It is February 12th and this private chef is sitting in her home office, gazing out at ponderosa and songbird and gambel oak. There is no snow. We are fortunate to have a big storm rolling through tomorrow evening, but still. It is disorienting. It’s the middle of winter and yet one might mistakenly assume we’re in June, based on a glimpse at the La Platas.

I don’t really have any uplifting words to share today. It’s not that gratitude and hope evade me, but what’s happening without happens within, and my body feels the climate confusion alongside the more-than-human world. Our human existence has always been one of reciprocity with the more-than-human world; it had to be. In the blink of an eye, everything changed. Most of us raised in the Western world have been force fed narratives of disconnection and somehow believe them.

We are not separate from one another, let alone mountains and rivers and elk and beetle. We are not separate from the animals we eat, the foods we consume. The animals that we eat are not “lesser than.” The atrocious conditions that factory farmed animals endure does affect us: physically, energetically, emotionally. We are what we eat, and we are what we eat eats.

I understand that not everyone has the privilege to shop local or choose organic. (For the record, I don’t think organic is the end all be all either.) But I believe that those who have the ability to do so have a responsibility to vote with their dollars. Not because it’s what’s best for us as humans, but because it’s what’s best for *all* of us (including the animals, soil, water systems, etc.).

As a private chef, this has been built into my business from day one. I source the best ingredients possible not only because they taste the best (which they do). I source the best ingredients because I believe that what’s good for the environment is good for us and vice versa. Adventure through Food has always been a business of philosophy first; this is mine.

As a chef, I feel I have a responsibility to do right by each and every step of the process that allows beautiful produce to end up in front of me. To cook with grass-fed local meat is to honor the ranchers, the soil, the beings who live in the soil, the sun that shines, the water that flows — the whole process that affords me the ability to hand someone money in exchange for quality ingredients.

The narratives of disconnection that we’ve been fed have landed us here. Here, at 7’000 ft with birds who think it’s spring. Here, in a snow-less winter which inevitably means a wildfire prone summer. Here, in a society of people longing for connection but seeking it in ways that continue to perpetuate feelings of disconnection. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Here’s to doing something different. Whether it’s about sourcing quality ingredients, or being intentional about what we consume (physically, energetically, emotionally), or whatever the eff something different is that lights you up from the inside out.

If there were ever a time to go all in… the time is now.