don't know, it's such a natural... It seems like a natural, really deep, old human tendency or draw... I'm not sure what the right word is. To gather around the fire. Gather around the kitchen. Gather on the heart. Do you have any thoughts about that as a... I don't know what to say as... It seems to go all the way back to the beginning of humans and or even other animal beings to be drawn that way.
0:34:54.2 S2: Well, it is, especially for humanoid, so to speak. My sense is it initially had to do with survival, and I will say I had a two-year experience in the Pools of Colorado back in the 70s, where I lived in a 14-foot tape, and I can tell you going home there in the middle of the winter, when there was no fire on whatever, the emergence of relaxation and just a deep feeling of home place when the fire was lit and starting to warm that space, there was a connection with antiquity it, knowing that people had done that long before me, and what it took to maintain a half and then thinking about a time when that was a prevalence of life in different parts of this country, that to have someone who was tending the hearth it... When other people would be out doing other things and to know they had a warm place to go, to get out of the elements where there was food and sustenance and shelter and all of that, it's just an aspect of heart and survival. And if we think about anse antis, if we think about squirrels and nuts and trees, we think about different life forms, that there is a natural inclination to live in the seasonal cycles and to provision for leaner times, etcetera.
0:36:47.5 S2: So for me, human beings and fire and warmth and light is ancient.
0:36:57.9 S1: Yeah, I got a sense of that when I lived in this sort of cavity house in the mountains in Santa Cruz, California, which isn't certainly not as cold as Colorado or even where I live now, but would still get cold in the winter, and we were heated by wood stove, and I had a cushy chair, and I would sleep in the chair all night in front of the wood stove and a bank members and then to ten them back up again in the morning and just like I could sit in that chair for days, I just meet and the cats in the chair right in front of the stove and just tending the fire, keep feeding it and making sure it keeps going And what starts to feel cold week up, open one. I get it going again. Fall back asleep for a few more hours, there is definitely something that fed on a deep level by doing that...
0:37:51.9 S2: Well, it was also... If we sort of deepen with what you just shared is also understanding that there was an art to it, the banking of embers, and there was a knowledge of the size to keep and not to build too big and to not let it get too low. There was an involvement of you being involved in the time it took for the sustenance of that fire to be kept alive. So here's a really interesting concept to think, there's the natural world is... When we think of the natural world, it says Though everything created in the natural world is a contribution towards the creation of beauty on some level, whether it's sunsets or food or whatever, that's not to say there isn't destruction that takes place. It's just like the cracking open up a seed involves the destruction of that shell for the design to emerge... Right, I'm not eating a naive picture, I'm just talking about the... So it's kind of like time to unfold to maturation, whatever that seed or life is... Time is art, time is the creation of something that comes from within itself, whereas in the digital world, if we think about it, everyone considers time as money, and so that it's not a condemnation of where we are, it's an observation that we're at this threshold of how we view time, the dimension of time that we wanna live in and the value of that, so when you talk about what's involved in keeping a fire alive for the warmth or me and the TP, or going back and centrally, whether it's survival...
0:40:09.6 S2: What we're talking about is a way of life where we have to be involved in the maintenance of that life, and what's being talked about now is an automation of maintenance of life to be artificially created so that, I don't know, we can drag our bodies around is irrelevant to what our minds create, it's a curious consideration.
0:40:38.9 S1: Indeed indeed, and that's where you're talking about slow food, or with my sheep, we're talking about slow fashion, I mean, takes a year and a half before I get a scan of yard on the sheep. I share them. Well, they're born and then a year later they get shorn and then it takes me a number of months to skirt it, then it goes out and then it's eight or nine months while it's fun and washed and everything, and then it comes back to me and then every single color I might make it naturally is three to five days for a call, you're talking about almost two years from when sheep is born to its first colored R, and then someone has to knit or crush into an article of clothing. It's certainly slow and... No complaint about that. And it's always interesting, one of the things I think I talk to my customers and I write about sometimes is how for a lot of people, food is something to get, a meal is something to get over with and move on, right. And just like, Let's get through it as quickly as possible, so we can go on with everything else, and I'm like, without food, you don't exist really seems like a core thing to me that I'd wanna spend some time and attention on A...
