A cooking class with Mee isn’t just how to prepare the food but why, and this past Thursday I was invited to cook for a group of women.  As you all know my life is about finding out what I don’t know and learning it.  Cooking for groups of people other than friends and family is something I’m learning to do, so when opportunities appear I’m sure to take them. I’d first met Judy the host of the party and class through a dear friend of mine, her husband is a gastroenterologist and a year ago we’d spent one evening at a cocktail party chatting non stop about the digestive track and of course my favorite subject POOP!  Yep, I’m down right obsessed as we all should be with what our poop is looking like, how it comes out and of course how often.  I chatted Judy’s husband up about my health and diet, which I had changed to an ANCESTRAL path – one with NOTHING fake in it and full of known foods that support the immune system.  He told me that what I was doing was great and it’d be wonderful if more folks would do the same, one to prevent illness and two to assist in their healing processes.  He said the problem is that most folks DON’T WANNA CHANGE” and therefore want to take a pill or have an operation so that they can keep eating their fake foods. I learned a lot from him that night and mainly I walked away feeling good about my path and my poop – ’cause according to the poop doctors I got gorgeous movements happening & good looking Pooh is a sure sign that all is well in ones body. What does a gorgeous movement look like you ask?  Long, connected, round, log like, brown not black or light yellow and comes out with ease – at least once a day. OK, back to the cooking class…Judy attended my USN cooking class I taught in February and wanted to find a way to spread the news about the Noble Food Makeover & encourage her friends to shift their relationships with food.  Her close friend is moving away and this was a perfect opportunity to introduce meals that heal, as she is open to change. The kitchen quickly filled up with amazing women, highly educated and interested in what and how to support their bodies in simple ways.  You see the food I cook is simple, as it should be so that our bodies are not burdened with the complication of processed foods with additives that we can’t pronounce and the body can’t identify.  I was completely blown away by Judy’s kitchen – not only the physical beauty but what she filled her pantry and fridge with – she has shifted and is doing it, cooking whole ancestral foods!  She had everything I needed, this is a grand compliment.

I’d struggled to connect to folks here in Nashville my first year, those days feel far away as I am totally in awe of how many wonderful people I am connecting with and Judy’s dinner party left me glowing with the level of fabulous gals that inhabit this fine city.

As I’ve written before about my life that I have lived in a broad range of social classes, giving me a larger perspective on life and how we navigate it I am still moving between the worlds.  Cooking for the private classes located in close proximity to the freshest whole foods available in the city to teaching in what is known as the cities food desert I am able to once again grasp a complete picture of just what is going on with our food relationships.  You see there may be neighborhood differences, economic gaps, color and ethnic demographics; what spins me is that we all have a common thread, we want to feel well, we want to prepare food that has purpose and can support our lives, we also want to take better care of our families and very few of us have any idea what foods heal and support us.

Of course we don’t know what to eat since everything is first approached from a weight loss point of view – Calories, sugar & fat. Food should have very little to do with vanity and everything to do with health and the ability to feel well enough to participate in our lives. What we should be asking is WHAT’S IN IT – and if it’s hard to read or pronounce how can our bodies identify it? We are all coming back to the table, an old school table that is.

I totally understand the historical road that led us away from the family garden and a functioning kitchen. In the 1950’s processed food was introduced and milk formula was available to infants – nursing your baby was seen as low class. When I first told my mother in law of my pregnancy she said “I do hope you get that baby some nice formula”, I told her I was going to breastfeed, you would have thought I told her I cleaned toilets at the Winn Dixie for a living, she explained to me that in her day nice women of a certain class did not nurse their children. Processed foods gradually found their way to the table, they were expensive and seen as luxury items to the wealthy and “treats” to the middle; poor folks ate real food from their gardens. By the 1970’s the great family divide was on and divorce became a common part of our culture, women went to work and cooking was about cheap and quick.  Being a child of this exact era I understand what happened, I watched as more and more families bought processed pre- cooked foods – however in the 80’s they were still too expensive for our family so my momma cooked basic foods and canned veggies.  By the 1990’s processed food prices went down, junk food went down and soda became cheaper than water.  The kids that were raised by working mommas in the 80’s or mommas who cooked convenience foods are now women and mommas themselves – they NEVER learned to cook, as there was no teacher.  Home economics classes are also a thing of the past no longer available as again we have seen spending time in our kitchens as wasteful.  I cannot tell you how many stay at home momma’s I know and have met that don’t cook complete meals where NOTHING comes from a package. I too had bought into this thinking and cooking, preparing food that was half prepared by a factory somewhere, but with the end of cheap oil, a shattered economy and preventative illnesses on the rise we must take our kitchens back. Saturday I met up with Pastor Fuzz and a handful of gals from Corinthian Baptist Church and a woman Amy, that I met at the Integrative Life Center – she was one of the people that I wrote about that came towards me with their arms out wanting to participate. Well she did and the 7 of us sorted through boxes of donated items, cleaning out the kitchen and riding it of FAKE foods.  There was a moment where the project felt way to big and way impossible, one of the women questioned it all and asked just who I thought was going to really do this? She asked, “Are you going to get up every Sunday and cook for these people here?”  I then explained that “It might be the 5 of us that shows up every week, that it may be tough but if we can do it we’ll be a mirror for the rest of the congregation and the entire city, so all we gotta do is pull it all up close to our face and focus on one task at a time – today’s task is cleaning up this kitchen and getting it functional enough so that I can teach tomorrow.” Sunday morning I entered the church plugged in my hot plate (we don’t have a working stove yet) ready to teach 21 kids how to make coconut Oatmeal w/kombu seaweed (click for recipe). There was a full film crew making a documentary on the food and health crisis, they are working with Restoring Nashville and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The cooking class went to so well, the kids loved it and ate every drop – do you know that not one of them had eaten oatmeal not poured from an instant envelope, even Pastor Fuzz said he’d not eaten oatmeal in it’s whole form but once since his childhood. We didn’t have enough bowls so we used coffee cups and of course we were way short on spoons so we used forks and as soon as one child was done we washed their cup and utensil for the next.  We’ve only got a few glasses but I’m sure the universe will provide and more folks will continue to donate kitchen items, I just keep thinking if we build it and do this it will all come.

I had some moments on Sunday, listening to the choir sing brings up such amazing feelings of gratitude for being in their presence and then I was moved to tears as one of the little girls 8 years old read a letter she wrote to Michelle Obama for the film crew, she invited Mrs. Obama to be a guest at Corinthian Baptist church so that she could share The Noble Food Makeover.. My heart filled with joy and pride, I remembered climbing the stairs of the Basilica of Guadalupe just 2 years ago, Senora Gina holding my hand, each step a struggle.  I bowed down before the Tilma and asked for a miracle – to get well.  I pledged my word to do God’s work; I had no idea what that work would be and here I am teaching about real soul food, that comes from the earth and as I like to believe God.