Welcome to Ask Dr. Change. I’m Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson. I’m happy to have you join me today to explore how to seriously up-level your leadership and consulting to transformational changes all through conscious change leadership.

Welcome. Today is a special episode. I’d like to share with you my other passions beyond change leadership. This is fun for me to share more personally.

Some of the other things that I love doing in life. So first up is my art which has always been a lifelong pursuit, but has also always been a hobby. So I’m going to share some of my artwork with you. I’m also a foodie, and in my community, everybody knows I love to cook.

Dean loves to eat my cooking. And so I’m going to share a few of my favorite recipes with you as well. And these recipes, as much as I’ll show them on the podcast, they’re available for download on askdrchange.com.

Aside from these two loves, I also spend a lot of time gardening. We have a 33 foot growing dome, a geodesic dome. That’s our greenhouse. It’s a really cool structure.

Here’s a picture of the dome in full growth. Now this is the summertime. In winter time, we don’t have quite as much green going, we grow lettuce and kale and chard and onions and potatoes and cucumbers and tomatoes and beans and beets. We have a lot of fun with it.

We really do. And herbs, all kinds of things. So it’s always fun. Before dinner, once I’ve planned out dinner to go down to the dome and harvest for dinner right there, right fresh, right out of the ground.

And again, all done organically because we like everything to be super healthy. So that’s my third passion and that’s all that I’m going to share with you about that today. Unless any of you have questions about it, you can email me. let me start with my art.

So again, I’ve always done some kind of art, mostly sculptures. I love putting things together. However, now I’m doing wall hangings and vases. They all center around a leather mask they are surrounded by feathers and wood and beads and antlers and fiber, I find all the wood that I use while Dean goes fishing.

Or we go camping. I’m always hunting for interesting word to use in my art. Gnarled and curly and root like it’s always fun. The feathers are all legal, and the masks I use come from artists around the world.

I don’t actually make the masks, but then I create all around them, which you’ll see momentarily. People often ask me, How do I get my inspiration to do the creations? Well, the feathers and the masks guide me to shape the piece itself and what it’s about. Sometimes it’s about always natural things.

The seasons are place in nature. The elements, the various locations, the woods, the ocean. You’ll see here shortly. So for me, it’s really an important part of my life and my world.

It’s a balancing act. Instead of spending all of those days and days and days and hours on the computer writing or producing or teaching online. I turn to my art work for my balance, for my right brain, creative, spiritual, heart level work. here’s my website.

it’s called facesofnature.art. This particular piece is my logo. It’s my most favorite piece. I have it hanging in my living room.

It’s absolutely beautiful. So the first piece I’d like to share with you is called Out of the Mist. So we’ve set these pieces in little settings for you to get an idea of them. This is a very lovely, soft, sweet piece.

Here’s a more of a close up of it where the mask is coming out of feathers made of pheasant or turkey or rooster or chicken or macaw parrot and also beads and and a variety of things. So out of the mist, I just feel her emerging from the light blue of the mist around her. Next up is also one of my favorites. There are, of course, all my favorites is the Mayan Queen.

And again, here in the setting, just to get a sense of the vibrancy of her colors and textures, here’s more of a close up. I love the combination of feathers and colors and textures here. And so again, rooster and macaw and pheasant, mostly here and chicken a bit. And you’ll see how the roots that I found complement the texture and motion of the mask itself.

I really loved this Mayan Queen. Next up is a recent piece called Lost in the Wind. This piece showed up and I immediately got the image of what this should look like. And so you can feel the wind coming across her.

You can feel her emerging out of the wind, out of the feathers. Again, their rooster in this one, duck nagari duck feathers, the curly feathers and other again, pheasants that are in here, as well as beads and some macaw. So I love this. And I recently did a Christmas show here in Durango and Lost in the Wind got the most attention of any of the masks and 15 masks that I showed.

And so she’s very powerful and very sweet and very inviting. Next up is Sweet Being now sweet being is just that. She’s very sweet. She’s very calming.

She’s very inviting. Here’s a bit more of a close up look at the colors here. I just love this. And when I compliment the pieces, it’s so interesting.

It’s not a compliment to me per say. It’s that these are the pieces that emerged. I happened to be the vehicle through which they came out. But the pieces themselves have a life of their own.

Very separate from me. So Sweet Being again. Sweet, sweet peacock pheasant. My car, rooster. There are a variety of types of feathers here, and I just love the combination of colors and textures here.

And then lastly, Mother Earth, again, a very powerful piece. She’s large. She reminds me of the blue pearl, you know, from outer space. Here’s a close up of her very powerful emergence out of the background of Earth.

And again, rooster and pheasant and chicken and mocha here. And lots of beads. Mother Earth, very powerful piece, embracing the energy of the earth. those are the pieces I would like to share with you today.

Again, my website, facesofnature.art has a lot more. I even have more to add to the website that I’ve been working on and it’s just a great joy to me to be able to create something of beauty that I can live with on a daily basis. Now I’d like to turn to my food experiences. So my favorite recipes for you.

