Alrighty.

Good, how are you?

I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

I'm reading this, yeah, this very cool cookbook.

It's a lot of fun.

I have another one here.

So the one you're reading right now is called The Witch's Cookbook.

And there's so many great recipes in there.

And a lot of them align with certain attentions or certain seasons.

But I also have one here that is a divinity cookbook that aligns with certain tarot cards and using tarot magic alongside food to create, manifest and infuse your intentions into what you're eating.

That is such a fun exercise.

One I've never done before.

Really?

Well, not intentionally.

I think after doing some reading, I'd find out that I've done a lot of things just by accident.

Right, cooking.

I mean, you cook for your family and for your friends all the time because you love to, and you love to feed them.

And this is just like an extension of that.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, it's definitely a love language that was pretty much ingrained in me from a super, super young age.

Probably in utero, well, definitely in utero.

Right.

I remember my grandmother would, she lived out of state, and it didn't matter what time you would show up, if it was the middle of the night, she would have a four-course meal on the table.

Yeah.

Ready to go.

Yeah, getting drunk growing up in my 20s.

That sentence did not come together exactly the way I wanted it to.

After I turned 21, and if we would be home after we had gone out and you get the munchies, rating the refrigerator at my parents' house was always a good time.

You would always get really good leftovers that beat the hell out of McDonald's or Chips and Dip, that kind of stuff.

And we also have a friend that makes crepes when intoxicated.

Well, she bakes.

And she bakes, right.

Crepes are her easy go-to, and I feel safe.

One night, she made orange soufflé at 2 o'clock in the morning or whatever it was, and we were all like, oh my God, no one can wait up for this.

She did push me over the hill into a crepe-making kick, though, for a solid six months.

I was like, I could crepe the shit out of anything.

Yeah, crepes, I think go under.

They're not like super popular here in the States.

I mean, you can definitely find like a a creperie here and there.

But, you know, our go-to is let's just thick it up a little bit, make some waffles or some thick ass pancakes.

But crepes are where it's at.

Like, they're thin, they're delicious.

They're so good.

They're French.

They're French.

They're French.

Anything French is good.

You know me.

Welcome.

Welcome.

To Two Mystic Mamas.

I love every time we do that.

I know.

Me too.

I mean, listen, the crazy DJ-inspired sound effect that we were doing really only works in person.

It really does.

No.

No.

Listen, for you listeners that have stuck with us the last 10, 12 weeks, by the time this comes out, it'll be like 12 or more episodes, I believe.

But for those of you that stuck around in the beginning for the first few that.

Were here, audio was less than par.

We were trying to do too much.

Too much too early.

We learned.

We learned, yeah.

We are talking about culinary spells.

All the things.

I have so much to talk about.

I know you do.

So many stories.

It's like bursting out of you, I can feel it.

I know.

Well, I love when you brought these three cookbooks because my parents are really trying to downsize.

And well, let's just say the amount of cookbooks that those two humans have for being in the industry and all the things for, I mean, close to 50 years at this point.

The other thing that my parents collected was menus.

So throughout their time together, and they will be celebrating 43 years of marriage here in August, and even before that when they were dating because they met in culinary school, they would request a menu and have the chef sign the menu.

So they have a ton of menus.

Some of them are framed.

My parents ate at Windows of the World, which was in the Twin Towers in 1981.

It was a very, very famous restaurant at the top of, I want to say the North Tower, but it was at the top of one of the towers.

And they ate there before they got married, and there was a famous chef that was working there, and he signed the menu.

And my parents got married in 81, so they celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in August of 2001.

And that was what my mom had given my dad as the present.

It's like a really cool frame, it's like open on both sides, so you can see the menu on both sides, you can flip the frame.

And then the towers fell a month later.

That's wild.

It was wild, yeah.

Anytime I go thrifting, I always look for cookbooks, namely Julia Child, who I just freaking adore and love.

And like I always look for some of hers.

I found one not too long ago at an auction I wanted for $2, and I did gift it to Miss Crepe.

Oh, I love that.

For her birthday.

I generally, I used to collect cookbooks and had a lot of them, but now I really only buy a cookbook, I buy like a local cookbook when I travel.

So I try to pick up something from wherever I'm going.

I don't know if you know this, but I haven't done it in many years now, but I used to create my own cookbook and print it out and give it as gifts every year for Christmas.

