Kitchen Therapy with Charlotte Hastings

What if the most healing room in your home isn’t the one with the couch, but the one with the stove? We sit down with Charlotte Hastings, the pioneering force behind Kitchen Therapy, to explore how simple, hands-on cooking can lower anxiety, unlock conversation, and guide people back to trust and connection. From a childhood marked by trauma to eight years of sobriety, Charlotte shares how food became a safe third space—where a wooden spoon can reflect a life story, and a cheese sauce can invite truth without pressure.

We trace her path from teaching to psychodynamic counseling to a practice that uses recipes as living maps. Instead of rigid measurements, she leans into play and adaptation: swap ingredients to fit your needs, taste as you go, and let intuition lead. Together we unpack why repetitive kitchen tasks soothe the nervous system, how teens open up when eye contact is optional, and why a finished loaf can be the proof someone needs to believe they can finish hard things. Charlotte’s book frames cooking as a life-seasoned journey, with feminist tarot imagery, family illustrations, and recipes designed to evolve with you.

We also look beyond the countertop. Charlotte’s community interest company builds groups that cook outdoors around a fire, restoring a sense of belonging and shared purpose. In a fast, AI-driven world, this is our first technology—flame, food, and fellowship—bringing people back into their bodies and back to each other. If you’re curious about alternative therapy, mental health tools you can touch, and ways to turn small kitchen wins into bigger life changes, you’ll feel right at home here.

If this conversation feeds you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to the table.

Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Share the episodes and let's chat in the comments.

Support the Cake Therapy Foundation:
1. Cake Therapy - Cake Therapy (thecaketherapyfoundation.org)
2. Buy Me A Coffee : The Cake Therapy Foundation (buymeacoffee.com)
3. Buy The Book: Cake Therapy: How Baking Changed My Life https://a.co/d/76dZ5T0

4. Buy The Book: Lessons I Never Learned from My Father: Things We Missed Out On and How They Still Impact Me https://a.co/d/9wLOguc

Follow Sugarspoon Desserts on all social media platforms @sugarspoondesserts

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose Of The Show
• 1:05 Gratitude, Growth, And Listener Support
• 2:07 Introducing Charlotte And Kitchen Therapy
• 4:57 Charlotte’s Book Origins And Teaching Years
• 8:10 Creativity In Cooking Over Recipes
• 9:56 Eight Years Sober And Finding Place
• 11:07 Childhood, Family Trauma, And Card Games
• 15:33 Why Sociology And How People Connect
• 18:37 Hands-On Cooking In A Tech-Heavy World
• 20:39 From Classroom To Therapy Kitchen
• 23:45 The Cheese Sauce Breakthrough
• 26:30 Working With Anxiety Through Tasks
• 28:18 Chopping, Eye Contact, And Safety
• 30:18 Small Wins And Confidence In Kitchens
• 32:11 Bread, Belonging, And Earning Pride
• 34:08 Food As Bridge And Shared Humanity
• 35:42 Tarot, Seasons, And A Feminine Journey
• 38:05 Recipes As Play, Adapting For Life
• 40:05 Family Art, Illustration, And Meaning
• 41:58 Community Kitchens And Cooking Outdoors
• 43:40 App, Alternative Therapies, And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to the Cake Therapy Podcast, a slice of joy and healing with your host, Dr. Altricia Foster. This is a heartwarming and uplifting space that celebrates the transformative power of baking therapy. The conversations will be a delightful blend of inspirational stories, expert insights, and practical baking tips. Each episode will take listeners on a journey of self-discovery, emotional healing, and connection to the therapeutic art of baking. There's something here for everyone. So lock in and let's get into it.