First up, I want to share with you and I have many, many, many recipes and stacks and stacks of recipe books from around the world. You name basically the kind of food that’s out there. And I’ve looked into it. I have my favorites, and these are several of them I want to share with you.

the first one is going to be Chris’s pumpkin pie. So here’s that recipe. Again, the recipes are available for download on askdrchange.com.

So Chris is pumpkin pie. Chris is Dean’s cousin. And we believe that this recipe was handed down to Chris from her grandmother or her great grandmother. So it’s it’s at least four generations old.

Now I am famous for never following a recipe. Exactly. Because I have my own tastes and my own ways that I like things to show up and to taste. However, Chris’s pumpkin pie is one recipe I do not mess with.

I follow this recipe because it’s perfect. We just love it. And of course, you can add whipped cream or whatever you choose to the top of it. Chris is pumpkin pie is a fall favorite of ours on our day of things.

We always have pumpkin pie again. One thing I want to mention to you is Dean and I are gluten free. So every one of these recipes, some specify gluten free, but any normal flour or gluten free flour tends to work just perfectly fine. And so I put together a gluten free crust for Christmas.

Pumpkin pie always turns out great. Next up is my fruit cobbler. This is my family’s favorite. And what’s interesting about this is really fruit and nuts with a little bit of sugar.

I mean, there are other little pieces, things in it, but it’s inevitably just fabulous and wonderful. One of the quirks about my cobbler is that I don’t eat it. Dean always laughing at me. Terra always laughs at me.

I’ll take a taste when it’s just cooled out of the oven. But that’s it. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I’ve never been attracted to round two, three, four or five of my cobblers or pies. So Dean and Terra rejoice in how much they get to eat because they’re so wonderful.

And so this too, again, it’s a lot of fruit and nuts on top. A little bit of butter, a little bit of sugar. Again, you can download the recipe at askdrchange.com.

It’s always wonderful in it. Again, I do it gluten free. This doesn’t even have crust.

It’s there. The topping is the nuts. And so it’s a wonderful fairly healthy dessert. Next up is my superfood smoothies.

Now, these are truly famous in my circle and with my clients. When we talk about, you know, non-work things I always mention or I’ll go and get a smoothie while we’re consulting. And so I’ve shared this many, many times with my clients. What do I mean by superfood?

And so you’ll see here there a variety of ingredients listed that I’ve learned. And I’m not the expert on superfoods, but I’ve studied it a bit and I’ve learned there are a variety of things that we can add to, in this case smoothies. But you can add to foods that are good for our health, whether it’s our heart or our liver or lungs or our brain, our energy or immune system, you name it, there is something that we can add that is supportive. So you can probably tell I like things to be healthy.

And so this is the one of the healthiest things that I have in the summer months because it’s always cooling. And so, again, a very meaty of fruits. You can put in any of the superfood options with coconut milk or regular milk or oat milk, any of the other special milks and juice that are useful. In this particular recipe, I will share with you my secret ingredient, especially in the summer, is fresh mint leaves fresh mint leaves just add so much and a dash of lemon.

Those two things add so much to the vibrancy of the smoothie. So next summer have at it. These are really, really wonderful treats in whether it’s the morning or your afternoon. Wonderful smoothies.

Lastly, I want to share with you Cynthia’s rigatoni and sausage with tomato cream sauce. Here’s the recipe. Cynthia has been our beloved caterer for our advanced training programs. When we host them here in Durango.

Cynthia has been our caterer for years, up until a couple of years ago. She actually opened up her own restaurant, The the James Ranch, Grill. Cynthia is one of the children from James Ranch, which is a huge organic ranch here in Durango that is extraordinarily successful. And each of the kids, Cynthia, being one of them, has taken on some specialty.

In this case, Cynthia’s specialty is the restaurant. They have cheesemakers and lamb growers and vegetable growers and flower growers and you name it. It’s a wonderful place, and Cynthia’s restaurant, the James Ranch, Grill at James Ranch jamesranch.net/grill. So here’s this recipe which I again mention, because there’s rigatoni, which is not gluten free.

I always use a gluten free pasta, some kind of spaghetti or linguine, something like that. And there are some great gluten free pastas. This is special is one of the fairly simple but one of the yummiest dishes that Cynthia shared with us. I asked her permission to share it with you, and she said, Absolutely, because Cynthia cooks with love.

And so I learned so much about the quality of what she’s able to produce because it all comes from home grown, organic, very fresh, made with love. And you ask anybody who’s been in any of those programs, they will all mention the food was incredible. And that’s because Cynthia has blessed it all and us with her love. there you go.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. My growing dome vegetables, my art and favorite recipes. I love to know your reactions to my sharing these things. I love to share some more personal aspects of myself and my life.

Aside from my professional work, I have much more along all of these lines to share with you. If you’d like to hear more periodically of see more art or get more recipes, please, please just let me know. And as always, send me your change leadership questions and challenges.

Go to askdrchange.com to communicate with me about anything you’re interested in my talking about. I’ve had some wonderful inquiries. You’ll be hearing about them as we proceed, and I invite you to talk about your project challenges or change leadership in general.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and happy holidays to you all. May peace and love and security and safety and health surround you. Thanks for today.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. I hope you gain some valuable insights for your work. Please send me your questions and challenges by going to askdrchange.com.