That does not surprise me, but I did not know that.

Maybe I should re-institute that this year.

I love that.

I think cooking is one of those things where, well, I have such a passion behind it.

You know, I offer service on my website to help people learn how to get comfortable in their kitchen.

Whether that's just navigating how to use certain equipment, how to hold a knife, how to eat, just basic, basic kitchen things.

Or if it's wanting to take a step further and, you know, help them learn how to cook and feel comfortable with making meals and food in general.

And also teaching children, like, how to do those things.

Mostly like more teenagers, not like little kids, like how to bake and whatever.

It's more like giving life skills to those who take an interest in this.

Because I do feel strongly that that was a generational thing that stopped because right when we were growing up, so we were both born in the early 80s, and then fast food and mass marketing of processed food and how to get food in quicker into our bodies so we could work longer hours and do all these things that really are so unhealthy for how we function as humans and getting back to people learned how to stop cooking, if that makes sense.

It's just not something that a lot of people know how to do.

And it intimidates the hell out of people.

It really scares a lot of people.

How do I do this?

How do I do that?

And the kitchen is such a fun place.

It's such a place of magic.

It's such a place of creativity.

But again, I grew up in that.

That's what I know.

Well, and I love that you have such a unique background when it comes to cooking.

I, in my early 2000s, really got into watching The Food Network.

And so I was all about Nigella Lawson and Alton Brown and anything that I could learn from those guys, I was like all in on.

And I just started getting in my kitchen and experimenting because I wanted to learn.

I wanted to be Martha.

You know, minus the house arrest.

I don't actually want to be Martha Stewart.

I was like, God, what?

That would not be the person.

No, I just wanted to have my own little cooking empire.

The interesting thing about cooking too, well, about the industry, when you say empire, right?

Because people would always be like, oh, where's your dad have a restaurant?

And he never had a restaurant.

And then people, you know, always like, why don't you open a restaurant?

Why did your dad open a restaurant?

You know, after you retire, why does your dad open a restaurant?

The restaurant industry is like so time consuming.

It is an energy suck.

And I will say that like when, now that I'm so attuned to energy, and I'm so attuned to frequency and like that exchange, when you're dealing with other humans, there's a lot of things I loved about working in the restaurant industry, and there's a lot of things I loathe about it.

And owning a restaurant is not my calling.

No, not at all.

We had talked about this in kind of the infancy of our relationship because Charlie's family has a smoked meat business up at the farm.

And he was thinking about wanting to do a restaurant down here that was like, you know, an annex off of that basically.

But that is, it's a lot.

And I was like, I personally am out on that.

Yeah, too much.

I think it would be cool, but it is so much time and effort.

You live there.

Yeah, 100%.

If you want it to be successful, you live there for a period of time.

My mom had a catering business called Culinary Creations, and she ran it out of the house while raising me and Matthew and Justin, which I have no idea how that would be possible.

I have three kids, and to work on a schedule like that where you don't know what's going to happen and people are waiting on you for, say one of us gets sick, I mean, it just is so frustratingly, I don't know, it already makes me be like, ugh, ugh.

What is the coolest dining experience you've ever had?

You talked about your parents in the World Trade Center.

Yeah, I have had some pretty magical experiences.

One that comes top of mind when we were, I don't know, I was probably 13 or 14.

So Matt and Jess would have been like 11 or 12.

We went to Toronto and we, they have a restaurant in the CN Tower that rotates very slowly.

And I remember everything about that meal.

We got Shirley Temples in these CN Tower glasses.

Our server was super cool.

I had Fettuccine Alfredo.

That was a super, super memorable, memorable experience, memorable dining experience for me.

And then some of the other ones, I think would have just been people, not necessarily the food.

I had some pretty magical experiences in my 20s at, do you remember Gypsy Cafe in the South Side?

Yeah, what street was it on?

It was on a back, it was like, it ran parallel to Carson.

Oh, okay.

And it was like a, it was a BYOB, and they would always have like funky tapas and like Bohemian, like pillows on the ground and like live music.

And that was a really fun place.

That had really great energy.

So not so much about the food necessarily, but more about just the people there.

I had an incredible experience, and I believe this place doesn't exist anymore either.

But when I was in Australia, in the, off the coast of the Sydney Harbor, there's an island, and it's an old fort, and it's called Fort Denison.

