Hi, and welcome to Root to Sky Kitchen
I’m Kelly and I was born and raised in a small town in Canada (currently latitude 43.9) downstream of the boreal forest. I’m a perpetual student of life and I enjoy cooking and growing food, often sunbathing at solar noon.
In 2013 I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in illustration, having cultivated a solid foundation in multidisciplinary skills to support visual communication. An artist at heart, I eventually wanted to weave these skills to support more conscious initiatives aligned with human and environmental health. Exploring nutrition and earth medicine, I’ve served with a number of organisations including Sustain Ontario while discovering the impacts of place-based and interconnected food systems around me, volunteering at West End Food Co-op, helping facilitate local fundraising events such as the Humber Ride 4 Real Food, and supporting farmers’ markets like the Village Market at Waldorf.
In this space, I share my favourite nourishing whole food recipes aligned with the seasons where I reside, connecting you with traditional skills, small farms, and big ideas. My goal here is to help you along your own path in some way, and show you some tools to find some answers yourself with your inner wisdom. What we truly need is already inside of us, and it is either harmed or helped by our daily choices. Take what serves you, and leave the rest!
I started this blog after resolving many of my own issues and malnutrition over 15-ish years (severe acne, dental cavities, mild depression, anxiety, anemia, lack of energy to the extent that I’d get a workout from trying to cook, mood swings, brain fog, PMS, hormonal imbalances, hypoglycemic spells, mismatched circadian rhythm and more), and becoming interested in the reclamation of health and food autonomy in the midst of modern challenges through a proactive, functional, holistic approach. I am here to shed light on some of the modalities through which this can transpire in a daily practice, and I feel that one of the best places to start for almost anyone confronted with these challenges (especially if you’re able to read this right now) is through food itself: cooking it, growing it, and sharing it.
The challenge of making pretty much every sun-raised meal on my own from scratch was something I hadn’t appreciated in my earlier years. I never knew I could feel so balanced, clear, light, coherent, at peace and full of energy—and through knowing this, that there is no limit to how good we can feel in this life. Home cooked, nourishing, whole food ended up transforming my life, energy, mood, and resilience, and this continues to shift every day. I tend to gain inspiration from ‘primal/ancestral’ approaches and eat according to my latitude and corresponding UV light (all while supporting the circadian clock that governs metabolism and biology), but of course, I encourage you to adjust the recipes and make substitutes to meet your own needs, context and preferences.
Ethos
I believe food is one of the greatest expressions of self love and self care, and to reconnect with one’s food can potentiate profoundly transformative impacts as one part of the puzzle when it comes to living a joyful, adventurous, limitless and fulfilling life. I like to live simply in accordance with nature’s rhythms and cycles, and a large part of this involves cooking with seasonal foods. My hope is to share inspiration when it comes to cooking and well being with the confidence to try new things, wherever you’re at in this lifetime.
Globalized, industrialized food is not cheap: it is too costly for the Earth, for the farmers, for our health. The Earth can no longer carry the burden of groundwater mining, pesticide pollution, disappearance of species and destabilization of the climate. Farmers can no longer carry the burden of debt, which is inevitable in industrial farming with its high costs of production. It is incapable of producing safe, culturally appropriate, tasty, quality food. And it is incapable of producing enough food for all because it is wasteful of land, water, and energy. Industrial agriculture uses ten times more energy than it produces. It is thus ten times less efficient.
Vandana Shiva
One of the most tangible and powerful ways to go about this is to vote with your fork and increase your food sovereignty. Every action and every bite is a vote for the world you want to live in. Making the world a better place begins with you; as you continue to evolve, you will create a ripple effect with everyone you come across. Going beyond restrictive, external dogmas and ideologies, the recipes on this site are a greater reflection of my personal food ethos which is rooted in a bioindividual, joyful approach guided by my intuition: whole, abundant, nourishing, nutrient dense, chemical and pesticide/herbicide-free, cultivated and raised with care for the soil food web through organic, biodynamic or otherwise alternative practices (as a baseline), informed by ancestral wisdom, and complete with nature’s codes in accordance with the earth’s rhythms and bodily intelligence.
Many of my recipes are informed by the dietary wisdom and teachings of Weston A. Price. I like to think that when I eat the seasonal foods from my local ecologies (wild or cultivated!), I bring the land into my cells and rewild my microbiome; essentially becoming one with the land including the local microbes, secondary compounds, and a host of other things, and that is an incredibly special experience to me. Food is information on a cellular level; a priority for me is being able to find and grow food that makes me feel incredible, there is no need for guilt, no dietary dogma, no calorie counting, and certainly no compromise on deliciousness and enjoyment.
Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.
Thich Nhat Hanh
In Fred Provenza’s Nourishment, animals were observed to have confidently nibbled on a vast range of grasses, shrubs, and other foods, remarkably fulfilling their nutritional needs with precision and wisdom (also, check out this video where a cat named Milo rejects low quality tap water in favour of pure spring water). He contends that nutritional voices of ‘authority’, ideology and industry can disconnect us from a deeply personal search guided by intuitive wisdom when it comes to nourishing the body, mind and spirit with life sustaining energy. In modern cultures, it’s easy to become inundated with a harmful, self-sabotaging, unnatural diet mindset through conditioning and intellectual, external pursuits, but he posits that we can rediscover our innate nutritional wisdom, intuition and awareness despite this. Me? I’ve found that I’ve possessed it all along through keeping an open mind, trying different foods that make me feel good and energized while embracing my intuition with wonder and uncertainty. Through my experience, I genuinely believe there is a rebalance for every imbalance that can be created through living closer to nature.
Food is one thing, but to cultivate whole body health is limitless. Sunlight, hydration, herbalism, individualized non-dogmatic nutrition, information, relationships, how aligned you are with your natural, authentic, highest self and desires… developing your unique relationship with the elements and adapting to the environment and stresses in a sustainable, practical manner ensconced into daily life is a vital practice. We are all on a path of healing of some sort, to hone the ability and confidence to respond to the deleterious elements of the artificial modern environment as a living alchemy and process.
The information in this space is for anyone who’d like to explore and make use of it, to pick and choose whatever resonates with you and to leave the rest, to trust and follow your own intuition, and to use it to reclaim your power, potential, and fullest expression of your Self. I believe there is no limit when it comes to how good one can feel no matter the circumstance and that by finding the appropriate tools, you can transform your situation and create a new life. With all of the conflicting information out there these days, what works amazingly for one individual may be terrible for another; I am here to share with you what resonates with me at this point in time. As always, it’s important to really tune in with yourself, discover your evolving needs, and seek the guidance of a trusted, quality practitioner if needed (whether it be Ayurvedic, functional medicine, GNM, TCM, or naturopathic) before diving into a new dietary practice or healing modality that will be realistically and sustainably embodied.
I hope you find some aspects of this space useful and inspiring, and hopefully to learn from you too, so I encourage you to comment and ask questions if you have any. May all beings be wild and free. May all beings feel peace.
— Kelly
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Feel free to reach out and e-mail me at [email protected] for collaborations, questions, feedback, or projects!
THOU SHALT NOT DESTROY THY PLANET
Root to Sky Kitchen acknowledges that this work is situated on the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas (Anishinaabeg) of the Credit River. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of Turtle Island/Canada, and give gratitude and reverence to your continuing, sacred connection to this land, waters and community. We pay our respects to you and your cultures, traditions, and to Elders both past, present and emerging. May we learn and strengthen our collaboration with your ancestral knowledge and wisdom, for knowing the ways of the rivers, mountains, fires and waters, and remember harmony with the highest integrity and deepest reverence for spirit and the Earth.
