Nutritive Art Exercise

This is for you busy, artistic souls. Maybe you have trouble getting inspired to cook, maybe feel a lack of creativity. This exercise requires you to have an open mind, and to prioritize your creativity.

Pick a day, set aside a minimum of an hour. Pull out your favorite art medium and let yourself flow. No restraints, no rules, no expectations. Go wild! This isn’t a process to create *something* but an exercise in play. Outcome irrelevant. 

When the hour is up, step back from your work. What colors did you gravitate towards? What textures, what shapes? Write it down. 

This is your grocery list! Go to the grocery store, and pick 3 different vegetables that correlate with the colors you used. You can get more extravagant and explore textures and shapes used in your art as well. The ridged spikes of bitter melon, long thin lines of burdock and green onion, orange of carrots and deep purple of yams… This is your play time. Ignore what they tell you, playing with food is good.  

Now– time to cook. Create whatever you wish, or, for an easy and fool-proof recipe, toss your veggies with some oil, salt, and pepper, and throw in the oven on 370 or sauteé on the stove top. Top with whatever sauces and spices strike your fancy. 

Enjoy! Notice how colors and shapes and textures affect and express how you feel, how you’re nourished. 

How beautiful, how enchanting and mesmerizing is it, that nature repeats and replays all around us. How the spirals of emotion we express through color and shape can be found, mirrored in fruits and vegetables, flowers and birds! A reminder that we’re not alone, the paths we walk and the things we feel–they’ve been walked before, felt before, and the impressions are all around us.