I'm Katerina Pavlakis, The Intuitive Cook, and At Home with me today is Lauren Woodgate. As an intuitive copywriting coach and storytelling expert, she helps people uncover the magic of their own words. I can tell you from working with her, myself, that she is the queen of word woo woo. Raised in Britain, now living in Canada, she also brings a unique cross-cultural perspective to our chat about pancakes, creativity, unexpected flavor matches, and those small shifts in perspective that can blow your mind. Welcome, Lauren. So lovely to have you on the podcast.

Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here.

I think we'll have a lot to discuss about finding your way intuitively, but let's just start with something really simple. Let's just start with food memories. Do you have a really early memory of food or of cooking?

Hmmm. I think I have a few little snapshot memories. I think that food tends to remind us of people in our, in our lives. And I just remember smells and tastes and relate them to people in my family. I remember going to my nan's house that always smelled like cabbage because they just loved cabbage and it was quite a strong smell in the house and it was something we didn't really eat in my house. So that smell of cabbage, just any time that I smell that, I'm automatically kind of thinking of my, my nan and that, it puts me back in that room with her again with that smell coming from the kitchen. But I think my... My favorite meal growing up was always having pancakes for Shrove Tuesday. And I think it was extra special because it was close to my birthday, so it was a sign that my birthday was on the way. So it was already an excitable time for me, but I remember my mom used to just do very simple... Some might consider plain pancakes because while some of my friends were putting all different fruits and chocolate and things on theirs, we just used to have the traditional little bit of sugar and some fresh lemon juice. And I just remember how exciting that was because it was different from the regular dinner. We could eat something sugary for our dinner and just have as many pancakes as we wanted. My mom would just keep making them. And then we'd have the fun competition between me and my sister of who could flip the pancake the best without it kind of flopping or falling out of the pan or getting stuck on the ceiling as my dads did once, which is a great memory. So I wouldn't exactly call it, a memorable meal for the taste, but it was just more the occasion. And the kind of celebratory feel that it had to it, and just being different from the regular meals that we ate as a family.

And only being that one day a year, that also makes it special, doesn't it?

It does, yeah. It does, because we really didn't have pancakes the rest of the year. It was just that day. And now in North America, there's pancakes everywhere. You know, people eat pancakes for breakfast. There are little cafe shops, and they always have pancakes on the menu. Pretty much lunchtime, afternoon, all the time. so it was very much for me, a special occasion. And it's a bit of a shame now I can't seem to replicate it. I can't seem to make it taste like it did back then when I try myself. So maybe it's something that I need to ask my mom how she would make pancakes so that I can then maybe maintain that tradition with my children.

Yeah, although it might also be that the ingredients and the way of making is so intertwined with the experience, that maybe you can't replicate it because you are a different person now in a different environment and it's all different. And I guess for your children, I mean, it would be lovely to replicate that, but if they eat pancakes at other times of the year, it wouldn't be quite as special as it was for you.

No, no, I think you're right. I think it's a time capsule moment to just keep in that time of my life and treasure it for what it was.

think that is true for every dish and for every recipe. This is why I often, marvel at this idea of, replicating a recipe if you only follow the exact steps. And I believe that you can't because next time you make the recipe, everything is different, including yourself. Not to mention, the different tomatoes and the different whatever, even if you measure the exact grams of tomato, it's going to be a different tomato, a different day, a different you. So, to me, you can't even replicate a recipe, so, why, even try?

Yeah.

Do you, do you remember learning how to cook? I mean, obviously you were flipping pancakes at an early age.

