Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Articles exploring food as a practical tool for nourishment, resilience and rebuilding the body. These pieces include nutrient-dense foods, traditional preparations, cultured foods, broths, herbs and foods grown from biologically active soil.
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 …
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 am finishing Plant & Kitchen Alchemy, a book that has grown to more than 550 pages of personal experience, practical knowledge and over 80 kitchen alchemy recipes centered on food as medicine. As I moved through the final edits, I realized I had spent a great deal of time …
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 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, …
I love olive oil, but you will rarely see us cooking with it at Living Ground. We use good extra-virgin olive oil generously on salads, vegetables, herbs, cheeses, fermented foods, soups and finished dishes, but when a pan goes onto the stove, we reach for butter, coconut oil or tallow. …
This is about ancestral food, not as nostalgia, but as pattern recognition. It is also about the future Gratitude Meals we will offer at the Gratitude Cafe, meals that come from lived experience and are anchored in something deeply personal. This article will discuss my Healing Soup , but it …
There is something essential missing from most of the food people are eating today, and it is not listed on any label. It is not a vitamin, not a mineral, not protein or fat. Those are all there, at least on paper. What is missing is the living layer that …
We talk about “B vitamins” as if they are a single substance you can swallow, measure, or fix with a pill, but in the body they behave more like a living network. Vitamin B is never just one thing, and that is where the misunderstanding usually begins. They are a …
Cholesterol has become one of the most misunderstood substances in the body. It is often spoken about as if it were a toxin that must be lowered at all costs, yet it is one of the most essential molecules for life. Every cell membrane depends on it. Hormones depend on …