Plant & Kitchen Alchemy Digital Version

From Living Soil to Wild Plants, Food, Medicine and the Human Microbiome

604 pages | Over 80 recipes | Illustrated digital edition

Food as medicine begins in the soil.

What does a handful of living soil have in common with a bubbling jar of sauerkraut and the microbial world inside your gut? Far more than you might imagine.

Plant & Kitchen Alchemy follows the extraordinary living thread connecting soil, plants, food, traditional medicine and the human microbiome. It brings together the science of microbial relationships, decades of practical experience and the pleasure of creating nourishing foods and herbal preparations with your own hands.

Written from the gardens, kitchen and microscope laboratory of the Living Ground Project in southern Ecuador, this 604-page book is filled with discoveries, experiments, illustrations and more than 80 recipes.

Inside, you will explore:

• The soil food web, compost and the microbial relationships that nourish plants and build living soil.
• Wild and medicinal plants, their chemistry, harvesting and practical preparations.
• Sprouting, fermentation, sauerkraut, kimchi, yoghurt, kefir, cultured cheeses and traditional food preservation.
• Medicinal vinegars, herbal oxymels, Fire Cider, nourishing broths, whole-food powders and medicinal chocolate.
• The human microbiome, digestion, intestinal mucus, the gut barrier, food reactions and microbial nourishment.
• My practical food-as-medicine approach to digestive rebuilding and food tolerance, including recipes and step-by-step preparations.

These are preparations I have tried, tested and refined through my own kitchen experiments and years of working with clients. I share what goes into them, how to prepare them and the science behind the ingredients, giving you the knowledge to adapt and experiment with the plants and foods available to you.

The journey begins beneath your feet and continues through the garden, kitchen and microbial communities living inside us. Along the way, you will discover why a tomato cooked in butter offers something different from a raw tomato, how fermentation transforms ordinary vegetables, why resistant starch matters to intestinal microbes and how an everyday garden weed may become food or medicine.

You will also find my food-based digestive rebuilding approach, including gelatin-rich meat stock, herbal infusions, quercetin-rich preparations, cultured foods and a structured introduction to exploring food tolerance.

This book is for gardeners, herbalists, fermenters, curious cooks and anyone interested in the living connections between food, microbes and health. The recipe index, detailed plant index and science references make it a practical resource you can return to as your knowledge and experiments grow.

I invite you to grow something, make something, observe what happens and rediscover the extraordinary living world connecting the soil beneath our feet to the microbial communities within us.