SPEAKER_03: 0:57

Her name is Charlotte Hastings, and she runs what is called the therapy kitchen. But before we dive into that conversation, I want to acknowledge the growth. Our amazing podcast. You know, a couple months ago, I stepped into this and I leaned into it because I believed that it was a good format for me to be able to communicate with people who've watched me bake, persons who bought my book, and kind of wanted to see, you know, how I've connected with baking, you know, outside of my day-to-day, with running a family, with being a part of this amazing family with Kennedy, Kennedy, and all the. But then I still bake and I continue to bake and the work that I continue to aspire to do with girls to really make a difference in the community. So I'm really honored that people continue to listen to us and are leaving messages. And I'm like really, really, truly, I use really, really a lot, but I'm truly grateful for it for the support. So if you've been listening to us and you have not subscribed to our podcast yet, um, go ahead and subscribe. Wherever you get your podcast from, go ahead and get that. Subscribe to us. If you are watching us on YouTube, please go ahead and subscribe, leave your comments, your feedback are welcoming. I want to mention the University of Technology students whose um our podcast is now included in their recommended resource. Yay, uh, and I think it's a testament to the quality um guests that we have on our podcast. And I love that for us. Full disclosure, I'm a University of the Technology alum, but I don't think that influenced that much. I think it's the quality of the guests on our podcast. Um, so keep supporting us. I look forward to continuing to bring you great guests in the space. And like cake therapy is so much more than cake, it's all about art and expressions of your own personal art history and what you're using to center and ground yourself. It's your personal slice of joy and healing is not just, it doesn't have to be cake, right? It's your slice of joy. So we're gonna welcome Charlotte Hastings to the show. So Charlotte is actually the pioneering figure behind the kitchen therapy, behind kitchen therapy, like I mentioned, it's quite an innovative approach, similar to clinic therapy, right? Um her approach actually blends art, cooking, and talk therapy. She has a BA in anthropology and sociology. And after completing her training as a psychodynamic therapeutic counselor, Charlotte discovered the profound connection between culinary practices, emotional well-being, and art. This insight led to the creation of kitchen therapy, a method she's combined, you know, by using practical cooking with deep personal exploration. It is for the body, she says. Is it for the body? It's always for the body. So I'm really excited to talk to her. So we'll be exploring with her on her journey, principles of kitchen therapy, and uh, you know, what what keeps her going, what makes her, you know, want to continue to do this. So welcome, Charlotte. Thank you for joining.

SPEAKER_02: 4:04

So I'm so excited to meet you.

SPEAKER_03: 4:06

Yeah, well, I am excited to I'm excited to meet you as well. So thank you for your patience. Um I know we've been trying to get this conversation going for a long time, but because of our time zones, it's it's but we have it, we're here now. So I'm happy to have you on. And um, like I mentioned to you, I was just recording your intro at the top of the conversation. So our listeners have heard, you know, about a little bit about your background and stuff, but you're in the UK, yes, and we're doing we're doing something similar. It's amazing that sometimes you feel so isolated in what you do, yeah, and something that you actually believe in, and then you see someone else who's doing the same thing. And I'm like, yes, there's some alignment, there's really some truth to what you're doing, and it actually validates your feeling about a thing, and it helps you to really understand, like, okay, it does work. So, welcome to the show, Charlotte.

SPEAKER_02: 5:08

Oh, thank you so much, and um, yeah, well done for having such a lively show and all the work that I see you doing. It's really exciting.

SPEAKER_03: 5:16

Yeah, thank you. I know we just paused just now because you have a book.

SPEAKER_02: 5:20

I do, yes. Because I had to rush to the door to my lovely neighbor and say, Yeah, she wanted a few copies of my book. So I feel very, very well, I don't know. I feel yeah, it's almost it's just quite amazing, really, to have had this idea. I had the idea a long time ago, um, when about 20 years ago, probably. Yeah. And I was leaving, I was a teacher um with secondary school students, but uh special needs, they had they were mainly dyslexic, but there were a lot of with autism and ADHD and combination thereof, various different um learning, I'm gonna say, yeah, learning difficulties, but um differences really from from the mainstream. And I left there because they were insisting that all the exams became very literacy-based. Yeah, and I was able, I didn't want to do that. You know, it wasn't it wasn't in the it wasn't serving the best interests of my students or what I can best offer as a teacher. And so I had an idea to create a set of playing cards, yeah. That would, I don't know quite how it landed in what order, but I um a pack of playing cards that would come alive, you know, they would each have a little character with a story to tell, and and that is how the book began. And at that point, I hadn't trained uh as a psychotherapist, and I hadn't actually started to put the idea of cooking with therapy together at that point. I just knew that cooking creatively and with intuition, rather than following a recipe slavishly and just doing what somebody out there tells you is right, um, finding finding that answer inside, I knew that that's is what worked. Is that that's what made me feel good? You know, that's what I did. I just followed, so when I'd left this job and I was working, you know, needing to find new work, needing to find another way of um communicating with the world, I thought, well, I went to the kitchen and I put a dinner together and it was delicious, right? It was really good. But the thing that I really loved was the feeling of looking in the fridge and working out how to put it together, you know, and playing with the ideas. And I know you're a baby, so it's um we come at cooking in a very different way, I think.

