Author: Meghan O.

Well! It’s nearly the end of the quarter, so I figured I would take this week’s project update as an opportunity to discuss the wrap-up of my research this quarter and what I’ll be looking forward to in the next!

To finish out this quarter,  I will be compiling my information on the practice of conscious eating and dietary herbalism in a private document to be turned into a brochure next quarter. I also will be working several hours each week with Aurora and a few other students to rehabilitate Evergreen’s Elizabethan herb garden and process the herbs into teas and possibly lotions and salves as well.

Initially we will be working to weed the garden and identify the healthy plants living there, and then we will be purchasing some seeds and starters to hopefully bring a flourishing spring herb harvest.

We will also be working to make a book with the layout and uses of the herbs as well as drawings and pressed plants. We plan to split the work of the quarter into six phases which will weave together as plants are ready for market, but the idea is to plant, weed, design labels, harvest, process, and create tea blends. We plan to dry the herbs in the Gnome Shed and our own homes prior to making our teas.

Additionally, I will continue my food studies. I don’t yet know where that will take me, but I am spending spring break in Washington D.C. at museums and historical locations, and plan to see several exhibits currently at the Smithsonian related to food culture in the United States. Hopefully that will give some direction to my more general ideas about what I plan to study.

I have also discussed with Kotomi the possibility of working together (recycling her used tea leaves) to make tea cheeses. I have an interest in studying the process of cheesemaking, and am interested in exploring that process especially through local farms and small dairies.

Finally, as a part of my blog for next quarter, I plan to begin a YouTube channel dedicated to my work in food studies and the herb garden. I will document progress in both, create recipes and prepare dishes, and discuss topics in the program.

This week I spent a lot of time watching Chef’s Table, a Netflix documentary series that I would highly recommend to everyone in this program (and out of it as well). One episode in particular stuck with me, and I have now done a ridiculous amount of research on its subject and her cuisine, namely Jeong Kwan and temple food. In a phenomenon particularly unique to Buddhist temples in South Korea, an ancient food culture is finally emerging in media.

The philosophies behind temple food are simple: it is sustenance and an expression of joy and connection, though it excludes ingredients deemed inflammatory to the mental state necessary for meditation (garlic, onion, green onion, spring onion, and leek) and foods traditionally not eaten by Buddhist monks and nuns (meat, fish, MSG, and dairy).

Yet somehow, the nutritional needs of those who eat it are sufficiently and artistically met, and the food is delicious, nourishing, and fully satisfying even to a voracious American palette. In fact, Jeong Kwan was flown from South Korea by Eric Ripert to prepare a meal at Le Bernadin. Her food in particular appears to be delicate, flavorful, transcendent, and spiritually unique. However, the practice of temple food, often centered around homemade kim chi, pickled vegetables, and aged soy sauce.

Soy sauce to Buddhist monasteries in Korea is what Molé is to Oaxacan chefs – a continual process. Soy sauce is rarely started new, only added to to enhance and enrich flavor. In some places, soy sauce is left to ferment for 200 years. I had always just assumed the Kikkoman jugs I bought at the grocery store were all there really was on the market!

This practice interested me so much because of my shifted focus towards conscious eating. In a way, eating to optimize meditation is the ultimate expression of that practice. Monks and nuns are so in tune with their bodies that they can sometimes affect their emotions, physiology, and even their longevity through meditation and centered focus. My whole interest in conscious eating is on the ways we can impact how we feel through what we eat, and temple food seems to be the ultimate expression of this.

This was one of the most interesting weeks I’ve had the privilege of in my education. To begin the week, I was working on my narrative self-evaluation and  trying to juggle a million personal projects. But I brought a fresh mind (though almost definitely not enough sleep) to class on Tuesday, and efforts to stay positive paid off. I had a great class, thoroughly enjoyed our tea tasting. Sarah suggested I write about our experience with the Week 6 tea tasting because of the unique social dynamic it manufactured.

As we drank our pu-er – some raw and some cooked, exploring multiple steepings and a range of complex and earthy flavors, we got somewhat giggly. As the tasting went on, we asked more questions, opened up, became vulnerable and silly and exploratory. It in many ways mimicked many of the symptoms of slight drunkenness, and I don’t understand why. I certainly enjoyed it (especially as tea drunkenness doesn’t seem to come with a hangover!) despite my inability to articulate exactly what it was. I left class that afternoon in a pleasant daze, and went on to dinner and the rest of my evening with an overwhelming sense of calm contentedness.

