Transcript

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] So, I started to get into deeper principles, beyond just food and understand that food is like foundation and you have to have a strong foundation but that's not where it ends. Your spirituality, your breath, your consciousness, the thoughts that you're holding constant in your mind, those things are also just as important.

- [aja monet] Hello listeners. You are listening to The Sound Bath and my name is aja monet. This podcast is brought to you by Lush Cosmetics. We are so excited to have you join us today. Today, we have Lauren Von Der Pool. She is a chef, culinary artist, and a philanthropist who is committed to healing the world through food, agricultural awareness, and self empowerment. She graduated from Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School. She has worked with many notable chefs, including Marcus Samuelsson and Wolfgang Puck. She has worked as a personal chef for many prominent individuals. One of the most significant highlights of her career occurred in 2009 when former first lady Michelle Obama invited Lauren Von Der Pool to work for her obesity prevention campaign, "Let's Move". She is known as a popular food artist and has dedicated much of her career as a chef conveying the importance of healthy living. She has impressed and inspired thousands to lead a healthier life through her 21 day Eat Yourself Sexy journey, making her one of the most exciting voices in raw vegan food today. Through her philanthropic work, Von Der Pool Healthy Living Services, and her Fresh City Kids movement, Lauren is committed to healing the world through food, agricultural awareness and self empowerment. All right everyone, we're so excited to begin this conversation. Let's get into it. Well, Lauren, thank you so, so, so much for joining us today. I know that you are traveling and so, ya know, just in general, I'm honored to have you but especially when I know that you're busy doing so much. I just wanna welcome you to this lovely, incredible podcast and as we begin, I just wanna take a moment to do a check-in with you just how you're feeling, where your heart is at right now.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Wow, thank you so much. I feel honored to be here with you. I know that we're both busy and doing amazing things. Thank you for the check-in. I'm feeling grateful. The blessings are flowing, right? And the lessons as well. So just, I'm in a space of recalibration, of observation. It's a beautiful space. I'm really grateful to be here though.

- [aja monet] Mmhm, yeah. That sounds like it's a beautiful blessing. I had the privilege of experiencing your food maybe two years ago.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah.

- [aja monet] Yeah and it was ya know, I'd followed you for a little while. My little sister, actually, was a big supporter of you and especially Queen Afua, you know, knowing that she's a mentor to you and someone that has been such a big influence and inspiration in your life. And being able to share space with both of you, for me, was so important and crucial just seeing y'all's intention in creating space but also feeding people and particularly women and Black women. And as someone who spends so much time feeding others and creating space for others, I wanted to ask who is it that first poured into you and fed you that gave you the appetite and the strength to be able to pour into others and feed others?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Hmm wow. That's a beautiful question. I would say the first person that comes to mind is my great grandmother, Mommy Sue, and then secondly, my parents, you know? I wouldn't be here without them, so I'm super grateful for them but, it was my Guyanese great grandmother, Mommy Sue, who first developed my flavor profiles, my palette. She really poured into me in so many ways. She was the epitome of a great woman but she was also very strict. But her food was the best food you've ever had. So like, in regards to feeding people, I come from a family of women who feed you. My great grandmother, my grandmother, my great aunt, my great great aunt. I mean, all of them, if you come over there to their home, you're gonna eat well and you're not gonna get in the kitchen at all. Don't even think you're gonna come here 'cause they want it exactly how, you know, there's a whole thing about it. But yeah, I would say my family, honestly.