SPEAKER_03: 7:49

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So before we get into this wonderful world of the kitchen and cooking for you and the story that helped to shape the book, the stories that helped to shape the book. I know that when we were initially supposed to speak a couple of weeks ago, this was your eighth year of sobriety. So it was an anniversary, and I wanted to pause and give you a shout out. I believe this was August 16th or something like that. Yeah, I want to really congratulate you. I mean, this is a moment to be celebrated, and eight years, it's amazing. So I'm very proud of you. I'm proud of you know of your strength and you wanting to become sober and have held on for so long. So kudos to you, Charlotte.

SPEAKER_02: 8:37

Thank you so much. That means so share with our listeners um, where are you from? Where are you right now? Um, so I'm in Brighton, which is in the southeast of England, uh, and it's on the coast, it's on the sea, it's definitely not an ocean. Sometimes they call it that, but it really isn't. It's certainly not from Jamaican standards, you know. So it's a little bit of a grey sea, but it's a very um, I I love it here. Where I live is actually um more in what we call the Sussex Downs. So it's a very old set of hills. So they're mountains that over time have just been softened and are in low-lying, rambling hills, which I absolutely adore, you know, in terms of my own therapy and um healing from um the addiction issues that I was trying to work with. Certainly walking out in nature and being by the sea as well, have really taught me to trust in Mother Nature rather than in my own mind so much.

SPEAKER_03: 9:42

So um you you mentioned your addictions. Permit me if I may ask about like your childhood and you know, upbringing. Did any of that influence your addiction? Talk to me a little bit about your upbringing and who, you know, how did Charlotte come to be?

SPEAKER_02: 9:59

Yeah, so I think that's it's also um it has affected my addiction, but it also, yeah, is very entwined with my idea about kitchen therapy of using cooking as a way of healing the self. Um, so I I was born in Switzerland and my dad was German and he was um an alcoholic and he was violent with it as well. And so my mum needed to leave him, and she managed to escape, and she brought she's English and she brought us both back to England. And it was a complicated time. She, you know, it wasn't that common for um to have single parents, wasn't that common to be a single only child either. And it was, yeah, life, life was a little bit complicated for us. Uh, you know, the the uh fallout from my father's abuse, and um, you know, perhaps I also inherited some of his addiction issues. You know, I'm not sure how these things work, but certainly things passed on, and so it was I was on my own a lot. This was the key thing that I see as the problem, or one of them, is that I was left on my own a lot. But what I did have was my great-grandmother lived next to me, or sometimes in the same house, and she had the time to spend with me. Yeah, and so um, when we spent time, we would play cards, and I just loved that time with her, and she was born in 1900, and that is 28 years before women get the vote in this country. Yeah, that, you know, when I say that, that just makes my blood run cold, you know, because it's like, you know, can you imagine? And also what's occurred to me recently is an amazing gift that I have of having spent time with this lady who had so much to tell me, you know, she didn't have the vote, she was the only girl with um all boys in her family, which was a good family. She was happy growing up, but then she went through two world wars. Okay, I just can't imagine. And she was living in London as well, they're Londoners. And um, the fear from that was extraordinary. And in the in the second world war, her her grown up, my grandmother and her sister were working as um in in the army, but she had a younger daughter who was um, you know, she was really feared for their lives, you know, with the boss favors. So this was something that she was able to pass on to me, and she was actually a single parent herself, so she'd had to divorce her husband um because he was a gambler. So I was learning a lot from her, which I didn't realize, you know, as a little girl, but I actually was absorbing an awful lot about how life works and how much we need relationships, we how much we need a community around for people to feel safe, for you know, to be able to parent well, and you know, that that takes a whole community. And then, you know, another aspect of it was that my grandmother looked after me a lot whilst my mum was working, or you know, for various reasons, I was with my grandma a lot, which was another massive gift, and she was a great cook.