0:42:03.8 S1: And E-food that actually keeps me going, I was like, sure, there's convenient food, but it actually is not even in service to the thing you wanna do instead of cooking food in the first place, it... In a certain way. And that's one of the reasons why I love the slow food, and this gets us into a conversation about seasonality and living within seasons, I know, I forget where I read it or saw it, but it was this discussion of all of our nutrients and everything, we can get everything we need, nutritional from food, even eating sea only, but the cycle is over the course of the year, so in the spring, all you eat as a spare guest, maybe when you get all the nutrition of asparagus and maybe not much nutrition from a lot of other things, but then in the fall you're eating all the apples or in the winter you're eating the clashes, and over the course of the year, we get all the vitamins and minerals, but it's a longer cycle, and I know for me, being on the farm that's been... A huge important awareness is the slow down of my cycles annual, which means I think further out our modern society, and I float around in a lot of tech world where...
0:43:23.0 S1: A cycle is a couple of weeks or a month or two at the most. And my business cycle is a year, year and a half, we plant a garlic this week on the waning moon, and I wanna go back to talking about things that you learned about harvesting and working with the moon cycles and food, but we plan to garlic this week, that we won't eat from until June for the scapes and July, August for the actual garlic. And when I ordered that car, I ordered it when I was harvesting this years, this July, so I order or save the seed for next year, a year in advance, and it's just a whole different way of life, and I start to notice how the farm and the natural world informs the rest of my life... Business cycles and things like that, and how I think about them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, can we talk about food in the moon cycles, 'cause I didn't forget you mentioned that, and I've been thinking about that a lot lately, and I don't think a lot of my listeners know that there's practices around planting and gardening with the phases of moon a...
0:44:40.1 S2: Well, a simple way to think about it. I learned from the Mayan anti when I was in the jungles of Belize, the Naropa Rosario I went to study with. And the Mayan grandmothers, the example that she gave, which was meaningful for me, she was talking about mahogany wood and she said, Do you know... Have you ever experienced being around mahogany furniture like Antiques, where it might be a couple hundred years old and it's just really solid and intact and looks... Due to fall, I said yes. And have you ever been around my Hogg furniture that might be 50 years old, but it's starting to disintegrate, and I said, Yes, I know both. And she said, Well, you can tell mahogany trees that have been harvest properly, they would be harvested on the full known... Why would that be? Because all of the resin and all the fluids in the tree would be pulled up into the tree, right on the full moon, and all the natural bug resistance and the natural preservation substances and chemicals would be up in the tree, and the trees that were harvested closer to the new moon, it would all be down in the room, so you wouldn't have that substance up in the tree.
0:46:25.7 S2: So the application of that in the conversation we were talking about when we were walking around harvesting different plants and things in the jungles, she basically said, When you wanna harvest the leaves and the stems and the fruits of a plant, the closer you do it around the full moon, the more the chemicals and the benefit that naturally in the plant will be there if you want to eat the optimum in the roots, harvest it closer to the new moon or at least in the waning cycle, because that's when everything is dropping down into the roots, and
0:47:18.5 S1: It's the same for planting as well. Yeah, absolutely. She always plant the garlic, you play all the roots in the waning moon, so... Yeah, 'cause they wanna send roots down first, we need roots down, but especially bulbs and roots and things that grow under the style and things that are above the soil, you plant in the lacing moon, so they push... Reach out.
0:47:45.7 S2: Yeah, and of course, if it's the root, you don't wanna planning on a new moon even though, because then you're... Then is moving up. So within the waning moon cycle, so you might take from the full moon the days after that, because everything is now going toward the roots, that might be the time that you would plan, and of course, it depends on what plan and what you're wanting to harvest and what you're growing... This is all part of the learning and the understanding. But basically, that's sort of the premise or the principle of that, that I learned there.
0:48:28.4 S1: Indeed, although sometimes I have to admit when I'm trying to follow that and crop rotation and just a timing, timing or scheduling of what time I have, it gets a little like, Oh, what do I do? I tried the garlic. For sure, garlic and shallots. We just finished planting yesterday, today is the new moon. We squeezed it in the waning very... By the skin of our teeth, because they say.
0:48:55.8 S2: I measure to say Missy, when I had my huge gardens in the Northwest, and I was making a lot of... Sabi had my massage practice, so I was an aroma therapy, working with essential oils, I was making a lot of... Well, all the products I was working with, my special affinity then was with the country plant, and I had one plant in particular that I cultivated a relationship with over time, and I would track it and I would harvest only on the or the full known. And what I harvested in the spring, in the early time, the quality that I would have in the effusion I did from it would be very different than mid-summer, and from mid-summer on, I basically no longer harvested for medicinal purposes, it was more from the spring early shoots around the salic or mid-summer in the full moon of August, so it's just tracking things over time and knowing your land and knowing where you are...
