the radical roots of amazement

I first came across radical amazement when I was doing karma yoga in the kitchen at Schumacher College in Devon, UK.  The chef there, Wayne, invited us to slow down and come into new relationship with the incredible beauty of each vegetable we were cutting, to listen differently to our own internal rhythms and come into ourselves by entering into intentional relationship to that which we would be cooking, serving and eating with others.

It was true. The light through a thinly sliced carrot revealed an incredible pattern that I had never noticed before. I could see its cellular density! It was orange matter, but it was pure light! I was amazed at how little attention I had paid to the natural and unique beauty of each and every living food I cooked with or ate.

When I moved to Jerusalem, I soon discovered that radical amazement had a deep and mystical lineage to it.  It was a term coined by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who embodied an activist-mystic Judaism and a complete awe of being alive. He walked with Martin Luther King and “prayed with his legs” by being the values that he espoused. He wrote about a certain kind of humility that allows humanity to be learners, and if we ceased to be surprised and amazed by the wonder that is life and the ineffable mystery around us, then we were not longer alive.

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement, to look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; to be spiritual is to be constantly amazed,” writes Abraham Joshua Heschel.

This deeply informed my continually evolving practice ground of the Conscious Kitchen which I have brought as a practice to share with and learn from kitchen tables, fires, hearths and communities all over the world. It has evolved into a collective practice, one which constantly amazes me in the huge love that people bring to the hearths we create together.

 The practice of radical amazement can be as simple as setting an intention around an inner quality we want to bring to the making of our meal –  a quality that we would want to offer as nutrients to the people eating the meal. Qualities like - gratitude, joyful attention, groundedness, wholeness, awe.  What is the experience of cooking when we embody those qualities as we cook? And how does this intention come into the experience - and the bodies - of those who are eating? The intentions and the quality of presence of how we prepare the meal becomes a full nutrient into the food itself.

And somehow, the carrots and zucchinis invite us to become more aware of everything, of extraordinary in the ordinary. They become our teachers.

Today

The vegetables would like to be cut

By someone who is singing God’s Name

How could Hafiz know

Such top secret information?

Because

Once we were all tomatoes,

Potatoes, onions or

Zucchini.

- Hafiz

white soups for a not-so-white christmas

the iraqi market in the jerusalem souk

The markets in Jerusalem this time of year have the full spectrum of colours for a rainbow diet, a diet that contains all the micronutrients via the different colours of our natural foods.  And with the glorious colours, writes Dr. Gabriel Cousens, we eat with our eyes and begin to imagine the taste before we put it in our mouths. Apparently, this anticipation is one of the best ways to pre-digest our food.

One of the colours we don't see much of in this region during the Christmas-Hannukah season is white ~ there is no sprinkling of snow over treetops and few references to winter as I know it. It is also a colour of food that is associated with the naughty things ~ white flour, white sugar, pastas and the tasty things that fill our guts with gluten, sugars and unfortunately, bloating and discomfort.  To bring white back into food fashion, I have conveniently fallen in love with the nutty sweet white vegetables and am finding ways of bringing them to our table and stomach with panache!

So I have been making "white soups" because they are best made with seasonal celery root, cawliflower, jerusalem artichoke (or sunchokes). The other discovery is chestnuts which we find all over the markets in the East.  Add them in to your soups and they make a super-creamy, toasty kind of creation.

This is an exceptional base for a series of delicious soup combinations because of the scrumptious and unique taste given by the peppery sweetness of tarragon! 

creamy celery root and chestnut soup, with tarragon

2 leeks, thinly sliced  

2 cloves of garlic, chopped small  

1/2 c vegetable stock (and/or you can also use any leftover wine)  

dash of dried thyme and 4 bay leaves  

2 celery roots, chopped or 1 cawliflower, or the equivalent of jeru-artichoke (looks like ginger or galangal)  

8 c vegetable stock, or water with herbamare salt!  

handful of dried chestnuts  (you can find at asian stores, or the health food store)

1 teaspoon lemon zest or lemon rind  

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg  

1-2 tablespoons of fresh or dried tarragon  

2 tablespoons light miso (or whatever you have handy)  

ground pepper and salt to taste  

rice or soy milk to thin the soup

making the soup

cook the leeks, garlic, salt and sherry/veg broth til the leeks are tender and begin to caramelize. add in the thyme, bay, celery root, stock and chestnuts.

cover and simmer for 40 min then add in the lemon zest, nutmeg, tarragon, pepper, miso and salt. remove from heat and discard the bay leaves so you can blend the soup. 

add rice milk to thin the soup if you want, and garnish with lemon zest and tarragon or thyme!

thank you to amazing vegan gourmet the millennium restaurant for the inspiration for this recipe, which invited the mighty tarragon into my life!

