A recipe for deep summer
Thoughtful musings on plants and food + a way to use up all those sungold tomatoes from your garden
Hello dear readers,
Thank you for being here! The last couple of weeks have been the muggiest and hottest yet here in Richmond summertime. The kind of stagnant humidity that hits you no matter where the sun is in the sky. It’s a great time to get into bodies of water, lounge in the tree shade, and delight in fresh cold foods that take that heat down a notch.
If you are feeling adventurous and can stand to turn your oven on, I highly recommend this recipe for sungold tomato butter sauce (scroll to the bottom of the page for recipe). I found it many years ago from Isabella Gambuto and have tried to make it every year when the sungolds are going off in my garden.
My husband and I grow a very small veggie garden that is mainly made up of herbs and tomatoes. This year we’ve adventured into some peppers and kale, but to be honest the bugs have gotten more of the kale than we have. What are you growing and what are you eating and what are you excited about food-wise? I would love to hear of your current inspirations in the comments below!
As you all know, my art tends to circle around the natural and culinary worlds. I’ve particularly loved exploring pastry through the paintbrush and all leafy green things in general. I’ve spent the summer taking two courses- one on intuitive plant medicine with the herbalist Asia Suler, and the other a course on calming anxiety with Martha Beck. I’ve also been working one on one with a dream therapist of sorts, Laura Melling. We meet every other week to deep dive into my dream life with somatics and archetypal/mythic wisdom and symbolism. Without knowing it consciously, taking these two courses at the same time and doing this dream work have all alchemized into a new way of relating to my nervous system, my creative body, and the natural world. I am totally in love with plants (always have been) but now I know how to make flower essences and trust my intuition more when I feel they are speaking to me or showing up in my life in a particular way. I am learning tools to bring myself back down from anxious thinking, over and over again, and plants seem to be a huge helper in that. They are showing up constantly now in my dream space, telling me at times even how to use them. It feels like a long love finally coming into full knowing, and I am so grateful for these teachers and guides to help reveal to me this golden wisdom along the way.
Cooking and baking has always been a way that I relax. I recently was listening to an interview with an herbalist from Wales and she was explaining how when, many years ago, witches were banished from practicing magic, they just moved their magic making into the kitchen, and I love thinking about creating magic with the food I make. In fact, I feel that witchy cooking magic in the lineage of women in my family. My grandmother was an incredible cook, as is my mother and sister and aunts and cousin. It’s one of those amazing gifts you take for granted until you zoom out and realize how much love has been felt through the food you’ve eaten and how much you’ve poured into what you’ve created. Painting has also offered a way for me to feel calm and cast my love out, but maybe in a different form these days as it is also the way I bring in money and has more necessary showing up/parameters to it.
I feel like I am in a very emergent space these days, my artwork shifting around a bit, my interests being pulled more directly into the natural and dream worlds. I’m not sure how my work will respond to these changes but I am excited to find out and really grateful to keep sharing with you all here. It is my greatest pleasure to feel community in the way that I create, and I hope to continue deepening that bridge and know more of your creative endeavors too.
What are you dreaming up these days? What is emerging from this hot summer heat for you and your path? How are you making space to play?
Some fun announcements to share with you all:
I taught my last workshop of the summer this past Sunday at Fort Lewis Lodge and had a beautiful turn out. It was my largest group (15 students) and I am always blown away by the natural talent and discovery that comes out of these spaces. If you’ve attended one of my workshops this summer, thank you so much for taking the chance to learn a little bit about ritual making and painting from me. I am looking forward to planning more workshops for the fall and winter, and am always interested in aligned collaborations. If you have a space/farm/idea in mind that you’d like to partner with me on for a future workshop, please reach out!
Calendar Pre-Orders! I am coming out with a brand new calendar this year and it is FULL of new artwork, including some never seen before pieces. Its been 2 years since I made a calendar, and I am excited to offer this one at an even larger format with artwork that you can cut out and save as 6x8” prints. You get 13 prints in total, plus beautiful design from Anna Thompson of Palindrome Creative. Pre-sales for the calendar will start August 10th AND the first 100 calendars sold will get an extra letterpress notecard created by Anna. Keep an eye out here and on my instagram and website for when they go live. These calendars make such wonderful holiday gifts.