- [aja monet] Mm, and you call yourself a food artist, I guess a culinary artist and I wonder what are the ways that you see yourself in the world. How would you like to be seen and described? You know, there's a bio and there's the things that you tell people that's kind of easy for folks to see but, I think we're always growing and evolving and sometimes we shift and shape into other versions of ourselves. And as we're growing in the thing that we love to do, we can find new ways to express who we are and what we love. So, I wonder, what are the things that best describe or best identify who you are right now? In your craft and in your relationship to your passions and what you love.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Hmm, that's such a good question, wow! aja, you're really hittin' em today. You know, who am I, like, right now. I was just speaking about that 'cause I feel like I'm in a place where I am looking at myself and I'm seeing my inauthenticities, for example, I'm here in London and when you're in Babylon, ya know, for me, I feel like a ninja. You know, I move through different places, but really, I'm a bush woman. I like nature. I don't need any of these things. But if I'm here, ya know what I mean? I love a fashion moment. I love all of those things but I was just looking at where there might be opportunities to shift and to resurface or to revisit. I was thinking about my grandmother and I remember being like 16 years old. I had my locs and I had five locs. I was very much hippied out, onked out, ya know? And it was so different from what many people in my environment was doing but especially my family, my mom's side of the family coming from Guyana and my grandmother being Chinese and Amerindian Indian, born in Guyana. So it's a different culture, me growing locs and me hanging with the Rastas and eating raw foods and stuff like that. I feel like because I started out so early, there was so much persecution, ya know what I mean? And I kinda got broken down in certain areas, so I think I got disappointed with the conscious community coming in as just a young, bright-eyed teenager and reaching towards consciousness and then being disappointed in what was really there beyond the outfits and the clothes, the look of consciousness. So I figured, you know what? I'll be the sheep in wolf's clothing, so to speak, ya know what I mean? I'll blend a bit, differently from how I was initially with my five locs in every color in the rainbow and carrying my gallon of water and my fruit which is still intrinsic to who I am. But I just, I'm at this stage where I'm stripping back the layers like an onion or like the lotus, you know? As those layers fall, I'm in space of allowing what needs to surface to surface and really embracing and leaning into the growth. So anyway, I hope that answers your question.

- [aja monet] Yeah, sounds like you're growing.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Long winded.

- [aja monet] Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry. I'm queen of long winded, so we're in there together.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Okay good, yeah.

- [aja monet] I wanted to know what was your entry point? Like what was the thing that woke you up, that invited you into a more expansive relationship to yourself, your spirit, your emotional world, and there in your body? Maybe there was a few scenarios that probably sparked your introduction. I know I spent some time with your book that you talked about a very violent incident that took place with you. I'm sure that there are other incidencies, but what was the thing that woke you up and invited you into a more deeper conscious relationship with yourself and therein, the things you put into your body?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah. Well, coming from a food desert, coming from a home where there at some points, were five people in one room, where there was just extreme poverty and drugs everywhere and all of those things, the environment caused me to harden and caused me to ya know, I was a little girl. I was scared. I was in pain. It was terrible. But I chose to be a fighter and that was something that got me in trouble definitely but I was stabbed in my head and it knocked some sense into me, that's for sure. And it made me look at my environment differently. It made me see that I was in a food desert, that I was in the murder like a war zone. I was coping with it so much that it was almost like it was normal. But then when I stepped out of it, I realized this is not normal. This is not it! There is something else and to be honest, I didn't try to change. I really do believe that God just shifted me. I stopped going outside and hanging out with the people I was hanging out with. I just stayed in and I was a lifeguard at the time. I was just doing that and it was for old people, honestly, it was a spa where old people swam. So I just read most of the time. I was reading this book called The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. And that was a good opening for me. It just was like wow! It's like 16 reading Kahlil Gibran. I was feeling deep as shit, you know? Then you know, like, I started listening and started to obey what I was hearing. So, if this voice told me to get on the bus, I'd get on the bus. If it would say get off the bus, I would just, I was listening to my intuition. I found it. I started to hone in on it and it led me to Queen Afua's book. And this is happening all in the span of like from October to the end of the summer. It was miraculous how it happened. Ya know, I still am so grateful and really can't believe all of these blessings and miracles that have happened in my life, even the fact that I'm having this conversation with you. That it would lead me all here is quite profound. So yeah, sometimes, jolting things are necessary. God knows what will do the job and so, that kinda helped to shift me knowingly and unknowingly.

