MY Approach
My work is guided by a philosophy of Intentional Nourishment: the practice of using food and shared rituals to cultivate pleasure, dignity, and meaningful connection.
Intentional Nourishment is derived from the rich tradition of soul food, which stands as both a historical testament and a contemporary framework for asserting humanity, pleasure, and community under constraint. It is further informed by Black diasporic foodways, ancestral memory, and rituals of care. I approach food as an emotional and relational technology: something that holds memory, mediates intimacy, and teaches us how to care for one another.
My approach is also deeply influenced by bell hooks' Theory as Liberatory Practice (1991). For hooks, theory is inseparable from action; it is not an abstract intellectual exercise but a tool for shaping how we live, relate, and build community. In this spirit, my work is not a prescriptive model for wellness but an explorative methodology that invites curiosity, openness, and a deeper understanding of how nourishment can be a powerful tool for connection, healing, and collective care.
“Let me begin by saying that I came to theory because I was hurting-the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend-to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing. ”
The Core Principles of Intentional Nourishment
1. Food Is Never Neutral
Every meal carries history, power, ethics and memory.
2. Constraint Is a Creative Site
Scarcity is not romanticised, but worked with honestly. Limitations invite improvisation, resourcefulness, and reflection.
3. Pleasure Is Non-Negotiable
Joy, flavour, delight and play are not frivolous, they are reparative.
4. Care Is Collective and Relational
Wellness is not individual; it emerges from shared rituals of care, nurtured by community, ancestry, and the social relationships that shape our lives. This includes our relationships with the land and the non-human world.
5. Nourishment is Praxis
Nourishment is not theoretical, abstract or idealistic, it unfolds through doing, sharing, and reflecting.
Quote from Vibration Food by Vertamae Smart Grosvenor (1970)We are living through multiple overlapping crises — social fragmentation, rising fascism, political violence, ecological collapse, the erosion of public care and ongoing global conflicts (Free Palestine, Congo, Sudan and all oppressed peoples). These issues are further exacerbated by a failing economy and continued government incompetence. This has deeply altered the way we relate to one another and to ourselves. Many people are not only materially hungry, but emotionally and relationally undernourished.
Food is one of the last shared, embodied practices most people still have access to. It moves between home and institution, memory and survival, intimacy and politics. Treating food as an emotional and relational technology recognises it not just as sustenance or culture, but as a tool for repairing connection with ourselves, with each other, and the relationships that shape how we live.
At a moment when wellness is increasingly individualised, commodified, and detached from history, Intentional Nourishment offers a way to practise care collectively, culturally, and without abstraction. Working with food in this way allows people to slow down, feel, remember, and reflect together, building the emotional literacy and relational resilience that fractured societies urgently need.
This work matters now because care cannot be postponed, outsourced, or scaled digitally. It must be practised, together, in real time.
THE INTENTIONAL NOURISHMENT PODCAST
I bring together chefs, therapists, artists and and other thinkers and makers to co-create, explore and expand this philosophy.
This is conversation as praxis: treating dialogue as something we practise together, not something we extract from one another. Not content, but a shared practice of listening, reflection, and relational care.
Alongside my quarterly supper club series, Gather/Celebrate/Congregate, the Intentional Nourishment podcast invites listeners to engage with nourishment as a living practice—personal, communal, and ever-evolving.