Paid Substack Subscription updates:
I’ve been sharing a fresh mini painting every week for the past couple of months with my paid subscribers and then on social media. It’s a fun way to share my process with you all and offer a glimpse into the way a painting is made. Paid subscribers to this substack get to see the paintings first AND get to purchase them first too! These mini paintings are a way to offer a more accessible and affordable option to purchase an original piece of artwork.
As a paid subscriber you also get an extra post every month with an interview with different artists/creators plus a 15% off discount code to my print shop that never expires. This month my interview is with the talented and wonderful mixologist Danny Childs. I got to create the illustrations in Danny’s new James Beard award winning book Slow Drinks and can’t wait to share some of his knowledge and creative practices with you all!
Flow Chart from Danny’s book Slow Drinks To change your free subscription to a paid subscription you can do that here. You’ll pay as little as $4.17 a month (that’s less than one espresso drink these days!) to get all of this extra content, discounts and goodness. Plus you really support me in my work which means so much.
Thank you so much for being here and for following along as I share the inspirations and practices that help make this work as an artist doable.
Sungold Tomato Butter Sauce
INGREDIENTS
2 pints of sun gold tomatoes
8 oz (2 sticks) GOOD unsalted butter (I used Kerrygold grass fed Irish butter) at room temperature
Salt and Pepper
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Slice sun golds in half and arrange on baking sheet skin side down
2. Roast at 300 degrees F for 1 hour, or until soft and slightly browned on the edges
3. Blend roasted sun golds with softened butter until puréed
Pour over fresh pasta, spread on toast, melt over steak, the possibilities are ENDLESS! Will keep in the fridge for about a week.
Current Inspirations and Musings…
My friends and loved ones are doing great things out in the world! I am blessed with incredible abundance in my immediate community and so proud of all that is being created around me. I wanted to share some of them with you all here.
-I’m incredibly proud of my husband Rob and the offerings he has created with his coaching and facilitation business Kind Moon. He just completed a 6 month program in psychedelic integration coaching and is now offering one on one coaching containers for people desiring a little extra support after moving through any peak experiences in life. While the focus of these containers is catered towards those who have undergone psychedelic sits or treatments, integration coaching is really for any big life events you are moving through. This includes marriage, divorce, having a baby, losing a loved one, moving, starting a new career, etc. This stuff is BIG stuff! And it helps to have some support and coaching on how to move through it all along the way. It can make the whole experience that much more rich, healed and abundant with opportunity for growth. He is also just about to start a mindfulness mentorship program with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield that will offer even more tools of support for those he meets with. To learn more, or to schedule a free discovery call check out his website here (which is about to get a nice new facelift!)
-Liza Newell is a dear soul sister best friend and incredible story teller. She has been diving deep into the performance and art of storytelling, traveling over the past year to different storytelling events and festivals, and headlining quite a few! She leads storytelling classes at retirement homes, helping elders learn how to tell their own unique and beautiful life stories to a live audience. Check out her site and work here.
-Charlotte Oddi is another dear soul sister AND is now an ayurvedic wellness coach! She is offering one on one consults and cleanse protocols to people who are looking for some physical wellness and support. Check out her offerings here.
-Kathi Hendrick is yet another dear friend (I told you I am abundant!) and an incredible facilitator of embodiment practices, living art, and regenerative design. She has a few new offerings available including a somatic/dance/movement group container called SOMA. Check out her site for more info.
That’s all for now! Thank you again for being here. I am so grateful for this little corner of the interweb space that I get to share with you all.
Ooo, love this so much. I've also taken a course with Martha Beck, called The Art of Calm. I found it so supportive and the techniques and information are so enlightening. Plant medicines is something that speaks to me. I've taken an Ayurvedic Culinary training course as well as Indigenous cooking classes. Learning about the healing properties of food is so fascinating. I am in awe how the plants appear in your dreams and how you tune into the messages from them and your intuition with using the medicine they offer. Knowledge gets imparted in so many different ways, word of mouth, intuition, dreams...etc. Love it. Have you read Earth Medicines by Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz?