Have you ever felt like you were caught in a spiral when everything around you is just not going right? This Feed Your Fire podcast episode will change how you see those moments and give you perspective on transforming that energy into something positive so that life can work for you. We draw inspiration from nature and the comfort of an old memory to ground us as we move ahead to break through that cycle and open ourselves to growth.
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Episode Transcript:
Feed Your Fire, a podcast from Kim Baker Studios that dives into self-discovery and personal fulfillment through the shared experience of food.
I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods, and this is Feed Your Fire. It's a bit of a mash up discussion about life topics and food. Sometimes we'll cook, other times we'll just eat, but in each episode, we'll share stories and have a conversation that pushes us further in our relationship with ourselves and other people to us. Food is the connective tissue in life, and it's so much fun, feel free to just listen or cook with us.
The topic of today's episode, like all Feed Your Fire Podcast episodes, is inspired from the events that are happening in real life. It's almost as if the universe is curating our content calendar, and I'm simply here to usher in its words.
Have you ever been in a situation in your life where you feel like things around you are just swirling that there's kind of this spiraling effect? A lot of energy is on the periphery, and it's pulling you in, and you have to consciously stand apart from it so as not to be enveloped by it.
I often feel like a sponge. I can just very easily absorb that energy around me, and it exhausts me, and kind of makes me feel very overwhelmed.
And as I started to think about that, I realized that I'm associating that energy, that spiral with a sense of destruction, kind of like the way a tornado comes in and unearths whatever is around it. But spirals exist everywhere. They are a predominant force of nature. In fact, scientifically, they are considered one of the most efficient ways to grow.
Think about a pinecone, the petals on a flower, the seeds of a sunflower. All of those come together in the form of a spiral. Now these spirals are built on a very specific mathematical ratio. There's something called the Fibonacci sequence. And no, that is not my long lost uncle of the Fibonacci family. It's a real mathematical concept. And when you take this very specific set of numbers and you create a ratio from them, you get something called the golden ratio, and it is found in nature all around us. Things that we are naturally drawn to in the arts are built on this ratio. Honeycombs and bees exist in this ratio. Our bodies are built on this ratio, and that idea got me thinking, what if the spirals in our lives are essentially a force of nature calling us to grow in the most efficient way possible?
Just last week, I was in the grocery store, and I was struck by these beautiful artichokes. They were just so fantastic that I couldn't resist. And artichokes are was so special to me because they are one of the first things that I learned to cook as a child. And interestingly, they are an example of these spirals that occur in nature. If you look at the leaves of an artichoke, they are formed in a spiral pattern that follows this golden ratio.
Every Christmas, my grandmother would make trays of artichokes. They were loaded with bread crumbs, and I was her faithful helper, soaking in the time with her and learning how to cook. And no matter how much garlic and parsley I chopped, she would tell me it was not enough. We needed more. Those memories are very grounding. And so today, as we think about the spirals in our lives, how they may be working for us, I wanted to embrace the harmony of nature spirals and prepare something that has the comfort of this old memory.
So we are going to prepare artichokes for ourselves, and we're going to share it with a friend. Now. Artichokes have all of these prickly parts that you kind of have to dodge in order to get to what is known as the heart. I think that's an interesting idea.
And so as we start making our artichokes today, you're going to see that we're going to need to trim them so the outer layers of the artichoke have this thorn, so using a kitchen scissor, just cut away kind of the top third of the leaves so that they're kind of flat, and just discard the tops with the thorns.
If your artichokes have stems, go ahead and trim them down. Don't throw them away. We're going to use them in our stuffing. But we want our artichokes to sit flat. So once you do that, turn them over and press the artichoke into the countertop. We want to open it up, let the leaves push against each other to create that space, and then pull the leaves apart with your fingertips so that there's lots of room for breadcrumbs to fit inside. Before we stuff the artichokes, we're going to clean them really well. So fill up a bowl with ice cold water and put the artichokes in there upside down. We want to use gravity to help us pull out any sediment. And then we're going to rinse them underwater and really make sure we're getting in between the leaves. We don't want any surprises. Once you do that, put them in a saucepan and arrange them so that they're standing up straight.