SPEAKER_03: 13:09

Yeah, yeah. And yeah. So so what in that? So I I was with my grandmother a lot too, as my mom, you know, worked. I I also wrote a book called You Have Kitchen Therapy, I have cake therapy. Oh my god, we have to swap those books, Al Tricia. Yeah. And it talks about like my upbringing, um, how I my life with my grandmother and my mom took me at the age of eight um because she was out of the village working. So I, you know, I see those parallels. You you were hanging out while your grandmother took care of you, you've had conversations, you were paying cars, you were doing everything that she she has played uh an important role in your life. What of that upbringing led you to anthropology and sociology? What is that? You know, tell me what it is that influenced that path for you.

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

Um that's a really interesting question. I just loved it when I came across that when I was at school. So when um a lesson I had, which I think was particular to my generation, was called environmental science. And I absolutely loathed environmental science as a subject. I was rubbish at it. But what I did really like was when we learned about the Industrial Revolution, and I just found that absolutely riveting, you know, and I just got into a space of hyper focus, and I was just fascinated by that. And I came, I've come to realize that she said, When because I've studied sociology as well, and I it's just largely I've gone into it because yes, there was interested in it, fascinated actually by this technology and how it changed our lives, and you know, by human lives of how they're being changed by how we work. I'm not really sure because I was quite young when you know, maybe about 11, but that influenced me to study sociology because when I read about that, I thought that's I think because I came in a complicated family, you know, there were really complex relationships, and you know, a lot more than I would talk about just here. Yeah, it started to wake me up to the fact that life is done very differently. I think that you know, coming from Switzerland where they speak one language and nobody understands Swiss German. That's a whole thing of its own. And um, and then I was with these different generations of people, and they were all experiencing life slightly differently, and they were communicating to me very differently as well. And because I was an only child, I was the only small one amongst all these adults. So I was observing them and fascinated by how this worked, and really, really came to realise how important having people around you is. That you know, I think I just spent so much time on my own that just trying to understand how people tick, how communities work, and how different cultures can work together, you know, and really understanding that how much you can learn when you do speak a different language, when you do cook different food, you know, that each of those individuals, all of them as I was growing up, Londoners, but they were all feeding me very differently. That you know, they're all and and they were communicating something to me about how they cared about me. And so I think that came to develop into a an interest in the communication of all people of our species through food, which I think anthropology. But I've actually been questioning this um, you know, my interest in the industrial revolution, and it's only to you asking me that question. So thank you so much that I've realized how much it keys into where I am with kitchen therapy at the moment. A world of AI, you know, and a world that is, I mean, I'm so grateful to information technology and so on because of our conversation right now, but the importance of hands-on, you know, breathing the same air with people. I mean, obviously, I just really wish I was in Jamaica with you right now. That's an obvious one. But I also, you know, to be in the room with you would be an amazing thing. And, you know, we're an animal. And so what I'm thinking about at the moment is computer technology is going so crazy fast. Yeah. And the importance of hands-on cooking as our first technology, that is what humans do. We come to understand here's a fire, I can make that fire happen. It doesn't just happen by magic, you know, I don't have to wait for the lightning to strike for the fire. I can learn how to make that, which is phenomenal. And then I can turn these various different ingredients into a meal and the artistry that you create, you know, that is that is coming from a long line of people that have learned from each other and built on skill, on skill, on skill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:13

So you you you you did anthropology, you did sociology, you taught for a while. How did you, how and when did you make this transition from teaching drama, doing anthropology and sociology to the kitchen? Talk to me a little bit about that transition.

