to my kitchen!
to my kitchen
Welcome
The "Standard of Care"
In medicine we are taught to offer the “standard of care." Taking creative liberty is not encouraged. Medical boards want to be sure that the practice of medicine is evidence based, consistent and not based on personal discovery. However, in this model, patients with a constellation of medical issues are too complex for the system. They are passed along to specialists or given prescriptions to “address” symptoms without getting to the root of the problem. This is particularly true with regards to nutritional instruction. In the standard primary care office, there is no time to discuss in depth eating patterns in visits and frankly, medical school did not offer ANY practical curriculum in it either. There was so much more I wanted to offer in visits as I increasingly saw that we no longer connect to natural rhythms of healing with ease.
Food is Our Best Medicine or Primary Source of Disease
80% of chronic diseases present in America are now predicated on how, what and when we eat. When it comes to creating a sustainable pattern of eating, we are failing. Depleting our land, pillaging the goodwill of farmers, overeating and under-nourishing are now the norm. As a culture we have been fed incorrect information and moved away from our innate capacity to know what is best for our body. So, the question remains, where can we go to get the “right information”?
The Problem
I believe that now is the time to invest in your health and the health of the planet by making a change to plant forward eating. You will find a wide array of resources for you on this site to support this journey. From recipes to setting up your plant based kitchen, I have you covered.
Explore how eating plants in their whole form can bring us to our greatest state of health and vitality.
RESOURCES
Finding good
Join the Luminous Food's Facebook group while it is still free to access free classes and up to date content.
JOIN HERE
Join the Luminous Food's Facebook group while it is still free. This is a place to hear about new recipes, health ideas and plant-based nutritional content.
JOIN HERE
Not on Facebook? Join the email list to get the ebook and hear about upcoming classes.
I’m in the 48th grade. Since I started school at Ms Matthews pre-K program at St Lukes, I have been busy gaining academic accolades and credentials. From attending one of the most prestigious high schools in the country to a MS in biology to a residency in Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic, I have been engaged in a comprehensive course of study. And yet, once that process was completed, I wasn't done yet. I started phase two diving into even more my unanswered questions. This led to two years of full time Ayurvedic study with master teacher, Dr. Vasant Lad, a yoga teacher training, reiki master training and a formal fellowship in Integrative Medicine. From seeds planted in my long term study of Ayurveda, I began to understand why I had observed that there was no "perfect food plan" that worked for everyone.
Interested in knowing more about all the training I have done through the years, you can see more here.
Wounded Healer
In 2018, I returned from the most amazing 3 week trip with my husband across the Western states. I had just left my primary care job to pursue my passion for teaching culinary medicine. Burned out and exhausted from trying to exist in a dysfunctional medical system, I had leveraged my savings to take 6 months off to create my dream career. I arrived home excited to think about the next steps but within 10 minutes of coming through the door, I received a call from my mom, “your dad is in the ER with a heart attack and sepsis." I urgently hopped on a plane to support them and he died an agonizing death a week later. Needless to say, everything fell apart.
I have lived the problems | I have lived the solutions...
Over the following years, I unexpectedly endured a barrage of symptoms from crushing migraines to severe systemic pain. And then in Febuary 2020 found myself one of the early individuals to become sick with Coivd and then long Covid. And what a journey it has been from there. With the pandemic and ensuing solation, I have been exploring in even more depth how we heal and what brings us to more balance even in the midst of confusing and complex disease. Time did not heal me. On the brink of progressing symptoms, I realized I needed help to get better. Through a few dedicated practitioners and the healing power of nature I began to see how I could flourish again. And in that time, I began to see how my own creative explorations could also support other Integrative Doctors.
meet me,
Dr. Siri Chand Khalsa MD MS
Intelligence + Intuition
= My Hidden Talent
Intelligence + Intuition = My Hidden Talent
Kitchen techniques can be learned in bite sized pieces!
I will be sharing techniques to make you more confident and less overwhelmed when planning meals. From batch cooking to food prep to novel flavor combinations, it can be an efficient AND creative process. I have been studying techniques since I was a child starting with The Great Chefs of Europe tv series on PBS. That’s right, you remember, before the food network when there was only 4 channels. And my love of food (really eating) has continued through nutritional and Ayurvedic training as well as developing curriculum in nutrition at the founding program in integrative medicine in Tuscon, Az.
Empowered Kitchens
How can anyone ever figure out what the best choice is?
Through ideas shared here, you will have resources to know how food is produced, favorable profiles of macronutrients, fasting basics, cooking techniques, stocking a healthy pantry, incorporating mindfulness, and digestive pearls. Food choices are deeply personal and depends on skills, tastes, budget, time and so much more. My training in Ayurveda has given me a global perspective on understanding the delicate balance that resides between our inner and the outer ecologies of producing food that can be a guide through the “maize” of modern nutrition. Just look at the exploding science around the microbiome. So many elements of microbiome health and its systemic effects were right in front of us in Ayurvedic texts that are hundreds to thousands of years old.
I am not going to *solve* any of your problems.
You are the steward of your own health journey. No one can accompany you to the grocery store or choose your food for you, making us all accountable for what we consume and how it's produced. This personal responsibility is both a challenge and an opportunity. I'm here to provide you with evidence-based skills, practical tools, and a guiding framework to spark your intuitive ability to create nourishing meals. These resources aren't about strict rules, but about empowering you to make informed, mindful choices. Remember, our food decisions ripple beyond our plates. And the decisions we make have a larger impact as well.
He's gotta have a moment in the sun here too. He is the kitchen helper and all around master of scent. Perhaps someday in a future world he will be a sommelier. He is my right hand man and accompanies me through the garden, to the market, hanging out with his feet in the air when I am writing, and of course, tasting.
Lessons learned in the kitchen include patience while waiting for tastes and that there is art to the best crunch in potato chips.
meet Teddy
Dr Vasant Lad
The Ayurvedic Institute
"There is order in the disorder"
-Michael Pollen
Author
