We have too much fire in our lives. Like wayward children, we forgot to Love and practice Breathing. So now, we can practice keeping our fires small, like a small campfire or cookfire. In every cell of us burns a tiny furnace, our mitochondria. We can work our bodies between meals, creating movement and internal heat while doing work that helps communities and the world heal. This is what Nature gives us food and shelter for.
What we need is floating around in the soup of us -- A different blood chemistry, not bound up with the cycles of addiction, the modern use or fire, refined sugars and oils, to substitute for deep connection with the sea and soil and our local communities. We've replaced what gives life with what pollutes it. That's why in the South American dieta they say limpia, limpia! We have to clean ourselves out from the inside. And this means practices of peace, acceptance, healthy exercise, loving service, good nutrition and deep connection with our relatives, all the plants and animals that 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.
Movement & Energy: E-Bike Practice
We can replace modern excesses with simpler living. Ride a bicycle or e-bike when we can to reduce our reliance on cars.
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.
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 great way to simplify and reset when the stresses of modern life become too much. This ancient skill reconnects us to our resourcefulness and the intelligence of nature.
Primitive firemaking in nature
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
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.
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.
Root Camp
Participant and Filmmaker