SPEAKER_02: 18:30

Well, I don't think actually it was a transition because it has always been there. So I was always loving cooking. And I was always, I didn't realise how much I was getting from it, but I that was always there in part of my life. And um I suppose what had happened was when I was studied anthropology, I found out about Karl Jung and his death psychology, and I knew that I wanted to follow this man. So I would say he's like my guiding guru, you know, of my understanding. So that was when I was 21, and it was always there. And then um I left the teaching job that I'd had, which I'd I had enjoyed, but the way it had changed meant that I wanted to do something more creative and more practical. And so I'd had the cookery book idea. At this point, it was just a pack of playing cards. Yeah. And then um then I realized, oh, no, that so I got my place then a couple of about a year after I'd left my teaching job, I got my place uh to train as a psychotherapist. And I thought, oh, you know what? I also need a job to earn some money by now. So I um I looked in the local paper when we used to have those, we don't have them anymore, and I saw this job to be a community cooking teacher, a domestic cooking teacher, and I thought, you know what, I think I can do that. So I got the job, and it meant that in the same term, in the same September, I trained to be a psychotherapist and learned about child developments and you know, relationships and uh emotional nutrition. I also was in the classroom teaching a variety of different types of people to cook, and so because I was learning, you know, both of these things were happening together, it was just an amazing synchronicity that the light bulb went on, and I just thought, oh, you know, the way this person, there was a particular person, and she was the same sort of age as me, and the rest of the group were all autistic, quite young men. So we had a particular understanding, I think, between us because we were the same, um, very similar. And she was so anxious, and she when she would stir the um just a cheese sauce, really simple things, she would just almost not want to touch the sides with the spoon. She was worried about hurting the spoon or the saucepan, and she kept giving away all of her ingredients to other people, like she didn't really want to own anything, she didn't really want to hold anything, she didn't seem to believe that it was going to be okay and that she could trust herself. And so I said to her at one point, I said, the way you're holding that wooden spoon is the way you're holding your life, isn't it? And she looked at me, and I think, you know, I mean, I am a bit of an outspoken person. It was, you know, possibly I was just really fortunate that actually, I think when you speak with your heart, you know, and I I meant it with like with such respect, because it could have been quite intrusive, I suppose, but and it wasn't my place really to make this comment as a cookery teacher. But I did, and she looked at me with a really long look, and she just clearly felt really seen and understood. And she started to talk to me about living life on the edges, about not being given to as a child, yeah, you know, about other things that had happened to her that meant it was difficult for her to take ownership and trust in her life, and that this was really showing up in the way that she would eat, and just the anxiety that she was feeling towards her life was showing up in the anxiety around food. I think what was interesting as well about that is that that's quite, you know, to pick up on someone's anxiety when they haven't invited you in, and she wasn't a therapy client, is it could be quite intrusive. But she just responded. And I think because we had the cheese sauce to play with, and the cheese sauce was helping us speak, so it wasn't me, you know, saying, Well, you seem to be doing this, and you know, we could speak through this other vehicle that was like a bridge between you and me, and and that's really, I think, as that only child, as somebody trying to reach people, food had always been this way of offering and saying, Well, for all of us, food goes in the same way and it comes out the same way, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:54

So, do you think that your personal experience and your upbringing, um, experience with self-medic education? And do you think that because of your um lived experience you were able to recognize what she was experiencing in that moment? And how has that um experience influenced your approach to therapy as you practice it now?

SPEAKER_02: 23:18

Yes, I think that lived experience as a as a person, you know, understanding another person. I mean, we can have empathy for things that we haven't experienced, but I think that I had gone into some very, very dark depressions during my time. And so I'm not scared of that place with somebody else. Do you know what I mean? And I know that it's possible, I know how important it is to be understood and to be seen. Um, so I think that that influenced that. And um, yeah, from that moment, I think I'd started to obviously I'd been working on my own addiction and I'd was researching at that time. I still hadn't become completely sober. I'd had some you know events around it, but obviously I was I'd been working on it since I first started drinking, you know, I knew it was but the key problem, the key uh block for me succeeding was because I believed I should do it on my own. I believed I could find the answers on my own and do it alone. And and that is certainly not my experience. You know, I I I've needed to join with other people and and follow a pathway that has been laid down that many of us belong. So the the other part of your question of how it's influenced my work, I think one of the I think this interesting to have this third person in a meal between therapist and a client so that we've got this vehicle that we can talk through. And it has felt very quite unthreatening actually to talk through something else. And then there's the practicality of you know, I can have my eyes down chopping, and I'm not eyeballing that person, I'm not demanding from them. You know, is it quite a natural human task? Is it very natural human task there is? And so I think that calms the nervous system. So it and I think that because we were both had this job to do. So what happened when we were stirring that sauce? I guess that at any point I could leap out of that deep conversation and back into stirring a cheese sauce. Yeah. And I do find that that works really well, especially with younger people, that I don't have to stay at this high intensity pitch and that I can move in and out of something practical and something real. And there's probably more that I could say around that. Do you want me to carry on or shall I stop there?

SPEAKER_03: 25:42

Yeah, I mean, because you know what, I I've experienced it too. I think younger um individuals um they respond more to accessibility. And when they don't have to outwardly communicate, you know, if they can do it on their terms per se, you're shopping, you're mixing, um, they will they respond accordingly. Or, you know, like they I would say in that the eye-to-eye contr the eye contact is what is I've noticed that's all often troubling to them. So I think they can get in their zone, but then still try to have a conversation. So I think there's value in in what you've said about, you know, just stirring and mixing and chopping, but then still facilitating a conversation.