And for a while, there was like a very upscale restaurant that was there that you could only get to, you know, by boat.

And so they would ship you over, and it was just me and a friend of mine that I had met and, you know, that lived there in Australia.

And oysters and champagne and fresh catch, and they cooked everything there.

It was magical.

Yep.

And then looking back at the opera house and...

Yeah, oh, yeah.

Everything was so, so cool.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I've...

What else?

José André, who's probably, you know, one of the coolest chefs in general.

He does so much for humanity, but he's such an experimental chef.

He had a restaurant down in Disney Springs, and Jeff and I, we had the tasting menu, the chef menu, and it was such a cool experience.

It was like play on food.

Like you would eat something that was, you know...

It looked a certain way, and it just tasted like something completely different.

Like it was such a cool play.

Yeah, that's like a whole other thing too, when you're talking about food.

They're some of the most creative, crazy creative when it comes to food and science.

I don't even know.

Like I can't even put a finger on it, how to even start doing some of that.

And in Pittsburgh, we're really lucky.

We have some incredible restaurants here.

We do.

We have some hidden gems.

Get into food, get out there and start looking, because they exist.

Yeah, they really do.

And the food scene here is, you know, a lot of these chefs are graduating, and they can't afford restaurants of their own in Chicago, Washington, New York, Boston, LA.

I mean, like, the properties are just way too expensive.

And to start a restaurant, you have to have some serious capital.

And so Pittsburgh is very appealing, and it's such a fun city.

There's just so much to do.

And yeah, the restaurant scene just continues to change and grow, and it's fun when you get out there and do it.

I very rarely do I get out of my little South Hills bubble to go to a restaurant.

I mean, my kids are like, let's go to Pins and Pints or, you know, something that has games.

Oh, does that have games?

I will say that Coupe de Ville is really fun.

That's one of Richard.

Yeah, Richard Deschamps' restaurants.

We went to Cobra, which is right there in Bloomfield, and it is like a Korean barbecue.

It's very small, and they have the barbecue tables with the small girls in the middle.

That was Evie's first time she ever ate red meat and enjoyed it.

She was like, oh, this $90 Wagyu, absolutely.

Yes.

But it was...

Everything that we had there was absolutely incredible.

And see, I will do Korean barbecue.

Don't take me to a fucking melting pot.

No.

Bye-bye.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

I will never go to one of those again.

I went once.

I know it's your jam.

I know you have that anniversary thing.

Yeah, Evie loves it there.

No, it's not our anniversary.

That's where she wants to go when she gets straight A's.

Nope.

So we go once every nine weeks.

I was one and done.

I went once.

I got food poisoning when I was pregnant with Emeline, and I was like, never again am I going to pay those kinds of prices to cook my own food.

That was mediocre.

I thought it was so mediocre and so expensive.

I like it because they are really great with gluten allergies.

Oh, well, yeah.

So I really appreciate that.

Like we've touched on restaurants.

We've touched on like the background, kind of how we grew up.

Let's talk about the magic of cooking.

Yeah, let's do that.

Let's get into it.

So growing up, I always knew that food played a big role because my mom was very strict is the wrong word, but consistent.

That's a good word.

My mom was very consistent with us having family meals.

And now raising three children, I'm like, why can't we have regular family meals?

And it's because we are involved in, I don't want to say way too many activities, but we were involved with more activities than I was growing up.

It was just not a thing.

So we would always have family meals, and we always had a salad, and it was a ritual, plain short of it.

And I think it laid the foundation for me just to appreciate what that looks like, even if you're doing it on the run.

What it means to eat with maybe one of my children, not all of them, and just what goes into preparing food for nourishment.

I think one of the things that I really try to stress with the kids is nutrition versus, no, you can't have that.

It's, all right, let's look at the ingredients, okay, and really analyzing it and being open with them, right?

Because so much of our processed food in the United States is absolutely terrible for our bodies, and it is full of garbage.

And it is convenient, no doubt, but it's really not good.

And so I try to just teach the kids, listen, you can't just have carbohydrates and sugar because then guess what's not gonna happen?

You're not gonna have any magic happening in your body.

Like, we all know that if we eat well and we feed our bodies well, we feel better.

There's not one person out there that can say that isn't the case.

And there's a lot of studies out there about how you can heal certain ailments in your body with food.

