“What is Seasonal?”

Seasonal refers to what the land produces at any given time of year according to the local environment and the availability of water, sunshine, and soil nutrients. Typically, the farm season begins with asparagus and ends with pumpkins. Each vegetable or fruit is produced in profusions but for a relatively short period of time. Eating seasonally entails eating what is available when it is available locally, and canning or freezing what we can’t eat fresh for the upcoming winter months.

Did you take note of that last sentence? For the past few years I have been trying to “put up” my food for winter. Each year I get a little better at it, meaning I actually “can” something I want to eat later. My set backs to canning have been rotten food, greed, lack of time, other priorities, starting to late in the season and the inability to read a recipe! Even the ones I write, oh my.

The Setbacks

I can elaborate a little for you on some of those set backs; it could be useful for both of us. The thing about rotten food is I always try to can like my mom did. She used to go to the farms in Northern Cal where we lived and come home with a couple of cases of tomatoes or peaches or apples. Then she would go next door and come back with an Auntie or a neighbor and a handful of cousins and neighbor kids. Combined with her own 3 daughters that would make very short work of three cases of Tomatoes. With all the food cleaned and cut, she would stop to make us kids and my Pop our dinner and then we’d all get hustled off to bed. My mom would make a pot of coffee and stay up all night long doing the rest of the work herself. You could hear the pressure cooker hissing and her tuning in her favorite country music station and the beautiful sweet smells of blackberry jam and every so often as you would drift into sleep you would stumble back into consciousness to hear the soft Pop! of another jar sealing. Oh how romantic and nostalgic I just painted this warm loving memory of Mom putting up food.

Guess what? I am kid less. I don’t drink coffee. One of my sisters lives in California and the other lives in Arkansas. The only time I was a Night Owl was in Aspen in the Eighties and believe me I wasn’t thinking about Peach Jam at 3 in the morning…So my first attempts at buying a case or two of fruit each time I felt the urge to can have turned into Compost. Good intentions aside, 30 pounds of peaches go south fast. I must tell you how I have fretted and worried about getting my beautiful peaches packed into jars tomorrow, tomorrow, even as the mold started growing and the fruit flies become a dark cloud and the smell of vinegar started wafting from the corner they were dying in.

Fretting doesn’t stop the natural process of decomposition though, so here is what I have learned from a few attempts at canning big batches of ripening fruit. Don’t try to put up big batches. Just do 3 or 4 pounds at a time whenever you have a window of opportunity and soon you will see pretty little rows of jarred peaches, raspberries, strawberries, plums and apples start filling up your basement shelves. The only drawback to canning this way is you never seem to have enough surplus to give those pretty little jars away as gifts. Oh well, it does make the Close Circle of Friends and Family knit even tighter in it’s own special, new way!

The Greed Problem

The “Greed” problem for me is that although I run a small, organic produce company in Paonia, chances are very good that if someone calls me up wanting to purchase that extra 10 pounds of Amish Paste Tomatoes I set aside for myself, I always need the money so I usually always sell my stash, just like that, all summer long.  I am sure this won’t be a problem for any of you, as your intentions will be to can food for your family and not to see how much money you can make in 4 months of summer.

Lack of time, Other Priorities

Lack of time and other priorities, well I know we will all share those realities. All I can say in encouragement is, there is nothing quite like opening up a jar of Blackberry Syrup to pour over your Buckwheat pancakes in January with snow on the ground and cabin fever in the house. Sunshine in a jar… That’s what you get when you make the time to can. You can taste, smell and see the sunshine warming that little blackberry just as if you were at the Austin’s Paonia based Fruit farm, picking that fruit yourself the past July, (and maybe you were, I was!) Although as an aside, the ones that Tony and her grandchildren pick that I purchased from them, tasted just as good as the ones I picked myself.

Aside from the above vision of encouragement, there is something immensely more practical that I can give you to beat Father Time and Mother Too Busy. It is this little tip I learned from the efficient Farmer Moms I hang out with in Paonia. Prep your soft fruit and tomatoes and put them in plastic bags and freeze them for a canning session later when you have more time. I scrub, de-stone and split my peaches in half and throw them into a gallon sized plastic zip lock. I wash and core my tomatoes and make a big X with a paring knife on their bottoms. I throw all the tomatoes in a gallon zip lock for another more industrious day to come. The x makes the tomato easy to peel when you run warm water over them while they are still frozen. That is a very handy tomato tip, to join  many other useful tips that I have learned from Monica Wiitanen of Small Potatoes Farm of Paonia, such as only hunt squash bugs at night.
I freeze local blackberries, strawberries and raspberries that are sun and vine-ripened for jam making when the snow flies. Sorry readers, I just told you a little white lie. Although I always think I have enough of those frozen berries in my larder, somehow that jam idea hasn’t materialized for me yet. They usually get eaten as fast as I can freeze them!