Yeah. I mean, our, our house, it was very much my mom would do the cooking and we would get chased out of the kitchen because it was, it tended to be, my mom was, she was a single mom. So it was very much work and then a quick dinner. She didn't have that much time or energy. And so it was very much stay out of the way when I'm cooking. But that said, I didn't realize until I got. into my kind of mid secondary school age, and I noticed in my cookery class that I knew very simple things, like how to make a white sauce, for example, and I noticed that we were being taught things that I already had at some point been shown how to do, and they were new to my classmates and so I knew how to make toffee. I remember we made a caramel sauce one day and I thought, well, I know how to do this and I, it got me questioning. How do I know to do this? When have I ever had to make a caramel or a toffee, you know, but I think that my mom, even though most of the time she was rushed and she was limited on budget and other things that made her cooking perhaps a bit stressful. I think that secretly, even though she probably wouldn't admit it, she actually did enjoy cooking. And especially I have memories of making bread so we would plait the bread to make buns in different patterns. And so we would, she would show me how to roll out the dough. And I've got memories of those things. So I think that she was really enjoying using that as a bonding moment with us. And so there are certain things that I realized going through my secondary school that, wow, somewhere along the line, I did learn some basic skills of sauce making and casserole. You know, how do you make a casserole? What's in a casserole? What are the kind of ingredients that I could throw in there? And I just assumed that everybody knew those things until I came across situations where I realized that actually other people didn't know those things. And then, of course, when I moved out of home when I moved here to Canada and I had my first house with my partner here, I saw how little he actually knew about cooking, and he would ask me, well, how did you do that? And I would think, well, surely that's just obvious, but I think part of it was just picking it up because my mom would actually speak to me about what she'd done or show me a few little things here and there, or get me to help a little bit as I got older and also just because I'm curious and I tend to, you know, I have a very different personality from my partners. He's just happy to sit back and let somebody else do it. But for me, I am always kind of just looking or I'll ask a question. Oh, that what's that flavor? And I'm just innately curious. And I think that that's another way that I just learned things without realizing that I had, because I'd just been asking questions or watching and observing what other people were doing.

Yeah, and I think that is as important in, cooking as it is with everything else. I think really this kind of curiosity about what's cooking and why it's tasting the way it's tasting and just curiosity to try new things. yeah, I think that is also something we have, we have in common: curiosity and wanting to know how things work. And I think we also have in common this kind of intuitive approach to things because you are a writing coach and I have been working with you for quite some time now and it very often strikes me how the things you say and you write about finding your intuitive voice in writing is so similar with the things I talk about, finding, your intuitive way of cooking.

Yeah. And I think that's, that's it. It's the intuitive element and the creative side that cooking is, creating something just like when you write or when you, you could sing a song or a dance, it's a form of, of expressing yourself. I really feel that about cooking. And. I think meeting you has opened up that perspective for me because before that, this kind of intuitive, curious, creative nature has always been with me, but I hadn't really applied it to cooking because I've just been exposed very much to recipes and measuring, and.... that in my mind, there were certain boundaries that I didn't realize were there. So, well, you shouldn't put that flavor with that flavor, or a meal consists of three things, your meat, your potatoes, and your vegetables, just very much what I grew up with. And I hadn't really noticed until I started working with you that I could apply my creativity and I could apply that Intuition to the way that I make a meal just as I would to the way that I write which is very much about feeling not about kind of thinking and analyzing and trying to get it right, but actually just trusting your instincts and experimenting, you know, what happens if I do this? What happens if I do that? And when you add that playful element that is really the foundation of that creativity, isn't it? That playful exploration of, Oh, I wonder if I try this or try that. And so actually applying that in the kitchen is what I've really loved about being part of your community. It just opened up some freedom for me, I suppose, and it took so much of the pressure away because it wasn't any more about the goal of getting it to match what it should be in the recipe. It was just about exploring, adventure.

and that somehow, yeah, as you said, it takes the stress away and then it becomes more enjoyable and I guess also easier because it's the stress or the fear of doing something wrong that is, that is holding us up, whether it's cooking or writing or, or anything really what we want to do with our life, with our creativity.