With food.

Right.

Yep.

So I think just being in that, and when we moved into the house we have now, one of the things was we blew out the whole wall that basically divided the first floor living area because I really wanted the open concept, because I wanted to be able to cook and entertain at the same time.

So we have that giant island, and it just makes it very accessible to be at the stove or be prepping and cutting something while also talking with whoever's at the house, whoever the kids are home, and just asking them questions.

And so our family sit down dinner just looks a little bit different, but we still have that, I try to still have that unity of eating and talking at the same time, not being on tablets.

I mean, we do from time to time, definitely.

I have a strict no screen at the table rule.

Oh, not at the table, yes.

But sometimes they'll be like, can we eat in front of the TV?

And depending on the night we've been having or the day, I'll be like, yeah, we can put something on, watch a movie, especially if they have friends over and that kind of thing.

Our nights are also very crazy, and usually none of us are home at the same time.

You know, Charlie will be gone for long, long stretches of time in the evening with rehearsals and EVs in and out of activities and whatnot.

So our time is really the morning.

So we always have breakfast together.

Even if one of us is fasting or something like that, we still sit down and, you know, enjoy breakfast time together.

And, you know, we have like a mantra that we say in our family before we eat.

That's not religious, but it's just very much like thanking the earth for the food that we're eating and welcoming, you know, any family and friends that might be joining us.

But the mornings for us are so great because we get up, we have a lot of ritual in the morning.

Like you were saying, you know, sitting down and eating a meal with your parents was a ritual.

And that is something that kind of transcends all different types of life, right?

In villages, you see people come together.

In the Mediterranean, you see people come together, you know, Buddhist monks.

They have a bowl that's like their very special bowl.

It's all about ritual.

And I would say, you know, if you are into cooking or want to get into cooking or just want to eat with your family more or be more intentional, start to look at it as a ritual.

You know, how can you incorporate intention into what you're doing with your food?

And that goes how we eat it and how we make it.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And it's funny because there were certain things that my mom especially would tell us about food, like when we would help her do things and prepare things.

Because my mom was definitely more hands-on than my dad because my dad, he wasn't home.

He was, you know, he was the breadwinner and he was in the kitchen.

And so, not our kitchen, the other, the working kitchen.

And, you know, she would always say, okay, now, stir that with kindness or stir that with love.

Like, it has feelings.

And I always was like, what?

But it was so true.

If you were whisking something, and again, this goes back to just learning how to whisk, if you will, right?

Like, it's all in the wrist.

And how you hold the whisk and how you whisk things together, when you do it with intention, and you do it with grace, right?

Like, you're not super hard with the whisk.

You're like gentle, but you're firm at the same time.

Things just turn out so much better.

And, you know, there was a movie in the, was it the late 2000s where it was all about, it's not gonna come to me, but she would like make food, and she would make it with love.

And it like transmuted into the food.

And so if she was crying, she like cried into her soup, and then everyone at the event she was cooking for started crying.

And so, you know, I think that that is so true, and I do it with the kids too, because sometimes they're like super rough when they're like doing things.

I'm like, no, no, no, you have to be more gentle.

You know, like Graham was helping me last night on the grill flip burgers.

And, you know, it's like anything else, the more we've been doing it, the more I know how to use a spatula and just be like bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, you know, whereas you have an eight-year-old that's like, I don't know how to, how do I flip it, you know, and just taking the time to do that.

So the power that you can infuse into food, that then, you know, because nothing feels better than making a meal that you've really enjoyed putting effort into and then having it taste so delicious and so good and then having other people be like, oh my God, this was the best meal ever.

Thank you so much.

Nothing brings me more joy.

I know it does.

It feels so good.

I had a girlfriend that had stayed the night a couple of weekends ago, and I made breakfast for us the next morning, and she was like, this is amazing.

Even your strawberries taste good.

We were just laughing about it, because when you go and somebody makes something for you with love, it tastes so good.

And I have a meal that I make that Charlie has dubbed Best Friend Pasta, and I've made this for you before.

And I first started making this, like, over 10 years ago, when I would go to the farmer's market in the north side.

They would have it on Fridays.

Oh, yes, and the Farm Kings.

Well, this was...

You know what I'm talking about.

The most gorgeous, adonis farmers known to man.