Another favorite timesaver I use is to cook my fruit in the crock-pot over night. I love doing applesauce like this. The house smells so good in the morning. I eat a warm bowl for breakfast while my water-canning bath comes to a boil on my stovetop.  I dunk my jars and lids in the boiling water bath for a few minute to sterilize them, fill them with the hot applesauce, put on their rings and lids, put them back in the boiling water bath, set my timer for 20 minutes, sit down to my emails and my tea and then I smirk…How hard was that? Not!

Starting to late in the Season

One of my other foibles is starting to late in the season. I take the time to relax as my work starts slowing down for me. I sleep in, take long naps and I get in a few hikes up on Kebler Pass to watch the trees change. I start to feel rejuvenated from a pedicure and a shopping trip or two and I finally put down my Romance Novel. I start getting excited to Can and then, the first freeze happens. Usually more often then not, it is just the nudge I need from Mother Nature to spend a few days canning and drying whatever is left in the fields or rotting in my fridge before the big freeze comes. Another reason to can in small batches as the summer moves along!

Recipe Reading

I never have followed direction well, just ask my Dad…What I have learned from “lots” of experience in this department is, keep it simple. I get a big kick out of rummaging around for old canning cookbooks at garage sales and used bookstores, but there is something to say for the old “tried and true.” When I do try out a new recipe, I try to take notes and usually do a small batch to test it.

The other reason I have a hard time with recipe following is that all the recipes I have come across use a lot of white sugar. Icky! I don’t want white sugar in my body. So I spend some time converting stock recipes with alternative sweeteners. I use apple or grape juice a lot and let it cook down to further concentrate the fruits natural sweetness. Sometimes I use honey, though not always, as personally I tend to get heartburn when I combine cooked fruit and honey. I will use Succanet sometimes if I need a sugar taste or property in something. Succanet is an acronym for sugar-cane-natural. It is in plain speak, dried sugar cane. It has a lower glycemic reaction in your body, with less propensity toward sugar cravings, it doesn’t’ cause cavities, but it is sugar, and it cooks and tastes like sugar, well, brown sugar that is. One of the advantages of canning in season and using local fruit that has been allowed to vine or tree ripen is that it will need less sugar. When Nature is allowed to ripen fruit it is much sweeter than something that was picked on the West Coast meant for long storage and long travel time.

When I try to talk the old-timers out of using so much sugar in their jams and jellies, they always give me the same reply. “Sugar helps to set the Jelly”. Yes it is true, most recipes require a high ratio of sugar to fruit, usually up to 85% white sugar.  I would rather have slightly runny jelly than Diabetes and Blood Sugar spikes. I don’t have to hide my runny peach jam from my neighbors anymore though because I just discovered a new thickening agent at my local Health Food store called “ Pomona’s Universal Pectin” It was designed to jell with any amount of Sugar. Hallelujah! It is made from citrus peel and it works great. So there you go… Oh, I just heard a Pop! from my kitchen. I just canned 7 little half-pints of Alberta peaches while I was writing this story for you. Ha! I am so proud of me and Hello Old Man Winter, I am not so bothered by you now.

So going back to my first paragraph, Eating Seasonal in the Winter can mean eating a lot of beans and kale, but oh how much better those beans and kale are when combined with a bag of frozen sweet corn, rehydrated dried chilies and a jar of home canned heirloom tomatoes.

Crock-Pot Apple Butter

5 pounds ( about 10 apples)of mixed variety apples
1 cup succanet
1 cup apple juice or cider
1-1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
tiny pinch of salt

Use organic fruit if possible. Leave the peel on and take out seeds and core. Chop into med-sized chunks. Spray inside of cooker with a little olive oil or grapeseed spray. As you put the apples in your crock-pot throw a little of the succanet in with each layer. Add spices and cider or juice. Cover and cook on low for 10-12 hours overnight.