- [aja monet] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that there is sometimes these drastic, mm, I wanna say heartbreaks or losses or violent experiences that really jolt us into awakening. Sadly, it takes those moments and then, in that moment of awakening, one becomes hungry and seeking and searching for something to fill or to offer another a way out or an outlet into another way of seeing or another way of being in the world. And it looks like once you sought, the things that you were seeking started to find you in these really profound pieces of literature. And reading them and being open to them then allows you to start to take these steps in your life that choose a different way. So, I wanted to ask you now that you've grown and you've been able to accomplish and share so much of yourself with the world and teach people about what it means to be a vegan chef, a vegan food artist, this is a very specific relationship to food but, I wanted to know a little bit about what you're relationship is to being a vegan, how you came to understand your relationship to veganism. Is it just a matter of you wanting to feel healthy in food or do you see it as something that's taking a stand against a sort of way of being or an industry in the world? Do you see it as a very conscious political choice? What is your relationship to being a vegan especially now?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] You know, the word vegan is, I wanna come up with a different one 'cause it's kinda annoying me at this point.

- [aja monet] Yep. I hear that.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] It's revolutionary and in the most peaceful, ya know, nonviolent way, in my opinion but I came into it because after reading the Queen Afua's book, Heal Thyself, the light bulb went off and I decided to be a raw foodist. I didn't go to just having your regular stuff. That wasn't good enough for me. I wanted to go straight raw food. So I, overnight, became a raw foodist and it was so powerful on so many different levels because not only did I change my cells but my cells, right, the cells in my body transformed and then, I began to attract differently. My energy shifted and so, my point of attraction was also different. So it shifted my manifestation. It shifted how I felt. And so, I was looking at it from more of a spiritual, metaphysical level, right? But of course, I think about what's happening to animals, right? It's not like how back in the day, like I am a naturalist. I'm a person who is about living off the earth, living in the earth. Right? And that's what I'm reaching to. So, I think that even the way our ancestors handled the ya know, animals and sacrificing them and eating them and maybe using their fur, it wasn't as bad as what's happening here. Like white people are treating these animals like they treated us. The same slave system. The same thing. It's just a commodity. There's no love, no heart. It's terrible. That's disgusting to be brutally honest. But for me, because I'm coming out of already, ya know, a turbulent environment, I didn't wanna focus too much on the negativity that was going on in the world. I knew it was there. I was coming from it, ya know? So I decided to shift my attention and focus on the positives. Like okay, I'm eating my raw foods. I'm gonna meditate. I'm gonna focus on canceling out the negativity by focusing my attention on the solution and all of the positive things that I could do 'cause I really feel like there's a lot of vegans out there that are, quite frankly, abrasive and self righteous and annoying and no one's trying to hear all that the way they doin' it, you know what I mean? There's people who will just speak negatively over someone's food. If someone's eating meat, let them be. I just think it's starting to get a little too pushy and angry and negative. I think we need to recalibrate and look at why we're even doing this. It's not to love animals more than we love human beings. It's to see the justice, the truth, the rights, the love, and all of it, ya know?

- [aja monet] Yeah, what inspired you to become vegan? How did you begin your journey to becoming vegan?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Well actually I was on my bus route and something told me get off this bus near Howard University and I got off and there was a bookstore named The House of Kemet and I, well I walked in. It was so intimidating, you know? Like everyone's afro-centric, everyone's like, there's all these books. David Icke and all these different people. I'm like oh lord, ya know? I saw Queen Afua's book and I read it in a day and literally overnight, that's what inspired me to become vegan. After that, ya know, I was focused more on eating very simply, not all of the prepared raw breads and stuff like that. Just a lot of mono meals. Making my herbs and looking at it from the space of medicine even though those prepared foods and vegan, raw vegan ice creams and all of those desserts and stuff are great, ya know? I was more so, I wanted to go very simple and natural and then I got hungry and that's when, I was like I do want a pie. I could go for, ya know, and so I started to learn how to create but yeah, that's how it came about. I read Heal Thyself and got on the journey the next day.

- [aja monet] Was there something in particular in that book that spoke to you?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah.

