Broccoli Rising and Let’s Dance
What makes you feel connected?
Easy recipes delivering big fun flavors had participants dancing in their kitchens during my Soulful Dinner virtual cooking class, part of the national community-building initiative 10 Days of Connection. I’d have been dancing too. The irony was, I couldn’t see them. Or hear them. Let alone dance with them. Connectivity issues.
Hey, tech glitches happen, and one hour of feeling cut off from the world is crazy-making but endurable. But what if you feel that way all the time? More than half of us do, so much so that loneliness is a public health crisis. It’s not obvious like a rash or a broken bone, but it’s painful. More than that, loneliness impacts lifespan and quality of life in a not good way. So it’s not a coincidence 10 Days of Connection, now in its 10th year, happens in May, Mental Health Awareness Month.
Virtual connection can be amazing. It got a lot of us through the pandemic shutdown. I’m grateful for the energizing, funny, warm, brilliant friends I’ve met online who I might never have met in real life. But Sunday’s audio/video fail on my end reminded me that virtual connection has its limits. Even when it works, it won’t let you smell the warm fragrance of just-picked rosemary from my garden, won’t let me feed you a spoonful of something delicious right out of the pot. Closing your apps, getting out of the house and connecting with new people is where the magic happens. And I say this as a nervous introvert who can enter a room full of strangers and want to run back out. But I still try to do it.
Stepping out of my comfort zone is challenging in a way virtual connection is not. But it’s vital to building community, relationships, tolerance, communication, and creating real connection — the stuff and support reminding us we’re not alone in the universe.
I love creating plant-based recipes, menus and programming, but as fantastic as plants are, the secret sauce is — wait for it — us — you, me and all of us very flawed human selves. In my first book Feeding the Hungry Ghost, I wrote about how experiencing care and connection nourishes us the way a good meal does. It brings down our frazzled energy, it lets us take a breath. It makes us go ahhhh. It feeds us. And if we’re lucky, it makes us want to dance.
Fast and Fabulous Fruit Tarts
These tarts, made as part of the Soulful Dinner cooking class might make you dance. Dessert is not a cure for loneliness. But share them with with a colleague or neighbor and I pretty much guarantee you’ll be feeling an enhanced connection. (Recipe available to paid subscribers, only.)
You know what else is fast and fabulous? Find out next Monday with Broccoli Rising’s five fast and fabulous plant-based recipes, a paid subscriber exclusive. If you’re a free subscriber, now may be the right time to upgrade your subscription. You’re pretty fabulous, too.
