Delicious Auspiciousness Vol. 2

Food as a love language of our culture.

Happy Valentine’s day from Zurich, Switzerland babe.

Valentine’s Day is a day many people celebrate romance, devotion, and intimacy.

But love has never lived exclusively in candlelight surrounded in red roses, hearts, and whispered words between lovers. This Valentine’s Day, I am thinking about love beyond romance. I am thinking about love as nourishment. I believe that love lives in our magical kitchens. In farmer’s markets. In soil. In hands that prepare nourishment for another body. When we gather around meals to celebrate unions, births, deaths, homecomings, food is how we mark deep meaning, auspiciousness. It is how we honor existence itself.

So on that note, I got that delicious auspicious drip drop dropping in today, waking up beautifully designed boutique hotel to a proper DELICIOUS AUSPICIOUS spread. On the breakfast buffet, the first thing I see is passionfruit, my favorite fruit in the whole wide world. Absolutely obsessed with passionfruit or parcha; Passiflora edulis. The food in Europe just tastes so much more flavorful. Healthy, nutrition-packed, clean. Often times in America, I feel like I’m pushing up an uphill boulder like Sisyphus to get access to clean food without sugar, without chemicals or additives.

So what does it mean when the food that surrounds us is filled with chemicals, preservatives, excess sugars, and additives that slowly erode vitality?

What does it say about a culture when nourishment becomes poison in disguise?

Because food is not neutral. Food is information. Food is instruction. Food is relationship. Food tells the body whether it is safe to thrive. Or whether it must merely survive.

My Disenchantment with Modern Nutrition

Most people don’t know this about me, but I studied nutrition in university.

I chose it because it felt like a practical path toward helping people live healthier lives in a world that was visibly becoming more ill. Chronic disease was everywhere. Fatigue was everywhere. Disconnection from the body was everywhere. I believed, naively, that I would be taught the secrets of optimal health. Instead, I learned the language of maintenance, of management of dis-ease, of acceptable dysfunction. The goal in modern (American) dietetics is not vitality. The goal is not radiance. The goal is to keep people within the statistical range of “normal.” Normal energy. Normal inflammation. Normal dis-ease risk. Normal sickness. I realized quickly that I was not being trained to cultivate thriving human beings. I was being trained to help people remain functional within a system that quietly profited from their dysfunction.

I graduated with a BS, Bachelor of Science in Nutrition & Dietetics, aka a bullshit degree.

But the deeper truth is, my real education began when I stopped accepting what I had been taught. The sacred rebel in me did not want to participate in the overculture of a sick society, so I started my own private questioning, my own quest into the ancient teachings of other cultures have taught about health and vitality and the search for what really is the truth of how to live an optimal, healthy, vital & vibrant life. The search for the delicious auspiciousness.

The Sacred Rebel Chooses Another Path

There is a sacred rebel that lives inside anyone who has ever felt the quiet knowing: This cannot be the only way. There’s always more choices than we can perceive.

That sacred rebel led me to discover ancient teachings and traditions of Ayurveda from India. To traditions that viewed food not as commodity, but as medicine. As energy. As consciousness. I found myself deep in library pockets writing research papers on the benefits of Curcumin, Curcuma longa, the active ingredient of turmeric that is anti-inflammatory.

Ayurveda, the ancient science of life from India, taught me that nourishment is not just about macronutrients, like carbohydrates, fats, and protein. It is about living harmoniously and in balance between the elements of the body, mind, and spirit. It taught me that digestion is not merely physical—it is emotional, energetic, spiritual.

At the heart of Ayurveda is the understanding that each person is born with a unique constitutional blueprint made up of three primary energies, or doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Vata, that governs movement—breath, circulation, thought, creativity. You do not just simply digest food. You digest life and everything you’re consuming around you effects your vitality. That includes cyclical living where seasons, environments, water, food, information (i.e. news, television, social media, books, magazine, literature) are in direct relationship with your body constitutions (doshas). When these energies are balanced, we experience vitality, clarity, and ease; when they fall out of harmony, imbalance manifests as physical or emotional disturbance. Ayurveda invites us to know our nature intimately and to live in rhythm with it—choosing foods, routines, climates, and practices that restore equilibrium rather than disrupt it.

