The Vitality of Food, Folk and Fire

The sustenance of connection

…And that is how Kitchen Therapy, the book first landed, following the flow of consciousness that begins with food, folk and fire. A grand sentence to introduce the mundane magic of meal making.

Many moons before I had trained as a therapist, I stood looking at a depleted fridge and waited for dinner to reveal itself. It had been another exhausting week of teaching teens and parenting small folk – the fridge, like me, was worn out. A bit empty. But I waited, adding a few optimistic drops of attention onto the messy shelves, who were hoping (forlornly) for a clean.

A wrinkly mushroom nudged a courgette into action, they found some cream cheese and asked sherry for help. A meal came together and following the post dinner reverie, I recalled card playing with my great grandmother. Each hand of cards and round of tricks brought its unique trials and tribulations, all long gone (like that dinner), but what remains are the delicious feelings of fruitful attention.

The oldest and youngest family members utterly wrapped in their own world had fired and wired the dopamine sensors together – cooking a meal with what you have to hand is like playing a hand of cards you’re dealt – with resourceful imagination and the pleasure of presence. As I kept on the path these musings were making, a book emerged – a pack of playing cards who would come to life as recipe characters showing how to cook (and live) with creative intuition. Our playing cards originating from the tarot, of course carry a message to guide us through life, tapping into our deep intuition.

It would be a long time before I trained as a therapist and discovered the potential of cooking as a therapeutic medium. However, the relationship between playing cards and cooking a meal, an elderly matriarch and a demanding child, a forlorn mushroom and a hopeful courgette, between cooking and therapy, reminds us that at the heart of life is connection.

Melvin Sheldrake’s brilliant words from ‘Entangled Life’ describing the romance between fungi from the land meeting algae from the sea as the symbiotic building blocks of life on earth. Deep levels of natural exchange offering what we have and receiving what we need, the generative power of genuine relationship is the force and font of life.

“The intimate associations between plants and fungi form an ancient life support system… in their exchange of energy and nutrients [they] engage in sophisticated trading strategies, striking compromises and resolving dizzyingly complicated trade-offs…”

I wonder if such a conversation between our forefather Prometheus, who gives us the force of fire; and Mother Nature, the unconditioned font of life, may have emerged.

Did Nature see Prometheus building his people from clay with their potential for knowing life, Her name and perhaps, purpose…? Did Prometheus recognise the generative power of Nature to breathe life into his hopeful yet inert creations?

Nature: now here I am with all this generative, eternal, chaotic power. I need some direction, a touch of containment, the essence of awareness.

Prometheus: now here I’ve made these incredible works of clay, capable creatures bestowed with my ability to know time. I need the force of love to breathe life and soul here, the essence of connection.

So, as these great gods spoke in the morning gardens, their voices found each other and met their match. The risks were great as Prometheus foretold, but Mother Nature knew where to find trust and tolerance to add to the mix. And the rest, dear reader is His-and-Her-story…