by Lisa Marie Lindenschmidt
So, I decided to start selling my raw chocolates. But before you start thinking this is a shameless plug, let me tell you why I brought this up. The shameless plug will come at the end of the article.
Mo was raised in the kitchen – well, there and in grocery stores. I spent so much time in the kitchen that we eventually brought down a box of her toys so that she could play while I made food. As she got older, she became more and more interested in what I was doing, so I let her help. I’d have her sort through the dried beans, wash the mushrooms, and lick the spoons. The tasks, of course, got more advanced as her attention span and interests developed.
When I got into raw foods a couple of years ago, Mo (about 10 at this point) asked if she could do the plating. I let her and noticed she had a real eye for making things look artistic. She even looked up how to fold napkins into cool shapes and how to set a table. (Gotta love those homeschooled kids!) She’s gotten really good at it!
So, when I began experimenting with raw chocolate, Mo was right there beside me. Jokingly, I made her my Official Taster, but I noticed something: she really had an amazing sense of taste. Granted, it was different from mine and we didn’t always agree, but usually she was spot on. And the ideas she was coming up with! I would say, “So, Mo, I’m thinking about making some chocolates out of [some weird ingredient]. What do you think?” She would say, “No. That’s stupid. [We’re pretty up front with each other.] What about [other weird ingredient]?” It would invariably be something totally wild and ingenious. I came to her more and more to get her opinion. And I realized something was happening with me: I was trusting.
OK. I’ve never been the greatest at trusting people. For good reason. My developmental years were far from The Bradys or The Cleavers. I ended up as one of the Walking Wounded, spending years trying to repair something that I wasn’t convinced I really needed anyway… until this whole chocolate thing.
I noticed that every time I came to Mo to ask her opinion, it was from a place of curiosity. I really wanted to know what she thought. I was relinquishing the illusion of power-over, that need of having to decide everything about every aspect of my world and control it down to the finest detail. When I truly listened to her and tried one of her ideas… they were brilliant. But I began to question myself: was I asking her opinion because her ideas were usually pretty good or was this coming from someplace deeper? Why did I even care what she thought? And why was this whole process feeling novel to me?
And then it hit me: she never gave me her opinion from a place of power-over. She was genuinely interested in what I was doing and wanted to let me know what she thought of it. She cared enough to think about it during the times I wasn’t making chocolate and come back with ideas she’d mulled over. Not to put too romantic a point on it, but she was coming from a place unfettered by battle wounds. Jim and I had done something right: we’d given her a voice. But more importantly, we respect her enough to hear it and respond to it as valid, as something desired.
There’s been a running joke between Jim and I. Whenever we do something to Mo that is a little tougher than maybe we originally intended, we say, “Well, that’ll be in her book!” – meaning that autobiography that every parent worries that their child will write. Now I don’t really worry about that so much. Maybe it’s because I’m secretly hoping her book will be… a cookbook.
Shameless Plug: I’m launching a new line of raw chocolates called Rite Chocolate. If you’d like more information, contact me at [email protected].
Lisa Marie Lindenschmidt is a raw foods chef and teacher and owner of Rite Food and Company (www.ritefoodandcompany.com), which offers workshops on intentional and joyful eating. Lisa Marie and her homeschooled daughter, Mo, record a weekly podcast – called Sweet Peas Podcast – chronicling their raw foods journey together.