Part 1 of 3: The wisdom of Food

Finding Our Way Back to the Seasons

Cooking over the last year has been an evolution for me.

Tonight, as I moved around the kitchen preparing meals for the next few days, I found myself reflecting on just how much my relationship with food has changed.

There was a time when cooking was simply something we did. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, repeat. A necessary part of everyday life. Something to check off the list between all the other things that needed tending to.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted.

Food began to feel like a living relationship. I don’t quite know how else to explain it, except that I have begun to experience plants and other food sources as something that speak to me, something that moves through me.

I find myself paying attention in ways I never did before. Not just to what I’m eating, but to where it comes from, when it grows, how it tastes, and what it offers us in the season we’re living through.

And lately, I’ve been noticing just how much more I can taste.

Since beginning my Candida cleanse, my taste buds seem to have awakened. Flavors are more pronounced. Foods I once passed over now invite me to slow down and really experience them.

Tonight, it was the mint growing in our garden.

I harvested a handful, knowing she was well past her sweetest, most tender stage. When I tasted a leaf, I could tell something had changed. The familiar sweetness of mint had faded, replaced by a sharp, pungent flavor. Her energy, in a way, had moved elsewhere. The flowers that once held her vitality had withered at the ends of her stems, and the leaves no longer offered the same experience.

I stood there with that mint in my hand, thinking about how far removed we have become from the natural rhythms of our food.

We’ve forgotten how to notice.

The Wisdom of the Seasons

We have grown accustomed to walking into a grocery store and finding almost anything we want, at almost any time of year. Peaches in winter. Blueberries in December. Produce traveling across the world so that our cravings can be satisfied regardless of the season.

And while there is a certain convenience in that, I find myself grieving what we may have lost along the way.

I’ve begun to appreciate seasonal food in a way that feels almost sacred.

Right now, the peaches are divine. The grapes are sweet and abundant. But each week, I notice the shelves changing. The selection dwindles, the flavors shift, and I know the season is beginning to turn.

There is something bittersweet about that ending. I want to savor every last peach, to remember the sweetness of a grape at the height of its season.

And then, just as naturally, excitement begins to rise for what comes next. The oranges. The pomegranates. The foods that will meet us as the days grow colder and the light begins to change.

What if this is part of the gift?

I believe that Pachamama, God, Spirit, or whatever name you give to the unnamable, has offered us an incredible way to remain connected to the world around us. The changing seasons bring changing foods. Each has its own character, its own flavors, its own gifts to offer.

Perhaps the foods growing around us are not separate from the season at all. Perhaps they are one of the ways we are invited to experience it.

The sweetness of a summer berry. The grounding nourishment of autumn’s harvest. The bright, vibrant citrus that arrives in the colder months.

When we begin to pay attention, food becomes more than something that fills our stomachs. It becomes a way of connecting with the land, with our bodies, and with the natural cycles of life.

And I wonder what might happen if we began to live a little closer to those rhythms again.

We’ve become so accustomed to having everything at our fingertips that perhaps we’ve forgotten the beauty of waiting, of anticipating, of allowing something to arrive in its own time.

What might change if we began to see food not simply as something to consume, but as a relationship to nurture?

I’ve been sitting with that question, and it has led me somewhere I never quite expected.

Back to my kitchen. Back to my garden. And back to a vision I received by a fire on the fall equinox.

I’ll share that story with you tomorrow.

In Peace, Love and Service,

Rebecca