Everybody went to that farmer's market just to see the Farm Kings.

I totally forgot about that.

The King brothers.

Well, how could you forget about that?

I don't know.

I was focused on the skinny pasta guy.

Not me.

No, but I would go there, and then I started my own garden.

So I would kind of take things that I grew and things that I got at the farmer's market.

And I think the pasta guy, it was just like a small little stand.

And I think it was Ohio City Pasta, which is like pretty big now.

And I would go home, and I would get fresh goat cheese too.

And I would make this pasta, and I called it farmer's market pasta.

And then it kind of transformed over the years.

And now when I have someone over that I, you know, care for and I want to make a meal that really is nutritious, but also like full of love and caring, I make my best friend pasta.

It's just all veggies.

And I use gluten free corn pasta.

Yeah, that sounds delicious.

I don't feel like I've had that.

You said you made it, but like...

I made it for you one time.

Was it a long time ago?

No, it was recently.

I can't believe you don't remember my best friend pasta.

I feel bad about it too.

But you're just going to have to make it again.

I'll just make it again.

A lot of what you're talking about, though, moves into the area of kitchen witchery or being a kitchen witch.

And the things that your mom was talking about with love and care and infusing all of those things into your food have been done for generations.

And they were done by medicine women, and they were done by quote unquote witches and women that were the head of families and the head of tribes that were taking all of the food that they were gathering and putting so much love and intention and care into feeding their families and their people.

And so you were talking about whisking, and in the kitchen witch world, which I started an Instagram page called The Witching Kitchen, which is just geared towards, you know, fun witchy things.

Like, I'm just going to start to post recipes and stuff in there because, you know, it's fun.

But when you whisk clockwise, in a clockwise direction, you are adding in your intention to whatever it is.

So when you're stirring, when you're whisking, if you want to add love into it, if you want to attract abundance, if you want to manifest something, then you stir in a clockwise direction.

And then if you want to, let's say, release something or banish negativity or something, and you're making something that you're like, I just want to let go of what I'm holding on to, you can start in a counterclockwise direction, which is also called Whittershins.

I believe a Scottish turn.

Interesting.

Yeah, and that just made me think of when I get on my sourdough kicks, too.

You know, with that, because some things take a lot of attention and a lot of time.

They're not necessarily difficult.

Like sourdough is one of them.

You just have to feed it and feed it, and then you have to make the bread, or you have to do something with the starter.

And sometimes I like I find myself, you know, kind of being in that mindset where I'm like, yes.

And then I'm like, no, I don't want to do it anymore.

It's too much work.

One more thing I have to do, you know?

So I think kitchen, kitchen and cooking is like that too, where you, you, you have, you just go in cycles.

Like we all go in cycles of different things where sometimes I'm really into it and I want to experiment.

And very rarely do I use recipes when I'm making savory dishes.

If I was doing like, there's no recipe for your best friend pasta.

It's like whatever you want, how do I make it fun?

How do I make it delicious?

You know, you taste as you go.

I kind of do that when I make meatballs or different types of things too, where I don't really follow a recipe.

I kind of know what I need to add to it.

I hope you don't taste as you go with meatballs.

I do taste a little bit, but I cook it.

I don't eat raw meat.

Ugh.

But also, however you're saying about the Food Network and how you used to watch that, I think there are some really incredible shows out there now that are so much fun to watch.

And if I was to ever do anything, there's a show called Somebody Feed Phil, and it's the creator who was the creator and writer of Everybody Loves Raymond back in the day, which wasn't a show that I necessarily watched religiously at all, but I knew of it, and I knew it was popular.

But he travels around the world going to places and eating through the cities, which is like, that's my jam.

If I travel somewhere, and you said you pick up cookbooks when you travel, just feed me through the city.

I don't need to go to nightclubs.

I don't need to necessarily see all the fucking churches or cathedrals or museums.

Just feed me all the way through.

I want to know from top to bottom what they got going on food-wise.

I can't wait till we travel to Europe together.

This is going to be epic.

We're going to travel, eat our faces off, lose weight, because that's what happens to everybody.

They go to Europe and they lose weight, even though they eat the most decadent, delicious, amazing food, because there's no preservatives.

There's nothing shit in them.

They're just straight, good ingredients.

When I got here today, Rachael had made a blueberry scone cake.

I mean, it's a take, yeah.

