Cooking Evangelism….Smell that bread? Real Food is REAL and holds a key to our happiness & healing.

Among my so-called “titles” … Food physicist, environmental steward, mechanical engineer, skillet whisperer, college professor, crazy Italian woman …. One of my favorites is “Cooking Evangelist!”

Last year, my local magazine “All About Women” highlighted the work I am doing to encourage my students to “Take Back Cooking” as a significant climate change solution.

The great news is that there is mounting evidence that home cooking also is a great, grounding activity to help with our mental health.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

I can’t find anything else to replace the emotion that stirs up on some indescribable level in me when I smell fresh baked bread – no really – Wherever you are, just stop for a moment and take a virtual deep inhale of a freshly baked loaf of bread. Try as much as you can to conjure up that fragrance and allow it to fill your olfactory canals and hold it there for a minute …. Feel something stir in you core? Doesn’t it make you want MORE of that?

It’s REAL - I believe, deeply, that real food holds a key to our happiness & healing.

That healing is available to you every day! I invite you into your own kitchen to reap all those smells and emotional and health benefits!

Happy cooking!

P.S. I presented (virtually) at the 2020 AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) conference about my cooking evangelism work at Appalachian State University. If you’d like to hear this lightening talk – it is available here.