Yeah, and we just, we spend so much time thinking, and I think that's, it's true for writing, it's true for cooking, that we just... the problem is not so much in the doing, it's in the thinking about the doing. Yes, we just, we spend so much time. Worrying about what will happen if we do this or do that and worrying about coming up with ideas, whereas actually the ideas are just there and it's the worrying about not having the ideas that's pushing it that away that's putting that out of reach. So I think just letting go and coming very much back into that intuition, means that you're actually, you're doing it. So there's not really much space for, Oh, I'm worried about getting it wrong because you're just learning through the doing,

I very much have learned and I'm still learning that with, with my writing from you and everything that I've learned from you. from you. I find my problem is not so much not having ideas, but discarding the ideas as wrong ideas or useless ideas, or who wants to know about that ideas kind of thing. and yeah, and worrying about it. And this is then creating that mind block of not Not letting your voice being heard really, and although I've been working with you for a very long time, I find that every time I don't have the little kind of nudging from your presence, from the conversations within your community, that I kind of fall off the train. So I've, for the last month, I mean, I've been away, I've been sort of deep in whole sort of family issues. And now I'm back and dealing with other things. And I haven't written hardly anything for a whole month, which, um, it's about time that I get back onto the train.

But it's also very much been a time of rest and regeneration and lots of things going on. And because you haven't been producing doesn't mean that you haven't been creating. So there's, there's something shifting and going on for you. You're getting new stories, you're getting new insights, new experience, which is all fueling that voice just behind the scenes. And I do think going back to, to what we were talking about of getting it right and needing that community for support. Is, I really feel that this is something that is very female in our society. Like when you're cooking, trying to make a dish that other people are going to like, rather than do I even want this particular dish? we are just so conditioned to look to others, to serve others. And it's the same with our voice and with our writing is are other people gonna like this? Because if not, oh, then I'm not, I'm gonna scrap that idea. Even if I actually love the idea, and it would feel great for me to express that, I would prefer to put my desires aside, if I'm worried then that it's, it's going to offend somebody, or if it might make people think something about me, that I don't want them to think about me. So it's, very much a, a female thing, and what I have noticed, in my cooking in the house is that, even now when I believe I'm more of an intuitive cook, I still notice that these little moments where my husband will do something and I'll think, I would never have thought to do that! Because I had noticed these blocks that I have. So it's peeling back the layers all the time and finding more and more ways where we're limiting ourselves or holding back or not fully allowing ourselves to be that curious, creative force that we are. And just the other day, my, my husband made dinner and he did a pork fillet. And he said to me, which he loves to do, can you guess what I've put inside it? So he'd cut it open and put some sauce inside. So I said, it's apple sauce. And he said, yeah, but there's something else. There's a bit of mustard. Yes, but there's something else. So I'm tasting this and it's quite fun actually. and I couldn't figure out what I thought might be cheese was actually banana. And when he said it, I said, no, it's not, it's not banana. And he said, yeah, it's banana. What is it really? It's banana. And I really wouldn't believe him because in my mind, I thought, who on earth? would chop up a banana and put it inside the pork and bake it for the dinner. Like, just to me, it was like, so bizarre. And then I thought, well, why not? Why wouldn't you give it a try? You know, there was half a banana there, what had happened is one of my children had had the other half of the banana for breakfast. And what my husband will do is see, oh, look, that needs using up, throw that in there. So that's what he'd done. He'd seen that half a banana and thought, well, may as well use that up!

