About us
This journey began on Valentine’s Day of 2014. My wife, Tracy had a vision of a rainbow raw vegan cheesecake, and I knew that making her one would be the perfect way to celebrate our love.
Creating that first cake was a mind expanding process, as colors made from scratch with organic fruit and herbs emerged more vividly than I had imagined possible. She was thrilled when I presented her my rainbow love cake, and when we shared images of it with our community the response made it clear that I was onto something. A new desire was born within to create food that was art.
I had already traveled down many roads in search of the ideal artistic format. I left my hometown of Cincinnati in 1997 to attend art school in Washington, DC. The freedom to explore multiple disciplines was inspiring; my thesis show included oil painting, sculpture, video, installation, and sound. But I found that art without purpose, without utility, was unsatisfying. Once a vision was complete, the objects I had made felt meaningless. They were destined for storage. I knew that my next body of work would need to be sustainable and not bound by form.
My quest for formlessness led me to music, an art I had been practicing since I was nine years old. 2003 came with the opportunity to join my friends’ stoner rock band. The sound was hypnotic, deep and heavy. I loved traveling the world and building our sonic cathedral each night. To share that space was a gift. Yet it came to be that as my devotion to the spiritual possibilities of music grew, I kept colliding with the most tired old trope of rock and roll: that a musician must practice self-abuse through chronic intoxication while pursuing the meaningless pleasures of the road. Such a life was unsustainable in the extreme.
Tracy and I met in New York City in 2006, and moved to Los Angeles in 2007, where I embraced the opportunity to begin cooking professionally. I spent ten years in the kitchens of three of LA’s best loved vegetarian establishments. What I took away from that experience is an affirmation of three concepts:
Food is sacred. What we put into our bodies is not just fuel, but a connection with the Earth that provides sustenance and the people who grow, prepare, and serve it.
Ingredients must be of the highest quality possible. Plants that are grown with respect for nature, (which restore the soil rather than depleting it) are the only ones that we can expect to function medicinally and restore balance to our hard working cells.
Intention is the most important element. The care that gets put into food during preparation is received and amplified as it is consumed. Food that is made with love and meditative attention can transform simply eating into a celebration of life.