- [aja monet] Was there something that, that this is the thing, this is the story. This is the moment. These are the words that moved me to think about food as medicine?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah! I was looking and I was like oh, wait a minute. Papayas have enzymes good for your digestion and it's good for my skin? Oh, word! Oh what, dandelion? What, the liver, okay! Ya know, red raspberry, come on! Tone up the utero-, and I was just like what? This is real? I could not believe it. I was so, I was amazed and then, I looked at the different levels of being. She had it in there, like the different levels of being vegetarian because back in those days, everything was just vegetarian. So you know, you have your lacto ovo, your vegetarian, your vegan, your raw foods, your fruitarian, your breatharian. You have all of these different levels. So, the Leo in me, you know I gotta reach for the top. I was like eh, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do the lower tier ones. Not gonna do mid. I'm gonna do raw foods. I think that'll be fine for me. And I literally started doing it immediately and then, right nextdoor, there's a place called Everlasting Life at the time, now named something else. Still a vegan spot but this was a grocery store and a juice bar in the back. So, I went in there and I was like oh my God, this is heaven! I was like right at home. And I asked them if I could have a job application. They were like we don't hire, this is the Hebrew Israelite. I was like oh, y'all don't hire. Everybody's a volunteer. I was like, well sign me up, okay? What do I get for volunteering? And they would give me the produce that they couldn't sell in exchange for me coming in and volunteering. So, it was so perfect that I would read the book and then I would have access to a place where I could go every day after school to just be in the vibrational resonance of what I wanted to be. Ya know, it was so easy to reach those levels 'cause everyone around there was into it.

- [aja monet] Do you remember the first time you healed yourself with food?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] You know what? In that process, I was healing myself and didn't even real-- I was so excited to love everything, it wasn't even hard to switch overnight because I was so convicted. I was so sold on the whole thing that I was like oh yeah, I need to start tomorrow. I need some papayas. Ya know and I just noticed it kinda happened organically because I wasn't paying attention to the results really. I was just being. I was just in it. But then, I looked up and I saw that, I mean, I started my business. I ended up taking the produce that I was getting, that they would give me and turning it into things I could sell, like pies and tarts and juices and salads and stuff. So I would go across the street to Howard and I would sell them and so, things were going well, ya know? I was doing well in school, honor society. All my teaching, like the influence. It was super powerful. I feel like the whole process was healing. And one part of it that a lot of people don't talk about and they're just like everything was good until I'd hit a glitch, right? And this right here is what I call the tempering stage, right, where either karma comes back from the past stuff that you've done or that you've inherited. Like everything was going great. I was positive and then, I had a really turbulent couple of years. Those were some of the most impactful times of my life, ya know, and I had to learn how to reach for new tools not just food. Food was one level. Food was foundational but then I had to realize, like okay Lauren, what are you thinking? What is your mental diet? What are you allowing people to speak into your life? What are you choosing to digest? What environment are you in? Is this good for you? Ya know, I started to look at what I was consuming on all levels and how that played a major role in what I was manifesting. So I started to get into deeper principles beyond just food and understand that food is like is foundation and you have to have a strong foundation but that's not where it ends. Your spirituality, your breath, your consciousness, the thoughts that you're holding constant in your mind. Those things are also just as important.