0:50:23.7 S1: Indeed, indeed, I give up grown carrots in the spring because I just found out they're so crisp and so sweet, so delicious, and winter because they're gathering all those sugars to have energy for the cold, and that's when they're really delicious and sweet and... Every year for a few years, I kept trying to grow spring care, it's also, I'm like, You know, these taste like crap, I'm not into it, it just kinda do carries in the fall, so I just harvested the first car it now, and they're amazing and they're juicy and delicious, and yeah, it's interesting you're saying about the plant in the different time of year, the ranchers and dairy farmers I know, often I've seen pictures where they show butter from different parts of the season, and it's really different, the quality of the milk is really different, depending on what the cow is eating and really the growth of the grass in that time of the year... Yes, and the color will change from yellow to more creamy and I'll more orange depending... Even my chicken eggs, the color, the yolks changed through the season, and this time of year, they're still eating, they're just finished eating a lot of extra tomatoes that we have, so their yolks very red orange from all the tomatoes.
0:51:44.5 S1: But that's the season that to me to are rotting on the vine and finishing, and they get lots of them.
0:51:50.8 S2: They have to... I have to interject and tell you this, I am watching the chickens come to my garden, which is quite a ways from their coop, they're out wandering around, this is the first time they've ever come to my garden
0:52:08.7 S1: That I watch out. Nothing safe anymore in your...
0:52:12.5 S2: Well, it's just... The herbs... Things are too high for them, and I have a little enclosed garden, it's just... They've never come to my end, it's just so curious, and we're talking about all this, and I was watching a parade of chickens and I went, This is really interesting, we're talking about all this, and here they are. So it really fun. Mine know certain things. They know when we're in our South gardens, which is where I have our little cocktail to means, and I had two or three varieties, it didn't grow too well, they got very Packard right away and then split really easily, so we'd pick them off and toss some of the chickens, and so they got to know
0:52:56.5 S1: If we're walking towards that garden, they better follow 'cause there's a lot of good stuff come... Yeah, I like, I know when I was in the sky in their world, I imagine it's raining. To me, those... 'cause we just roam over the trellis, I'll over the fence to... This was like to me, that was falling on what's a inherit one on the head and we apologize and stuff like that. So in a moment, I wanna dive more into seasonal cooking and some of your philosophy around cooking and food, but before we do that, I wanna take a quick break and share a bit more about how women and food is supported. Yeah, as you know, I care a lot about food and land, and this includes the success of food and land-based businesses, I believe that sustainability goes beyond the land to how we grow ourselves and our business at the same time. I've noticed that many folks in the food and land space have fantastic concepts, strong passion and deep care, but still struggle to market and run their business in ways that can make the impact the vision, while also providing for themselves at the same time.
0:53:55.3 S1: I always say that most farmers I know are great farmers, but dread or avoid the sales and marketing part, I'm the other way around, farming is my learning curve, but I know and love business really well, besides hosting this podcast and running my farm... I'm a business coach, having coached hundreds of entrepreneurs from across the world in a range of industries to mindfully grow their business. So if you're listening to this podcast as a food or land-based entrepreneur who's looking to what the next phase of growth for your business is, this kind of coaching could be for you, if you'd like support from me in this way, go to my website, I have a 90-minute session. The website is Women in food dot network with Missy, and I'll put the link in the show notes as well. I want every listener to thrive and particularly land in food businesses to thrive, because honestly, I believe your business success is our future. Once again, the link is Women in Food Network with Missy. Our local yell Buffalo has also been a wonderful supporter of women and food programming almost since the beginning. Video Series in 2020.
0:55:01.5 S1: Did you know that you can search specifically for women-owned businesses on Yelp, Support your local women-owned businesses by visiting them and then writing a Yelp review, download the Yelp app now and use the filter for women owned business. So Connor, we were talking about slow cooking and cooking food, and I want to have this realization recently, I wrote a little bit about it, that there's certain... Like the fancy meals, the more complex meals or me... Whatever word you wanna use. I love cooking, but it's actually the act of making them or figuring it out that I enjoy, but when it comes to eating, I love to eat a simple meal, like a protein and a bunch of veggies simply cooked with not all kinds of crazy preparation, so I'm curious, is there a favorite thing you love to make and a favorite thing you love to eat, are they... If they're even different or maybe they're the same...
0:55:58.9 S2: Well, it's seasonal. For me, I live a lot on salads and fresh foods, a lot of raw foods in the summer, and in the winter, I live a lot on soups. Yeah, that's OI.
0:56:19.6 S1: Just with... I worked for a physician who was also Aravind, there's an area of Vita, which is ancient. For our listeners, ancient Indian Medical Practice, healing, health wellness practice, there's what they call the does or your body type and eating for that, but there's also eating seasonally, which is exactly what you described of warming internally in the winters when it's called out and cooling internally with raw foods and salads and things in the summer when it's hot out, so there's that kind of seasonal as well as what food products are in season, different kinds of seasonal eating.
