Member Spotlight: Kathryn Lafond
SFS member, wise woman herbalist, health coach and cookbook author, Kathryn Lafond believes that preparing and eating whole food affects how we heal, comfort and connect with others.
• Name: Kathryn Lafond
• City: Bainbridge Island
• Member of Slow Food Since: 2016
SFS: What are your favorite spices?
KL: Ginger, curry, cinnamon, thyme.
SFS: What do you do to embody Slow Food in your daily life (career, home, hobbies, etc)?
KL: Cooking, teaching, and working with the energy of plants and animals gives me great joy.
SFS: What is your favorite dish or food that has profound meaning for you and why?
KL: Making rich bone broths and stocks is one of my loves. Dishes that release their fragrance into the air truly create a feeling of welcome and of a nourishing home to me.
SFS: What is the last great book or film about food that you read/saw and would recommend to Slow Food members?
KL: My reading takes big swings from studying food policy and the modern food movement, such as Mark Winne's Stand Together or Starve Alone, Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement, to Erica Bauermeister's novel, The School of Essential Ingredients, which was just great fun to read.
SFS: Would you like to share your profession?
KL: I'm a writer — Seasoned with Gratitude, 250 Recipes and Blessings Celebrating the Greater Nourishment of Real Food was published in June of 2017. Previously I was a chef for a dozen years and now a healer and health coach for the past 25. In this book I brought my two fields of expertise together. The focus is on delicious, healthy, whole food cooking; blessings to remind people that it is life that gives us life and the innumerable ways to remember our place in the web of life and ways to give thanks; and 'about' sections that might discuss the energy of food, how it affects the body, why we need to support farmers, sustainable growing and raising of plants and animals, and so much more. I am also a wise woman herbalist and teacher of wild plants as food and medicine as well as had my own small farm in the past.