Jul 15

Jul 15 Chapter 1: The Forest's Edge

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Forest’s Edge

I believe we need to study and understand ourselves, from the fuel we put into our bodies, to the environment we place ourselves in, and our response to it all.

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Expand that view to include our interactions and impact, not only on our own bodies, but our minds, our ecosystem, immediate world, the greater population, plants and animals, environment, and our successors. Where do we draw the line of where we start and end?

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Can you really draw a line around the forest edge, a line that’s constantly interacting with more beyond? Do you include that weed, that bird flying in and out, that raindrop about to fall? Do you count the air breathed, the view from a window miles away, the memory once gone, or the story of its existence?

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We can draw a line in the sand to say this is my world, my home, the space where my impact ends, but how deep into the ground do you go, how high? Are we more than that which exists within our skin barrier? How does our energy change the room? How do we influence the air and interact with those around us? How far into yourself do you look, how far into your mind where your entire universe dwells? What impact have we imprinted onto others in the few years we’ve lived?

Nature resists hard boundaries. It is porous.

Air carries pollen. Soil carries microbes. Water carries minerals. A fallen log becomes food for fungi, which become food for insects, which become food for birds. Each edge is an exchange.

Our bodies are like that too. Our skin allows many things in, your gut lining is alive with trillions of microbes, deciding what passes through and what stays out. Your lungs dictate how oxygen moves into blood. Even your thoughts are porous, shaped by hormones and neurotransmitters influenced by what you eat. Your liver has a memory of its own, creating stomach acid to break food down that it expects to get from you, before you even know what you will have for dinner.

This is why food matters so much. It is not just calories. It is information, seeping through these edges into every cell of who you are.

The Sacred Act of Eating

Every time we eat, something has to die.

A leaf, once alive, is plucked.
A blade of grass, cut.
A fruit, the bloom of a tree, picked.
An animal, once breathing, sacrificed.

Life feeds life. That’s not tragedy — it’s ecology. It is the oldest agreement on Earth.

Our in-breath is the out-breath of plants. Their exhale becomes our inhale. The mushrooms are a whole other kingdom — transforming death back into life, weaving decay into nourishment. Mold takes old food and returns it to the soil, where plants drink it up again.

We need one another. Always have. Always will.

The planet does not simply tolerate us. It can be better with us on it — if we choose to be participants in this cycle rather than extractors of it. If we see eating not as consumption alone, but as communion.

Eating is sacred.

What we choose to eat determines what others will grow. When I buy grass-fed beef, I am voting for farmers who steward land in ways that let cows live well and restore the soil beneath their hooves. When I choose leaves, I am still choosing something that once reached for the sun.

Just because something does not have a spine does not mean it has no feeling. Watch an octopus curl in on itself, solving puzzles, showing affection — they are squiggly bundles of intelligence. Read about the “Wood Wide Web,” where mother trees feed their young through mycelial networks, and tell me trees do not care about others.

Veganism, as I understand it, is a protest against industrial cruelty — the cages, the grains that sicken animals, the antibiotics that follow, the waste lagoons that poison waterways. I am in full agreement with rejecting that system.

But I also believe that the answer is not pretending food comes without death. The answer is to honor what dies, and to support the cycles that regenerate life: grass-fed animals on pasture, soil enriched instead of stripped, the return of manure as fertilizer instead of toxic waste.

We once had millions of buffalo moving across the plains, fertilizing as they roamed. Their hooves and dung built the six inches of topsoil now vanishing under monocrops. We traded that system for feedlots and depletion. Their farts were never a problem for global warming that now are blamed on grain-fed industrial cows that make up majority of the modern food system.

To eat consciously is to see the whole system. To respect the lives taken and the lives supported.

Welcome to the forest. Let’s get into the weeds.

My Mother’s Ritual

When I was a child, my mother refused to buy canned soup. I remember standing in the grocery aisle, staring at the shelves of mouth-watering labels. Every other family seemed to have them stacked in their pantry.

But my mother shook her head. “They taste like the can,” she’d say.

Instead, she made her own. Bones saved from a roasted chicken. Onion skins and carrot tops kept in a bag in the freezer. She’d toss them into a pot, cover with water, and let it simmer for hours.

And we LOVED it. The smell would permeate our whole house, and we’d beg to drink it before the 4 hours were up.

It wasn’t until years later — after I’d spent a decade chasing convenience, microwaving my meals between work deadlines, numbing myself with chips and takeout — that I realized what she had been giving us. Her broth wasn’t just comfort. It was medicine.

The Science Hidden in Tradition

When you simmer bones in water for hours, something miraculous happens: the boundary between solid and liquid blurs. Minerals like calcium and magnesium leach from bone into broth. Collagen from connective tissue dissolves into gelatin, carrying amino acids like glycine and glutamine that soothe and repair the gut lining.