SPEAKER_02: 26:24

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and I think especially for young people, maybe for men, but for all of us as well, is this importance of getting somewhere. So when you meet me, I know that that's why it works really well for me, because I can start, you know, I've got the beginning, the middle, and the end of a story all at once. Yes, you know, it's not like gardening where you've got to plant something and wait for ages and then have a sales ticket off.

SPEAKER_03: 26:52

I find that and then what is so good about it is that even though you're having a conversation, I think the whole experience of chopping or mixing is such an anxiety buster. Yes. From like a 10 to a two within minutes, so it helps, it makes you feel safe, you know. I think what it does, it also it breaks the monotony, you know. Yeah, step to step.

SPEAKER_02: 27:18

Yeah. I mean, that's certainly what I have found over time is my you know go-to therapy, which I didn't realize until I've you know got gone along this journey. But it's a it's an easy task, isn't it? It's doable. A lot of life. I mean, I'm not I know people can cook complicated. I personally don't choose to do that, but even if you do, it's still a doable task compared to finding your way through depression, for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Compared to you know, having a a difficult conversation with your teenage daughter, you know, or holding your temper.

SPEAKER_03: 27:57

But even that though, I think like if let's say, for example, you are in the kitchen with your teenage daughter and you're going through a resume, like reading that together and trying to follow it together, like to me that that's facilitating conversation in itself.

SPEAKER_02: 28:11

Oh, absolutely. So that's yeah, no, and absolutely you are getting somewhere, and that has been one of the big things I've really noticed that my daughter, my eldest child, she um when I was trained to be a therapist, and I was a lot busier thinking about other people than my own kids, to be honest, and she came bursting into the kitchen.

SPEAKER_01: 28:31

Where's that bread?

SPEAKER_02: 28:35

She didn't speak like that at that time. Because, to be honest, she was absolutely right. You know, I I wasn't upholding my parental duties. On the other hand, she was now becoming a young woman, and she was more than capable. And so, as it happened, I because I'd been teaching um making simple bread, um, just soda bread, and I'd been spending ages making this really great, like little recipe with some funky photos and stuff, and I had all the ingredients right there. So I said to her, Oh, actually, there's the bread. You've just got to make it. And she was like, Oh, yeah, what I can do that. I mean, I can do that, absolutely, and so that was such a pivotal moment for me of just going, Oh wow, you know, the tools, the resources that we need are around us. But cooking so often finds the answer because my guilt and uh of not not being a good enough mother in that moment, my frustration with this kid who is actually old enough to make her own bread, you know, there's a natural thing there as well. And her understandable frustration that mum's actually not mum's giving a a lot more attention to other people than she is to me. Um that could have all really combusted, as it often did between me and her, into a mess brow. Whereas, you know, today uh it didn't. She made it, she made it great. Um loaf of rent. And she walked out that kitchen going, yep. Yeah, done it.

SPEAKER_03: 30:08

It's the finished product. And that's what I teach with the girls like in cake therapy. It's like celebrate yourself and celebrate the wins and celebrate completing this task. Celebrate completing something that you didn't know how to do a few weeks ago. Yeah. So it's all you know. So I know that when your daughter completed, you know, the task of baking that little loaf of breath, I know that there's a feeling of success and having accomplished that. So yeah. Yeah. That's what you get from culinary arts though. Is you know, that feeling, that euphoria when it comes to baking.

SPEAKER_02: 30:41

I think, yeah, I think the practicality of it and the fact that you can share it with others, you know, that it does provide this bridge that, you know, you feel great, that you've achieved this thing, and you love you, you make something that you love, or you make all your own self in that way. But it really reminds you of your humanity. It really just says, you know, if I love this, I send it to you with love. And if you don't like it, then okay, there's just more for me. That's cool.