And it's, you know, if you think of flavor combinations, but, in my mind, I never think of ingredients. I think of, flavor directions and that thing about complementing and contrasting. So, you know, pork has a sweetish tinge to it. So something sweet always goes really well as long as you add some contrast, maybe, the mustard and maybe there was something else that would have added, you know, some, some zestiness to it and then it works. So it doesn't matter the ingredient, as long as you get those layers of flavor, right, as in balance things out.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it's, it just shows me sometimes that in my mind, I am still thinking of ingredients, as you say, of well, as a child, my mom would say to me, Oh, no, you don't have that sauce with that particular kind of meat. You have that other one. It's just like, that's the traditional way of doing it, and it's very black and white. You gotta have your cranberry sauce with your turkey, for example. Like, don't think of putting any other sauce on it, just the cranberry. And so then I just these little moments where I see somebody else experimenting, it happens also in your community where people post things. And I think what a great idea. And it just, every time it just opens me up a little bit more. And I think that's the beauty of this intuitive processes. It's not like you just click your fingers and you say, okay, so now I'm going to just Do my own thing and be an intuitive cook and not follow recipes because that's so ingrained in us to have these almost blocks to our curiosity where we, we don't even realize that they're there. And it's, it's the same with writing too, that you just. Every now and again, somebody will say, Oh, well, it's really interesting when you talk about that. And it's something that you'd thought, Oh, well, I just assumed everyone knew that. Or, Oh, I didn't think that people would enjoy that. And so it just opens up that new avenue for you. And every time it really does feel like peeling the onion, which is a very, um, appropriate metaphor for cooking, but that's really, really what it is. I don't know if you ever get to the point where you've shaken off all of that, all of those stories that you hold around cooking and what food should be. And whether you're able to fully get back to that innate sense of following your instinct and matching flavors

But the thing is, obviously, the instinct is fed by something, and I think it's fed by these references we all have of things we have eaten, or... you know, recipes we've seen and we thought, Oh, that combination sounds interesting. so the instinct is being fed by these references. We don't kind of grab these things completely out of thin air. And this is again, when we have that curiosity and that openness, that is how we constantly can feed that library of references so that, when we open the fridge and think, Oh gosh, what am I going to cook tonight? The references are just there, but I think a lot of people are kind of not paying attention to that. And if you don't pay attention to what you like and what you don't like, it's not that it's not there, but it's just buried so far back in your mind that it's not going to come in that moment when you need it, which is when you think, oh gosh, what are we cooking tonight?

And that, that really is, I've said to you before that, that for me is the biggest benefit of being in a community like the one that you have is that you're not alone. So the other people there become your references. So when they're, when they're talking about experiments that they've done with dinner, things that they've tried, things that work for them, things that didn't work so well, the kind of flavors that they're combining, the way that they're building their dishes through that pattern structure rather than just through ingredients. It gets your mind going and you think, Oh, and you can, you can take what you like from that. You know, you can say, well, that, that sounds great for me. That one, not so much. Maybe I can try that combination. And you just notice if something's not working well for you with your dinner, somebody else might make a comment of something that they've tweaked that just matches the experience that you're going through. So it's that relational learning. That I feel is... is the most effective way to really integrate that intuition into your cooking, because you could tell people about it all the time, but actually doing it, it tends to be a case of we try it for a bit. And then as you said, with your writing, you fall off the wagon. It's, it's like that. You just lose motivation by yourself. It's because it's a new way of thinking, a new way of doing things. It does take effort. And so you can very easily fall back into, Oh, I'll just do what I know is okay. But then kind of feel a bit resentful about it because it's something that you were hoping to change or a kind of pattern that you've got into that you, You don't find particularly healthy or as you want it to be. And so I think having that community and just seeing other people doing that, thinking that way, it gives you permission to do it and it also gives you motivation as well and builds that bank of references that you were talking about.