It's a take on a combination of, yeah, we'll just go with that.

That works.

And it was gluten-free.

And it was delicious.

Delicious, not attractive.

It doesn't have to be pretty.

It tasted real fucking good.

No, it did taste good.

It was kind of crumbly.

Scones are crumbly.

They can be, yeah.

So I just want to mention that there is a distinction here between cooking and baking.

Now, you can still bake with love.

Baking, you can't experiment as much unless you really know what you're doing and you're like a tried and true baker.

Like my sister-in-law, she could probably experiment because she's like an extraordinary baker and that's her jam, right?

Cooking allows you a lot more freedom.

I love to just get in the kitchen and Charlie gets excited when I wing it.

He's like, man, this is going to be good.

I know when you wing it, it's going to be good.

For dishes, but not baking.

Right, for cooking.

Yeah, yeah.

Baking, so I did follow a recipe and I tried to take a gluten-free mix, and it was a cake mix and turn it into scones, which...

You made one giant scone.

I did.

It's just a big circle.

One big delicious circle.

But I do, I think, you know, like even going back to my sourdough, people started, because I started making sourdough, not so much this past wrestling season, but the season before it, I was like making so much sourdough.

That's when I was in like my heyday, and I was like, to the point where I had to give bread away.

Like I was sending loaves of bread.

Not this way.

You never made a gluten-free loaf, Lee.

That scares me.

I did find a whole Instagram page dedicated to gluten-free sourdough.

I think you should make gluten-free sourdough.

I know.

I got into sourdough, like everyone did, in 2020, before I knew about my gluten allergy.

And then in June, I had found out about, you know, all the things that were going on with me.

There was a lot of things I didn't get into in 2020 because I was making my third human.

Right.

I mean, I had four or five different starters in my fridge that I kept naming after characters from Harry Potter.

So we had Volmour and Hermione and Harry.

I haven't actually done that.

I have two starters in there.

I should do some more baking.

People have asked for it this past wrestling season.

They were like, where's your sourdough?

You're going to make me some sourdough?

And I was like, oh.

Yeah, I can do that.

The people want their sourdough.

But you can't just whip it up.

You have to give yourself a solid two weeks to get your starter back kicking and all of the things.

It's a crazy world.

The sourdough world is a crazy world.

There's a lot of people out there that also experiment and make amazing, incredible sourdough.

All different types.

I just go with basic sourdough.

I have been thinking about investing in a bread maker just for the purpose of easy gluten-free bread.

You should thrift a bread maker.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

They're always...

I shouldn't say they're always there, but you can 100% thrift one of those bad boys.

That's a good idea.

I have found I made a quick bread that wasn't a sweet quick bread with oat flour and a ton of Greek yogurt.

It was a really interesting recipe.

It turned out really good, though.

Yeah, sometimes they can have...

I know when Jeff was on keto, they can do that cloud bread, and it's super weird consistency.

Just don't.

I've never tried the cloud bread.

I've seen it on Pinterest before, though.

It's not good.

I always find that when I am able to do some prepping for a meal, I love...

That's when I love to have conversations with my spirit guides and my guardian angels to just have like real transparent conversations about what's going on in my life and what have you.

And another thing that my...

Both of my parents instilled in me is you always start with a clean space.

You never prepare a meal when there's too much clutter around, which Jeffrey does a lot, and it drives me bananas.

So I always take the time to prep and prepare my space before I actually dive into a meal.

And that's easier said than done.

I mean, there are definitely times where I'm like, shit, I got to get chicken nuggets in the air fryer, and I got to get blah, blah, blah here.

But if I'm preparing, like my parents are coming into town this Friday.

My dad's birthday was yesterday.

And so we are going to be celebrating my dad's birthday on Saturday.

And I've been trying to be intentional about what dishes I also want to make for him because he's also been really struggling.

He's been dealing with a lot of grief.

Just, you know, my dad's turning 69, and some of his friends are starting to pass away.

And it's an interesting place to be supportive of someone that you love so much.

And so I have really been trying to think about how I can be intentional with my dishes that I'm creating for him, that I know will bring him comfort and love.

Yeah, I think adding, you know, healing and comfort into our meals is so important.

I actually have a friend who, every time she sits down for a meal, she holds her hand over her food and just says, you know, I'm thankful for this meal, and this meal heals my body, and gives the food intention.