In the morning, stir, remove the lid and let apples cook on low uncovered for 2-6 more hours. When most of liquid is cooked out and apples are very soft use a hand held immersion blender and puree apples until very smooth. Keep hot until your jars are sterilized and ready for canning.

Fill a large flat-bottomed pot with water to the level that it will cover your canning jars by an inch or two. When water boils, submerge canning jars for a few minutes. Pull out with canning tongs and fill immediately with apple butter. It helps to have a wide mouth funnel for this task. Use a butter knife to slide down into jars and pop any air pockets. Wipe off any residue that may be on the rim of jar after filling. Leave about 3/4 of an inch from the top. Seal with a new lid and a ring. When you have all your jars sealed lower them into boiling water with your canning tongs. Let stay submerged in boiling water for 15 minutes. Take out with canning tongs and let sit on a clean counter until cool. During this process you should hear lids popping as they seal and visually making an indentation in the middle of each lid. Label and gift. If you have any that didn’t seal, they will last a couple weeks in your fridge for you and your family.

Are you a certifiable “veg head” looking for new recipes and techniques to uplevel your skills as a home chef? Are you trying to cook seasonally and locally, but finding yourself overwhelmed by all of the possibilities? Are you having trouble finding your way around your own kitchen? Hint: It’s that room with the oven in it.

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, or if you’re just looking for a rip-roaring and entertaining way to spend a Saturday evening, then the next class in our Cooking Class series is definitely for you!

Cook With Dava

Dava’s headed down to a Deborah Madison workshop where she’ll pick up new tips, recipes and techniques from the world renown vegetarian cuisine expert. Then, on November 17th, she’ll share the veggie love with you in a workshop as part of our Fresh & Wyld Fall S.O.U.L. Cooking Class series!

Learn how to cook delicious and healthy vegetarian cuisine that is Seasonal, Organic, Unprocessed and Local in a small and intimate class in the Farmhouse kitchen. Then, invite your friends and family over for dinner to share your success! Dinner is open to the general public, so even if you’re not taking the class (and don’t know anyone who is), you are more than welcome to join us for a beautiful three course meal in the Farmhouse Dining Room at 7pm.

Stay Over?

We still have rooms available on Saturday night, so consider making it an all day escape: a little learning, a beautiful little dining experience, and a LOT of fun!

Who? Beginners & Experts Welcome!
What? Vegetarian Cooking Class
Where? The Fresh & Wyld Farmhouse: 1978 Harding Rd. Paonia, CO 81428
When? Saturday, November 17th: Class begins at 4pm. Dinner at 7pm
How Much?

• Workshop= $25
• Workshop + Dinner= $40
•  Dinner= $25
• Workshop for 2 + Dinner for 2 + A Room At The Inn + A Farm-To-Table Breakfast for 2 on Sunday=  Just $165! Woo hoo!
  

This week, we got our hands on a compelling read called The Intention Experiment. It got us thinking about the power of intention – a purposeful plan to perform an action, which will lead to a desired outcome, and what we should be doing to wield this, very real, and very potent ability. There’s no doubt in our minds that our thoughts directly affect the material world that surrounds us, especially after coming across the log of empirical data contained within the pages of that book.

Even though we’re barely into the first chapter, we ran into a ton of evidence that changed our view of intention setting, and brought it down to earth a bit more. The experiments showed how we directly affect the behaviors of both animals and inanimate objects alike. Needless to say, they results of these experiments were incredibly compelling.

The research shows that humans can directly effect the outcome of randomly generated images and rolls of the dice. Children were shown to move metal keys hanging from a wire attached to a ceiling from 3-10′ away, by directing their consciousness. Beyond that, they could generate up to 10 volts (the highest the scale went) in order to move the objects.

And we humans aren’t the only ones using our minds to get what we want. Baby chicks were introduced to a robotic “mother” who was programmed to randomly make rounds in her adjoining pen. The baby chicks influenced the machine to come toward their cage three times as she would have if she were on her random track. The study, like most of the studies reported in the book, was published in a peer reviewed journal and have been replicated and validated by labs around the world.

This sparked a conversation within the ranks of the Fresh & Wyld crew about the direction we should point our mutual intentions in order to move our beautiful B&B/Farm/CSA Program/Restaurant into the future. It was almost unanimous. We’ve got a lot on our table already, and now it’s time to align the stuff that’s filling up our plates. We want to do everything better, have more fun while doing it, and share our vision and message with everyone we possibly can.