These compounds don’t just heal the gut. Glycine calms the nervous system, helping with sleep and stress. Collagen supports joints, skin, and hair. Glutamine fuels the cells of the small intestine, making your gut lining less “leaky.”

And here’s the thing: your gut is where 70% of your immune system lives. It’s where your microbes ferment fibers into compounds that reduce inflammation. It’s where serotonin is produced, shaping mood and focus. Bone broth, humble as it seems, is one of the simplest ways to strengthen that entire ecosystem.

Contrast that with what I ate during my busiest years: bouillon cubes, canned soups, flavor packets. Convenience disguised as food. They filled my stomach but left my body starving. The labels looked reassuring, but the nutrients had been stripped away, replaced by salt and additives designed to hook my taste buds.

As an engineer, I can’t ignore the system logic: inputs → outputs. Put empty, synthetic inputs in, and you get fatigue, cravings, and inflammation out. Put mineral-rich, amino-acid-rich broth in, and you get resilience out.

Why Broth Is the First Act of Rebellion

To make broth today is almost countercultural. It asks us to slow down. To save scraps. To let something simmer all day. In a world of grab-and-go meals and instant everything, broth is the quiet rebellion that says: health takes time.

It’s also personal. Every culture has its version: Jewish chicken soup, Chinese medicinal soups, French pot-au-feu, Mexican caldo de res. When you make broth, you’re not following a trend. You’re reconnecting with something timeless, something human.

And that’s the heart of this book: rebellion doesn’t have to feel hard or joyless. It can feel delicious.

Why Broth Is the First Act of Rebellion

And that’s the heart of this book: rebellion doesn’t have to feel hard or joyless. It can feel delicious.

The History of Bone Broth

Bone broth may be trending, but making it is one of the oldest human behaviors we can name: take what looks like “leftovers” and, with fire and patience, turn it into something that sustains life. Humans have been cracking bones for marrow for at least 400,00 years (half a million!) and learned to coax its minerals into hot water, possibly around 100,000 years ago.

This is something our bodies recognize.

Our First Inspiration

Vulture drop bones from the sky, up from heights of the statue of Liberty (300 Feet) to shatter them and eat the fat-rich marrow. Their diet is made up of 90% marrow. These birds may have been our earliest teachers. Humans are scavengers too, able to survive on almost anything and everything.

We added tools, fire, and eventually pottery to hold water for a more complete extraction. Birds may have showed us what was inside; we perfected how to get it out.

Our African Beginnings

Archaeology across Africa shows ancient bones with deliberate percussion marks—hacking to get at the nutrients inside. Bones provided a stable strategy. Marrow remains from what other, bigger, stronger animals may leave behind, protected in the hard shell of bones. It may have been the perfect food for some clever primate who was trying to grow a large, energy-costly brain.

From Marrow to Broth: The Pottery Question

The leap from eating raw marrow to making bone broth required one critical innovation: cooking vessels. Our ancestors would eventually figure out how to make watertight containers that could withstand fire, but this would have taken some serious innovation.

Our oldest evidence of pottery can be found in Chinese caves dating around 20,000 years ago. But these are in places of ideal preservation: isolated caves in dry climates.

But what survives today does not tell us the whole story. Physical evidence helps shape the story of what we think happened, but this latest evidence was only discovered in 2016. Our dates of innovation only go deeper in time as our exploration tactics become more advanced.

But my bet on the origins of making dense bone broth still lies in Africa. This was the original source of all of humanity, with hundreds of thousands of years of practice in eating the marrow, with plenty of examples of vultures that were revered in later ancient Egyptian times. Lack of evidence of pottery here just reminds us that Africa has the LEAST friendly environmental conditions for preservation: tropical heat, acidic soils, deep roots, floods, and moving tectonic plates that all make it unlikely we will find any physical evidence of the soft materials most likely used before hard pottery was invented. In short, “oldest found” doesn’t always mean “first invented”—it often means “best preserved.”

The fact is, we know of many traditional cultures that cook foods without pots.

Humans boiled water with:

Stone boiling: Heating rocks in a fire; then dropping them into water-filled pits or containers.
Organic vessels: Animal stomachs, bladders, and hides; tightly woven baskets sealed with pitch or fat; hollowed gourds; bamboo segments; large shells, are all wonderful ways to hold liquid.
Earth ovens: created by lining hot stones with leaves and food. These are often covered pits that hold in remarkable heat and steam.

Each of these known methods leave almost no archaeological trace in hot/humid, tropical environments— and people all over the world still use them to reach this nutrient packhorse.

The Magic in Water

Water is an extraordinary solvent and carrier of nutrients. There's ancient wisdom in that line from Disney's Frozen where the snowman says "water has memory." This is a phrase I have heard thrown around in herbalist circles. Water literally holds onto what it comes into contact with, preserving a history, a documented evidence of everything that it has touched.