I was excited to meet with Sarah for my mid-quarter evaluation in the morning (boy did that sneak up), and after meeting to discuss the future of my ILC following through to next quarter, I attended a few hours of Farmworker Justice Day and hear about the current work with the CCBLA.

After that, I attended an incredible, life changing, and transformative talk by Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. You can (and should) watch the full video of her talk here. She is a scholar, poet, author, speaker, and artist specializing in black feminist narratives and queerness. Her website can be found here and I highly recommend you explore it and her writings.

As she spoke from her new (and yet to be published book) she engaged us in what she described as an “echolocation re-memory oracle” based on whale communication which I could neither define nor describe to you, but if you’re interested in some possible explanations you can find them here, here, and here. She spoke a word from a poem read at the beginning of her presentation, asked us to do an out-loud free-association game (as she described, “like a free association…if we were free”), selected a triggering word from the audience, searched it in her manuscript document, and read a surrounding passage. So much of what she read was (for lack of a better phrase) blowing my mind, and I scribbled down verbatim as much of what she said as I possibly could. Below are some of her words (and in some cases context) that I found particularly memorable, triggering, or at least worth some unpacking. Let me know what strikes your fancy here! Just a few of my absolute favorite and most provoking quotes are bolded.

In reference to the idea of human communication (echolocation) across great distances “there is no sound I cannot travel through.”

“[we must learn] to open and shut our mouths appropriately.”

“look at them when they are silent. it’s almost like it hurts to be so soft.”

The following quotes relate to a passage describing the transatlantic slave trade from the perspective of an enslaved person crossing the ocean in the hold of a ship: “we were preserved and packaged flesh.” “they had thought themselves the owners of their bodies.” Then, she goes on to describe the enslavement once landed in the Americas: “those hands that wanted to do and make…refined reuse into ritual.”

“scientists who had never understood dark matter [sought to measure it]” in which the dark matter exists both as the dark other, the dark body, the soul, the abyss, and the very fabric of space – the existence of all of these things is intertwined in Gumbs’ writing.

“they remembered the selves they had sent across generations.”

“welded by her intention”

“we scale the edges of our knowing.”

“there was the face she thought was hers when she saw it in her dreams.”

“do like the colonizers did and let the pheromones override the visual”

“not without effort, but without force”

she describes prison tattoos as “rebirthmarks” and says “even when their skin was stolen they remembered the maps and went within.”

“black feminist metaphysics, which is to say: breathing”

“the dark feminine, which is to say: everything”

“we violate the trust of being born.”

“what was in them [poets] that made work more food than food was?”

“they say it’s about sea level, but the sea doesn’t have to level with you.”

(last note: the choice not to capitalize the beginning of quotes was intentional; so far in Gumbs’ published works, she chooses not to capitalize the first letters of new sentences á la bell hooks or e.e. cummings)

Gumbs, D. P. (Writer). (2017, February 15). After Brightest Star. Live performance in Washington, Olympia.

Spoken word interactive lecture including excerpts from the author’s upcoming book M Archive: After the End of the World

This week in my project: research, nutrition, and traveling home.

It’s been a tough week. I haven’t been feeling quite myself recently, so it was hard to motivate to get my hours in. However, a short trip home for my Dad’s birthday felt really good, and talking to my parents about my program renewed some of my energy. We cooked together, ate together, and talked about food and nutrition and minimalism.

Cooking has always been an incredibly important part of my relationship with my parents. It was a special opportunity to take skills I had learned with my Aunt Shannon for making traditional Chinese hot pot and teach them to my Mom, the person from whom I have learned all of my chef skills.

Most of my work this week has been good old-fashioned book learning. I have so much to catch up on in my knowledge of plant medicine, and the more I learn the more tangents I go on. I’ve recently become fascinated with cilantro and how it binds with heavy metals in your digestive tract to pull them out of your body. Also, apparently we should all be eating chlorophyll. Go figure!

My main interest in herbalism is shifting from exploring how to make remedies for sickness or to improve wellness, but rather how consuming medicinal herbs and ingredients and consciously incorporating them into one’s diet can help with nutrition, health, and a connection to the way our food affects our bodies.

Sidenote: the documentary The Minimalists on Netflix is really fantastic. I’d love to have a discussion in class about minimalism in food (both preparation/display and content and the value or use of simplicity in cuisine). There’s also a website on minimalism here and my favorite blog on living simply and consciously here. These philosophies have greatly influenced my own ideas and priorities surrounding my body and my health.