june 2022 herbal meditation: chai masala 🔥

chai masala

ingredients: ginger from tierra negra farm, peni miris cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, fennel, and cloves.

supports us with: digestive aid. short hangs and drop-by visits. a reason to take a break and gather in the afternoon.

recommended use: USE THIS RECIPE for masala chai. the double-boil method is the gateway to great chai. i use chobani extra creamy oat milk + maple syrup as a sweetener. every sumistreet chai masala jar comes with a bag of CTC black assam tea.

(finally) use those frozen bananas and make chai spiced banana bread (we used 1-2 teaspoons). be fancy and make these apple hand pies or masala chai ice cream. also dirty iced chai hello???

potion inspired by: being tropical in durham 🌴

The June herbal gift for sumistreet patrons is a chai masala.

Enjoy this herbal meditation talk — as a mini voice note, or read it below — including ideas for how to work with this potion.

If you’d like to start receiving monthly gifts in July, become a patron!

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herbal meditation talk

THEMES: VENUS IN GEMINI, RESOURCE SHARING, REPAIRING FRIENDSHIPS OVER FOOD

Though “Gemini Season” is ending, Venus (planet of love and attraction) enters Gemini this week on June 22nd. This month’s herbal potion, a chai masala (a blend of spices), feels ultra fitting with Gemini’s chatty, flirt-with-the-world vibe.

I can’t think of an herbal drink that symbolizes the Gemini spirit of communicating and exchanging ideas and information, more than chai masala! Made with six different spices, chai masala has big multi-hyphenate energy. She is known for her ability to gather us and get us talking. She’s a key ingredient for short hangs, unstructured political convos, reading in the morning, and a whole reason to take a break.

June’s herbal gift is special because it’s made with ginger grown by Tierra Negra Farm on Occaneechi land also known as north Durham. The farm is run by Cristina Rivera Chapman and Tahz Walker, and stewarded by many, many community member hands. These two farmer friends will always have a special place in my heart. When I moved back home to Durham in 2017, they essentially created affordable housing for me for three years, in a 500 square foot converted-garage studio apartment where I lived alone (TBH a luxury in this economy) with my pup, surrounded by an abundant backyard with medicinal plants, fig trees, and a mighty pecan tree. (It’s one of the many fortunate examples of a homie hook up and resource sharing which has been a game changer for me. And let me just make a plug for this while I’m on the subject: If you are able to create free and low cost housing while maintaining your personal boundaries with people — for example, it’s real that you might not be able to live-live with anybody and it’s not a sustainable, healthy situation if you were to overextend, so keyword here is know yourself— but if you are able to, I really can’t emphasize how much of a gift it is.)

Okay, I have a creative idea for how y’all can work with this month’s potion and it has to do with long overdue conversations.

So one thing about me is, I’m always gonna try to figure out a way to bring food in. As both a cooking class instructor and a conflict transformation facilitator, I am fascinated by how food and cooking can play a role in conflict transformation. And let’s be real, this isn’t a new idea. People have been working their shit out across kitchens and over food since… probably forever. And in a culture where we struggle with fighting well, like often it’s either avoidance or total chaos, I’m curious how food and engaging our senses and really bringing land back in in this way into our disagreements, can support us to face conflict, disarm us a bit, and maybe even find resolution.

If you’re like me, the ongoing pandemic has probably put a strain on your close relationships. I think about pre-vaccine life and navigating pods and calculating exposure risk and various other health and safety needs which are in conflict with each other, and just generally being in each other’s intimate decision making in ways many of us haven’t been before. Or trying to form new work relationships over a screen and navigating disagreements and work power dynamics all through Zoom. Or just losing touch and quietly drifting apart from community—especially if keeping in touch with people just isn’t a strength or practice for you. Not to say this is by any means over, and I think many of us are witnessing a lot of pain and feeling really at our limit, in this phase of attempting to “go back to normal” when we are not the same and rent and gas is quite expensive and we really still need mutual aid and resource sharing as a way of life.

So here’s my invitation to you:

Reach out to a person who you’d like to repair things with. Repair doesn’t have to be the result of some big blow out — it could be that you’ve just drifted, or you haven’t reach out in so long that now it feels awkward to. It could even be someone who you spend time with quite often, but there’s a conversation about something difficult that happened in the past that you’ve avoided and that needs your attention (but instead of talking about it, it just quietly haunts you every time you gather). It could be someone who you feel like you want a more depthful connection with, because you’re trying to figure out if you could be like friend friends, or with a family member who you want to have very ~intentional and focused time with.

Okay, assuming you have someone in mind, invite them over for chai! This could be zoom chai, making chai with masks on and taking it for a walk, sitting on the stoop chai, or any other variation. Ofc, feel free to plug sumistreet while you’re at it 😉. Here are some edit-friendly texts or phone call prompts:

“I’ve been going back and forth about reaching out because it’s been so long, but I’d love to reconnect over some chai! Would you be up for that?”

“There’s been this thing on my heart that I’ve wanted to bring up with you, but haven’t been sure of how because it happened so long ago. Would you be up for having an intentional hang to talk about it over some chai?”

“Hey mom, do you want to try making this chai banana bread recipe with me? I think it would be a fun way to spend time together and I was hoping you could share some stories with me about your childhood while we make it. ”

That’s the assignment folks! Choose your adventure. I’d love to hear how bringing in tea or food opens a door to repairing relationships for you. If you’re interested in this idea of cooking through conflict and would be open to trying this form of facilitation, read more about it on my offerings page and reach out to me!

Lastly for my folks who are curious about how I made this month’s potion:

To process the Tierra Negra Farm ginger, I chopped it up into thin slices and let it sit in a dehydrator for about 8 hours total. Once the ginger was ready, I added crushed cardamom, peni miris cinnamon (sold by Diaspora Co and is so good that my partner bex calls it the “third” in our relationship), black pepper, fennel, and cloves — most of which I picked up at Spice Bazaar in Durham, but generally any South Asian grocery store will have this. I tested a whole spice version of masala chai using the blend and then a ground masala version — and chose the latter because FLAVOR. I used a coffee grinder to grind the chai masala to a fine-ish powder in batches. While I was doing this whole process in our kitchen, I kept asking myself, “how did I ever work a job where I lived out my days out on a screen????” And if your days are screen-filled, might I suggest a chai break?