Apprenticing to the Earth – Conscious kitchen

this blog post was written by Helen Titchen-Beech, who participated in Apprenticing to the Earth at Axladitsa in May and harvested, with gorgeous photos and words, her experience of the Conscious Kitchen.

Friday 27 May – It’s raining this morning. I’m in the kitchen with the breakfast team. Whenever we volunteer for kitchen duty we know we are stepping in to the sacred and intentional practice of Conscious Kitchen.

Conscious Kitchen is a beautifully grounding and flexible life practice. You can take it with you wherever you go, in the form of a set of principles and an attitude that I’d like to share with you here as a story of this day in the life of Axladitsa’s kitchen.

Fresh food - use what's there

Vanessa and Maria have been talking about supplies – what fruit and vegetables are left? What more do we need? Kiria Athina is chopping walnuts to add to the nut and seed mix for toasting. Now that the oatmeal is cooked (dried figs in it this morning), I have decided to withdraw from physical contribution in order to record my thoughts about the sublime collective practice of Conscious Kitchen.

Nici is cutting fruit, Athina has moved on to toasting the nuts, while Vanessa has concocted something ineffable with bananas, cocoa nibs, cinnamon, cloves, walnuts and orange peel (we’re experimenting with cutting and sun-drying citrus peel for use in the eco-loos (deodorising) and around the olive trees (bug repellent), rather than putting it in the compost where they burn the worms).

Quality of presence

Yesterday it was Claire’s birthday, so the kitchen team went into joyous overdrive. Before we even started, Vanessa Reid, the originator of the Conscious Kitchen concept, demonstrated two important principles of the practice by inviting us to look around and see who was in the kitchen, and then each to set an intention around a quality we wanted to bring to the making the meal – with the idea that the people eating the meal will consume those qualities and intentions. In other words: the intentions you put into the meal come into the food. If you’re hectic or frustrated, we’ll taste it. And so the quality of presence of those preparing the meal is transmitted to the food that we eat.

Colour and texture

Two more principles of Conscious Kitchen are use what’s there and left-overs are really ingredients for today’s meal. Janell had made a fabulous soup stock from the chicken and lamb bones of the previous day (her own birthday feast), into which we threw artichoke leaves discarded from the lunch preparations. The artichoke leaves were then recovered when the stock was strained, and made into an artichoke paste, destined to become a layer in the innovative Surprise Lasagna conjured by master chef Nici from left-over bread mixed with eggs and milk, topped with the artichoke paste, finished with a mix of carrots and tiny bits of lamb meticulously picked off the stock bones by Steve…

The story of this dish itself demonstrates a few more key principles: firstly, upcycle what you have into something new – the stock demonstrates a double upcycling, first from last night’s bones into stock, and then reclaiming the artichoke leaves, that had already instilled their flavour to the stock, as a layer in the lasagne. Secondly, cook collectively when you can,  inspiring each other to branch out, experiment and innovate, offering our gifts and expertise – thus is lasagne born!

feral salad

Meanwhile, Penny, Claire and I went off foraging for salad greens, following the principle of seeing beyond your current scope –what else is there out there available to us that we never knew we could eat? Having Penny with us, as a nature sprite who talks to plants and knows them well, we came back with dandelions, mallow (leaves and flowers), wild garlic flowers, different leaves from the mint family, all bulked out with plantain and milk thistle, and made it into a feral salad with a sumptuous vinaigrette marrying cabernet balsamic and Axladitsa olive oil.

When we returned, we discovered there was also a rice pilaf with lovely toasted almond slivers, a divine salsa with onion caramelised in baslamic vinegar and red wine, courgette and apple and a crunchy living chutney made with sprouted mung beans, fresh lovage, olive oil, salt and lemon juice.

A decorated table creates beauty

The last remaining touch to complete our banquet preparation was creating beauty – decorating the table and the food in preparation for welcoming the guests of honour.

