food

“The Serviceberry” by Robin Wall Kimmerer

January 18, 2025 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
Recommended to me by: Reading Kimmerer’s other books

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Indigenous scientist, writer, and teacher. She shares the gathered wisdom of her Potawatomi tribe, along with her knowledge of the ins and outs of academia as a botanist.

She compares the Indigenous gift economy, which is in harmony with the natural world, to capitalist economics that try to extract maximum value, wrecking the natural world. The book is small and brief, 100 pages, illustrated with pen and ink drawings.

The serviceberry bush has many names because it is important to many communities and cultures. The berries are eaten fresh, and dried to make pemmican for travel and winter months. Birds also feast on the berries. Their abundant berries lead to gratitude, which leads to reciprocity and paying it forward, which feeds the cycle of life. A specific instance of picking serviceberries described in vivid detail provides a rich scaffold for considering how we can learn from plants and live better.

How can we grow gift economies within and alongside the capitalist system? There are already little free libraries, tool libraries, neighborhood food banks, trash nothing and buy nothing online groups, and neighborhood organizations for mutual aid.

This book is a joyful celebration of all of those, along with a careful, encouraging exploration of a positive direction to replace the negative of capitalism. The more we can each support our local gift economies, the more joy and sustainability we bring into our lives.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer

May 6, 2020 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Recommended to me by: Amy Bennett

A set of essays loosely tied together in chronological order, with themes of sweetgrass and braiding all the way through. Each essay braids together personal memoir, Native American (specifically Potawatomi) ways of living, and colonialist ways of living.

Potawatomi ways developed over generations as people saw what works to live in balance with nature, as a part of nature. Humans are considered the young ones, the newcomers, learning from their more experienced plant and animal family members.

Sweetgrass is harvested in specific ways. Not the first plant you find, because that might be the only one. Take only what you need, up to half of the plants there, either by cutting half of each bunch, or taking whole bunches. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Professor of Botany, and one of her PhD students showed in a set of careful experiments that sweetgrass thrives when harvested this way, and fails to propagate if it is left completely unharvested. Humans and sweetgrass have a cooperative, collaborative partnership.

White colonialists disastrously interrupted Native American ways of living by stealing Native Americans’ lands and pushing them into entirely different ecosystems, and by taking their children to residential schools and forcibly preventing them from speaking their own languages or practicing their spirituality. The Potawatomi people and other tribes are gathering together the fragments of what remains, and braiding them together anew.

The book ends on a hopeful note, that perhaps enough of us will turn toward collaborative, cooperative ways of living that we will not entirely destroy the ecosystems of this green earth. Fitting right in with that hope, the current Great Pause of this pandemic gives us time to consider what we want to add back in to our lives, and what we want to leave behind to allow cleaner skies, safer streets, and more sustainable lives.

I read this as an ebook, because that’s what I can get from the library in this time of pandemic. It’s an odd way to read a book so rooted in physical experience, and I would have much preferred to have a physical book in my hands. This is a long book that wants to be appreciated slowly, essay by essay, section by section, exploring how all the parts fit together to support each other.

Highly recommended!

Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how’ interview by James Yeh, May 23, 2020

Available at bookshop.org.

“Gluten-Free Flavor Flours” by Alice Medrich with Maya Klein

December 5, 2019 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A New Way to Bake with Non-Wheat Flours

Recommended to me by: runpunkrun

A detailed investigation of gluten-free flours, with a chapter for each with a description plus well-suited recipes. It includes rice, oat, corn, chestnut, nut, coconut, teff, buckwheat, and sorghum flours. There’s a resource section at the end with places to order ingredients.

About half the recipes have beautifully composed photographs. The recipes look clear and easy to follow (although I haven’t tried any yet). Amounts are given in cup measures and grams.

Alice Medrich ran a bakery called Cocolat on Shattuck Ave in Berkeley. A lot of her desserts are far more fussy and elegant than the baking I tend to do. I looked through the book and marked a few simpler recipes I might try.

Recommended for the serious baker who wants (or needs) to branch out into gluten-free baking.

Available at bookshop.org.

“mindful eating” by Jan Chozen Bays, MD

November 24, 2017 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

Recommended to me by: a client

Unlike the deep compassion and acceptance for how things are right now that I found in Cheri Huber’s books, this book is judgmental, directive, and critical. It recommends mindfulness as a method to restrict food and lose weight, even though it has been repeatedly scientifically shown that 95% of people regain weight lost through dieting no matter what the dieting method.

At the same time, mindfulness about eating is useful, as long as it is done with kindness. Eating is central to our existence, nourishing body and soul.

Jan Chozen Bays is both a Western medical doctor and a Zen teacher. She identifies 7 kinds of hunger: eye hunger, nose hunger, mouth hunger, stomach hunger, cell hunger, and heart hunger. We can check in with ourselves about what level of hunger we are experiencing in each channel, and what would nourish us via that channel.

We can pause before, during, and after meals to invite awareness of our physical sensations in the mouth and belly. We can experiment with chewing a bite thoroughly. We can pay attention to the first three bites. We can try stopping eating when we are no longer hungry, rather than full. We can bring awareness to emptiness.

We can do body scans and send kindness and gratitude to all our parts. Hakuin Zenji’s soft butter meditation: Imagine a lump of soft butter the size and shape of a duck egg on the crown of your head. As it melts and trickles down inside and outside you, it permeates you with warmth and good feelings. Feel it trickle through you all the way to your feet.

We can give ourselves boundless permission to eat exactly the way we eat right now.

This book is not recommended for anyone who is prone to self-judgment about weight and eating habits.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Yoga of Eating” by Charles Eisenstein

June 21, 2016 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self

Recommended to me by: a client

A compassionate, wise look at our food choices. What are we saying yes to? How can we bring more kind attention to the nurturance and nutrition our bodies need? How do our food needs relate to the rest of our lives? An invitation to allow rather than coerce.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook” by Mickey Trescott

October 6, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: An Allergen-Free Approach to Managing Chronic Illness

Recommended to me by: a friend

This cookbook feels less scientifically authoritarian and more personally friendly. “This worked for me, see if it worked for you.” Also, the photographs are beautiful and enticing. Unfortunately, most of the recipes have garlic and/or onion, which don’t seem to work well for me.

I may eventually buy a copy, just to add a few more recipes to my repertoire. I’m still considering whether to try the whole bone broth and fermented vegetable routine.

Recommended for a friendly introduction to “Paleo” cooking.

Available at bookshop.org.