We intend on emanating as a center of wellness and joy, a place you can go to really let go, a place that rests outside of the norm, while still remaining comfortable and welcoming to everyone who pulls up the driveway. We want to feed your desire for decadence, while remaining sustainable and supportive of our loving community of growers, artists, and musicians. We have a dream of keeping the doors to our organic B&B open, pillows fluffed, and the CSA boxes rolling your way without compromising our values, or leaving our community in the dust. Those are our best intentions, and we vow to take the steps to nurture those intentions through thick and thin.

Now that we’ve shared our intentions with you, and we’re feeling all open and vulnerable, we’d love to hear your intentions… What will you focus your energy on for the rest of the year?

It was a rainy, sleety, snowy, windy kind of day. The greens, reds, browns of the greens were stunning in the dull grey light of the day. I hauled in 10 lbs of wonderful greens and almost as much spinach. The Kale  – like I said  – had been enjoyed by another.  It was muddy and wet and beautiful. I was grateful for all the garden gave to us and thankful this would be the last time I would be getting muddy, wet, and cold harvesting anything for a while. Plus the mountains were getting whiter by the minute.  Needless to day the single digits low never came and the greens are growing still. I think the spinach has had it though. Its been snowing the past three days and the greens seem to be loving it.  Think I’ll be harvesting them again in a couple of days. Hopefully on a crisp clear sunfilled day.

I’ve also was able to get one last compost pile built and innoculated with the Biodynamics Preps a couple of days ago. Went out today while the snow was falling and the cold cut through  my light fleece and stuck my hand into the pile. Just 6″ in it was hot and cooking. Can’t wait till the snow melts off of it in March and the sun starts to warm it and dry it and we get to dig into its blessings and spread them on the beds prior to seeding. That will be a good day.

The Chantung purple garlic I planted a few weeks ago poked up through the ground and was sticking bravely up above the mulch 3-4″.  All the other varieties kept their heads low and covered.

We have only a few beds to fork, amend, and cover. The hoses are rolled up and stashed for the winter in the old chicken coop. The irrigation system is drained. The lawn is covered with leaves – perhaps I could get in one more compost pile….. The Great horn Owls arrived back a few days ago. They nest in a Blue Spruce next to the Farmhouse.

So Winter is here and the greens still grow. The compost is cooking under  its blanket of hay. The garlic cloves break their dormancy and begin to swell and grow. The chickens scratch the still warm ground for bugs. The green tomatoes in the basement ripen into beautiful fruit of all colors. The light fades early. Tonight snow is falling in the moutains and I am digging out my ski equipment dreaming of floating through powder. Its a beautiful abundant life we have on this small farm. We are blessed indeed. Thank all of you for helping us do what we are doing. Thank you.

Here is the way I am seeing it. I just spent 10 hours on a great meal, which is a little exorbitant and the only way I can rationalize being tied down to the stove that long is the payback of knowing if I make enough leftovers I may not have to do any serious pot-welding for at least a week after the big Holiday. Here’s to excess! May it pay off grandly for you in the week to come.

Re-Fixin’s

Here are some ideas for you. No recipes, just ideas. You will have to hum a few bars and guess at the rest. I am already starting my week off from cooking!

Turkey, Brie, Cheddar or Blue Cheese and Cranberry Quesadillas

Pan-fried Stuffing w/ Poached Eggs & Bacon

Turkey, Sweet Potato & Green Bean Curry

Potato Cakes w/ Smoked Salmon and Chevre

Cranberry, Turkey, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich

Pasta w/ Turkey, Gravy, Braised Greens, Sun-dried Tomatoes, Parmesan and Garlic

Turkey Chili & Cornbread

Cobb Salad w/ Turkey, Bacon, Hard Boiled Egg and Avocado

Turkey Bone Broth w/ Pumpkin, Wild Rice and Kale

Cream of Mashed Potato & Leek Soup

All right, do you get the idea? Bon Appetit!

“People say to me, ‘wow, summer must be really busy for you guys,’” said the farmer,as he climbed back behind the wheel. “But in the summer, there’s a rhythm. You know what each day is for. This time of year, running around like a madman getting things ready–Spring, now this is crazy.”