When the community gathered in the kitchen, Vanessa spoke to the gathering about what was in all the dishes, so that all present would understand where our food came from (another principle: know what you eat). Introducing the meal and sharing your experience of preparing it brings the guests into the space and creates awareness: the meal is alive, and the fruit of a story in producing it. When all the plates were full, we offered a moment of grace, the cooks sang a spontaneous (and funny) song of thanks to the earth.

Just before we tucked in, Vanessa chimed in one last time: “Notice your first bite – notice how it feels in your mouth, the taste, the texture: what ingredients can you discern?” We broke this bread together in joy and awe, knowing that we would never eat a meal like this again.

After dinner, we sang birthday songs from all the cultures present, old and new, and Nici whipped out a gorgeous carrot cake topped with a mix of greek yoghourt and lemon curd all the way from Leeds, UK.
In a nutshell (where else?) Conscious Kitchen is the practice of consciousness in daily living – it invites us to do what we always do and then that bit more: noticing what is present, bringing intention to life, offering the fruits of our labour as a gift of love.

to see more of helen's wonderful writing, visit: iyeshe  
for more Apprenticing photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/i-yeshe/5764398752/in/set-72157626803445068#/

invisible networks of life

i have been thinking a great deal about "fields" - and how we create energetic and magnetic fields that can shift or deeper our awareness or actions, how in coming together with a certain intention, we can create a field that can source or access a collective intelligence.  

some call it resonance - or "collective resonance" which is described as "the "magic" that transforms individuals and whole groups through access to greater sources of wisdom."  it is that sense that there is a deeper connection or weave between people and place and intelligence that is beyond what is visible, but it is strongly experienced.  it is a practice of cultivating consciousness as something real, tangible, accessible. and basically, creating such fields helps us host the evolution of our humanity.

i do believe mushrooms know something about this.

author Paul Stamets who wrote Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World believes mycelium, which bear mushrooms as their fruit, have not just the ability to protect the environment but the intelligence to do so on purpose.

in this wonderful interview with Derrick Jensen in the Sun magazine called going underground , Stamets describes how the invisible and underground systems of fungi work to nourish the whole and how they transmit information across their huge networks. it intrigues me to think about this network of life that is so alive, that decided to do its work underground.  the invisible work, at least it is invisible to us topsoil folks, that sustains life on the planet.  

"Mycelia took an evolutionary path by going underground and forming a network of interwoven chains of cells, a vast food web upon which life flourished. These fungi paved the way for plants and animals. They munched rocks, producing enzymes and acids that could pull out calcium, magnesium, iron, and other minerals. In the process they converted rocks into usable foods for other species. And they still do this, of course.

Fungi are fundamental to life on earth. They are ancient, they are widespread, and they have formed partnerships with many other species."

what are the invisible networks working on our behalf, those that sustain us and those we humans create and sustain? Jungian psychology describes a collective unconscious that lives alongside and within us, it is available when we accept our whole selves through our shadows, our dreams, our inter-connectivity with our lineage, and the inter-generational transmission of consciousness.  indigenous peoples and traditions work with the invisible in many ways,  bringing in ancestors, plant-spirits, and the cycles of life and death such that all life and time is present at all times. this information is accessible to us, if we practice, if we invite it in and work with it, if we see it as real and tangible.  access this, and more of life is available to us.

so what kind of partnerships can we form with the invisible networks of life?  what are the "fieldwork" practices that bring in the multiple levels of intelligence that are just waiting to be invited to the party?  how would our organizations, communities, institutions be different if we saw the wholeness of integrating the visible and the invisible?

ask a mushroom.    

and come to the Immersion, May 6-15, 2011!

we will be working with the Living Wholeness pattern

which offers a framework for being
systemic at every level: with ourselves, our work and our communities,
and especially in relationship with all of life. with the Living Wholeness
pattern, we navigate the visible, invisible, individual and collective pathways
towards deeper alignment with all of Life.
 

photo by daniel seguin

apprenticing to the earth

 

With great delight, we are/ I am inviting you to Apprenticing to the Earth, taking place from 25 May-1 June at Axladitsa-Avatakia, in South Pelion, Greece. It is one part of a longer learning month we are hosting in Greece.

We invite you to be part of a rich translocal community of learners, with a wonderfully diverse circle of hosts with visiting faculty, the wild land of Axladitsa, and its local community. It is less a workshop and more of an inquiry into what it means to truly learn with and from the Earth in order to become more resilient, to sustain people and the planet.  We will be living and working with the a pattern we call Living Wholeness along with the practices of permaculture, mud building, poetry and reflection, conscious food, living systems, art of hosting, open space and a whole lot more...