- [aja monet] You're listening to The Sound Bath brought to you by Lush Cosmetics. And my name is aja monet. I'm currently in conversation with Lauren Von Der Pool, a chef, food artist, and philanthropist. Next up, I want to talk to her about how to commit to your path when the people around you aren't on the same journey. But first ... It looks like in your program, Eat Yourself Sexy, I think there's a 21 day journey reset and you say that you use more than food to heal and reset lives. There's talks of meditation, affirmations, yoga, African dance, being some of these things. I was wondering do you have a practice that you commit to daily? What is part of your relationship to your wellness right now that continues to keep you not just like certain and committed and consistent with your relationship to food, but also in your relationship to yourself. What promises do you keep to yourself that allow you to remain consistent in your relationship to your body?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Mm, thank you. Gratitude is one of the first thing, you know? Before I open my eyes, just giving thanks for the presence, for still being where I am, and the opportunity to evolve and to grow and to be, so, I would say that would be the first thing and then, of course, in the morning, what's on auto pilot is my room temperature or hot water with lime and my green juices and all of the nutrients that I feel called to, right? Also, the listening. You know, listening to what my body needs. Sometimes I come out of the auto pilot and I allow myself to flow and listen to what my body wants to do 'cause it's so easy to be like okay, this is easy. You know what I mean? Once you get on a certain rhythm. But then, I do like to break it up and listen and allow myself to flow and to be because for me, I can be a little bit strict and hard on myself and I'll wake up at sunrise even if I didn't sleep much the night before. But I've just been being kind to myself, listening to what my body needs but the main things are making sure that I'm getting nutrients in my body in the morning. Then I'm taking the time to do some breath work and meditation centering and giving thanks and really being open enough to receive the downloads and pushing past my comfort zones and taking hard looks at myself but then also, again, the balance of it is ya know, not always being so strict to give myself grace and to have some enjoyment every now and again, you know? Having that balance.

- [aja monet] Yeah. Thank you. I also was wondering, you know, 'cause I was in a household with my former partner and his brother and they were meat eaters, heavy, it was just a lot and it would be hard to really, not so much try to preach to them what they should be eating even though I love them and I wanted them to eat better, but to even sometimes stay committed in my own path when I have other people trying to push me into eating more like them. You know, that can be difficult. 'Cause I'm thinking about the people who live in households where everybody else eats meat and eats all the things that are unhealthy. How do you remain steadfast? What offerings could we give to listeners who are struggling to commit to their own path in spite of the journey of other people who may interfere and may not support their own path?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah. Find your big why. What's your reason? Let your why be big enough to carry it. Ya know, for me, I mean, I knew, I knew that that wasn't the way and my why was big enough because I got knocked up the head hard enough, ya know? So that was one of those why God told me, you either go this way or we don't really need you, right? So, I was like I'm gonna go ahead and go this way and I'm gonna be a good girl. But for one, that's why I had the Eat Yourself Sexy journey because the Eat Yourself Sexy journey is a community of people who hold you accountable, right? In the journey, you get an accountability partner or you join an accountability group. And everybody on the journey, for the most part, is the one person in their household that is eating this way, right? So there's a point of attraction there, a point of communication and just camaraderie. So, I would suggest--

- [aja monet] So find your community.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah, I would.

- [aja monet] Find your community.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah, I would suggest of course the Eat Yourself Sexy journey but even if you don't join the journey, find your crew. Find your group of people in your area who you can connect with, you can cook with, hang out with, go do things that are healthy. Maybe go to a yoga class, some breath work, the spa or wherever so that you're still able to have enjoyment where you can still connect. And what I do, ya know, to your question about how do people stay steadfast when everybody in the household, with people who are eating all kinds of things, it's like well, get in the kitchen and make some food. Tell them to sit down, right? A lot of times, people are like uh uh, I don't want vegan food. What I do is I don't tell them what's going on. I just give it to them.

- [aja monet] Mmhm.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] And it's good so they enjoy it. I remember working with Diddy and he wanted something, some meat or whatever. But he was eating vegan and enjoying it saying this is the best lunch I've had in all year! And it was all, it was vegan. So, I think that it's the finesse and not making it a big deal, right? So I don't make it a big deal. I don't announce it all the time. Like oh, this is vegan and make it, 'cause then it just throws it off. I just do it and then afterwards, be like oh yeah, by the way.

- [aja monet] It sounds like there was a lot of experimenting going on to get to the point where you knew how to make things that other people really loved taste good.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] No!

- [aja monet] Like you knew how to make the vegan version of those things.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] No, that, what's so wild is that I don't know how I , I was about to say something very Leo-like. I was gonna say I don't know how I keep on making these slam dunks.