And it is. For those of us mad enough to yoke our working lives to the turbulent and sometimes vengeful tides of the Colorado seasons, this time of year is for doing, basically, what the plants outside are doing too. We wake up from endless winter, stretch our legs, gather sap and strength for the bonanza to come in the summer months ahead. We remember where everything is, where we left it to lie last fall as we hurried to be done, and to rest. We remember how a shovel works.

Here on the farm we have been prepping beds, running the rototiller through the hardpan clay and ginning up the dirt with a mix of manure and organic fertilizer that we hope will prove its worth come summer harvest. Like the surrounding landscape, we started slow, pulling a few greens from the hoop-house once a week.  But before long the rest of what we’ve put in will start to show: more greens, of course, and peas. Beets, carrots, turnips, onions, raab chard and kale.

Until then we continue to run around like headless chickens, thinning and transplanting and prepping and hoping that, someday soon, a rhythm will set in. Then again, in a state where the weather changes every 10 minutes, will the rhythm ever come? I’m not holding my breath.

With the start up of Friday night dinners we have gotten the chance to start playing and cooking with springs early offerings. Not only do the surrounding farms have an abundance of sweet tender vegetables, our very own garden is pumping out some delicious salad greens.

Of all the greens so far- spinach is the winner. There is enough to go around for everyone- and then once more. We have incorporated in soups, quiches, salads and tamale pies. It’s too early in the season to start getting tired of such a nutrient rich leaf… and so we continue to rack our brains for spinach recipes. One in particular that I have become fond of is Spanakopita. When mentioning the dish to my mother the other day, she shuddered across the phone line. “Spanakopita? For forty? That sounds intensive and a bit awful..” My thoughts exactly, before I got a down a nice system and got over the fear of working with that fickle phyllo dough. The filling is easy and delicious- don’t let that flaky dough throw you off. Below, I will post a recipe for the filling. Now, my advice to you, is get everything set up. Create a station for yourself. Melt your butter with a pastry brush ready beside it, lay out the phyllo and cover with a damp rag (use throughout the whole process to keep the dough from getting brittle and impossible to work with), and have your filling ready to go. The following recipe is just a basic spinach filling- as summer goes on, add fun herbs popping up everywhere, incorporate green onions, or add a crunch with a handful or walnuts or pine nuts- above all, be glad spinach season is upon us… because that means berries and peaches aren’t too far behind!

Spanakopita

1 package      Phyllo dough

8 cups             Spinach Leaves

1 tsp                 dried oregano

1/2 cup           butter, melted

1/3 cup           cheese (I chose Avalanche Chevre)

1/4 cup            feta, crumbled

1 each               egg

5 Tbsp              heavy cream

1 clove            garlic, finely chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Start by heating a skillet or large pan with olive oil (just to coat the bottom). Once the oil is heated through add chopped garlic and stir until just golden brown.

Add all of the spinach and stir to incorporate garlic. Add oregano, salt and pepper to spinach. Stir until spinach is just cooked (wilted) and remove from heat.

Add the egg, cream, and cheese to the spinach mixture and stir until fully incorporated. On a half sheet tray (or casserole dish) layer three pieces of dough, while brushing each layer with the melted butter, to create the bottom crust of the Spanakopita. Place the filling evenly across the first layers of phyllo dough and repeat first step by placing three more pieces (butter in between) on top.

Brush the top layer with remaining butter and add crumbled feta on top. Place in the oven for about 15 minutes or until top is gold brown.

Cut into triangles and serve while hot!

If I told you that a bunch of recovering drug and alcohol-addicts had spent the last two weeks occupying our farmhouse, you’d probably picture a driveway littered with broken bottles, cigarette burns on the upholstered chairs, perhaps a syringe or two rolling about on the linoleum floor, abandoned after a missed toss into the wastebasket.

You wouldn’t expect to see a freshly-primed fence, a few just-planted strawberry beds, or a mowed, manicured lawn with a newly built path snaking through it. You wouldn’t expect to see young leeks and onions in the ground, or well-thinned spinach and broccoli raab growing. Probably most surprising on your walk across the grounds would be the quarter-acre of just-tilled land in the back pasture, shaped into fertilized, composted planting beds.