Axladitsa Avatakia is an ancient Olive farm and haven of 24 acres on the Pelion peninsula, mainland Greece - is unspoiled, remote, rugged and beautiful.  It is a teacher and learner, and one of our hosts.  Axladitsa has inspired Maria, Sarah and myself to develop a pattern known as Living Wholeness that offers a framework for being systemic at every level: with ourselves, our work and our communities, and especially in relationship with all of life. With the Living Wholeness pattern, we navigate the visible, invisible, individual and collective pathways towards deeper alignment with all of Life.  

Here you can download the elegant Apprenticing to the Earth invitation and the registration & fee form:

Apprenticing to the Earth Invite

Apprenticing to the Earth Registration Form

In the meantime, please join the Apprenticing community and indicate if you will be joining us in May, are still thinking about it…or simply want to part of the conversations and connected into the evolution.

And if you wish to join us earlier, from 6-15 May, we are offering the always much-anticipated Axladitsa Immersion (the Mystery, Mastery and Artistry of Living Wholeness).  If you are interested in coming to both gatherings - coming for a month of Immersion learning in a wild place with excellent people - please join us for the Early Bird rates and register by 28 February.  If you wish to register, or if you have any questions at all about payment, fees, scholarships or sponsorships, please contact Sarah Whiteley at sarahwhiteley.hara@virgin.net.

We look forward to seeing you this May!

Much love, Vanessa with Sarah Whiteley, Maria Scordialous, Janell Kapoor, Filiz Telek, Penny Livingstone and Axladitsa Avatakia

tasting the future

i find myself part of some incredible work in the United Kingdom ~ an initiative called Tasting the Future is being called by some brave souls within the WWF-UK and is attracting all sorts of people to it. i say they are brave because in fact what they are calling in is a way of working on systemic and intractable issues that works with the real context in which humanity currently finds itself.  in human systems dynamics, this context is called "dynamical" ~ it is characterized by high levels of complexity, inter-connectivity, non-linearity, emergence.  this simply means that with the way things are working right now, we are on the edge of what we know and what we know how to do.  it means we need to brave enough to not-know, and yet to step in and say yes, i am here, join me.

Tasting the Future is less a "project" and more like a movement because it is about collectively finding a new way of living with the planet and with each other, through the portal of our food. currently, the UK alone consumes as if it had 3 planets to feed itself from.  factor in north america, europe, and the massive consumer cultures emerging in asia and it is almost too much to bear.  so we are asking, what would a food system actually look like if we produced and consumed in a way that sustained, rather than depleted, people and the planet?

the answer is actually that nobody knows what our new systems can and will look like because we are currently in a world in transition.  we have a sense of the new ways forward and we have a sense of the massiveness of our current systems' dysfunction.  our damage to the planet and to our humanity has lead to unprecedented depletion of both our biosphere and ethnosphere, while our economic and governance systems show signs of stress and distress, irrelevance, and an incapacity to respond to the real needs of this time.

there are various pathways forward. we can adapt to the current context as we imagine and innovate our way into completely new ways of being a human ecology on this planet.  we can consume better and create higher standards and regulations for our current industries.  we can consume differently by creating entirely industries, like electric cars and up-cycled product lines.  or we can consume less and in so doing, shift industries and behaviours radically: car-free cities and everything non-privatized open-source. this last way is a fundamental shift in our values, behaviours, artifacts, and assumptions about what ecology and economy and humanity are and can be...

what we are seeing in Tasting the Future is that these are happening all at once in the food sector.  there is already so much innovation happening in local and regional ways, in civil society and in the market, all around the UK.  they are, however, not connected, and they do not reach a critical mass of citizens.  so the invitation with Tasting the Future is to convene these projects and people, illuminate the work that is happening, connect them in meaningful ways and from this, scale up the work and begin to co-create the new together.  in other words, create an intentional learning ecology to support the catalysts, grow the impact, and together seed new innovations from what we learn collectively.  it is time to innovate and prototype, but the trick is to do it collectively, and learn with each step as we tread - or tumble - towards a fundamental change.

it is to begin to BE the new system that we want to cultivate more widely.