Bali and the Return to Vitality through Purification

After university, I went to live in Bali, Indonesia for a summer.

The moment I arrived, I felt something shift. The island itself felt like a purification. Temples everywhere. Springs where people gathered to cleanse their body mind and spirit. Without forcing it, I stopped drinking alcohol entirely. I began bathing in sacred waters. Walking everywhere. Eating vibrant, living rainbow foods. Like passion fruit and dragon fruit every morning.

My body transformed effortlessly.

I lost stress weight I had carried for years. My skin glowed. My hair grew stronger. My energy became clean, stable, luminous. I wasn’t trying to fix myself. I was simply no longer consuming what harmed me. I walked over 10,000 steps a day. I ate foods that still remembered the earth, and for the first time, I understood that health was not something you fight for. Health is alignment with choices that makes you feel loved, uplifted, elevated, vibrant, feel good.

The body knows. Every body is a unique environment, shaped by its own rhythms, history, sensitivities, and strengths. What works harmoniously for one human may not work for another, because no two internal landscapes are the same. Our nervous systems, hormones, muscles, and minds are in constant conversation, sending signals long before symptoms become loud. We have to first learn to listen to how the body talks to us — through energy levels, breath patterns, tension, appetite, mood shifts, and subtle sensations that whisper when something feels off or perfectly aligned. The body teaches us in quiet ways: a sense of lightness when we are on the right path, a heaviness or tightness when we are not. When we slow down enough to notice, we begin to understand that the body is not an obstacle to overcome, but an intelligent guide, always offering feedback, always inviting us back into balance.

The Magical Kitchen and the End of Starving for Love

While I was living in Bali, there was a jasmine garden tucked behind the villa where I stayed. Every morning, the air was thick with the sweet fragrance of jasmine blossoms, and I would sit there reading The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz, letting the words move through me slowly, like warm water finding its way through stone. One morning, I arrived at the chapter called The Magical Kitchen, and something inside me unlocked.

The lesson was simple, but it carried the weight of a lifetime. Don Miguel asked the reader to imagine that inside their home was a magical kitchen—a kitchen where any food in the world could appear instantly, in infinite quantity. You would never worry about hunger again. You would never need to bargain, perform, or sacrifice yourself to be fed. From this place of abundance, you would naturally become generous. You would feed others freely, not because you needed anything from them, but because you had more than enough to give. And then he presented the contrast: if you already had infinite food, no one could manipulate you by offering a slice of pizza in exchange for your obedience. But if you were starving—truly starving—you might give away your freedom, your dignity, even your soul, just to survive. And then came the revelation: the kitchen was never about food. The kitchen was the heart. When you are full of love within yourself, you cannot be controlled by the promise of love from the external. But when you are starving for love, you will abandon yourself just to taste it.

Sitting in that jasmine garden, I realized how deeply this applied not only to love—but to nourishment, to worth, to the relationship we have with ourselves. Our heart is our magical kitchen. Our body is our magical kitchen. When we are connected to our own source—when we respect ourselves, nourish ourselves, feed ourselves with vitality, truth, and care—we stop negotiating our worth for energetic breadcrumbs of love. We stop accepting poison disguised as nourishment. We stop confusing scarcity with our current reality. What lit up inside me in that moment was the knowing that self-love is not just a concept, it is a condition of abundance and greater prosperity. It is the moment you realize that you already have the source within you. And from that place, everything changes. You no longer beg or cling or betray yourself just to be fed with love. You become generous. You become sovereign. You become someone who feeds others not from depletion, but from overflow.

