Leisha Plant & Kitchen Alchemy • An introduction for readers of the blog
On Sunday, our students arrive at Living Ground for Plant & Kitchen Alchemy, a seven-day workshop on food as medicine. Each of them receives my book, a student manual and a box. Inside is an envelope with their name, the empty jars and tools we will use through the week. It is the beginning of a collection they will carry home on Saturday. At the end of each day, there are a series of “alchemy box” articles that give the participants something to think about. You will see them next week in your subscription email. I hope you enjoy them.
The workshop follows a single thread. Everything we eat begins in the soil, with a community of life too small to see. The plant takes up that work and turns soil, water, air and sunlight into food and medicine. In the kitchen we take it further, by soaking, sprouting, fermenting, drying, steeping and simmering. Then the work moves inside us, where digestion and the microbes of the gut finish the meal. What we do not use goes back to the compost, and the circle begins again.
What the Alchemy Box is
At the end of each day, the students take home a short reading. We call it the Alchemy Box. It picks up whatever we did with our hands that day and follows it further, into history, into the science and into the old traditions that understood these things long before anyone could explain them. Each one ends with a question to sit with before sleep. The next morning we begin by talking about it, while we check the jars and see what changed overnight.
I publish these readings here on the blog so the students can open them on their phones. You are very welcome to read them too. You can visit this site daily or wait until next weekend to receive all in your newsletter.
Reading along from home
Please know that each article was written for the people in the room. It will talk about “the jar on your shelf” or “tomorrow at Morning Report”, and about things we made together that afternoon. You were not there, and that is fine. Each reading stands on its own, and you can read it a little like a letter you happen to be holding.
This is the week, with each evening’s reading:
- Sunday, Day 1: Living Soil. The Smell That Is a Message. We begin underground, with soils, microscopes and the organisms that feed our plants.
- Monday, Day 2: Compost, Ferments and Sprouts. The Salt of the Earth, the Sugar in Life. Salt and sugar, the two white powders on almost every table.
- Tuesday, Day 3: Meet the Plants. The Garden Was Never Silent. Meeting a plant with the senses before the mind, and learning the six tastes.
- Wednesday, Day 4: Gentle Heat. Gentle Heat. Slow broth, fresh cheese and the digestive fire.
- Thursday, Day 5: Sharp and Sweet. Sharp and Sweet. Vinegar, honey and the old medicine that joins them.
- Friday, Day 6: The Second Dinner. Who Is Cooking? Companions. The microbes within us, and medicinal chocolate.
- The final reading: The Alchemy Was Always Ours. A letter I wrote to the students before they arrived, given to them as the workshop closes.
Saturday is our last day. We work with scent, finish our preparations and cook for one another at a shared table, so there is no evening reading that night. The final letter takes its place.
If you would like to take part
You do not need a workshop to try any of this. Put a spoonful of lentils in a jar of water on Monday night and rinse them twice a day. Smell a handful of soil from your garden. Make a cup of tea from something growing near your door and taste it slowly. While you do, ask the same four questions the students ask every day:
What am I working with? What condition am I creating? What changes? How will I use what I have made?
And, the next offering of this workshop is here
Next weekend
You can follow along day by day, or you can wait. Next weekend all seven readings will arrive in your inbox together, with the final letter, so you can read the whole week in order from the soil to the table and back again. Nothing is lost. It changes, and it carries on.