the edge in this work is around calling out a new culture, one that learns and grows together through actually being in profound relationship with each other and with the earth.  why is this edgy?  because the norm is to work with cause and effect and to see the system as outside of ourselves: to see problems and find solutions, to bring together experts or power brokers and get them to create strategies that will be implemented by us, or to create lists of recommendations that others should follow.  what we don't have as a sophisticated human capacity is to be learners together regardless of our status, to be the "us" that leads and the "them" that follows, learners who access a collective intelligence from the whole - from our diversity, differences and inter-connectivity, from what the Earth is asking of and teaching us, and from our wholeness as human beings, as opposed to from our "titles", positions, these fragmented aspects of our selves.

as margaret wheatley says, "whatever the problem, community is the answer" and "the leaders we need are already here."  those that are showing up are "paradigm pioneers" who hold a sense of purpose so strongly that others gather around, bring their beauty, and live their way courageously into the unknown, yet tangible, future.  we can already taste it...

we are risen, tangled

it is a strange thing to ask...
but when you eat something fresh, something you picked or caught or

gathered with your very own hands
something that had its own life and has now become your sustenance
when that miracle touches the softcells of your mouth
and its particles become
scent
flavour
texture
when you let them wash into your body, through your systems,
and they become your blood, your energy, your life ~
do you think about your own death?

i thought about this when i read Mary Oliver's poem, the Fish... the miracle of the tangled life we lead with all that is around us, all that sustains us and the incredible amount of Life that goes so completely unoticed every day. ingested, yet not fully digested.  but what happens when we notice how life leads into life, and notice those little deaths that offer us life each day?  would we live differently, die differently? is the light somehow different, the taste that much sweeter?  the mysteries more wondrous....

The Fish 

The first fish

I ever caught

would not lie down

quiet in the pail

but flailed and sucked

at the burning

amazement of the air

and died

in the slow pouring off

of rainbows. Later

I opened his body and separated

the flesh from the bones

and ate him. Now the sea

is in me: I am the fish, the fish

glitters in me; we are

risen, tangled together, certain to fall

back to the sea. Out of pain,

and pain, and more pain

we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished

by the mystery.

~ by Mary Oliver

amuse-bouches (& the fire of transformation)

.....an "amuse-bouche" is a whimsical appetizer offered before the meal, invented by the chefs to please, tease and invite the taste buds to a kind of ecstacy....

what new can we create from the seemingly useless? how can we utilize as much of our food sources as possible?  

in the Conscious Kitchen, we work with creativity, resourcefulness and awareness in many different ways.  this is a recipe for a once-in-a-lifetime “amuse bouche” called Jeanne D’Arc.  the idea was hatched as a result of the sheer wonder evoked by very naked, vulnerable oranges whose skin had been "zested" and whose juice had been squeezed for other recipes and dishes already...coupled with our desire to create as little waste as possible.  our "collective chefs" worked with sheer inspiration with the parts of the orange that are FULL of nutrients, yet often overlooked as a potential ingredient.  

we transformed a seemingly useless skin into a fiery taste sensation.

"Jeanne D'Arc gave her life for something new to be born. There will be a fire of flavor exploding in your mouth"

in giving our recipes and dishes a unique name that captures the experience of creating the dish, we create a kind of wholeness, an invitation to remember not only the taste of the food, but its personality.  it is a way of saying "i hear you!" since the name is inspired from the ingredients, the process, and the context in which we find ourselves cooking so consciously together. 

the power of naming also brings to life a story.  and this story is a way to introduce our eaters to the food that is offering itself to us, and the light of inspiration from which it was created.  and that all of this - the food, the ingredients, the process, the love and inspiration - will be nourishing their bodies and souls....

food ingredients

2 oranges, using leftover peel 
     ...naked, wounded, surrendering with unexpected shining beauty and softness...

zested orange and lemon peel, 
     ....mixed with bit of freshly squeezed orange-juice and the leftover pulp from squeezing the orange

date-water 
       ...the soak water from dried Axladitsa dates creates a sweet water that can be used as a  sweetener...

greek honey

2 bananas, sliced

1 dark chocolate bar, cut into squares

wild fennel, freshly harvested from the walk on the wildside

       ....for extra-taste and decoration (a little Tree of Life on each island of fire)

preparation:

mash the orange peel and zests together. add some date water and honey, as needed and then roll them into balls. to arrange each amuse bouche, take a square of chocolate, add a slice of banana, the ball of orange and add a dash of wild fennel.

magic ingredients

the conditions for creating such amuses for our bouches is really about the kind of space we create together in order to be fully responsive to that which wants to be created.  it certainly helps to have a beautiful, spacious, sunny, windy kitchen, with life blowing through, in all its forms…this kind of vitality and life shows up in the spirit of teamwork that evokes fun, joy, laughter, reciprocity and trust ~ in one's own creativity and giving trust to each other to create;  spontaneity and improvisation that surprises oneself and others; wonder, details and beauty as essential ingredients;  resourcefulness that leads to surprisingly new and refreshing things born out of what we think is rubbish/ left overs/ compost/the old skin.... 

