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

Episode 333: A Serious Way of Looking at Food and Your Imprint

God Bless Britain’s longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022), who passed on Thursday, September 8, 2022. Affection for the Queen will be in many of our memories. Her stability and consistency are something we love about her. When I was born in 1961, Queen Elizabeth II, mother of three at the time, was doing Royal Tours addressing 250,000 people in India. She was eight years into her 70-year reign as Queen. Can you imagine leading and being a role model of stability and formality of the monarchy for that length of time? “Elizabeth remained determinedly committed to the hallmark aloofness, formality, and pageantry in preserving its mystique that underpinned its existence and survival. Her courtyard reserved manner changed little,” as noted in The New York Times (9/9/22).

The Queen’s tours in India reminded me of today’s Guest Mentor, Gita Mazumdar. Gita was born in India. Our two conversations aired at the end of 2019. Here is our first conversation, if you missed it.

In our second conversation, you will hear Gita’s profound way of looking at food and your imprint through her project, Mystic Murrabba. Gita’s mantra, “From the earth came seed, from seed came to the 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.”

Mike Kabeya is my sound engineer, videographer, and photographer. After recording our two conversations, Mike and I had a good laugh. We were leaving Gita’s home in St. Paul, MN, and Mike leaned over and said, “I have never thought that much about food.” I paused a minute to take in the way he said, “I have NEVER thought THAT MUCH about FOOD,” and burst out laughing. That is so true, isn’t it.

Chef Gita has the well-being of others and their bellies in mind when she prepares her food. When you are not the preparer, little, if any, of one’s time is spent thinking about food. Our bellies were pleasantly satisfied when we left, and our view of food forever changed. A part of what led me to become a vegan, but that is a topic for another day.

Entrepreneurs are the preparers of innovations they infuse into the marketplace. Gita brings 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 taking your idea into the marketplace, will I lose myself and what I am trying to achieve? Another way of asking the question is, will I compromise a part of me and my vision in a way that doesn’t feel right by legalizing my business? 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 can I sustain it, stay human, do my lifework, and participate constructively in our Ecosystem?

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

I received an email from Gita yesterday. She is in London with her husband, Jim, visiting the year-round farmers markets, taking long walks, and writing her cookbook. She says, “my book is creeping along, but is shaping into something cohesive.” That sounds familiar. Enjoy our conversation. DOWNLOAD

NEXT STEP after listening: Challenge yourself and do the Conscious Attentive Leadership Mentoring (C.A.L.M.) Activities, below.

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Episode Resources

Ayurvedic Philosophy

The Ayurvedic philosophy is a 4,000-year-old system of well-being 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

Channel Z James Stanger (Gita’s husband)

Cooked

Michael Pollan’s New Book, Cooked and Netflix Series. A look at the evolution of food through the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth.

Lunch in Bombay

Lunch in Bombay, a film by Gita Mazumdar

Murrabba Definition

Murrabba Definition

Sour Dough Bread Recipe

Nancy Silverman’s Sour Dough Bread Recipe

What is Thali?

Thali is the way Indians eat regularly, 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, a fermented pickle, some 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 6 flavors. 5 textures. 4 elements: earth, fire, water, and air. 3 different qualities (temperaments) that wake you up, calm you down, and encourage 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.

Conscious Attentive Leadership Mentoring

After listening, do these three C.A.L.M. Activities:

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 peak into your food and life. She is filled with many ideas of ways to eat food prepared from the soil you live in. Expand your knowledge of life.

Self-Compassion: Eliminate two or more foods that harm you and our planet (this includes the packaging of the food). Add at least one locally grown food to your diet that nourishes your body and spirit. Labeling what is locally grown makes it easier to support local farmers. Plus, more plant-based offerings expand our ability to make healthy food choices.

Gratitude Challenge: We participate in daily rituals that connect us as an ecosystem that keeps us alive and well. Click here for a website of gratitude prayer ideas you can keep and use at Thanksgiving and tailor for other occasions.

“Most of the problems in our lives and world are caused by relational dysfunction, a dysfunction in how we relate: as social groups, as individuals, to animals and the environment, and even to ourselves. Therefore, developing relational literacy—the understanding of and ability to practice healthy ways of relating—is essential for personal, social, and ecological transformation.” —Melanie Joy, psychologist, author, theorist, educator

When WeMentor… your life becomes more meaningful!!! Redefine how you lead while redesigning your business. Dual Innovation Mentoring WORKS.

Podcast Guest Mentor

Gita Mazumdar.

Enjoy regional cuisines from India. 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.