And yet, as I sit here typing from my post at the farmhouse window, I look out and see all of this. This past weekend marked the close of the inaugural “Fresh and Wyld Recovery” program, a two week intensive rehabilitation session that brought seven recovering addicts over from the Roaring Fork Valley for a fortnight of 12-step study, garden work, reflection and good food. And rather than indulge their old habits (aside from nicotine and coffee, of course), the participants gave us their labor for two weeks, helping to complete several projects that would have otherwise taken hundreds of paid man-hours to finish. They weren’t always enthusiastic–indeed, I’ve never seen a crew so eager for a cigarette and water break–but however slow and intermittent their labor may have been, the fact remains that they paid to come work for us.

As someone who is paid–however modestly–to do the daily work that comes with maintaing a farm, it has always fascinated me that this very work is often perscribed as therapy to people who are struggling. Fighting depression? Build a fence. Recovering alcoholic? Plant some flowers. Three years for manslaughter? Trellis a row of tomatoes. What’s particularly ironic is that a long bout of farmwork so often sends me scurrying to the yellow pages in search of therapy–a chiropractor, a masseuse, anyone to get this kink out of my spine.

What is it that farmwork–on its face repetitious and tiring, often dirty–can give to those who are sad, jilted, angry and abused? Obviously it never hurts to be outside, to get a bit of exercise and wind in your face. But it seems to me that the most valuable commodity that farmwork provides–indeed perhaps the very base of its popularity as a form of new-age therapy–is a basic sense of usefulness.

As humans, most of us will do most anything to be useful. We’ll start families, farms, and other money-and-time-suckers, all of which limit our freedom and make us accountable to hordes of other people. Tell us we’re useless–that, in modern parlance, “our services are no longer needed,” and very soon we’ll be driven to the same alcohol, drugs, and other junk that the recovering addicts were trying to purge from their systems when they rolled in two weeks ago.

To a sense of uselessness, farming provides a nice antidote. “You built this fence,” it tells you at the end of a long day. “You weeded these peas, you harvested this lettuce, you tilled this field.” If there were ever any doubt that humans are simple creatures, there is to me no proof more convincing than this fact: at the end of many days, these words are all we need.

The group arrived weary, and wary of what was to come in the packed days ahead of them. Their apprehension and fears reflected our own. When they got here, on a Sunday night, they seemed a bit resistant, and as luck would have it I was in charge of their first meal. It had been a long weekend for us in the kitchen with a Friday Night Dinner, Farmer Appreciation Dinner, and two back-to-back Sunday brunches, and to be honest, I wanted nothing to do with the kitchen that night. So I did what most tired cooks do: I reheated left overs. And delicious leftovers they were. We had tri-tip from Saturday, mashed potatoes from Friday, braised greens from Sunday, and apple crisp with gingered whipped cream from Friday as well. Sitting down with the group, ready to make forced small talk and take a quick nap with my eyes open, I watched as these tired and self-abused individuals plunged into their plates and barely looked up from start to finish. They went back for seconds and thirds, and their cheek began to regain some color. People started talking, and eating, and eating some more. For me, these were just leftovers from the weekend meals. For them, this was some of the most nutritious stuff their bodies had received in a long time.

The next two weeks brought more of the same. Appetites grew. The group started asking questions about cooking methods, organic products, and different types of grains and how they could be used. They also worked in the garden in addition to painting murals, making journals, and attending group therapy sessions. For many, the concept of planting, growing, harvesting, and cooking their own food was not an attainable or realistic one. As a cook, it was heart-warming to watch malnourished individuals harvest their own greens and then see them prepared. For me, it was a firm reminder of why I do what I do. By the end of the week, it was plain to see that participants’ moods had been lifted from their previous state by a simple change in their diet.

I have always been fairly in tune with my body and how food affects it, although I may tune out those effects from time to time. For the past five years in particular I have been conscious of using organic and local products, steering away from refined sugars, and packing my meals full of delicious and complex grains. I also tend to surround myself with people who do the same. For me, to see the effect of this food on individuals who have not been as vigilant as me (or have hardly been feeding themselves!) opened my eyes. Eating this way helped them regain their energy, cured depression, and got them excited about cooking at home on their own.

Having The Right Door program was just as therapeutic for me as it was for the participants. Although some days were stressful and others downright tiring, feeding a different demographic was good for my soul. To see people appreciate your food the way these people did–the smiles, the “thank yous”, and above all the physical and mental change­–brings me back to the heart of cooking: to nourish and love our bodies.