0:57:02.3 S2: Yeah, so for me, in the summer salads and what vegetables are available, that doesn't mean I don't do us Terry 'cause I love onions, etcetera, but what I do with those foods is different, so for example, I have a lot of spicy mustard and some kale and regular growing in my garden now, moving, and that's just a really pungent... I did it some initially for micro-greens garnish-ing on some salads when they were coming in, and now I'm moving more to the warmer 'cause it's been cooling off here, and so I might use those as a garnish row, but I'm also dehydration. A lot of things. So I use them in soups in the winter, that kind of a thing. Right now, for example, squash is coming in, so I have been making care better, not soup, I'm about to cook a spaghetti squash tonight, and I can use that in... So I can also use that. Well, there's just so many different ways to utilize that once it's cook, so... I will say that when I had the gardens in Port Angeles and I was harvesting and I had huge herb beds and all of that, that's when I began to mess around with using herbs to flavour food, to try different things, and also seasonally.
0:59:02.1 S2: What was there, what was able to be harvested and that would determine what I ate, and probably the hardest part for people is to eat what's available seasonally, because it means that your fair is a lot more simple, and we've grown accustomed to ordering out tie or Mexican or whatever, the culture, food. And not pay attention to what the local markets... What food is actually there on the land where we live, and can we live more simply... What I came to know them and have continued to know is one, if I can eat more locally-based, I'm eating the food that attuned me to the land where I live, and it also, depending on how it's grown, most markets are oriented more to organically, whether they're certified or not, just from a natural process using compost and all that means that the nutrients are more dense, and when we're eating close to the source, we need far less food, and I have come to understand by just living in an artificially created paradigm of food in which we're in, right? Go to the store and buy whatever you want from wherever in the world, that often times it's not nutrient-dense, so we end up eating a lot more and trying a lot more variety to try and satisfy our body's needs and desires for satisfaction.
1:01:12.6 S2: So when I lived in New Mexico, before I moved here to North Carolina, I had a lot more beans and we had phenomenal Farmer's Market in Santa Fe, and I was able to continue eating seasonally as well as locally, and I will say I sprouted a lot more beans and even before cooking, for example, because that was available there, and part of the indigenous culture in that area and what the farmers grow, so going to the local markets too, you're also just on the business mind part of Miss... Absolutely.
1:01:57.9 S1: You're supporting local economy. Your dollar goes further. There's a lot of statistics and studies about buying fruit of the grocery store and only if you sense stay in your economy or even make it to the farmer at all where... Yes, and the farmers all the way in another country, and the rest of the money is going to a corporation that may not even be in the state where you bought the groceries, whereas when you buy directly from the farmer. Like I know, I go to all my local... My local tractor repair guy and my local times businesses, I buy from the local markets and other local farmers, so the money stays within the muni, which actually on a business level, in my mind, is a form of resilience as we look towards wherever the heck... Our culture and world might go... Yes. And so eating locally, not only good for planet and good for yourself, and nutritionally resilient and supporting resilient plants, but it's also economically resilient and business-wise... Resilient as well.
1:03:05.9 S2: Yeah. And that it's also an increasing awareness that we're starting to cook and provision and provide and keep Earth relative to what's at hand, and it's understanding that all the recipes we may follow, it means that somebody messed around in their kitchen and arrived on a recipe that someone really loved and they wanted to repeat it, that's not to say I don't have cookbooks, and I grew up in If kanyon, where Museo cookbooks and Museo restaurant originated, and I had all the original ones, the side passed on to my son and daughter-in-law and had some favorite recipes there, and it's not to say I don't reference recipes anymore, but for the most part, I don't, and it's not because I don't think other recipes are worthy, I've just really arrived at a place where I like simple, clean source food, and it means that my preparation is more simple, and I rely more on herbs and spices to create the variety tour or to enhance the nutrition. And it's relative to what I have on hand.