Yeah, this thing about motivation I think is quite, quite important because it's, as you just said, you know, a process that goes on over time and it's very easy for your motivation to kind of flag on the way and then being surrounded by community that kind of helps you to keep going. And... I guess it's the same for me with the writing, because it still is some sort of effort. Especially when there is lots of other things going on, I will, that is the one thing that feels too much. Whereas with cooking, because It's so automatic, you know, whatever may be going on, I still cook, even if it's just, you know, fried eggs. I don't easily fall for, for other solutions. I I'll rather have fried eggs. I just, as you were talking, then I just remembered an expression that my mum used to say when I was growing up. And I think that we're just so shaped by our parents perspectives of things. And I just remember my mom would say, and she would say, we, which is including me in this, we don't live to eat. We eat to live. You know, some people, they live to eat. They just love food. They love cooking. But not us. We just eat to live. And I think part of that was circumstances. Because she didn't necessarily have the money to buy extravagant meals, or the time to prepare them, but it's, it was also a mindset thing because you don't really need to have a load of time, a load of money to feed your family something nutritious and enjoy doing it. Um, but that obviously had come from down the line with her too and her experience. But I realize more and more how much, actually, maybe I don't live to eat. Eating is not the important thing, but I think that you can. Live more in the kitchen than what we do because I feel it's very much, it's very robotic. It's very like you say, it's like a chore. Oh, well, I've got to make dinner now. Let's go. What am I going to make? And it feels heavy, but I don't think it needs to feel like that. It's not just I've got to eat now, but why not have fun doing it like everything in life? We're still living. So, so do you feel this has changed for you? Have you changed your approach? Is it different now from what you maybe inherited?

Yes, it's starting. It's starting, it's a process, and some days and weeks are, I'm more enthusiastic than others. And as you were saying about writing, it's, it depends what else is going on. And for me, thinking about food is more difficult. So it's one of the things that I tend to pass on when I... When I'm overloaded with other things. So I've noticed the last couple of weeks, it's my husband that's been deciding what we're eating for dinner. And sometimes if he's not home, he'll just send me a message. By the way, I was thinking this for dinner, to take that mental load off of me. Which does feel like a mental load, because I'm, it's not automatic for me to just go into the kitchen and open the cupboard and say, Oh, I'll just put a bit of that and a bit of that right now. Um, I am very much in, well, there's this meal, this meal, this meal. Almost like a menu in my mind of the things that I know how to cook. And I think that that's a place that a lot of people in, are in, is tonight is going to be lasagna, or shepherd's pie, or like a set dish that they know how to make, or have practiced, rather than just being able to pull flavors together.

Yeah, I, I feel that a lot of people feel the need to give dishes a name. And yeah, I'm more of a kind of, this is just some stuff in a pan kind of thing.

But that's what it all is, really. That's, that's all it all is. With or without a name.

yeah, I mean, obviously some things the name or the concept does give you, you know, a lasagna would be, you know, something that is layered and baked. And it doesn't matter so much, at least in my mind, what you have layered. It's still, you know, some sort of layered baked something. Uh, so, I mean, these names do give you some information about what it is. And then, you know, sometimes you find, people just getting all kind of upset and uppity about, you know, is this a carbonara, and this is not how you make a traditional carbonara. So how can you possibly call this a carbonara? Which is like, who cares? This is just a word that we're using to, you know, signify it's It's, a creamy sauce with, with spaghetti, but indeed, you know, I've been making a lot of cabbage carbonaras where the sauce may be quite traditional, but there is no pasta involved because it's the cabbage. So it's still, if I say cabbage carbonara, you probably have, you know, an idea of what, what it is. So, you know, these, names of dishes are useful in some ways.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. And I was, I was thinking about my children, my daughter who's just turned four will come home from her daycare and she always has a cooked lunch there. And I'll ask her what she's eaten so that I'm not giving her the same thing in the evening that she's already had for lunch, and it's quite funny to listen to her describe what she's eaten because she doesn't know the names of dishes. And so it's very much like: a brown sauce with it It's like some kind of beans in a, in a wrap with a, with a yellow thing. And okay, right. And then I try and ask questions to figure out what it was. Was it a bit sweet? But then even then she doesn't really know what sweet means so she's just describing by texture and by color but also it's just really interesting then for me to to see the way that she describes things very much by sensation and I realize how much I've lost that. I would describe it with a name like you say this kind of sauce, with this particular style of dish, whereas for her it's very much like, oh, it was, you know, it tasted a little bit, sometimes she says itchy, which makes me laugh. It's a bit itchy, which I think is probably spicy. Or it was, it was very soft or it was very smooth or sweet or, the color, sometimes how crunchy it was, whether it was cold or whether it was warm, which I don't tend to think about when I eat food. You know, what kind of foods feel warm versus cold. And so that's, just seeing it through that different perspective. Makes it difficult for me to know what exactly it is that she's eaten. But I see then what she likes just through the way she describes how it feels for her to eat it. And sometimes she'll say she didn't like something because it was cold: I only like that when it's hot.