SPEAKER_03: 31:12

So then you have your bread recipe in the book. I do, yes, I do. So it's about what's in it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:18

Okay, so you know what? It became a version of the hero's journey. So this this image on the front here, which I think you could wrong enough. Um, it's a the fool from a set of tarot cards. So you know, the the tarot is um quite a masculine journey, and this particular image is from the motherpiece set of tarot cards. So they're um it's written by a couple of people that I call my Cafe Californians because they're because they are um feminists from the 80s, and they rewrote the tarot for for women from a female perspective, and it's a really I really recommend it as a way into it um you know work. And so the book has become like this journey of it's about becoming a conscious cook, but it's becoming conscious of yourself as a human that has connected roots, you know, right from the beginning of time. So I love the fact that you know women were you know building a little hay pit and putting their iguana quietly in it, burying that, and then they were going on to go and get some jobs done. To be honest, the men were like, you know, big, like, I'm going on this big hunting trip, rah-rah, rah, quite often coming back with nothing. And then the women going, no, it's okay. It's all here. But you know, the point is that a meal means that we all as a community have to come together. You know, there's no way that one person can feed themselves. They on it. They it relies on somebody doing some hunting, someone doing some gathering, someone making a fire, someone keeping that fire going. You know, all those jobs, and that's still the same today. So I would say that the book is about that journey of us becoming who we are as a species and trying to reconnect with that.

SPEAKER_01: 33:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:10

Because it is our first technology. And when at the moment, you know, quantum mechanics is so important of how we understand the world. But when humans make a meal, this some quantum levels of understanding and meaning and magic, if you like, you know, so it's the original alchemy. What's really interesting is that you know, you've got the cook and the meal, those ingredients, but it's in the observation, as it is in quantum mechanics, quantum physics. It's in the observation that something changes. And my great kind of passion is to say, you know, cooking is uh is a way of like connecting with the magic, with the with the power that we have inside us, but we do need to notice. And we do need to understand that that is not just about the physical meal that we get at the end of it. So, you know, the interesting thing about quantum physics is that we don't understand how it works. We have we really just are struggling to understand it. And they argued that whether it worked or not for ages, but then the like the um engineers came along and said, Do you know what? I don't care why it works, I'm telling you that it works. And I'm gonna I'm gonna create all these amazing technologies from it. What we're missing, that's just the physical technologies, it's just the focus on the results. What we're missing is the spiritual and psychological nutrition and happenings that are contained in that. And for me, that is why we're in the mess that we're in. We need to we need to go back to, I mean, we can call it magic because on some levels it is, and I do want to connect with that child part of us that it's just going, I just made that bread. Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_03: 35:03

So does the book have like some of your favorite childhood recipes, or tell me about the recipes in the book.

SPEAKER_02: 35:08

Um, yeah, so each each recipe is a is a is a card from a game called Busy. So each recipe has, yeah, so there's just eight in each season. So I've divided the um the recipes into the seasons, which are the seasons of our life, not um not the weather seasons. Although that, you know, I'm following those. So spring is about um early nutrition, and I've just um, you know, the bonding and the attachment relationships and nurture. And so those are some recipes that I've come to, they're all about sort of more throwing things together. So there's very sort of opposite to what you do. Yeah. I don't use weights and measures, I just yeah, and so I just try, I know, I know. So I have got you know a chocolate and banana cake in there, and I just try and you know make it taste and adapt as well. That's really important that the recipes are all there as a starting point because obviously it might need to make it gluten-free, in which case they can use almond flour, you know, this or that might want to make it vegan so they can use tofu instead of chicken, you know, that so recipes are there to be played with, like a pattern. They have come from my childhood and they come from areas as I've grown up and as I am growing up, so they're constantly changing and things that have been meaningful.

SPEAKER_03: 36:35

Yeah, I I love that you've created these recipes where people could actually play and experiment. I think it it allows for people to be spend a little bit more time in the kitchen. As for me, I do have like recipes in my book too, but what I do in um the recipes is like I'll have them at the start of the chapters that I create because I use those recipes to actually set a tone of what I'm you know, of what I'm about to talk about. So, for example, in my book where I'm introducing myself, I talk about it as um I use the Pavlova bites to kind of describe, you know, who I am because it's so so deconstructive. Yeah. Because I felt like at the time as I was introducing myself, I I was a bit about to deconstruct myself, and it's such a deconstructive dessert. So I yeah, I'm asking people to pull me, it's gonna pull me apart. The stories that I'm about to tell you is pulling me apart and putting me back together. And I think similarly with your recipes where you're you're saying, play with this, yeah, see what you can do.

