"Have you ever struggled with the question of what to cook after a break-up? Have you ever thought of healing yourself with certain types of food? When you are feeling homesick, what can you eat? What would you eat after a fight with your parents? Single for too long? What could you eat to forget the feeling of loneliness? After an exhausting day, what is the best meal to recover energy? PMS is making your life really hard; how can food help alleviate your pain? If you have ever considered one or several of the previous questions, do not hesitate and get a copy of Life Menu!"
Life Menu is a self-help cookbook for your daily problems. This publication is the outcome of our vast problematic "Healing through food" derived from our initial idea of gathering people with food. We hope that people from different cultural backgrounds and of all ages will empathise and connect through the stories in the menu. And in the process, people can know about each other's experiences and cures through the medium of food. Even extensive social networks can be created through food to provide social and emotional support to individuals.
Our project is on-going research on day-to-day based problems, emotions related to them and the caring process with food. We explore how to help ourselves and others through food and plant-based medicine (vegetables, teas, herbs, meals, etc) that can contribute to elevate our mood. After conducting research about healing with certain ingredients, we organised a workshop to collect stories and recipes, with the aim to co-create this cookbook. With a group of ten participants, we described emotions related to certain situations, and then created some menus. It was a playful collaboration gathering people and mentally cooking together.
