Feeding ourselves
I lay out a case for why you should become your own favourite chef.
For true and lasting change to your health and vitality, you need to know how to cook. It’s the slightly boring, possibly triggering suggestion that we all should at least consider.
This is not about the flashy cooking. Instead, it’s more about pairing our very real, daily needs for healthful sustenance with just enough technique, knowledge of flavour combinations and thoughtful preparation to consistently eat well.
I’m talking about basic, rugged, healthy food cooked in your kitchen. Meals that give the most with the least are my personal favourite. I’ve had the privilege of watching my husband Tom cook, who is a chef and restaurant owner by profession, for 10+ years. By sheer closeness of contact I have miraculously absorbed enough to realise that we don’t need to be professionals to cook well and support our health. Tamar Adler summarises this idea beautifully in her book The Everlasting Meal, when she says that “cooking is both simpler and more necessary than we imagine.”
It’s necessary because cooking, or at least committing to the process of learning to cook, hones your body’s intuition of what foods are nourishing and healthful and what may be doing more harm than good. It also allows you to build consistency into life, as you begin to more effortlessly rely on yourself for nourishment.
Also, the process! Golden State is all about process and cooking is no exception. The magic happens when we allow ourselves to be someone who is simply learning to cook and isn’t aspiring to a professional level. Eventually, after small wins and the building of knowledge, we move through the awkward phase into something more comfortable. This can be relevant for the person who feels like an absolute amateur in the kitchen, and also for those of us who are eager to change what we cook or the way we cook it. When it comes down to it though, most of the time we all want to eat food that makes us feel energised and well - and improving our cooking is the path to get us there.
I believe we benefit so much when we learn the following: How to start when we don’t feel like cooking, how to get ingredients to topple into one another beautifully and how to build a healthy meal when there’s little to work with.
And now - the practical. If enough of you are interested, once a month I’ll pull apart meals and components to the food that we cook at home. Natural, whole, single ingredient foods that are pared together well. Elements of a healthy kitchen (our version of it) that are simple and designed to be played with, reinterpreted and built upon. Ultra simple food that still feels satisfying!
If I’m convincing enough, my husband, Tom, will feature too. Please like or comment at the bottom of this letter so I can get a reading on if a monthly piece on simple food preparations and healthy kitchen content would be useful.
As always, we’re aiming for joy, ease and curiosity. These are my own personal baselines for health on a daily basis. Keep establishing, practising and noticing and I’ll see you back here next week.
Sophie’s Marketplace
A few bits and pieces I’m loving right now, maybe you will too.
The Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. No one inspires thoughtful action in the kitchen quite like Tamar Adler. She brings a bright, poetic intellect to the art of home cooking. You don’t have to read the book back to front, you can pick a chapter that intrigues you and read it before skipping somewhere else. The creative’s culinary guide to making the most of what you have on hand.
Perfect purple tee. I’m obsessed with the brand Flore Flore, stocked at my best friend’s store Muse Boutique. The cotton is thick, the cut is very flattering and this purple version is so fun for summer.