January 31, 2024
Let’s Chat w/ Felicia Ruiz, Kitchen Curandera
What does it mean to be a kitchen curandera? What’s the difference between Indigenous food and local food? We’ll learn all this and much more when we sit down to chat with traditional healer and award-winning author Felicia Ruiz.
Episode Guest
Felicia Ruiz is a traditional healer, award-winning author, and indigenous foods activist recognized for her work with food and lifestyle as medicine. As a child she was deeply influenced by her great-grandmother, who was well-known in her New Mexico community as a curandera. Also called by the healing medicine, Felicia honored her own spirit and began learning folk herbalism, whole food cooking, and other holistic modalities with Indigenous teachers across the Southwest–where she works with the sun, the moon, and the elements, offering medicine workshops and one-on-one healing sessions for her community.
Felicia’s work has been featured in Spirituality & Health, Forbes, Bon Appétit, and several other media outlets including The Original Americans episode on Padma Lakshmi’s Taste The Nation (Hulu). Felicia presents frequently around the country on traditional healing practices, culinary medicine, holistic wellness, and Native American food sovereignty for nonprofits,
universities, and museums–including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Learn more about Felicia’s work at https://www.kitchencurandera.com/
What does it mean to be a kitchen curandera? What’s the difference between Indigenous food and local food? We’ll learn all this and much more when we sit down to chat with traditional healer and award-winning author Felicia Ruiz.
We’ll also talk about Felicia’s book Earth Medicines, winner of the 2022 Reading the West Award: Eating The West and the 2023 LULAC Book Award! Earth Medicines is an accessible guide to time-honored Indigenous wisdom, healing recipes, and wellness rituals for modern life from an experienced curandera.
You can learn more about Felicia’s work and get your copy of Earth Medicines at https://www.kitchencurandera.
This great book is also available on Amazon.
Before the interview, Bevin talks about the latest issue of Homestead Living Magazine. This new monthly publication also includes an annual compendium of the year’s best articles. The most recent annual includes Bevin’s article about small-scale seed and nut oil production as well as dozens of articles about beekeeping, gardening, baking, raising chickens and so much more! This is a wonderful publication for gardeners, homesteaders and anyone else interested in more sustainable lifestyles.
You can learn more and subscribe to the magazine here: https://homesteadliving.com/
Bevin also shares some exciting updates about his newest book – he’s been hard at work all winter working on this new project for Ogden Publications where he digs into all sorts of food preservation techniques, from canning and pickling, to smoking, salting, fermentation and more! He explores the history of how these preservation techniques developed, all the way up to modern uses… plus, there’s a ton of recipes too!
We’ll be announcing preorder details soon, and we’ll be offering a discounted price to our Patreon community! Our Patreon community is going to get first dibs and a discounted price, so if you’re not already a member you might want to consider it.
We also just launched our new Herb Co-op, an exclusive offering for members of our Patreon community!
You can enjoy these benefits and more while supporting our podcast. Join our Patreon community for as little as $3/month!
Check it out and sign up at https://www.patreon.com/
Today’s episode of Seeds & Weeds was brought to you in part by our friends at EZ Swap Pots! Check out their line of handmade fabric liners and reusable pots at www.ezswappots.com Use coupon code SEEDS at checkout to receive 15% off your purchase!
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