It’s the weekend and it’s time to rest, cook great food and be creative. I love to cook plant-based foods using crops from my garden. This new body of artwork, FAVI’S COCINA, celebrates my love for cooking all the wonderful fruits and vegetables that Earth Mother gifts to us.
I love showing care for others by preparing amazing dishes. I consider myself a culture keeper of ancestral food knowledge. I feel I’ve been blessed with unique abilities in my taste buds and in my gut which allows me to tap into the true essence of different kinds of food from different cultures. I love tasting food and then using my taste buds to identify the elements in a dish so that I can later replicate it with my own approach.
When I eat really great quality food made with love and intention, I get an immense set of sensations, often I feel like I’m going through a full-body euphoria. My brain gets high on endorphins triggered by the spices, and I literally feel the spices tingling different parts of my body. I’m lucky to have that embodied experience because it’s what makes me a good cook.
I also try to connect with each ingredient. I love to know where the seeds, spices, and vegetables come from. I try to imagine what it was like for my ancestors to come up with unique dishes that I get to recreate today.
As an artist, I see that my role is to continue our ancestral cultures, and so I try to learn as much as I can in a way that is authentic and respectful. Particular ingredients awaken parts of our bodies that allow us to remember and heal. I like to think of myself as a messenger for those elements and those life forms because they are from the Earth, they are alive and they enter our bodies and nourish us