....is really a kind of hosting Life in all its potential....

thank you to Katrin Kohlbecher for her generous harvest of this recipe and experience

and to Richard Moreham and Julie Arts for their gleeful photos 

eating Light

...it seems we've lost a sense of wonder in the food we eat.  we have forgotten that our food is actually Light manifest. in the interplay of sun, earth, and elements is a magical alchemy creating the plants that give their bodies to us so we can receive energy. we are what we eat.  Light. Energy. Life. it is pure potential - how do we process this Light?  how do we give back with the energy we receive?...

in the joy of hosting a conscious kitchen as part of the Axladitsa Immersion, we really played with the idea of eating Light.  

rather than thinking about "lite" diets or cutting down on foods, we invited in what it really means to eat Light.  we consume the nourishment that Light provides in every fruit and vegetable that we eat.  the vibration of Light is transformed into the uniqueness of carrot, a cabbage, thyme, aubergines...  Light becomes manifest through complex and incredible processes of photosynthesis and creates, well, our food.  


when we consume it, it becomes us....
so imagine with every bite, you are eating Light!

the first paragraph is a quote from an introduction i wrote for the "eating Light" section of ascent magazine's sustainability issue.   

eating Light profiles 3 young people who are bringing their light to their lives and work with community. you might want to check them out ~  gayla trail cultivates rich soil for plants and relationships as a pioneering urban gardener, and founder of you grow girl.    bryant terry is an eco-chef and author of Grub who feeds his african-american southern lineage through educating young people in healthy eating and preserving tradition. and jill boadway was the chef the radha yoga & eatery in vancouver's downtown eastside, and is the co-founder of the Conscious Table which shares a practice of conscious eating to cultivate gratitude and awareness. 

to read the entire intro and article which profiles these 3 inspirational people & their projects, click here.

the whole process of collectively imagining and then manifesting the sustainability issue of ascent magazine deeply influenced the way i think about sustainability as the union of our inner light and outer action.  when our editorial team first met to begin to think about the "core" of the issue, how we would approach sustainability in a way that was unique to ascent magazine and that offered a spiritual approach to this issue, we were inspired by the core teachings of swami radha, the founder of ascent, timeless books, and the yasodhara ashram.  in particular, the mantra,

"i am created by divine light, i am sustained by divine light, i am protected by divine light, i am surrounded by divine light, i am ever growing into divine light." 

to find out more about swami radha's work, her contribution to yoga in the west, and her teachings about Light (Light and Vibration and The Divine Light Invocation), visit the ashram's website at www.yasodhara.org.  

her own story is incredible and inspiring, radha, a diary of a woman's search.

walk on the wild side into edible landscapes

it's a evening of radical amazement.... 
and what if we practiced this everyday, and together? seeing and sensing the wonder of the world in every moment.  what would our food taste like and offer us if we ingested that amazement, the miracle of light transmuted into form, which becomes our food?

well, we did a little experiment in that regard, with the Conscious Kitchen we we hosted on the 3rd evening of the Axladitsa Immersion. we visited the edible landscape to see what She would offer... edible flowers, wild herbs to inspire our menu, fresh lettuce from the garden and luscious conversations all the while.  our little troupe came back filled with offerings of taste and beauty to make the food & space sparkle with wild welcome.

remarkable patterns of light in the food - the Tree of Life in the cabbage, the perfection of peas in a pod... and the scents and tastes of wild thyme inspired the Take Thyme Salad, wild fennel splashed on the Jeanne D'Arc orange-peel-banana-chocolate Amuses-bouches, the edible flowers on the Sunbeam Salad. and the look of sweet rapture on the faces of the radical chefs and eaters.

this little shift, this little invitation to eat Light and be amazed by the miracles that become of our food, inspired our blessings on the food.  no words, just look, see, smell and taste with reverence, in silence.

then dig in!

photos by richard moreham and julie arts