That's fascinating, isn't it? That, that whole different perspective. And I guess you can then, you know, use that as a guide to decide what, what you want to make that, you know, will maybe fit her, her preferences.

Yeah. Yeah. And in ways that I wouldn't think about, like we've spoken before about getting meals that the children will enjoy eating and like participating in and doing things like tacos and meals that my daughter calls them picnic dinners. Because that's how she sees it. I just put different pots on the table, and she goes, Yay! A picnic dinner! And she just loves the fact that she gets to do it herself. So she can actually pull the plate to her, take as much as she wants. And so normally if I put vegetables on her plate, she'll eat one or two, but if she serves herself, she just keeps going. It's just, vegetables I can get for myself! And I just think that... things like that come from listening to what she says that she likes. Like, oh, I like that I could pick it up with my fingers. And a lot of parents would say, no, don't eat with your fingers. Use your cutlery. but if that's the way that she's enjoying that food and it makes the whole experience more pleasurable for her and she's going to eat more that way, then why not let her eat that with her fingers?

There is always time to learn the cutlery thing later.

Yeah.

I and, I guess this is when you have no pressure to eat, then I guess as a child, that makes you also... curious and more open to try things. And, so it's something about, taking the pressure off and letting them do their thing. Yeah. So that was all about your daughter's preferences... what is your favorite thing to eat or one of some favorite things you have? What do you enjoy?

Oh, well, when I was growing up, I was a huge pizza fan. I would have eaten pizza all day, every day. I just loved pizza and I didn't eat meat, as a teenager. And pizza, became a little bit of an obsession, perhaps at one point. I had to wean myself off of eating pizza all the time, um, because nutritionally, it wasn't really great for me to eat so much pizza. Now I think I'm really into salads, and I say now because I go through phases. Um, it depends on the season, it depends on many things because in the, in the autumn time I really love soup. And soup is great, because it's so easy to just stockpile it in the, in the freezer. And it, it feels... Very nourishing for me and nurturing as something to do for myself to have made a homemade soup. And I like that feeling of, I did this myself, but it's already made. So it's that lovely combination of ease and yet knowing that you have actually put the effort in and it's going to be something you really enjoy because you picked the ingredients and you cooked it in a way that you like it. So I really like making soup, but I'm not a fan of cold soup. So in the very hot summer days, like right now, I've I'm into my salads and beets. I love beets! yeah. Goat's cheese. So I pretty much just have these certain flavor combinations that I like. And then, um, I base the rest of the meal around that. So goat's cheese with beets and a bit of balsamic, that's something that I know that I love. So whether I have that with salad or whether I do some kind of potatoes with a goat cheese topping, I have certain flavors that I know that I love and then I just play with those.

Which is the best way really to be led by what you like or by what your children like. And ideally, you know, a combination of both.

Yeah, and I find that, the flavor in my meals is now really interesting and exciting for me because I've discovered the world of fresh herbs, which, for some reason, I hadn't really explored much before. Unless I was making a specific recipe and it called for a particular herb, I would go and buy it. But otherwise, I had a few of the standard dried herbs in the drawer and that was it. And now I've discovered how much flavor you can get into a meal with not too much of fresh herb. And... what you've been teaching me about that nutritionally, how that can boost the nutrition of a meal. It's like a whole new world to me. And I'm finding that I really now like herbs that as a child I would have turned my nose up if my mum used. But now if I'm, if I'm doing potatoes, I love rosemary on potatoes. I've discovered that. So my kids are also really into that too. And if I make a salad, then coriander and mint are a lovely combination in my salad. So now I find that I can make that flavor that I like with the herbs. So I can change the ingredients. So it tastes like a different dish, but it still has that lovely flavor that I found that I like. And so the world of fresh herbs is just incredible. I'm loving it.

