Maria Konecsny - Bringing ritual and nourishment to your kin

Futuresteading

Maria Konecsky refers often to her ancestral memory. For her the way back to those who came before her has been through food. She says “Our food lines, hold our story, no matter what it is, whether its pretty or ugly, grand or humble it holds richness and grit and love and loss” It’s such a beautiful way to unpack our heritage - through food, in her case it’s sometimes ugly food made with love by her OMA who instilled equal part ritual and boredom into her childhood in just the right doses.

Wherever you are right now, I encourage you to find the thread that links you to your own heritage and give it a tug - dive deeply to understand how the patterns of the past are influencing the behaviours of today to form our own individual stories as part of the collective.

Referenced in our chat
Kindred - the book she wrote with her sister
Gewuzhaus - their shared spice store

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Show Notes
Food is an alternative language to the written or spoken word. Care love and power flows through our hands and into our creation
Food as opposed to ingredients are special
We have to keep showing up to cook - especially as mothers - even when its hard
The magnificence of sharing a business with family - always a process, it takes
To the nurturers, mothers, keepers of ritual
Her one word: HOME - connects her to her grandmothers.
Her kin: why writing a book was an opportunity to delve deeper into her ancestral lines, from all over Europe to ultimately coalesce in Germany
The importance of ritual, rhythm and routine in a life with young families - ritual helps to ground us and find commonality that we all understand.
The rituals of her childhood (Christmas in Germany)
Out of boredom came an ingrained and repetitious focus and love on food. Embedded in their DNA
A 12 layered Dobosh - spectacular creation to mark special times across the year “more than just making a cake, it was a channelling of my ancestors into the cake to be there for those who need them”
Mushrooming in Autumn, Winter citrus - balls of colour during the wet grey months, Rituals remind us that life is full of cycles
Opening Gewurzhaus as a nod to her love of food
How a can do attitude has been foundational to their willingness to get stuck in and have a go at things that might fill others with fear
Letting your taste and senses take over to lead you on your next adventure
Spending 6 months cooking to really learn how spices work
Kraut holds her story - a much loved ritual that she only does alone - grounds and connects her to her food lines
Getting her 3 year old to drink kraut juice
Embracing ugly meat - frugal, hardworking, industrious individuals,
Chicken broth as an analogy
How grandmas habits which used to gross her out as a child now form tha backbone of her adult rituals.
Coming back to getting squeamish and getting past the complex to better understand each other, our food and how we eat it.
Overcoming the disconnect of where our food comes from - the value of tending life and then taking life.
Nurturing a shrooming culture via an annual mushroom hunt for mothers day

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