And the more effort that you put in, the more likely that your intention is going to manifest.

Right.

Right.

So if you're, you know, kind of blessing food as you go along while you're making it.

Right.

Blessing the table, being intentional about your table setting, and teaching this, like I teach this to Evie too, is that we don't ever want to, if you don't want to do something, we don't do it mad, right?

Let's take time to like reassess where our head space is before we set the table.

We want to have a good meal, not a, I'm just going to slap this down and go because I'm trying to get on to the next thing.

Yep, and I also think you just made me ping something in my brain too when it comes to, we live in such a fast paced society, and I think a lot of what I've been called to do is help people like stop being so fast and stop being so rushed in everything they do.

And when we think about when we get food from other places, we don't know how it was prepared.

We don't know what those people necessarily were going through.

And everybody, I'm saying this in general, generalities, like going out to eat can be such a good time and such a fun time, but I think to your point, it's important to bless whatever food we are about to eat just to kind of transmute anything that might have been funky out and just to redirect any energy, because we all need food to survive and to live.

That's just part of the makeup.

And so when we fuel our bodies with really good, flavorful whole foods, that's the best.

But we also like, you know, we have to be flexible.

I mean, McDonald's does come into the picture once in a while, but just like really be attention-centered on that, you know, just because I don't even think sometimes, well, I know, I don't.

I don't always remember to do some of those things, and I think they're just quick, easy, and you know, you don't have to think long and hard about it.

You can just say it really fast and just have that, you know, three-second intention, and off you go.

Right.

I think we've talked about this with a lot of other subjects, which is the effort just needs to be there.

It can be one small step.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yip-yip-yip-yip-yip.

You don't have to go full Martha.

Oh, Martha.

Martha, Martha.

I find it so interesting that she's friends with Snoop Dogg.

I do and I don't.

I think that, like, I think naturally people are like, oh, my God, what a strange combination.

But they are both so brilliant when it comes to business that I think they have a lot of common threads.

Right.

Plus, I know Martha gets down with the weed, so, you know, they got that going for them, too.

Oh, Martha.

That's a whole other topic we could talk about.

Food that's been infused with drugs.

We don't get down with that.

Not yet, anyways.

Maybe I'll save that for our 70s.

So it can be our retirement plan?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The psychedelics and the...

Yeah.

Ayahuasca.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I got too much going on now to be like, let me get down.

Let me just ruin my brain for six months.

Oh my God.

Thank goodness.

Raising the humans does that for me all the time.

I can't combine anything else with that.

The other thing we haven't really touched on, we've touched a lot about food, but we haven't really talked about tonics or pairing it with beverages, which is also a really cool area that you can explore because naturally there's so many beverages out there that complement certain types of food.

And I'm not just talking alcoholic beverages.

I'm talking just beverages in general that can really pair so nicely with a meal and making sure that you don't combine or you don't forget to combine that aspect of it.

I mean, even down to like water, there's a lot of different types of water out there.

I know people are going to be like, what are you talking about?

But there are a lot of different types of water, whether you're doing still water or sparkling water or mineral-based water, that's like a whole other thing too.

I am all about flavor profiles that work synergistically with one another.

And my husband will pair some random ass shit together to eat and then drink something bizarre on top of it.

I'm like, do you care at all about your taste buds?

The palate.

Oh my gosh, it's terrible.

I will never understand it.

I'm not the kind of person that like, all of my food has to not be touching or whatever.

If it touches, it's fine.

You know, I like a good combo of this or that.

For a certain level.

Right, exactly.

But some of the shit he eats is wild.

My dad would do the same thing growing up.

He would make peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches.

Oh, no.

Fuck that.

That makes me want to vomit.

He said it made it creamier.

Fuck your creamy peanut butter.

God.

No, no, no.

No, nothing about peanut butter and mayo should ever, ever.

You know what makes peanut butter sandwiches creamier?

Marshmallow.

That's a fluffernutter.

I know.

I know.

I was definitely in a phase when I was probably in middle school when I found that combo.

Now, oh my God, it makes my teeth want to rot out of my face.

But...

I had a weird thing when I was in like eighth, I would say like seventh, eighth, ninth grade, where I would make onion sandwiches every day after school.

What kind of onion?

So just like raw onion.

Yeah, but we're trying to make like red?