That's amazing. That's great to hear. And, herbs are also some of the easiest things to grow yourself. If this is something, you want to venture into, that is really quite easy.

Yeah. And we, we've got a few in our garden right now. And we also have some raspberries and blueberries as well right now. So that's fun too. If the kids don't eat them all before I get to them...

yeah, I, I used to, I remember having raspberries in our garden when I was a kid and before going to school I would sneak around the raspberry bushes and, and have my fill. And in Greece, raspberries were something very exotic because the climate in Greece is not really very suited to, berries. but my mum is German, so she Got some raspberry plants from, I don't know, So, so, the berries were something very exotic in, in my life, something we didn't have very often at all and, yeah, so I was stealing the raspberries before anybody else could.

Oh, there are a lot of birds that like our berries too. So that's another thing.

Yeah. So, and do you have any favorite tips or hacks or whatever you want to call them that you, you can share with people? What is your best tip in your kitchen?

I don't know if I'm the best person for tips in the kitchen, but, um, I think anything that I can make ahead is always a great thing. So I have started to think more and more and open my mind up to what can be made ahead. And I think I think it was your newsletter recently, you spoke about vegetables, cooking vegetables ahead of time. And that blew my mind because we, we buy our vegetables and we chop them every night and cook them. And I thought, why hadn't I thought before to, to cook them more, you know, in a batch and then use them in different ways over the next couple of days. That's just another very simple thing that blew my mind that you tend to do that to me. You give these little tips and I think, well, of course, of course I can do that. So anything that I can make ahead of time is definitely something that I would do. So now I have started this week to cook my vegetables and then just, then I can just throw them into whatever I'm making. I can even just throw them in the blender into a sauce.

Yeah. All of these things, the possibilities are endless. And of course, another tip you just mentioned yourself just now was, you know, using fresh herbs and, and how easy you can, add a lot of flavor and nutrition to whatever you're making. Again, the possibilities are endless. Whether, it's fresh herbs scattered or you stick it in a blender and you end up with some pesto type thing.

Yeah, exactly.

That's, interesting how these little ideas are able to change, the way we, we think about cooking.

Yeah, and I mentioned to you before my salt epiphany. That I'd been brought up with zero salt on anything because it was unhealthy and bad for me to put salt, even in the cooking or on the food or anything. And then after taking your class with testing out the level of salt in the tomatoes to see what my preference was, I realized I actually really like it. I like the taste of salty food. And so just adding salt to my food has increased the flavor amazingly as well.. That is the magic of salt, when you use it not to make food salty, but to make food salted. I love this little detail that the English language has, with these two words, the difference between salted and salty, and how that that little salt is kind of literally blowing up the flavor of whatever you have. And it is one of my pet peeves, this idea of, of avoiding salt in your cooking when, you know, all the data shows that, 60% of our salt consumption comes from processed foods anyway. And, mostly from things you wouldn't connect with being salty, like, you know, cereal and bread and stuff like that. So while, we think that these processed things are so tasty because yeah, they have got the salt added because there isn't much taste there to start with. And, kind of this perpetuates this idea that if we avoid salt in our own cooking, our own food is going to be always blander than that packaged stuff. And of course, the packaged stuff needs a lot more salt because there isn't a lot of flavor to start with. That's this other thing we need to keep in mind. If you have flavorful food, you only need a little bit of salt to... multiply that flavor you already have. If there is no flavor, then, yeah, you need to pile on the salt and the sugar and the fat. Yeah.

So yeah, I'm glad that that has opened up a new world of flavor for you. I have to admit I've, I've always been a salt junkie. I'm, I'm immune to chocolate, but, and I'm not immune to salty snacks. So that is where, where I fall down. I have to not start eating that bag of crisps. So no crisps in the house, no way.