1:04:31.8 S1: Do you have a favorite ironic base base? My listeners, I think I've mentioned before that I have a freeze dryer, so I've been freezing my herbs, which is amazing. I mean, I have personally freeze-dried and I just recently wanted to switch, I had a plastic messenger cap on the free had partly, and I wanted that particular cap for a drinking vessel, and so I switched it around and my drink taste had smelled partly just from the cap, because the flavor and sound was so strong, I've been really... I've been having a lot of fun, and actually this goes back to the fire to at all into relays fire-tending conversation, I've been having a lot of fun smoking my pep reapers, they'll scale not smoking and then... Well, maybe there will be some in the mail to you smoking, and then drawing and then grinding, and it's quite a process to grow it and do all that stuff, but the smoking back to the fire tending, I think... Well, I am a Leo, so I do love fire in general, but the tending of that would stop really taught me the beginning of it, and then I love to use a wood or trickle grill, not a gas era, and I use wood charcoal in the grill and actually, one winter, my oven broke right before Christmas, and I promised my friend who was visiting that I would make cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning, and so I actually figured out how to tend the fire and manage the airways and everything to use the wood grill as an oven, and that got me on the path to smoking things and all the different ways you can manage fire and smoke to preserve food, so definitely, I would say paprika is my current current favorite, which has a good use from the Museo cookbook of that Musharraf mushroom soup is one of the best...
1:06:33.6 S1: Yavapai will send you patrician, then you can make the moose it. Not sure there go. Yeah, totally, and I have so many different... There's one batch that dried in the oven too long, so that's like my dark rose, almost like co, and then I have a lighter roast, and then some of it I didn't... I only dried and I didn't smoke, so it's fun to smell the different kinds and taste different varieties of Paprika, which would be one of my favorites, although my go-to was always... Personally, for sure. I love personally, and so many people, so many other cooks like, Oh, partially dried personally has no flavor, I'm like, You haven't had a real dry personally... Right. Packages dried parsley, which... Yes, has new flavor.
1:07:21.8 S2: Right, right. Well, that's the difference in quality versus quantity, and from the older times, the pre-modern times when things were made to last a really long time, and then with the advent of what's called built-in obsolescence, we're in a culture now that fosters... Throw away, in other words, it's quantity versus quality. So we might have 5000 things in our closet rather than 10 things that are really well-made and last a long time, 'cause people get bored and want new and improved all the time, and that's part of a lifestyle switch, and that's part of what's disappearing in the natural world and in the handmade world, handmade connotes, people glowing to popsicle sticks together and putting... You know what I'm saying? It's like just little crafty things, but being in possession of or having access to food that's grown with love, having access to tools that were made well, having access to clothes that were well made in my... Actually last 20 years or that kind of a thing, is a whole different experience of life expression, and most people recognize quality when they see it, and they recognize quality when they taste it.
1:09:23.8 S1: It's interesting too, there was just an article... I forget where I saw it. There was just an art. So last weekend was the New York will and fiber festival, ran back, which is like the big wool and fiber fair.
1:09:39.6 S2: Yeah, and out of it.
1:09:41.9 S1: I hope to go... Maybe next year, I almost went this year, but I had another trip plan I had to go on instead, and there was an article afterwards talking about how all these young people are getting into knitting and it's a cool thing, and it's like... And then there was all these other people like, Oh, it's not a new thing. It's around a long time. And going to the festival for 15 years, and I was the young person 15 years ago, and I'm still going. And I noticed that there's teachers out there in the food world that are teaching canning or teaching these things like it's the newest hottest HIPS thing, or through the pandemic Salado was all of a sudden this is the newest coating... It's like, No. That's been around for millennia. You have probably been living longer than humans and all these things, and it's always interesting to me to see how old things are new things or touted as new things, and it's like, No, we're actually returning to some wisdom that's important to reconnect to... An important to acknowledge that it's wisdom that's been around and in the same way, I just got a fund...
1:10:52.6 S1: This is totally a tangent, I just got a fund cook book, one of my favorite social media accounts follow and I'll... I'll put a link in the show notes is the Postgres, and it's a super fun YouTube channel, and the woman whose name is escaping me the second is she travels all over mostly Italy, but all over that region, going to these grandmas and learning the old past, away is postmistress and ways, and I love watching it, and I just got the second cook I had pre-ordered in the second QuickBooks just came out, I'm so excited to dig into it and read it, and that's my relationship with recipes, like you were to go back to recipes and cooking, 'cause we're gonna get into some of your cooking philosophy here is... I love cookbooks, I love to read them, but to spark ideas and to... Yes, it's like to give me the information so that then I can go to my pantry and see what I have and get creative with it to season or what's in the garden right now, even... I just think about last night's dinner, or any night's dinner, you were talking about having community gatherings and making sterile...
1:12:05.3 S1: I had someone over, a chef over and we made July with whatever I found in the depressed, so meat and otherwise it was whatever was in the garden that seemed like it would go in the chilly and at last night, it was beautiful out here, so we grilled some shrimp and some peppers and onions that we had... And I felt like something was missing, I need something else. And so I go in the kitchen, I just look, Okay, what's in the pantry? What can I add? And I'm like, Oh, I have some beans. Let's make some feeds to it, and it was the perfect compliment, but it was just the moment, Oh, I can... Some cells earlier this summer, let me open one of those and mix it in, and Lala, there's a dinner that I didn't plan or read a SPE or anything ahead of time, so I know my listeners are very accustomed to getting a recipe at about this time in... And you and I talked about not having the... There's conferences and non-conferences, and there's recipes, and we're gonna have the non-recipe, but I think you have some great wisdom and philosophy around having courage in the kitchen.
1:13:10.9 S1: Have encouraged to be creative. Now for you, from your stories, it was very natural even when you were a little and your parents encourage that, however, you also... I know you have some thoughts and some wisdom on how to encourage my listeners to cook differently and get creative in the kitchen.
1:13:27.7 S2: It's really having the courage to combine things or try something, and even if it turns out to not be so delicious, to be willing to experiment in that way and to discover what's there in the sense of the experience... So for example, in the late 60s, early 70s, I was grinding whole berries, it was sort of the back to the land, the time out on the farm in Vermont and the Tasha red book came out, so that's when I started to make bread, and it was a lot of work. And the first time I made bread, I could have used it as a foundation brick in a building Hardens, and yet I didn't allow that to discourage me, and over time, what I came to understand was it was just the doing of it on the experiment of it, and I began to develop my own experience of how the bread dough felt in my hand, and that's the thing about cooking, you can give a recipe to someone and it will turn out an entirely different... And why is that? It's because the more we're present with the ingredients or the feel of it, or the smell of it, or the taste of it, and what's pleasing for us, what delights us, what brings our senses alive, the more we can experiment with that and have the courage of you could say failures, or it didn't turn out the way I wanted, or the bread is a little more dense or all of that, that we can look at recipes, such as you're talking about, and then apply the principles of the CM combinations to take the elements of onions and garlic, and when we look at recipes, I look at recipes now a lot, and I look at how it's made and I go, Oh wow.
1:16:01.8 S2: That's basically how I generally cook. And so it's just to say that the recipes that are new and improved or people are rediscovering things that have been around a long time, it's new and improved or discovering because people on don't know history or haven't bothered to... What I call under the shoulders, we all stand on and to see the old ways and then to integrate the learning of the old ways of how people related to food or related to wall or related to whatever they're doing, and then try on for themselves how to do it. And it takes courage, and once we begin to ferment the courage to try things on and fail or succeed, we begin to figure out how to make things from whatever is on hand, whether it's food, or knitting, or spinning, or whatever it is. And that's why I'm a fan of... In terms of what I call heart life skills, it's a different methodology, it's a different undertaking, as I've said to some of the women that I worked with, if you're doing brain surgery on me, I wanna know that you bother to follow a lot of recipes, or...
1:17:48.9 S2: You know what you're doing. And yet at the same time, if we're really honest, even that is contingent on the remedy or the solution or the final product is based on what is found, and so it's an understanding that is the courage for a while to use recipes and to allow ourselves potentially to follow recipes, I cook the way I do now, because when I was younger, I followed a lot of recipes like the CASA Hara cookbook on sour dough and other Saudi became my crowning bread thing when I had to make everything from scratch. 'cause I lived in a really remote area And didn't have stores to go to, so it's why... When you asked me, what's my favorite recipe? Well, I have some family recipes that I occasionally make for family members, but if I were to say a favorite recipe that I don't make often now, but I did when I was younger, I would direct people, if you love cheesecake, my favorite recipe in the whole world and the most extraordinary one is Montana mom's dynamite cheesecake in the original Neosho cookbook. Nice, and it's not my recipe to give out, but
1:19:25.3 S1: I will link to it in our show door, our listeners can go find it. It's amazing. Yeah, I think one of the things, if I had to be you and I very intuitively cooked that way, and people ask me a lot like, Well, can you teach me your hat? And so I think a lot about How do I break that intuitive cooking down? And I think one of the things I pay attention to is being present with the quality of a flavor, and then what else has that quality that maybe I have on hand, if I don't have that thing on hand. So I made a rope the other night, which is one of my favorite things to do, is a simple roast and then cut off of it for days, it's just so easy, and then meals for days, and I had leftover vegetables from making chicken stock that I matched with some home-grown potatoes for Maine, we need some gravy, what can I do for a gray here or something, and yeah, I found some mushrooms on some shallots and then it was like, Alright, when I think about a really good gravy, what are the other flavors at play like there's some Tang, there's some acid, there's some sweetness or some salty, there's some Safran, starting to stare at, what do I have that? That also has those flavor, so some lying goes in, then it got too tart, so I added some honey to balance, I was like, I don't even know what went into that gray, but it was really darn good in the ad, but it's that same thing or...
1:21:03.3 S1: When I've multiplies, I've cooked something in a call for times or tomato sauce or whatever, and I don't have... To me, I was really not in season, and it's like, well, tomato is a fruit. That's a more acidic, tangy fruit. What else can I use that could be similar, maybe a tart apple sauce that I have canned or what... Just to give our listeners some clues is to start to know what other things, families of flavor, and then you can experiment and play within that family and try... Oh, I don't have time, no sauce, but I have group call, let me see what happens if I throw a little bit of that in instead, and it actually might round out the flavor or take it a whole new diet, and that's amazing. Or be terrible, and that's okay. And I feel like the other skill is knowing how to balance, so if I get too lemony or too salty, what do I do to balance it back out or come back the ad how to counter flavor, flavor families and counter flavors. I feel like those two things help me improvise and feel more previous in the kitchen.
1:22:12.1 S2: Yeah, well, I had told you a while back about an experience when I was in Port Angeles, and there was a teenage gal, a friend of the family who wanted to learn how to cook, and so we spent a couple of weeks basically in the kit in my kitchen, and we would harvest vegetables from the garden and bring them in, and we just started from a basic level, and perhaps even at a more basic level than we were just talking about, messy would be to take a vegetable and herb and begin to cook them or experiment with them and to slowly begin to have one's own experience with particular flavors that were meaningful or that you enjoyed, and to learn from one's own experience, what happens when you're Satan garlic and then you add onions and then you add one herb. How is that flavor? Do you like it? Is it meaningful? And what's the quality? So it slows down the learning, and yet at the same time, it teaches or allows us to discover the value of our own preferences, the value of our favorite, this or that or the combination, and I say basically, it's why I took more simply now, part of that is over time, having spent time with different herbs and different spices and things to have a sense for myself what I like or what works together, and honestly, I've an experimenting, experimenting...
1:24:15.0 S2: Adding different things. There were times where I couldn't correct it. You know what I mean? Yeah, it didn't matter. And to have that be... Okay, right.
1:24:24.4 S1: Yeah, you... To a blog that was worst recipe, every shared all my own cooking fails. Yeah.
1:24:33.8 S2: It's just about the courage to play an experiment and to do it over time, and I'm just a fan of working with simplicity initially to get to know what an herb tastes like and what its taste like when you add it fresh versus dried and just to feel some of you only wanna pinch some, you can do a handful. That kind of a thing. So I'm just a real fan of experimenting and yes, initially using recipes to help get an idea or to know how combos go together, but eventually that's what chefs do farm to table is at some point we have the confidence to combine and create out of what's actually there, and I just call that it's learning to navigate, and it's a huge skill to have in the times we're in... We're all having to learn how to navigate uncharted territory, well, it's the same in
1:25:46.3 S1: Food, it truly... And for many people, the kitchen is uncharted territory. A learning to navigate. I read rest apes for... My learning curve is around technique, roasting versus pan-frying, or if I'm gonna rest at what temperature is best for the special and he... When I learned eggplant is good to salt for 15 minutes and then rinse off and then roast, and then you get that nice Chris refining technique, and then like you're describing, flavors is more the play and then once I know a flavor and then I don't have that flavor on hand. What else can I do? Like it's also not getting too attached to a flavor combo I love, which is where the curiosity leads and then new discoveries are made like, Oh, there's one I often put Sage. I like Sage with Sweet Potatoes, squash, those kinds of things. Yeah, and sometimes I don't have it and it's like, Oh, what else? What else has that kind of Sardar that I can use as a... Oh look, time is really nice on street potatoes and squash was maybe I'll do that next time and... Yeah, that kind of thing. Alright, well, anything else you wanna share about...
1:27:10.8 S2: I will just say for my early years of learning, my parents gifted me The Joy of Cooking...
1:27:18.8 S1: Oh, that is a good one.
1:27:20.3 S2: And to me, that belongs in everyone's heart kitchen, it's an incredible go to learn how to relate to different food...