- [aja monet] It's true. I guess I am trying to understand because it is such a specific palette and you have been able to make things that typically, people would hear the description of and be like oh, I don't wanna try that but you make it taste really, really good. So there is some sort of love and commitment to trying things and experimenting with certain tastes and spices and foods that maybe others wouldn't even indulge in because they're like I can't do that. I can't make that. So maybe it's not one specific thing but I think that there must be something energetically that you put into what you're doing that allows you to believe like oh, I'm making this, it's gonna be good regardless of what it is. I'm putting vibes into this.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah.

- [aja monet] I'm putting some good love up into this and I think that that's part of what makes soul food soul food, right?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Absolutely.

- [aja monet] Which is putting your heart into what you create.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah, you know, for me, I learned how to make food from not having the right ingredients, right? So I didn't necessarily have everything, all the equipment, all of the tools, everything. But I knew how to make it work, right? It was like the listening. I'm tasting as I'm going in my mind's eye. It's a gift actually 'cause I'm, as I'm talking to you, I'm seeing how I'm reaching for it and I'm reaching for it in my head. I'm tasting it and I'm saying mm okay and I'm looking at what I have and I'm seeing what can give me a similar flavor profile. Oh okay, I could use this. I'm getting creative. I'm not saying aww, well I don't have enough, I can't do this. That's not, says no one in the hood. No, I'm joking. But you know what I'm saying? Like I used to learn how to make, you know, oodles and noodles. I mean, I would do all kinds of variations with those bad boys. You know? You learn how to play with flavor and not limit yourself to your ingredients but allow your ingredients to guide you and really listen to those nonverbal harmonics. If you have ingredients in front of you, you can hear what they can do and what they're wanting you to do. It's a conversation. It's not just you mis-making stuff. There's more happening in the kitchen than what meets the eye. So yeah, I think creativity and being open. Just like a painter, just like when you're writing poetry. You're hearing it. You can hear the rhythm and it's not even audible. You can hear it in your mind's eye. You know it starts flowing. Same thing with the food. It's the same kind of creative process. There's just a stream of consciousness. It's already there. It already exists. You're just tapping into that stream of consciousness.

- [aja monet] I love that. I love that about nonverbal harmonics and let your ingredients guide you. I think that that is such a, it is a very poetic way of looking at what you do. I think you know, you're an artist and so, I find that poetry is one of the highest forms of all arts, you know, in terms of the metric of one's relationship in success to their craft is can you do it with poetry? Or can it be poetry? Can you cook like poet? Can you make love like a poet? Can you dance like a poet? Can you sing like a poet? Can you be a architect like a poet? Can you be an astronaut like a poet? Like all the things that you do, can you do it with the same level of depth and metaphor and expression as a poet? I think what you're describing feels so poetic to me. It does beg one to wonder how do you create wellness in every part of your life with some level of nonverbal harmonics, as you say, right? Like in a way of listening and tapping into that listening. There's a poem in Vertamae's book where she goes, you know, "the kitchen is the most important room in my home. Tis the place from which I do my thing. I eat in the kitchen. When friends drop in sometimes, we never leave the kitchen. I just do everything in the kitchen. I wrote this book in the kitchen. When I sew, I set up the sewing machine in the kitchen. I iron in the kitchen. The other day, I tried to move the piano in but couldn't get anyone to help me. The children do their homework in the kitchen. Sometimes, there is so much happening in the kitchen that I can't get to the stove to cook and we have to call Chicken Delight." So, she's talking about the kitchen and the power of the kitchen and I think about the kitchen as a meeting place for so many people, Black people particularly, but definitely Black women. When we had to, you know, weather the atrocity and the terror of slavery, eating and the time to eat was one of the few times we could gather and be on one accord of one another. So, the kitchen serves a very specific space. It conjures a very specific thing, I think, in all communities, in all countries and societies and cultures. But I wanted to ask you about your kitchen. What is very important for you to have in your kitchen? What does your kitchen feel like? And why should we all take our kitchens a bit more seriously?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Mm, wow. Well, I'll say that my ideal kitchen is like indoor/outdoor and it's connected to my room. You know and it's an open fire pit moment and I love cooking on fire. And I love cooking with the sun. Ya know, I think that a couple essential things that I need in the kitchen is definitely real fire. No electric thing. Ya know what I'm saying? I need, I need real fire and then, ya know, this is just me going into my ideal, I always wanted in a walk-in refrigerator in my home kitchen. You typically see that at restaurants. I'm like I need a walk in refrigerator in my at home kitchen 'cause I have so much stuff. You know, and for me, cooking is playing. It's my art. It's just like an artist needing all of their brushes and all of their equipment, their canvases and everything to create a piece. But yet also great plates. Ya know, that's a huge thing for me. I need to always have great plates or even wood, like cool things to plate on. It doesn't necessarily even have to be a plate. It could be a canvas, a piece of wood. It could be an easel.

