We had to cook a twisted version of Chinese healthy food base on the mediterranean style-centred ingredients. Picking up the knife in the kitchen a year later after the time at NGI, I was surprised about the muscle memory. The body remembers the cutting exercises and the moments of team working at the class kept coming back.

@Tall Timber, Prahran, Melbourne

Last year 2019, to the surprise of my friends and family, including myself, I went to New York to take a certificate training course in Food Therapy.

Home cooking at my family has always been a daily ritual, a tradition on annual gatherings and an ordinary repetition to celebrate simple pleasures.

#COOK

Concepts like healthy eats for wellbeing and plant-based meals appeared all of sudden four years ago when I began to work with emerging food community in Shanghai.

This has provided me with the other greater aspects of Food Therapy on nourishing creativity, self-soothing and building mindfulness.

Love is food

Allows happiness

Conquers loneliness

Riding on that invisible title, I have ever since been fascinated about discovering the kind of sensational food experience that I think great for sharing with my friends or family. The curiosity in finding a story worth telling of a restaurant or a cafe has grown much bigger than digging that in the ingredients and the cooking process.

School time normally wrapped up by 4pm that enabled us to further explore the food scene on the street before and after dark.

With a pair of parents from internal medicine and science technology background, I do believe that the journey along food therapy would become richer and deeper as I gradually grow matured and capable of learning and practicing patiently and broadly from a more systematic perspective.

Highly recommended by Amanda, a wellness coach I personally admire, certificate programs at Natural Institute Gourmet (now merged into Institute of Culinary Education) came to my mind two years ago as I started to explore ways to detox mind and body from the unbalanced work-life. I like it as the format and the content of it suit my continued curiosity around healthy food style and at the same time very practice-based. I knew that I needed sort of “active relaxation” by working on something new, challenging and purely for fun.

Every morning kickstarted with an in-depth lecture given by our lead instructor Celine Beitchman, which was followed by a free-style quick bite for lunch and a group cooking in the afternoon and a buffet at one table at the kitchen lab with our mighty chef instructor Elliot Prag.

Largely influenced and driven by the expats and western food cultures in the city, many new ingredients and flavors along the trend of healthy lifestyle were getting popular, not only at regular meals but also casual drinks. That also happened to match my personal diet which became more veggie-based since living away from my parents simply because that I feel more energized by eating such, time-saving and good for weight control. However as a matter of fact, the healthy options available on the market are not satisfying enough, which often raise my concerns on tastes, cost-effectiveness, food security and sustainability etc.

I only realized the therapeutic affects recently through my shelter life in Melbourne, Australia, which inspired me to write a bit about it.

Cooking itself, as a shared task for me and mom to collaborate everyday created a comfort zone for two of us, which eased our tensions and stress in this absurdly long domestic life. Trying various combinations of local produces to curate a relatively budget and tasty food table, I found much more joy in cooking, than anytime at our real home.

I can’t tell exactly from when my friends started to recognize me as a foodie. Part of it may attribute to my critical eyes on details trained at work and a rather straight personality. I’m just more outspoken to share my inner thoughts.

So after Chinese New Year, I departed to New York. Compared to a couple of spontaneous trips previously, I feel much more excited to revisit the big apple with a lens of a healthy foodie.

Learning nutrition terms at the lectures or cutting a mango with a professional knife are same level of challenges to a beginner like me. The course opened up many windows for me to breathe. I found myself much more calm and confident back home in and outside the kitchen.

I had the “luxury” just watching outside the kitchen and enjoying the meals on the table all the times. I could have blamed my parents for not encouraging me harder to learn cooking and get knowledgable about ingredients at a younger age. But it is also their privileged happiness and authority which, I felt they didn’t want their child to take over too fast...

As the “specialist” to deliver the delicious from the kitchen to the table who is also happy with handling the dishes afterwards, I paid a lot attention on the food presentation.

A round year later, I “officially” took the charge of my home kitchen away from home. I cooked at least one meal a day at my shelter with my mom in Melbourne, which has become the most intensive cooking exercise in my life. Being stranded due to international travel restrictions, two of us lived a quite extensive staycation during the lockdown on a foreign land. Sourcing essentials at the local grocery to cook a healthy variety was a daily routine.

A journey to explore food therapy for self-care and becoming a therapeutic partner in intimate relationships.