Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Good Fats, Bad Fats: Why Warmth Matters When I talk to clients about seed oils, I sometimes see a look come over their face that says it doesn’t really matter, but it matters a great deal, and far more than most people realise. (Yes, we’re talking about fat again, because …
It is raining tonight, a gentle, real rain. It isn’t the quick passing kind, but the kind that settles in and stays, and I think it is making me reflective. I love the rain. I love the sound of it trickling and pattering on the roof and the leaves, and …
The story behind this weekend’s Ripening & Renewal Gratitude Meal and how it becomes a meal for the mind. We usually think of eating as something that happens in the mouth and the stomach. Long before food reaches the stomach, though, the brain is already at work. It reads the …
With my new lights, I can see…. I’m excited right now… and I want to say that out loud, because it’s been a while. For three years I’ve come to the end of most weeks wondering how on earth I was going to make payroll and get done all that …
When I was about fifteen, I had an English teacher who was a little unconventional himself, which is probably why I loved his class so much. It came right after lunch, and if I’m being completely honest, I was often a bit stoned by the time I wandered in. He …
My patio outdoor office and the Project Site is currently a landscape of preparation, drying herbs, working the gardens, jars in their early stages, and piles of herbs and foods (as medicine) being sorted. We are deep in preparation for the Plant & Kitchen Alchemy workshop, November 8–14, and I …
September 23, 2026 | Living Ground Project, Ecuador Whew! What a marathon. My Plant & Kitchen Alchemy book is finally finished, uploaded to Amazon and waiting to be published. After months of writing, experimenting, editing, illustrating and wrestling with page numbers, indexes, formatting and Amazon’s publishing requirements, I can hardly …
I use collagen-rich broth regularly when I am working with microbiome-healing protocols because the gut microbes are only part of the picture. They live against a mucus-covered intestinal lining that has to be hydrated, nourished and continually rebuilt. A good gelatinous broth brings water, minerals and the amino acids from …
(this is an excerpt from my new upcoming book “Plant & Kitchen Alchemy“) There is alchemy when a green tomato turns red. It may look as though the fruit is simply ripening, yet inside it an entire chemistry is rearranging. The green chlorophyll is disappearing, and the sugars and acids …
This November, from November 8–13, 2026, I will be teaching a new six-day workshop here at Living Ground Project in southern Ecuador called Plant & Kitchen Alchemy: Food, Medicine & Microbes. It brings together many of the threads that have been part of my work for years: soil, compost, plants, …