Culinary Witch
Cooking is a form of magic and recipes like spells….
Recipes as enchantments to boost the immune system, alter your mood, induce sleep and calm, give you energy or focus or simply indulgence and pleasure. The craft of potions, brews, medicinal herbs, beauty elixirs and healing concoctions is a distinctly culinary one. The magic that takes place in the kitchen is one of the most ancient forms of witchcraft. Fantastical recipes imbued with healing powers, intentions of comfort, and nourishment… Turning to plants for medicinal needs, brewing up potions for health and naturel beauty cures, combining special ingredients to optimize each other’s benefits... These are the tools of this modern day witch. And she reside in us all. The ingredients and plants we choose can have powerful effects on the body and mind beyond even sustenance and indulgence, and the culinary witch has the potential to manipulate them to her (or his!) desires. After all, sublimation of the natural world is the true art of the witch.
About Lisanna...
My name is Lisanna, and I am a culinary witch. In other words, I am a nutritional chef, clinical herbalist, and cookbook author (and stylist and photographer) with a focus on healing through food, plant, and mushroom medicine.
I came to embody this archetype of the natural healer out of passion, but also out of necessity. I have devoted myself to food, fungi, and flora medicine as a way to take control back over my body and life in the face of an incredibly complex pathologie, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and all its comorbidities.
This hereditary pathologie comes with innumerable co-morbidities. The condition renders my collagen fragile and unstable. Connective tissue is found in every single organ and system in the body, and nothing goes untouched. Given the vast, fluctuating symptoms, I have experienced what feels like every condition possible. Sever chronic pain (dislocations, muscle, nerve, tendon, joint and bone pain), immune dysfunction, autonomic dysfunction, digestive issues, respiratory issues, circulatory, heart complications, adrenal dysfunction… Plants and mushrooms have given me immeasurable relief and helped profoundly calm so many symptoms. Transformation is the ultimate craft of the witch, and my recipes are a sublimation of my own suffering in order to help others.
After graduating from Barnard College of Columbia University in New York with a degree in comparative literature and art history, I moved to Paris to continue pursuing a career in fashion and art. I interned and worked for Vogue, French Vogue, Latin America Vogue, and Marie Claire before my health took a turn for the worse. I had also worked as a private chef throughout and after college and was always deeply connected to medicine. But it wasn’t until I could barely get out of bed from pain and my body rebelling against me, my passion for cooking merged into an urgent necessity to survive.
When western medications reached their limits and my doctors ran out of solutions, I turned to myself. My first cookbook was both the culmination of this journey of self healing and also just the beginning…
Adopting this perspective of the healer has helped me to feel empowered and in control of my body. I have managed to regain control back over my entire life. I will always have this condition, but now I know how to respond to whatever my body throws at me. And even better, I can use my knowledge to help others. My hope is to share the medicinal intelligence of the natural world and show others how to wield its potential in every day recipes. And health shouldn't just be a thing of necessity, but imbued with joy, pleasure, and most of all, a sense of magic.
The Natural Witch’s Cookbook, was first published (and written) in French by Editions Solar under the French title Mes secrets de sorcière, and was also translated into English (Skyhorse– distributed by S&S), German (Riva) and Russian (AST). The book sold out multiple printings within the first year of publication and consistently ranked amongst the best sellers at major distributors across France and the United States. The book received press in publications such as multiple international Elle magazines, Madame Figaro, Femme Actuelle, Medium, etc. (see press page: https://culinarywitch.com/the-natural-witchs-cookbook-press).
I hope to share my recipes and knowledge to help you feel a little more empowered, healthy, Liberated, and happy, and your life imbued with more magic.
