Sweet Potato & Peanut Stew + Body Autonomy
Happy Friday, friends! Today I’m featuring a luscious sweet potato and peanut stew. It has aromas of ginger and garlic, with a subtle smokiness from paprika and a hint of sweetness from cinnamon. The stew is made with coconut milk, making it dairy-free (it’s also vegetarian). This is one of those meals I love to curl up with in the dark days of winter—it’s nourishing and uplifting, and it feels like a soft hug from the inside out.
Over the past year, we’ve talked a lot about reclaiming our body autonomy in this newsletter. One of my missions here is to help us all regain our sovereignty around food and our bodies. This means untangling from the ways in which we’re conditioned around food in order to discover the inherent freedom and joy that comes in feeding ourselves. This joy and pleasure is our birthright—it’s why we’re in sensual bodies—but it’s so easy to become disconnected from it, swallowed up in the influences of patriarchal programming, diet culture, and more.
As
explained in our podcast conversation, regaining our body autonomy starts by about remembering our original relationship with our bodies—it’s a relationship of reciprocity and regeneration, not one of extraction and control. In the kitchen, we can practice returning home to our bodies through the simple act of cooking. As I share in my intentional cooking/eating practice, we can bring our full presence into the kitchen, using it as a space to connect with our bodies and get curious about it’s unique needs and desires.
In order to hear our bodies, we need to first quiet our minds in order to enter that soft place of stillness within us (it’s there, even if we don’t always feel it!). In the kitchen, there are a few simple practices that can help us access that calm space so that we can better hear ourselves, which I’ve shared below.
While we can’t control the diet culture noise this month, which aims to control us with its messaging (and consume our dollars), my hope is that these practices can give us opportunities to tune out in order to tune in—to get curious about what feels authentically good in our bodies (which constantly changes, btw). While occasional resets and protocols can be helpful in bringing us back into balance, there’s a fine line between doing something because your body genuinely wants it, and doing something because your mind thinks you should in order to conform to some ideal of what’s good. My hope this month is that we start to turn down the volume on societal programming in order to explore our own wild, unique selves. In doing so, we begin to take back our autonomy, reclaiming our freedom and pleasure.
Finding connection (and autonomy) in the kitchen
These simple practices can be done before cooking and before eating.
Take two deep breaths before cooking and eating, consciously calming your nervous system and connecting to your body.
Create a ritual in the kitchen (this can be as simple as tying on an apron or lighting a candle) as a way to transition you into the present moment.
Engage your senses, grounding into your feet on the floor, noticing the smells around you, feeling of the texture of the foods in your hands. This will naturally take you out of the stresses of the mind (it will also make you a better cook!).
Set an intention for how you want to feel as you cook and eat. Often I set an intention to “be here fully” or to simply “slow down” in order to either decompress or find more pleasure (or both!). As I cook or eat, I continuously bring my mind back to the intention, steering myself away from the chatter of my mind.
Give gratitude for the foods you’re eating (no matter what they are; there are no bad foods), and give gratitude for your wondrous body, which knows how to digest and process nutrients without your mind doing a thing. What a gift.
These practices are so simple (you can do them all, or just one), but they help to bring us gently back home into our bodies, quieting the noise of our minds and of societal programming. When we’re embodied—when we’re in tune with our unique needs—we begin to trust ourselves. As we build that trust, we gain autonomy and freedom around food.
Sweet Potato & Peanut Stew
This stew is sweet and creamy, with a savory undertone and a hint of spice (it’s a mild stew, but you can spice it up as much as you like). Peanut butter lends a silky texture and rich flavor (but it’s not overpowering), while garlic, ginger, cumin and smoked paprika lend depth. Since it’s made with coconut milk, it’s also naturally vegan. This is the kind of dinner l I want to snuggle up with next to the fire on a cold night. It’s also the kind of meal I crave as leftovers for lunch or breakfast the next day (oh yes, I love soup for breakfast).
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