Meet Marcie

This is me and my dog, Lita. You might be wondering what does a dog have to do with Orgasmic Kitchen? 

I’ll tell you: Everything.

This little creature – she connects me to pleasure, to joy, to oxytocin, to being of service.

She is my muse, my coach and my healer.

But here’s what I really want you to know. 

For the longest time, I wanted a dog. But wouldn’t let myself have one. 

I feared the time it would take. The money it would take. The sacrifices to my freedom. I searched for new homes for myself…where I couldn’t have a dog. 

One night, a friend asked me a powerful question: “do you want a dog or do you just want to want a dog?” 

I sat there in the silence, choked up. Then I wept. 

I wanted a dog. 

And I realized in that moment, that I had been making outside issues, or people, the reason that I couldn’t have what I wanted.

Sound familiar?

I grew up in Los Angeles, on the edge of Koreatown in the 70’s. When I wasn’t slurping down Top Ramen or Kraft mac n cheese, or enjoying after-school snacks of seaweed and rice at my Korean friends’ homes, I had my hand in our family freezer, which were full of pleasure: Baked goods from my uncle’s well-renowned Jewish bakery. Ice cream. 

In high school, I excelled, in the arts, winning photography awards and getting commissions to shoot Hollywood portraits and events. In college, I continued studying photography, art history and dance; graduated from the University of California with honors, moved to Spain for 2 years.

On the surface, I made things look hunky dory.

The truth was: I was living with the family secret of mental illness and to cope with that chaos and isolation, I became an emotional eater with an eating disorder. Fear had crept in. I hid and isolated. I said no to connection and support, to pleasure, to my own dreams. I drove myself crazy with indecision. Overscheduled. Overworked. I rushed around and overextended to the point of having accidents, until I finally was stopped in my tracks by a health crisis. Vertigo, tinnitus and hearing loss. 

And then I changed everything. I changed my diet, learning what to eat for healing. I started cooking for myself daily. From one day to the next, I moved out of a single apartment living alone to living in a warehouse with 40 people. In 2006-2008, I became a resident at OneTaste SF, which has received the Inc. 5000 Honors for Top Health companies for it’s research in female orgasm. I immersed myself in researching sensation and desire.

It was there that Orgasmic Kitchen was born: I managed our resident kitchen and discovered my deep love of cooking for others and unveiled my passion for improvising in the kitchen, inventing recipes, and coaching volunteer cooks, many with little to no cooking experience. Together we prepared nourishing meals for 40 residents, many with special dietary needs while also connecting our kitchen experience to pleasure and our service attitude to love.

 

Since then, I’ve tried on many chef hats: catering, publishing my own recipes, leading cooking competitions for clients such as Facebook, teaching at a Macrobiotic Summer Camp,  hosting my own weekly online live-video cooking show. And what I love most is inspiring people to cook for themselves. 

 

 

Because…

Cooking heals. 

When you’re stressed.

Sad.

Tired.

When you need to express yourself.

Create.

Connect.

When you need healing. On all fronts.

(Afterall, it is alchemy.)

Cooking.

It has the power to change you. To nourish you. 

And I want to share this self-loving gift with you. Because you deserve it and your soul is hungering to be fed. And if you are not cooking for yourself, you are putting your health in someone else’s hands.

To discover more how you can begin cooking, for realz, click here.