- [aja monet] Some surface, yeah.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Some type of really cool surface but I like to say that I think the mark of a great chef is being able to work with bare minimum. You should be able to get it poppin' with a butter knife if you have to. But yeah, I think that my favorite things in the kitchen, if I'm not doing raw food, is the fire, you know? The fire and water element. Those are two essentials that must be there.

- [aja monet] Mm yeah, okay cool. I hope to the listeners that you can take your kitchen more seriously and think about the ways that you can play with how you create your meals and how you show and demonstrate and express those meals for those you love. It's really beautiful to think about ingredients guiding you and rather than you being the person guiding the food and really controlling what's being made.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] I do wanna say that yes, you know, listening to the ingredients but also, we also have to look at the deliberate creation at play, right? So if we're looking to heal ourselves and I would always say to have a apothecary in your kitchen. Have your herbs in your kitchen, your medicine, because often times, especially if you're in America, the food quality is so low because the soil is so upset. The soil has no nutrients, right? They're actually planting vegetables on nuclear waste. It's the worst thing you could do. So, if you're in America, you wanna make sure that you're replenishing with herbs, roots, things that are going to give you minerals that are gonna carry oxygen to your cells. I would say to do your best to have a little apothecary as big as you can where you have your basics like burdock or dandelion, your sea moss, your bladderwracks, your elderberries, your mints, your lemon balms. Like certain things that are gonna be good as emergencies but also as your daily, you can put them in all of your different foods, your teas, your sauces, your soups. You know, slip that medicine in as much as possible to heighten the nutrition.

- [aja monet] Hmm yeah, that sounds great. Thank you so much for all of that incredible information.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Yeah.

- [aja monet] I definitely hope that folks are listening and thinking more deeply about what they're cooking, what they're making, what they're creating but also their apothecary, what herbs do you have in your home? Do you have any herbs? Do you plant any herbs? You can plant some herbs. So yeah, those are things that I hope folks are really looking into and creating more space for in their homes. Then, the last thing I want to ask you is about sounds. I'm sure that you know, as an artist, you have an appreciation for other art forms and sound is a really important one. So, I wanted to know what sounds bring you comfort while you're cooking, while you're creating, while you're manifesting. What are sounds that make you feel whole and well and fed and nourished?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Wow, you're just really asking all the best questions. So, fire. Fire, the sound of fire crackling is like one of my favorite sounds. Fire and water, those are two of my favorite, you know? But the sound of my son's heartbeat is also beautiful. A beautiful sound but ya know, water and fire.

- [aja monet] Nice, yes. Okay, that was great! Thank you! Thank you so much

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] You're welcome.

- [aja monet] for your answers and your time.

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Thank you!

- [aja monet] Anything else you would like to share or leave us with before we close out?

- [Lauren Von Der Pool] Just thank you for asking me to be on your podcast and thank you for the work that you're doing. This is probably one of the best interviews that I've had just because of how thought provoking your questions have been and really like where I am, the alignment. So, I'm really grateful. I appreciate it and thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed it.

- [aja monet] Yes, thank you. Thank you, Lauren, for your time. I really appreciate it and I can't wait to eat your food again. Thank you so much to the listeners for listening. We encourage you to tune in to the next Sound Bath and enjoy this beautiful sonic meditation.