SPEAKER_02: 37:40

So I get it. Very much the same thing. It's so fascinating that in these opposite parts of the world, we were playing with the same idea. And I didn't Pavlova, despite the fact it was, you know, my grandmother's one of my grandmother's greatest achievements for me, she made a pavlova and uh uh hid bits of chocolate in it. So I, you know, particularly loved that. I just oh maybe, oh look, I've come onto this chocolate and banana cake. Yeah, and so these, oh dear, I keep going the wrong way. The um the recipes have all been illustrated by my middle daughter. So we had wonderful time kind of talking about the recipes, and she, you know, like um we do, we pass recipes on and she enjoys cooking these, she's a great cook, and but we had such great conversations um to think about the meaning and what we were gonna do, and her recipes, they're each the her illustrations, they're each very different. There's not a sort of a set style, and um, yeah, we had a lot of time fun playing with those and deepening our understanding of one another. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03: 38:50

That you know, I I um that's one of the pillars of case therapy. You know, we're trying to improve relationships between friends, parent, and child. So I think we are in these unique positions where we recognize that man, the kitchen does build community and it does build communication. So which is good, which is good. And I love I love that this community is growing. I love that we've connected. Before we go, though, I want to find out from you what is your home for kitchen therapy?

SPEAKER_02: 39:19

Well, I've started a community interest company, so it's a non-profit where I can um perhaps run some team-building events for corporate that could then enable me to fund more community work. And what I discovered in COVID when I started cooking outside was just how powerful it is, really, around a fire. So, where you said that community kitchen, there's something about being outside and connecting with our, you know, our animal nature that are really powerful. So for me, it's about building various different groups. That's what I'm I'm looking to do, of provide opportunities for groups of all different uh needs and natures to um find a way of accessing what they need through making great food together.

SPEAKER_03: 40:10

Yeah, absolutely. I love uh we're gonna end there. You know what? I find so much intersectionality with kitchen therapy and cake therapy. We are walking a similar journey. We're on a similar path because we've both been healed by the kitchen and there is so much value and there is so much promise in the kitchen for you, for me, for young girls, for anybody who's listening and who wants to go into the kitchen. Um, before I go, I want to I want to tell our listeners though that we do have an app that's called the Case Therapy app where we're encouraging more people to have the kitchen in the palm of their hand. It's called Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 40:52

I have got a little plan for a um, oh I did, yeah, I have a little plan for a video game, but it did start off as an app.

SPEAKER_03: 40:59

So we have an app we can download it to Charlotte. Well done. You to have the kitchen in the palm of your hand, but I want to keep encouraging everyone to be innovative in the kitchen because there is so much power in alternative approaches to therapy. Talk therapy works, yes. But the data tells us that new approaches are on the horizon and the kitchen is one of them. Yeah, you can use it, it's an alternate resource, it supports talk therapy. Talk therapy isn't the only way. I want to thank you, Miss Charlotte Hastings, for joining us. I'm happy to have you here. And um, I think we're gonna do a few more things together. We're gonna do a live, we have to plan that and maybe you know cook together or something. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02: 41:50

What a great idea! Yeah, I know. I'm so happy to have found you. Thank you so much for inviting me and um and just making it such a great experience to talk with you today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 42:01

Absolutely, we'll definitely talk again. Oh, yeah. Um, I have to say to our listeners, thank you for joining us. If you're listening and you haven't subscribed yet, please go ahead and subscribe. Um, your subscriptions and your listenership is valuable. That's how Charlotte found us because of you. Okay, that is right. Yeah, yeah. So Charlotte found us because of you. So thank you. Thank you so much, Charlotte, for joining us. This has been the Cake Therapy Podcast, your slice of joy and healing. And remember, we're not just about cake. We are more than cake. So thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Charlotte. Thank you very much. Today's mindful moment is that with each dish, we feed more than just the body, we feed memories, comfort, and moments of joy.

SPEAKER_00: 42:53

Thank you for tuning in to the Cake Therapy Podcast. Your support means the world to us. Let us know what you thought about today's episode in the comment section. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And if you found the conversation helpful, please share it with other friend. Also follow Sugarspoon Desserts on all social media platforms. We invite you to support Cake Therapy and the work we do with our foundation by clicking on the Buy Me a Coffee link in the description, or by visiting the Cake Therapy website and making a donation. All your support will go towards the Cake Therapy Foundation and the work we are doing to help women and girls. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll catch you on the next episode.