Just like a white, like a white onion.

Like a sweet?

Like a sweet onion.

On sourdough with yellow mustard and salt and pepper.

Raw, not sauteed?

Just raw, yep.

That is...

Bizarre?

I mean...

Yep, I know.

That's out there.

I don't even know why I did it.

Should I make one for you after the podcast?

Would you eat it?

I don't know.

I haven't tried one since I was young.

Fascinating.

I don't think I did it...

I remember once...

So, my parents, you know, when my dad was home on the weekends, he would make...

He would naturally cook, and he always just made it look effortless, right?

Like, little bit of this, little bit of that, pinch of that.

You know, like you're just in the kitchen doing whatever, and, you know, at the end, it's...

Here you go, and you eat it, and you're like, that tastes delicious.

So I thought that's really what you did.

You just went in and took a bunch of shit and threw it together, and it tastes delicious.

So I made them a sandwich.

I was probably Graham's age, like eight or nine.

And I made them the sandwich, and I just threw a bunch of shit on it, and kind of like that peanut butter mayo.

I don't think I went that hard.

I think it was like, you know, a bunch of different types of deli meat, and then maybe some jelly.

I mean, I definitely was...

I funky-ed it up, and my dad like...

And I put toothpicks in it.

Like, I cut it in half and put toothpicks in it, as you do, you know, fancy red, little frilly toothpicks on it.

And I think I was going for maybe like a club, maybe like a California club, but I made a Waynesboro club instead.

No.

My dad looked at it and was like, I'm not eating that.

And I was like, no, you have to.

I made it for you.

And he's, there's no chance, Rachael.

I don't know what you put on that, but no.

But I distinctly remember doing that.

And just, and that was my first.

So you can't just put everything together.

Right.

There is a method to the madness.

Evie likes to make concoctions.

Method to the magic.

Method to the magic.

Like drink concoctions?

Well, Emmy likes to do mocktails.

She likes to fuck with Charlie.

Oh, yes.

Now I know about this.

She'll make all sorts of things.

But she does.

Every year, we set an intention at the beginning of the year, and she picks something that she is going to learn how to make that year.

Something new.

So tortilla chips, or when you're a scrambled eggs, or cookies, or whatever.

Each year, there's something.

But she loves to prank him on April Fools.

And now I'm drawing a blank as to what she did this year, but I know it was food involved.

Oh, no.

She put hot sauce in his syrup?

Oh, that's right.

No, she made hot sauce pancakes.

Hot sauce pancakes.

I knew she put hot sauce in something.

She just put a bunch of hot sauce in that batter.

And then last year, she took him Greek yogurt with chocolate chips for breakfast, but it was fucking mayo.

Yes.

And you know, mayonnaise is one of those things that really trips people out.

Well, she, you know, her original thing she wanted to do was take an old toothpaste container and fill it with mayonnaise and have him brush his teeth with it.

I was like, babe, I don't have the patience to squeeze mayonnaise into a tooth.

Yeah, that might just be so trauma-inducing.

He's such a good sport.

I don't know if Jeffrey would be.

He gets like real tripped out about pranks, though I don't do them.

We never think about it.

I don't really enjoy being pranked.

I don't think.

I don't think I've really been pranked.

So I don't know.

Maybe I would.

Good conversation, Rachael.

Do you even need me for this conversation?

Talking to myself.

But yeah.

Oh, all right.

Well, speaking of, let's go eat.

I want to make you some food.

Well, you made some soup for us.

I made a blueberry cake scone.

And I made some chicken enchilada soup.

Yeah, so I'm going to do something with some tortillas.

And I think I have guac.

Yeah, let's just go.

I'll go raid the refrigerator and whip something up.

We're going to go feed ourselves.

Feed our bellies, feed our minds.

It's so important.

We love you guys.

We do.

And your brains.

Go get some good food.

Eat something delicious today.

Or make it.

Like, if you get into this place where you're like, oh, I shouldn't eat this, or, oh, I should eat this because...

I just want you to get real still.

And I want you to think about, what do you really want?

Really listen to your body.

What is it?

A, it's probably not as terrible for you as you think it is.

If you really listen to yourself.

And B, even if it is, just do a little bit.

But give yourself what you really, really want to give.

Yes.

I love it.

All right.

Peace out.

Bye bye.