That's one way of doing it. Don't let them in the house and then there's no choice.

And you know, on the very rare occasion that I go, you know, to someone else's house and they have a bowl of crisps on the table, I'll just allow myself to have some, or to have all of them.

I went to a birthday party last weekend and there was a boy there, seven years old, and there was a bowl of Cheetos on the table, those cheesy crisps, and, uh, he obviously wasn't allowed to have crisps at home and he probably got through half of that huge bowl of Cheetos by himself and he had this... orange mouth and orange fingers and everything was orange. And his dad came to collect him and said, Oh, I see that they had Cheetos. And it did make me laugh. I did. I did think of that. You know, he's obviously deprived of them at home and took his chance to get his fill where he could.

So, yeah, thinking of one last, one last thought to come to a finish. So you, you, you talked earlier about, you know, having the soup ready. it makes you feel good because you made it, but it's ready. So that, that makes me think, how does cooking make you feel?

I actually love cooking for myself, because it's, it feels like a self care ritual. And I think You know, I think about energy and there being energy and everything. And I think just that we talk about things being made with love. And I think that when you do take that time to cook your own dinner, it's the same when you cook for other people too, you can feel when your parents cook for you or your partner cooks for you and they put a lot of attention into it and what they're making for you, you can feel that too. But I do, I do really love knowing that I've made something by myself for myself. There's this, um, this sense of nourishment and just taking care of myself and knowing that I'm going to feel good after as well as when I'm eating it. I feel good when I'm eating it because I know it's my effort that's gone into it and I know what's in it. Which is a really nice feeling to see the ingredients that you buy at the supermarket actually go into the meal that you're eating. Which I think is something that's lost on a lot of people these days because they they just buy sauces and things ready made and they don't necessarily they read the ingredients but you don't see the exact tomatoes that have got into making that sauce and there's just something quite magical about that. It's very, very natural, very organic. And yet it's, there's some, some magical element of, wow, I turned this into this, these ingredients into this nutritious meal for myself. And then that sense of afterwards knowing that I'm going to feel good. Because I have been in periods of not eating so well and just feeling drained. And not really understanding fully, until having met you and you explaining the processes that happen in the body where we... we're not getting enough nutrients from our food. But just that knowing that then I've fed myself not just for that moment but for the period after so that I know how I'm going to feel after is really nice. That I'm not going to have that kind of clouded mind or that sense of, Oh, I'm already hungry again after 15 minutes of eating something. So I've got to go and find something else to eat, which is probably going to be something else that's unhealthy and quick and it's just going to keep feeding that cycle. But to know that I'm putting in the effort to nourish myself. And that I'm going to feel great for it is really rewarding for me.

Yeah, that is a really, really important aspect, actually, that you, you're bringing up: this idea that, cooking for yourself is really an act of self care. And even, the process of cooking can be quite meditative can be, you know, rather than a chore, it can actually be me time. And I know that from myself. I find it quite difficult to cook just for myself. So when my husband is not around, I. really find it difficult to do that for myself, which totally comes down to me not taking that time for myself and only doing it when there is someone else to nourish as well. And then I'm enjoying it. So, so yeah, This is this, the magic of sharing food and of, having a conversation around the kitchen table, which I'm sort of hoping to recreate with this podcast. And I really enjoyed our conversation. So thank you, Lauren, for your time and your thoughts and sharing around food and intuition and creativity, that's, I really enjoyed that.

Yeah, thank you. It was really, really nice to talk to you and share again some of these themes that we're both so intrigued by and interested in. I'm always excited to talk to you about this crossover between our work. And I've just learned so much from you this last period, so it was nice to also let you know some of the things that I've kept, you know, held on to some of the little learnings. Because sometimes when we, we share things, they seem so simple to us and we don't realize what a difference can make to somebody.

Well, thank you. I feel quite similarly about all the things I learn from you about writing and finding my voice and, you know, you often blow my mind too. So thank you for that.