I like to start them on the stove and then finish them in the oven, but if you don't have a saucepan big enough for them, you can just cook them in the oven. Now grab a medium bowl and add a bunch of store-bought breadcrumbs, put in a ton of garlic, about a half ton of parsley, a little bit of parmesan, I'm going to add in a little bit of lemon zest. Grandma did not do this, but I'm adding this as my own flavor, and then a little bit of salt and pepper, and then kind of dredge that mixture with a good quality olive oil. You want this to all kind of stick together.
Now take those stems that you set aside and trim away the outer layer, kind of like you do with a carrot. You could use a paring knife to do this, and then chop up the stem into small pieces. If the artichoke is ripe, this should happen pretty easily, and add those chopped stems to the stuffing, and then take these breadcrumbs and stuff them inside the leaves of the artichoke. You want to get a little bit of breadcrumb in nearly every leaf, because the way you eat an artichoke is by taking those outer leaves and kind of scraping your teeth on them, and you want a bit of the artichoke and the breadcrumb in every bite.
Once the artichokes are stuffed, fill that saucepan up with about an inch of water or stock. I'm going to use stock. Put a lid on it, put it over medium heat and let it steam for about an hour, you'll need to add more liquid as time goes on, because it will evaporate. So just check on it periodically, and that will really tenderize the artichokes.
And once they're steamed, we're going to transfer them to the oven. I would put it about 375 for maybe 30 minutes, and that'll give the breadcrumbs a chance to just kind of get a little bit crispy.
I cannot explain to you how much I love stuffed artichokes, and I think you will love these just as much. The key to really enjoying the artichoke is to enjoy the entire process. Right the leaves have this morsel of goodness at the bottom that's really pulling directly from the heart. And then once you finish eating those outer leaves, you have to strip away the inside, where there's kind of prickly hairs, and these spiny little leaves, again, these sort of rough edges of the artichoke that require this navigation. And then you'll get to the center where the heart is.
This week was a really good reminder for me not to get swallowed up by these negative swirls in our lives. I had made this lovely birthday package for Josh, who you met in episode one, and it was to celebrate this milestone for him that's particularly relevant because of everything going on with his health.
And so I had filled this box with his favorite goodies. As you could imagine, mushroom soup. I had made lentil soup. I had all kinds of goodies in there for him and Corinne, and I ship it overnight so that everything will arrive ahead of his birthday in tip-top shape. But unfortunately, the package did not arrive the next day, and it didn't arrive the next day or the next. In fact, it wasn't until five days later that this overnight shipment arrived, and as you can imagine, everything was spoiled and soggy, and it arrived days past his birthday, so I felt like I kind of missed it.
I initially felt this rise of frustration, right? It was like, Oh, come on, like I was a little bit pissed off, I'm not gonna lie. But nearly as quickly as that feeling rose, it faded, and I realized this, this gift that I had sent was an act of love, and I was not going to allow my own gestures of love to become something that then hurts me in some way. And I could actually hear my grandmother's voice saying the words, “It's not important”, which was a phrase she often said, and she was right. It wasn't important. This box was not a show of my care. It was just one gesture of many.
For me, in this particular instance, not getting caught up in the spiral was where the growth resided. And so as we think about the spirals in our lives, for better or for worse, the ones that we feel with ease and the ones that sometimes we feel with pain, I offer you my grandmother's wisdom and the comfort of her food, knowing that at times, we have to go through some of these rough pieces to get to the heart of what we really need.
These spirals exist all around us in ways that we may not understand. We may not understand the math. We may not understand the sequence, but we can find moments to enjoy, like this one, and we can share these moments with our friends.
That's what I'm going to do. I have a dear friend who's going to receive one of these lovely, beautiful artichokes that we made together, and that is a good spiral. Until our next episode, I say so long.
Feed your Fire, Where food nourishes growth.