1:27:35.2 S1: Yeah, actually, and I'll put a link in the show notes for our listeners, I have on bookshop dot org, a list of my favorite cookbooks, which I'm quite sure A Joy of Cooking is in there. My favorite educate, my mom had this good house, I think it was a good housekeeping cookbook that has that photograph of every single recipe in the front, my sister and I, we would look at the photographs and see what looked in thing and then go find the span then read some crazy ingredient that we're like, Oh, you don't want that, but you know, it was fun, and to look at the as the photos of every single recipe, and that's a favorite... I will also say for listeners a really good basic cookbook that's very tied to what Connor and I are talking about is... Is there's a Julia Child cookbook? That's like Kitchen Essentials. It's like the super super basics, all your vegetables and cooking times, all your needs and cooking times, basic Hollands, basic dress. Just basics, and I still make my holidays in my man is from that book. I think those are the two recipes I go to constantly in that book, even though I've done it hundreds of times, I still reference, and I love it because you kinda get a sense of the technique and then you can adapt it.
1:28:56.3 S1: There's another resorts, just making me think of this other cooks illustrates is another super fun magazine to read, and I know I've mentioned it on this podcast before because I'll take a recipe and they'll break it down and try it 20 different ways and explain why these ways did and didn't work, and then put all together into their favorite version, a recipe, which is super fun, but they had a recipe for physics steamed vegetables with a butter sauce and the technique on how to get a butter sauce that actually claims land doesn't break or get water, and there's a couple of cool little tricks, but what that taught me was how did they can assure with butter and yeah, that's become... How I think in all kinds of sauces, I'll start with an multiplying process and stuff, going straight to flour to thicken, and so it's like a little techniques like that that you pick up along the way, reading recipes and getting curious. There were some time where I had no flower and you just take in a sauce in my co, I wonder if I try... I'm multiplying butter without over-cooking it in this safe and see Felicia walla, it does, and I'm like, Wow, now I could be a fancy restaurant, salsa, no problem.
1:30:09.0 S1: And there you go. Have courage.
1:30:11.2 S2: Have
1:30:11.6 S1: Courage will travel. Yeah, his courage to get creative in the kitchen, any workshops I've taught on cooking, it's always about having courage in the kitchen and getting curious is those two things which will you Connor know, curiosity is one of my absolute top values and leads the way in my role so I have two last questions. 'cause I know we could talk forever and ever. The first question is, is there... What women in your life has been... Inspiration, role model. Guide any of those things.
1:30:45.1 S2: Oh my goodness, I don't know that I could name on. My silence is finding that there isn't a lot externally inspiring me right now in terms of mainstream world, for me, it's more about... I could say the past learning, I would say, other than the grandmothers and the antis and the traditional elders, a woman who inspired me early on, I was gifted to work with her before she got famous, was angelos area of the bask tradition. And it was just really about the seasonal life and the directions of life, and a deep earth-based cultural perspective. I've been inspired by phenomenal women my whole life, part of my hesitancy there, so much on
1:31:58.0 S1: How do I took on a solely... Totally, totally. And then my last question is, we've talked about so many different topics, and your wisdom and your thoughts, your ideas, your perspectives go way, way, way deeper than this conversation as I... I'm blessed to get to know a little bit more, however, for this podcast, if there's something we haven't talked about or something you wanna go further into that you'd really like our listeners to walk away from this conversation with, what would that be?
1:32:32.2 S2: Well, I am a lifelong devotee of the natural world, the biological... I guess I'd say it's carbon-based life, and that the divine feminine is an heartening, and everything about food, everything we've been talking about is really living what I call a devotional life, and to discover an aspect of our life that nourishes life, that's beneficent to life, and to make a commitment to discover what about that is calling forth a real devotion to following that path and living that life, so it's more about a life way and more about what nourishes you to unfold your amazing genius and talent from within you, what calls you forth and to discover not only what's in there to call forth, but what around you calls that forth, and that to me is the divine feminine and living a devotional unfolding way of life, which is the natural world. And as I say, one of the reasons I love living in wilderness national parks on my truck in the Himalayas, and I'm being around indigenous elders that bothered to take me under wing was that when I'm in nature and especially the wilderness, there's nothing there that is confused about itself, the natural world lives only as itself is, as I have said with people, bears don't run around wondering what it would be like to be a moose, and we've been given this incredible privilege of being in a human body and a human form, and as one of my teachers long ago said in my early 30s, you've been gifted an incredible privilege of human form, do not waste it, so discover what we love and live a life and devotion to that and make sure that whatever that is...
1:35:11.4 S2: It's beneficent to life. Connor.
1:35:15.2 S1: Thank you so much for that wisdom bomb, right at the end there. Wisdom drop, but thank you for everything, thank you for sharing your stories, your insights, your non-recipes with us today to all our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode of women in food and got a bit of inspiration for your next meal. A last request, if you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're using to listen and give us a rating and review, it's a simple act. That helps us a ton. Once again, thank you for accompanying me, this delicious adventure, join me around the table for our next episode and get ready to eat