Becoming a podcaster has been a fun new project for me to exercise my speaking voice, move into some fear edges, and explore a new avenue of teaching. It’s become even more exciting recently as I’ve started inviting guests! This week I interviewed one of my big inspirations in life: author, teacher, musician, and wild plant wisdom holder Katrina Blair. Katrina founded Turtle Lake Refuge in Durango in 1998, a profit whose mission is to celebrate the connection between personal health and wild lands. Katrina has been a big influence on me since I worked for her as a chef at the Turtle Lake Cafe some 9 years ago. She’s inspired me to reshape the way I look at the land around me, and to come into a deeper relationship with the plants I cohabitate with. She’s taught me the incredible support that wild plants give to the land they grow on and to us when we eat them.
Listen to our conversation on Your Inner Radiance to hear about:
How Katrina was called by the plants to live her life with them when she was just 11 years old
How daily raw juicing led her mother to overcome severe rheumatoid arthritis
How her father, an avid mountaineer, inspired her love for the wild
Why wild local weeds are the best SUPERfood
Why eating alkaline foods is essential to our health
How weeds are intelligently restoring damaged lands
Why mushrooms are so important to remediating toxic soil and water
How aligning ourselves with mother nature brings us into greater alignment
and more!
And here’s a recipe from the Turtle Lake Cafe for Dandelion Pesto:
Pasta with Dandelion Pesto
Spiralize vegetables into pasta. You can use veggies such as: pumpkin, sweet potato, burdock,
zucchini or beets into spaghetti with a Spiralizer
Pesto:
1 cup dandelions
1 cup basil, wild tarragon, mint or cat nip
3 cloves garlic
2 T olive oil and 2 tsp salt
1 cup water
2 lemons
½ cup cashews
Blend all ingredients until creamy. Serve over fresh pasta and garnish with fresh tomatoes.