Just Feed People

There is an old Ram Dass story that has never left me since I heard .

Ram Dass, the Harvard professor turned spiritual seeker, traveled to India to meet his guru, Neem Karoli Baba. Ram Dass had spent his life in philosophy, in intellect, in the endless pursuit of understanding the deeper meaning of existence. When he finally sat before this great master, he asked the question so many of us carry:

What is the meaning of life?

Neem Karoli Baba looked at him and said simply:

Feed people.

That was it. No cosmic riddle. No esoteric doctrine. No elaborate metaphysical explanation. Just feed people.

Ram Dass was stunned. How could something so simple hold the answer to something so vast?

But the longer you live, the more you begin to understand the profundity hidden in simplicity. To feed someone is to affirm their right to exist. To feed someone is to participate in the continuation of life itself. To feed someone is to say: You belong here.

Nourishment as Devotion

When I traveled through India and Sri Lanka, I witnessed this teaching embodied everywhere.

At temples , they hold what are called Darshan (in India) or Vesak (in Sri Lanka) days, where thousands upon thousands of people are fed freely. Massive kitchens hum like orchestras of devotion. Pots the size of bathtubs. Rice. Lentils. Simple vegetables. Chapati.

Nothing extravagant. Just nourishment.

And everyone receives it. No one is turned away.

I remember sitting among strangers, eating from simple metal trays, and feeling an overwhelming sense of peace in the space. Not because the food was luxurious, but because the anxiety of survival had been temporarily lifted.

When the body knows it will be fed, the nervous system softens. When the nervous system softens, the mind becomes quiet. When the mind becomes quiet, the spirit can finally speak.

This is why feeding people is sacred work. It frees consciousness from fear.

The Body Is the Channel

Your body is not separate from your spiritual practice. It is the instrument of your perception. It is the channel through which intuition, clarity, creativity, and divine insight flow. If the channel is clogged with toxicity, inflammation, and depletion, the signal becomes distorted. Not because spirit has abandoned you. But because the receiver is obstructed.

When the body is nourished, the channel clears. Energy flows more easily. Presence deepens. Awareness sharpens. You become more receptive to life itself. This is why food is not trivial. This is why food is not secondary.

This is why feeding people is one of the most profound acts of love available to us. Because you are not just feeding their body.

You are feeding their capacity to awaken.

Love in Its Most Practical Form

We often search for love in the abstract. In romance. In transcendence. In meaning.

Love in its most honest form, is practical. Love cooks. Love prepares. Love offers. Love makes sure you are sustained enough to continue your journey. This is what Neem Karoli Baba meant. Not just feed people food. Feed people life. Because sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is not to transcend the body—but to care for it so deeply that the spirit feels safe enough to fully arrive.

Culture Is Revealed Through Its Food

A culture that loves its people feeds them well. It prioritizes freshness, integrity, and connection to soil and land, because it understands that nourishment is not a luxury—it is a foundation. A culture that disconnects people from real nourishment disconnects them from their power. Because a well-fed body is harder to control. A clear mind is harder to manipulate. A vibrant spirit is harder to suppress. When people are truly nourished, they remember who the fuck they are!

This is something I feel viscerally here in Zurich, and throughout Switzerland. There is a quiet reverence for wellbeing embedded into the infrastructure of the culture itself. Swiss made ingredients and products are made with the highest quality. The standards for food quality are visible, the ingredients cleaner, more whole, more alive. But it goes beyond what’s on the plate. The entire design of life here supports vitality. People walk. Children bike to school. Adults bike to work. The body is not treated as an inconvenience, but as an integral part of daily existence. It is normal here to step away from your workday and swim in the lake during lunch, to let cold, living water recalibrate your nervous system before returning to your responsibilities. This is what it looks like when a society values the life force of its people—not just their productivity, but their presence. It reminds me that culture is not just beliefs or language. Culture is what you are fed, and what your environment makes possible for you to become.

