PAM.

beauties! here is my interview with PAM's alisa donner posted on their blog today! this is part 1 of a 2 part series they are so generously creating with me! if you are inspired by this, share the love to your tribes & comment on the blog too! check out PAM and all the wonderful things they are doing to support & empower the mothers in all of us xxxx (cut & pasted this & mercury is in retrograde so bear with me please) 
   Renaissance Mama: A Kitchen Miracle Worker                 

When I was a newbie mommy I met an amazing woman named Jules Blaine Davis at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market.  She had a son a little older than my daughter, and we had a brief intense conversation.  She closed it by saying we were Renaissance Mama’s.  I remember laughing and thinking, “yes, we are!”   Not too long later Jules and I took a parenting class together by the Echo Parenting Center, and she began the creation of what I believe is one of her life’s work: creating a healing kitchen and encouraging other mothers to do the same, actually teaching them.  To expand out from our breasts as we wean our babies and create beauty and healing in the kitchen for our families and our souls.  It is a complete pleasure for me to introduce you to Jules Blaine Davies, Renaissance Mama and Kitchen Miracle Worker.  This is part 1 of a 2 part interview series.

AD:  You have a unique approach to food as healing.  In my opinion you go beyond medicinal, it is a holistic approach to nourishment, spiritual really.  Can you explain your vision more clearly?

RM:  I believe that food is life. The adventure of how we feed ourselves, how we gather our food, how we create this dance in our everyday lives is a creative and spiritual act. We carry all of our stories, our fears, our dreams, all of what we come with into the kitchen. It can be intimate and vulnerable as we have an opportunity to meet ourselves in a white peach, a golden beet, a deep & juicy cherry tomato, or even defrosting edamame! Turning on the fire, making food a priority, hearing our stories of where we came from and how we were fed are the main ingredients to making a life that nourishes us in a deeper way.

My work is about inspiring people to cook inside their super busy lives. It’s about pointing to the beauty inside the mess, healing ourselves inside a zucchini mint soup, freeing our resistance, learning to feed each other, make our own medicine, sate our creativity, feed our hunger for freedom while feeding our family. It’s about worth, love, and beauty. It’s also about killing a few birds with one stone.
I mean… welcome to motherhood!

If a doula, a home economics teacher, and a Jewish grandmother were going to have a baby, that baby would be a kitchen healer!

AD:  I first met you at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market when Ocean and Roma were newbies.  I know you still shop there regularly, can you tell us why you love that market so?

RM:  The farmer’s market is all BEAUTY all the time! It’s my beauty church. It not only inspires everything I create in the kitchen, it also reconnects me to the source, to my desire to cook, to my story, to my palette for that week….then I bring it all home and see my family eating what I gathered.  Sticky strawberry fingers and cherry cheeks, being fed by my freedom; this for me is the best part!

Also, the market is an incredible moment in time. We all get ready for the event, the farmer & the consumer, in the hopes that we will feed each other with our offerings. It has ritual and hard work woven into the fabric of coming together to be fed. The farmer and I have the same goal: we are both hungry. The farmer wants to feed me what she/he has grown and I want to fed by the farmer so we can continue this relationship. We have traveled to meet here at the market. We are aligned in our meeting, in our exchange, in our desire to keep each other going. I feel that this exchange is highly nutritious.

AD:  What do you look for in a vendor/farmer to pledge your loyalty to?

RM:  I love this question! I look for LOVE in my farmer & the team. I look for a genuine smile, a kindness and an appreciation for my offering to his/her offering. I look for a generous spirit, a trust in each other, that we will tell each other what we need to know. There is a different kind of energy on the food when you buy it from the farmers hand. If that love is not there, it will not be in the food, and love is the main ingredient to everything delicious.

AD:  Tell us about your love fests!

RM: It’s all in those two words. Love fests are pure joy happening in random moments throughout a day. Don’t quote me on the exact definition as a love fest can be custom fit to any lifestyle! I just might inspire one to happen when I am having one! We can all do that! They are contagious. Love fests come in all shapes & sizes. It can be our morning snuggle fest with my family or a smoked salmon, radish, Persian cucumber, avocado sandwich that took a few minutes to make. Please come and experience a love fest in my kitchen, or a miracle in your kitchen. They are flexible and love to travel!

Truly Jules creates love fests and beauty in her kitchen on a daily basis. Usually she provides step by step instructions on how you can re-create one in yours too.  Find her at instagram @julesbdavis // twitter@julesbdavis // facebook @julesblainedavis or her blog !  If you live in LA, she does individual consulations and group nourishing kitchen sessions.  They are full of laughter, joy, and amazing food!
 

Jules Blaine Davis is  a consultant based in Los Angeles who inspires women in the kitchen: a kitchen healer! She is also a food blogger, guide, teacher, and mama!

Interviewed by Alisa Donner, MSW, LCSW, Co-Founder of PAM, and mom to an amazing wonder.