By Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, and speaker. Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC
For the last several years I‘ve had the honor to lead cooking classes with intuitive cooking with many different venues and organizations, including The Farm at South Mountain in Phoenix, the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, Gregory’s Fresh Market, and private cooking classes and events.
In light of my passion about food and intuitive cooking, I am thrilled to be featured in the Fall 2017 issue of Edible Phoenix, in the fun article by Sharon Salomon “Try Your Hand at Intuitive Cooking: Step Away from the Recipe!”
Sharon and I are in-sync with our cooking styles. I especially enjoy her thoughts on looking into the refrigerator:
“When it comes time to prepare dinner, I open the fridge, stand in front of it (yes, with the door open) thinking. Then I start taking out this and that. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what goes together…” Sharon Salomon
My take on intuitive cooking from “A New View of Healthy Eating: Simple Intuitive Cooking with Real Whole Foods”
Cook with Intuition. With intuitive cooking, we use recipes as guides. We first learn simple, basic culinary methods and techniques (such as raw, steaming, or roasting) to prepare real whole foods with recipes as our guide. Naturally, over time, we learn to trust our own intuition to cook foods we desire using cooking techniques we’ve learned. Over time, you will not need to rely on recipes; you’ll trust yourself and your culinary skills to create your own healthy dishes with local, seasonal food.
For instance, we learn the culinary technique to steam carrots in a bamboo steamer and use our recipe to finish the carrots with walnut oil, toasted cumin seeds, fresh lemon juice, parsley, and a pinch of sea salt. After learning the bamboo steamer technique to quickly steam veggies, we cook other steamed vegetables (such as asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, and peapods) and finish them with different oils, spices, and fresh herbs.
“With intuitive cooking we also naturally cook more mindfully, meditatively enjoying the rhythm of chopping veggies or the mindfulness of massaging kale or grating fresh spices.”
Hope you can join our community at the next intuitive Cooking Class, Winter Harvest Farm-to-Table, at The Farm at South Mountain on December 3, 2017, 11am-1:30pm. We’ll tour the beautiful Garden at The Farm and intuitively prepare Winter Veggie Stir-fry, Bamboo Steamer Carrots, and Winter Root Soup. It will be a fun class to attend with a group of friends! Also, one lucky participate will receive a copy of my book, “A New View of Healthy Eating.”
Click here to register for the class.
