Through the Fire: Cooking Our Way into a New Relationship with Food

By Charity Dasenbrock

Are Food and Cooking Challenges for You?

In Through The Fire, Cooking Our Way Into a New Relationship with Food, you will find a blend of personal stories, information, suggestions for inner exploration, and practical solutions to finding peace in your body and your kitchen.

You will learn how to

-Adjust your thinking

-Experience sacredness

-Broaden your horizons

-Engage all of your senses

-Make pleasure and joy a priority

-Use better ingredients and tools to elevate quality

-Be mindful of the rhythms of the day and the seasons

-And connect with your community and the wider world

in your kitchen and in your life.

Through The Fire brings alive a new concept of relating the sacred to the art of cooking. Food as medicine, an ancient idea, is given new life in Charity Dasenbrocks new book. Charity turns the kitchen into a sacred place, into a beautiful reality where one learns a new joy of cooking.

~ Brant Secunda, Shaman, Healer and Co-author of

Fit Soul, Fit Body, 9 Keys to a Healthier, Happier You

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Apr 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504352130

Charity Dasenbrock

Charity Dasenbrock combines her skills as a personal chef, a certified Eating Psychology Coach, and blog writer. She mixes her lifelong passion for cooking, nutrition, and her own personal growth to guide you.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 Charity Dasenbrock.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-5212-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-5214-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-5213-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016903837

Balboa Press rev. date: 4/7/2016

Contents

Introduction to Me

Welcome

Why I Cook

Some of the Basics

Beyond Basics

Relaxation

Skin or Not?

Quality

Only One Calorie!!

Awareness

A Simple Piece of Toast

Rhythm

Frosting for the Cause

Pleasure

Footloose and Fancy-Free with the French Fries

Thought

Comfort Food

Story

Celebration!

Sacred

Final Thoughts

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Resources

With all humility, I

dedicate this book to my parents, Mary Esther and John Henry Dasenbrock. I owe you my life and so much more. Although you have passed on, I thank you for such a beautiful life.

I also offer a dedication to my spiritual teacher and longtime friend, Brant Secunda, for helping me take this beautiful life and find true power, love, and joy. Because of my work with you, I am more connected to my soul, to the gods, and to my purpose in life.

Introduction to Me

2015CharityPIE51.jpg

I live in central California and work as a personal chef. I am a certified eating psychology coach and write a blog. You can find me at http://charitydasenbrock.com .

I have always loved to cook, having learned from my mother who was a very accomplished cook. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of spending time with her in the kitchen. We also enjoyed wonderful times together when I became an adult. This is a fascinating paradox, as we also had great battles over my weight. We both struggled with body image. Her struggle sadly lasted her whole life. I have a long history of dieting and varying degrees of struggle with weight and self-esteem issues. You name a crazy diet and I have probably tried it. Who knows how many pounds I have lost and gained throughout my life? I have been desperate, I have been sad, I have been angry. I have stopped caring, I have given up, and I have felt hopeless, all the while feeling disgustingly fat and, consequently, unlovable.

Currently, I am at peace with my diet, and more often at peace with my body. Diet is no longer a dirty four-letter word. It simply means what I eat. And I eat extremely well. My diet consists of almost 100 percent organic, nutrient-dense, locally grown, sustainable, ethically raised, and unprocessed food.

The kitchen has been a place of refuge, growth, experimentation, and discovering self-confidence, all the while having fun. I have cooked my way through tremendous personal challenges. I have found healing in cooking for myself and my clients as we navigate our way through sensitivities, dietary implosions, and tremendous breakthroughs. This has rippled out into our families and communities, helping us feel better about ourselves in general.

My feelings about my body are definitely still a work in progress. Some days I am a goddess, some days not so much. My journey is about feeling whole, accepting and loving of who I am, nourishing my body, and feeling healthy. I so want others to know that it is possible.

I have been interested in nutrition for many years and have learned a great deal. My current passion is the psychology of eating and body/mind nutrition. My spiritual path is a deep and strong one and greatly influences all aspects of my life. I have recently embarked on a journey exploring my creative side, claiming my artist and storyteller parts of myself. It brings me great joy and even deeper healing to combine those with my love of the written word to present to you Through the Fire: Cooking Our Way into a New Relationship with Food.

Welcome

W elcome to our collective journey through the fire. Fire transforms. Fire burns away the old and makes room for the new. With the discovery of fire, people were able to eat differently. Because of that, a wider variety of foods became available for consumption. Even now with the addition of gas and electric appliances to help us, we all look forward to outdoor grilling, using the barbeque or a campfire. In shamanic practices and ancient religion, the Fire is a god and a container for sacred wisdom. People call him Grandfather and see him as the original shaman and teacher.

People speak of having fire in the belly, meaning determination and energy. Through the fire, we also discover creativity and intuition.

This book is about all of those ideas. It is about taking that inner fire, the divine fire, plus the fire in our kitchens, and transforming our lives. It might involve making peace with our history, changing our body image, healing from a disease, or finding new joy and passion in life. It's about taking a journey in our kitchens and cooking our way into a new relationship with food. Imagine walking into your kitchen and feeling relaxed, perhaps even excited to be there. Imagine a kitchen filled with color and beauty. Imagine looking forward to cooking. This book will provide you with tools to help create all those things and more.

I have included posts from my blog, which you can find on my website, http://charitydasenbrock.com.

Let's explore together how to make the kitchen a sacred space. Let's find out how cooking can change the way we feel about food.Cooking can change the way we feel about feeding ourselves and others, and the way we have made, and can make miraculous changes in our bodies, hearts, and spirits. I invite you to embark on this journey through the fire.

Throughout the book, there will be Take a Moment exercises---techniques and activities to help facilitate integration of the topic at hand. I recommend getting a special notebook or journal and keeping it and some pens or pencils handy while reading this book.

The worlds of nutrition and cooking are ever evolving, as are we. Sometimes, change seems slow and arduous; other times, it feels like riding an amusement park ride or surfing a killer wave. However, the more we can relax and flow with the change, the more adventurous our life becomes. The more we can just ride that wave, the more we can give and receive.

The world's energy flows in a spiral. It may seem we come back to the same thing time and again, but we do not. We really are constantly moving forward and evolving. I believe now the energy is moving once again toward the feminine, back to a place of greater balance. The professional fields of health, nutrition, and cooking have long been dominated and led by the masculine and by men. We all are a blend of the sacred aspects of the feminine and masculine. This will be an ongoing discussion throughout the book.

For the purposes of looking at health, nutrition, and cooking, masculine energy can be seen as numbers, numbers, numbers. It is linear and logical. It is old, worn-out theories with old, worn-out research, such as to lose weight, just eat less and exercise more. Yes, if you do that, you will probably lose weight. (No,