Your Health is True Wealth

One of the most common arguments people make is that healthy food is expensive. And yes, at first glance, it can seem that way when you compare the price of fresh, organic, or locally grown produce to mass-produced, highly processed food engineered for convenience and long shelf life. But what rarely gets calculated is the long-term cost of disease. The financial, emotional, and spiritual toll of chronic illness far exceeds the upfront investment of nourishing your body well. Hospital visits. Medications. Ongoing treatments. The fatigue that steals your capacity to work, create, and fully inhabit your life.

Your health is your wealth—not as a metaphor, but as a literal economic truth. Vibrant health is not reserved for the wealthy; it is cultivated through intention, creativity, and relationship. There are ways to make nourishment accessible. You can join a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program, trade time or skills with a local farmer in exchange for produce, or shop seasonally at local markets where food is often both more affordable and more alive. Learning to cook and preparing your own meals dramatically lowers monthly expenses compared to eating out or relying on prepackaged foods. When you reduce processed foods, you are not only minimizing toxins—you are also breaking cycles of dependency that quietly drain your finances and vitality.

Eating locally reconnects you to the rhythms of land and season. It reminds you that nourishment was never meant to be a luxury commodity; it was meant to be a birthright. The real question is not whether you can afford to eat well. The question is whether you can afford not to.

The one place I will always invest generously in my monthly budget is food—ingredients that inspire me, that feel vibrant and alive. Because I understand that having a strong, capable body—the kind that can trek mountains and carry you toward your dreams—is a gift many people long for when illness confines them to a hospital bed. If you currently have a fully functioning body, do not take it for granted. Cherish your mobility. Cherish your vitality. Cherish the mornings you wake up feeling well for no particular reason. That ordinary miracle is not guaranteed forever.

I was reminded of this daily while hiking the stone-laid path to my apartment in Upper Bhagsu, in Dharamshala, India. That dream chapter of my life would not have been possible without a strong, resilient body. Living in the foothills of the Himalayas deepened my conviction that certain things are non-negotiable: access to clean, swimmable water within walking distance, a lifestyle centered around movement—walking, hiking, yoga—and the simple ritual of a weekly communal Russian sauna. These were not luxuries; they were foundations.

That belief crystallized during an intense throat infection in the monsoon season. I remember thinking I had fallen ill in the “right” place—somewhere with clean water, nourishing food, and affordable healthcare. I visited a Tibetan hospital and waited in line beside rows of monks before seeing a doctor. The entire experience—consultation, medication, and a driver to take me up and down the steep mountain roads of Upper Bhagsu—cost around $25 USD. Most of that went to the driver, who charged extra for navigating the narrow, winding incline. In a moment of vulnerability, I felt supported rather than burdened.

That experience reinforced what I already knew: health is not something to gamble with or postpone. It is the foundation that makes every dream livable. Without it, even the most beautiful surroundings lose their vibrancy. With it, even simple days feel rich.

Love Is Measured in Vitality

This morning, as I opened that passionfruit in Zurich, I paused to savor more than its sweetness. I savored the feeling of vibrancy—the subtle hum of a body that feels nourished and awake. Love does not always arrive in grand declarations or dramatic gestures. Sometimes it arrives as freshness. As color. As care woven into the smallest details. As the quiet offering of something that helps your body come alive.

Food is one of the purest love languages because it speaks without words:

I want you to have energy.
I want you to feel good.
I want you to live fully.

Love, at its core, is the desire for vitality—your own and another’s. It is choosing, again and again, to nourish yourself in ways that affirm your aliveness. It is understanding that what you consume becomes what carries you through this life. In a culture that normalizes exhaustion and chronic illness, becoming vibrantly well is a radical act. To choose whole foods. To choose rest. To choose movement. To choose presence.

To choose vitality is to choose life.

And life, when honored properly, tastes like passionfruit—sweet, a little tart, unexpected, and undeniably alive.

—LadyWisdom