A Serious Way of Looking at Food and Yourself | WeMentor Mondays with Nancy PODCAST

Episode 202: A Serious Way of Looking at Food and Yourself

Gita Mazumdar has a serious way of looking at food and yourself through her project, Mystic Murrabba. Gita’s mantra, “From the earth came seed, from seed came food. From food came man. Man is essentially the essence of food.” “This is a reminder,” says Gita, “of where we are as a big chain in the cycle of one part of this larger aspect of being.”

I had to laugh with Mike Kabeya (my sound engineer, videographer, and photographer). When we left Gita’s house, he said to me that he had never thought that much about food. It was the way he said it that was so funny. That is so true. When you are not the preparer, very little of one’s time is invested in thinking about and preparing for the wellbeing of others through their bellies. You are the consumer.

Entrepreneurs are the preparers of something they are bringing to the marketplace. Gita brings a home-cooked community service and speaks to the conundrum every entrepreneur I know thinks about and needs to work through when creating an entity (for-profit or not-for-profit). When I move my idea into the business arena and the American way of doing business, will I lose all the elements of what I am desiring to bring into the world? Will it be sanitized and distilled to a degree where I will lose all the joy and effervescence of creating it? Will it be disconnected from the Ecosystem? How then can I sustain it?

Gita tried creating a commercial entity. You will hear how she used the commercialization process to clarify what she is doing and what will work for her going forward. If you abandon a for-profit entity and create a community project, named Mystic Murrabba, can that work in the American system? Learn how she has carved out a niche that nourishes her local community and aligns with her Ayurvedic way of living and being in community with others. DOWNLOAD

WeMentor Self-Leadership Activation Exercises

After listening, do the following three WeMentor Self-Leadership Exercises:

Take this risk: For WeMentor Listeners, Gita has invited you to become part of her community table. Sign-up for one of her classes and take a serious look at your food and your life. She is filled with so many ideas of ways to eat food prepared from the soil where you live. Expand your knowledge of life.
Self-Compassion: Eliminate one food that harms you and our planet (this includes the packaging of the food). Add to your diet one locally grown food that nourishes your body and spirit. There is more labeling of what is locally grown now which makes it easier to support local farmers.
Gratitude Challenge: We participate in daily rituals that connect us as an ecosystem that keeps us alive and well. One of those rituals in the United States is Thanksgiving. Find a gratitude prayer you can share with those you share a meal with on Thanksgiving. Click here for a website of gratitude prayer ideas.

Self-Leadership Mentoring Options

Get One-On-One Mentoring during your transition. It is much easier to change when you know what is happening in your inner world. Paul Turek of Turek Consulting LLC says, “Nancy is a well-connected leadership development icon in this market… she’s got an interesting perspective on identifying and addressing leadership opportunities within oneself that is timely in our diverse and mobile workforce these days.”
Subscribe to this podcast. Get more meaningful conversations and useable tips every week.

Episode 202 A Serious Way of Looking at Food and Yourself Gita Mazumdar

Podcast Sponsor

Resources

Mentoring Conversation Resources

The Ayurvedic philosophy is a 4,000-year-old system of wellbeing and means ‘knowledge of life.’ Gita lives the Ayurvedic food philosophy. Eat by the season and for the season that you are living in.
Channel Z, James Stanger, retired film editor (Gita’s husband)
Lunch in Bombay, film by Gita Mazumdar, edited by Jim Stanger

Thali is the way Indians eat on a regular basis; an Indian style meal. The meal is prepared with seven components that make up a complete meal. Each region in India has a different Thali but is prepared with the same seven components in mind. There is particular attention paid to details.
- There is a Rice dish, a lentil dish, a cooked vegetable, some kind of bread, fermented pickle, some kind of chutney with lemon or lime (some added acidic flavor), fresh vegetables, and a small bite of sweet to encompass all the different flavors.
- “The entire Thali meal consists of seven components: 7 colors. 6 flavors. 5 textures. 4 elements: earth, fire, water, and air. 3 different qualities (temperaments) that wake you up, calms you down, and encourages the balance in between. 2 You never eat alone so you eat together with at least two people. The emphasis is on ONE UNITY that we are all a part of. We remember we are part of an Ecosystem; part of a cycle connected through this daily ritual two to three times each day, to what we are,” says Gita.

Podcast Guest Mentor

Gita Mazumdar. Enjoy regional cuisines.

The best ingredients are solar-powered and raised by nature’s perfect cycles. Our bodies recognize the elements, seasons, and life force of what we consume. It is her quest, in this increasingly careless time, to examine and find what is real and good, and make an offering. There are studies that exclaim this and that, and then there are further trials that reverse those claims. Gita’s gujarati grandmother said that her medicine was food and her food, medicine; that it had been tested for over three thousand years by the mothers that preceded her. Hence, she ate the traditional Thali daily. This was never a monotonous meal! It varied by time of day, time of the lunar month, time of the solar year, and season of the eater’s life. It was achieved by preparing foods using the still-practiced Ayurvedic philosophy of making several dishes, consumed in varied proportions in accordance to each individual. They had, at best, at least seven colors, six tastes, five textures, four components, three temperaments, two eaters (a shared meal) One Unity.

Gita’s philosophy is to use naturally grown plant-foods*, with as many ingredients in their whole form. (Oil pressing is a curiosity, but not yet part of my repertoire.) She shops at the Saint Paul farmers market through the year and am often able to prepare entire meals from items I purchased directly from growers there. Gita will continue to study ways to dry, can, preserve and freeze the local harvest so she can develop and make future offerings during the snowy months. To supplement the market, she shops at the Co-Op; for spices and some ingredients, at the Indian grocers. Gita will also share some of the ingredients she brought back from India and a few from her own garden.

*There are occasional exceptions. For instance, she uses Milk and Cream (For making butter) bought from Lucas Kapper OF the Big Red barn, a family owned and run farm. They have sixty-six cows. This is sparingly used and will be indicated on the menu sent with each meal. She may also use fresh eggs bought from local farmer, Jessica, of Gilbertson farms.