Fire is transformation. It transforms raw ingredients into nourishment. It transforms our energy stored in our bodies into the healing work of community. When we learn to work with fire—in the kitchen, in our cells, and in nature—we honor the cycles of life that sustain us. Fire, when tended with care and awareness, becomes a tool for connection: to ourselves, to each other, and to the living world.
Our path forward is about returning to practices that renew rather than deplete. This means nourishing ourselves with whole foods that come from the soil and the seas, moving our bodies with intention, and spending time outside in all seasons. This means practices of peace, acceptance, healthy exercise, loving service, and deep connection with our communities and all the plants and animals we share our home with. It's not some magic pill. It's just how we protect the tree of life—and the practices are as old as the hills. We just need to examine our roots.
Cooking & Culinary Arts
Only a thin cellular membrane separates what's inside us from what's outside us. Nowhere is this more clear than in our gut. We become what we eat, and therefore we can learn to eat from Nature in pure and simple forms, staying close to the soil and the seas and learning how to cook. This nourishes our health.
Education: Studied Culinary Arts @ Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo Community Kitchens - Nourishing Ourselves
Cooking Class Facilitator for VIU Students
Sharing culinary knowledge
Healing food, healing community
Nourish Nanaimo Cookbook
Cookbook Co-Author
Contributed philosophy and approach, nutrition, plant families, cooking skills, and recipes to this community cookbook celebrating local, nourishing food.
Nourish Nanaimo: Healing Food, Healing Community
Spring Celebration: Foraged Morels & Nettles Soup
A delicious spring meal celebrating our local ecology, farms and food. We foraged morels and nettles and prepared them with thinly sliced fennel, onion and hearty chunks of potato into a spring soup. Served with a local salad made from greens including spring beauties and brassicas from @earthcraftfarm, and roasted balsamic black pepper beets. Accompanied by a tasty spinach and feta scone from @islandrootsmarket.
Thanks to the Snuneymuxw Peoples for taking care of these lands for thousands of years. Our journey as newcomers is to remember to connect with respect to the land, seas and communities here. I am hoping to find ways to share my experience cooking for healing with whole foods with communities in need.
Chickpea Battered Foraged Oyster Mushroom
Using foraged mushrooms and simple chickpea batter, this dish celebrates the abundance of wild foods and the nutrition they provide. Sprayed with avocado oil and cooked with convection, it's crispy, delicious, and nourishing.
Grain Free Ham & Romaine Wrap
This wrap is made from a sourdough buckwheat crepe (recipe in Nourish Nanaimo), filled with ham, fresh romaine, peas and a tangy dressing made with veggies and healthy, whole fats. This means it has a healthier carbohydrate and fat balance than most white flour wraps and with refined oil based sauces.
Halibut Soup
Bone broth forms the base of this nourishing soup, along with halibut collars, which are a cut that is economic and locally available on Vancouver Island.
Red & Green Sauces
Made from 100% whole ingredients, inspired by Romanesco and Salsa Verde. No additives, no shortcuts—just the pure nutrition and flavor of fresh herbs and vegetables.
Fresh Local Fish Sushi Roll
We are learning how to make sushi using fresh local fish. Here we grilled halibut collars (a cost effective cut of halibut that in our culture is under appreciated), asparagus, and green onion, and rolled with daikon and carrot julienne, teriyaki sauteed shiitake mushrooms, and jalapeno. Inside is a garlicky and gingery sauce made with soy and toasted sunflower seeds.
This roll has no refined seed oil mayonnaise, nothing dipped in fryer grease, and no 'imitation' seafood products. And best of all, the fish is affordable when we get it directly from the fisher folk. Thanks be to the Salish Seas for nourishing our journey home.
Gluten Free Sourdough Crepe Batters
Made from whole pseudo-cereals and legumes with no flour and no added starch. These crepes are living food, cultured through fermentation for maximum nutrition and digestibility.
Sourdough Buckwheat Crepe with Garden Figs
Topped with garden figs, fresh romaine and cucumber. A celebration of simplicity and seasonal eating. This dish shows how healing food can also be beautiful.
Homemade Masa Tortillas with Local Farm Foods
Masa tortillas topped with local salad greens, grilled beef, bacon and a stew of farmer Aaron's white and black eggplant, onion, celery, smoked paprika, cacao, chipotle pepper, honey and lemon. Finished with a cilantro, lime, and jalapeno sauce.
Breakfast Cioppino with Toasted Cauliflower Bread
A nourishing breakfast made with local ling cod in a homemade stock, high in quality protein and omega-3 fats to manage trauma and inflammation. Served with cauliflower bread that has a low glycemic index. No food coma here—just sustained energy and deep nourishment.
Vegan Aduki Bean Pudding with Cacao & Espresso
This vegan pudding is easy to make and delicious. Made with aduki bean, ginger, fair trade cacao, espresso, cinnamon, vanilla and coconut oil. Sweetened with honey, stevia and birch xylitol, and topped with a raspberry compote sweetened with stevia. It's a naturally wonderful dessert that honors both taste and wholeness.
White Bean, Cacao Butter & Coconut Dessert
A nourishing dessert topped with salal and oregon grape compote, served with local plums. This dessert is full of protein and fiber from the white beans, whole fats from coconut milk, gently sweetened with honey and stevia, and drizzled with a compote made from highly nutritious and abundant local salal and oregon grape berries.
Why are so many desserts loaded with chemically modified and oxidized oils, refined sugars and carbs, and offer little nutrition to us? There's a middle man economics to food that reduces costs and stimulates profit through clever taste bud stimulation. It also leaves us sick. So, what's in your food?
Movement & Energy: E-Bike Practice
As we nourish our bodies with whole foods, movement becomes the natural next step. In every cell of us burns a tiny furnace—our mitochondria. We strengthen these cellular fires through intentional movement and work, creating the internal heat and resilience that nature has designed for us. This work also helps our communities and the world heal.
Tools of the Trade
An e-bike with a small battery carries me across town for exercise and groceries, saving on gas and car maintenance while cleansing the body and building strength. This small shift transforms daily commutes into movement practice, connecting us to the rhythm of the landscape around us.
Winter Practice & Cold Exposure
Go outside in the winter! How else can we teach our bodies to metabolize the energy we are given from food, and train our inner furnaces to light? Cold exposure is one of nature's greatest medicines for resilience and awakening our capacity to thrive in all seasons.
Winter strengthens our inner fire
Primitive Winter & Rainforest Firemaking Practice
Lighting a fire in the rainy winter with only a spark and what we find in the forest is a profound way to connect with our resourcefulness and the intelligence of nature. This ancient skill reminds us of our deep relationship with fire and our place in the natural world.
Primitive firemaking in nature