Begin PracticE
I took my loves and my strengths, and with the support of location, Nobody’s Darling was the lab where I created Kinky Bingo. Inviting us to be awkward together. A game where you talk to strangers, and win a cookie once you’ve successfully found 5 different people who could fill in a box on your Bingo Card. That’s lead to mixers, a Couple’s Scavenger Hunt, a conversational trading card game still in the works, and partnerships and collaborations with a variety of different organizers in and around the city.
It’s here where I’ve found my calling. It’s here where I’ve found the luxury to write. It’s here in this space where the many things I’ve done with this company have made the most sense. I know what I’m good at, what I can commit to, stay devoted to when it get’s hard. Baking is still a large part of what we do, but as an enhancement to the curated experience, not the main product.
Art is creation in progress, the conversation continues
It starts with The inventory
For the past 6 years I’ve been working on building out a business that blends people, sweet indulgence, prompts towards connection, and the most important part, putting your phone down to engage in the present moment.
I’ve built out and sold a product; a cookie kit with cookie mix, conversation cards, snacks and teas. The result, a simple, easy way to playfully engage with each other in an activity. Doing, sensing, smelling, tasting, feeling. Embodiment and curiosity, a core tenant of play.
I went on to build out a brick and mortar bakery, where I created new recipes, developed family friendly classes to learn baking with private clients, After school Matters, and other youth focused programs. I also created Art you can Eat, a fun program for Spring Break at Navy Pier in tandem with Lolita’s Bodega to litterally play with your food. We created edible cookie dough and shaped it like clay. We used food coloring to paint on Sugar Cookies. International, intergenerational, cross cultural, art that could literally be eaten.
I hosted a monthly Talk Cookie to me Tuesday where I invited people into the bakery to have snacks, buy cookies, and engage with the conversation cards. I went to pop ups, competed in competitions, learned and executed new skills and built up a small yet mighty clientele. The closing of the bakery in June of 2023 did not stop Cookies & Conversations, it redirected it.
Develop Your skills
Baking is a conversation between the ingredients and the baker. It’s intentional, precise, rhythmic, deeply sensual, powerfully felt. The sights, sounds, scent, touch and taste all work together in a dynamic conversation start to finish, alchemy in action, an embodied experience on a multitude of levels.
It brings us to the Cookies…. Fanciful flavors that range from simple, familiar, and comfortable; to exotic, expressive, and somatic. A dance between the inspiration and the playful, curiosity in the practice. Learning to execute a recipe with a delectable unforgettable taste.
The conversation between those who get to indulge in the moments of savoring cookies, and the chef that made them. Brining us into a dance, another conversation, were the wild colors of vibrant flavors cascading across time and space transformed into a small shareable, traveling treat. The unprompted, moans, mmmms and ahhs, a testament to the prowess of the Chef to bring the one eating the cookie back into their body immersed in the experience, into the present moment… even if just for a moment. We are human and there is an intrinsic need to share, to commune, to create, to just be…. Present.
The Queeries that have come of this new era are another example of the conversation, of the dance between the person holding the card, asking the question and the one who answers. Are you here? Are you in the moment? The questions range from passive to deep. It flows between the two. Unexpected, sensual, sexual, body centered. How do you feel in your own body when you ask with curiosity How do you stay bound to your community?
The thing about any form of art is that it is a practice. It is a devotion. You have to start. You have to start even when you aren’t good. You have to start when you are not any good, feel out of sorts, and think you look like a fool. Do it anyway. Start anyway. Stay curious with yourself in this process, think of it as play, an engaged experience between you and different people. What brings you ease, where do you naturally feel compelled to traverse. It’s a conversation with yourself, while engaged with others. What do you notice.
Cookies & Conversations aims to bring you back into yourself so that you can be here in presence with others. To bring others into themselves so they can be present with you. We do that through incredible unique flavors and and a spirit of curiosity. You are literally the canvas where anything is possible. You are the art, the muse, the masterpiece, the collection, always evolving, always changing. Artistry only stops in a person when their breath is no more. It just is. Being in person with others is an art. It’s forever a process where you’ll never know all the rules and must be brave enough to commit to showing up. To pushing yourself just a little further, for asking what happens if I do this. There are no mistakes just Happy Accidents… and while we may be the material in the background, our main goal is to encourage you to begin.
“To bake, to share, to convene, with love. . . “
Chef's Choice!
Chef's Choice!
Vegan Biscoff Cookie Butter Cake:
Have you ever dreamed of cookies becoming cake? This recipe relies on Biscoff Cookies, Biscoff Cookie Butter, & a little bit of Gold Dust to make make this cake STAND OUT in the crowd!