Consider how hard it can be to sift colored dye out of water. You are better off just diluting it out than filtering it. That dye essentially becomes part of the water's composition. The water holds that dye, carries it, remembers it. This is what we mean by water's memory: its profound capacity to incorporate and preserve what passes through it.

When we heat water with bones, leaves, or beans, water doesn't just touch these materials - it actively pulls compounds out at the molecular level and holds them. This is what we do when we make tea, or coffee, or soup: we extract nutrients from that which we put in the hot water. If we boil vegetables, we are better off drinking the liquid than eating the boiled leftovers, if the goal is nutrient extraction. Yet we often throw out that boiled water!

With broth, we can extract fat, vitamins, minerals, aromatic oils, and proteins, that break down into amino acids. Collagen becomes gelatin. The water becomes a living record, a historical document of everything it extracted. Water actively pulls nutrients out and holds them in suspension or solution, making them bioavailable to our bodies in ways that eating the raw material alone wouldn't accomplish. Our ancestors who figured out how to use hot water as an extraction medium unlocked a revolution in nutrition.

When you drink bone broth, you're not asking your body to do something novel or strange. You're giving it something it has sophisticated mechanisms to process, absorb, and use. Your gut lining recognizes these nutrients. Your cells know what to do with them. This is food your body has instructions for. That is why it is great when you are sick, it is nutrient dense, and easily digested.

Modern Brains

Marrow is dense in fats and fat-soluble nutrients that a growing, energy-hungry brain loves. Broth turns hard-to-access minerals, collagen, and cartilage into bioavailable nutrients. Put simply: cracking bones and simmering scraps likely helped fund the upgrade from “survivor” to “storyteller.”

Benefits for Children

For growing children, bone broth offers exceptional nutritional support. The minerals support bone development and tooth formation. The amino acids fuel rapid growth and tissue development. The easily digestible nature of bone broth means even young digestive systems can access these nutrients efficiently.

Children's bodies are constantly building new tissue, and bone broth provides the raw materials they need. The gelatin supports a healthy gut lining, which is crucial since about 70% of the immune system resides in the gut. Many parents notice their children have fewer illnesses and recover faster when bone broth is a regular part of their diet.

For picky eaters or children going through phases of poor appetite, bone broth can be a nutritional safety net. Even small amounts provide concentrated nutrition. It can be sipped plain, used as a base for sauces, or incorporated into meals in ways children don't even notice.

Why Organic and Pasture-Raised Matters

When making bone broth, quality matters more than with almost any other food. You're not just eating the meat; you're extracting and concentrating everything from the bones, including anything the animal was exposed to during its life.

Conventionally raised animals may have been given antibiotics, hormones, and fed grain-based diets that alter their nutritional profile. They may have been raised in confined conditions with less access to natural movement and sunlight. All of this affects what ends up in their bones and ultimately in your broth.

Organic, pasture-raised animals have several advantages:

They consume their natural diet (grass for cattle, insects and plants for chickens), which improves their nutritional profile. Pasture-raised animals have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids and fat-soluble vitamins like A and K2.

They move naturally and develop stronger bones with better mineral density, meaning more nutrition for your broth.

They aren't given routine antibiotics or synthetic hormones, so you're not concentrating these substances in your broth.

They're raised in more humane conditions with access to fresh air and sunlight, factors that affect animal health and therefore the quality of their tissues.

When you simmer bones for hours, you're creating a concentrated extract. Quality ingredients become concentrated quality nutrition. Questionable ingredients become concentrated concerns. For a food you might feed daily to your children or consume regularly yourself, choosing the best quality bones available is a worthwhile investment in health.

A Food for All Times

From the African savanna hundreds of thousands of years ago to modern kitchens today, bone broth represents continuity with our ancestral past. It embodies resourcefulness: waste nothing, use everything, and extract maximum nutrition from available food. It connects us to traditional wisdom while modern science validates what grandmothers always knew.

In our current era of processed foods and nutritional confusion, bone broth offers simplicity: real food, prepared traditionally, nourishing deeply. Whether you're feeding growing children, recovering from illness, supporting athletic performance, or simply seeking optimal nutrition, this ancient food remains remarkably relevant.

The next time you simmer a pot of bones, remember you're participating in one of humanity's oldest culinary traditions, one that quite literally helped make us who we are today.

Recipe: Healing Bone Broth

Broth is porousness made visible. Minerals and gelatin leach from bone into water, then into your body, then into your cells. It is a metaphor, a ritual, and a foundation.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (3-4 lbs), thawed
Frozen roasted marrow bones (as many as you have)
1-2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
1 large onion, quartered (no need to peel)
2-3 carrots, roughly chopped
2-3 celery stalks, roughly chopped
4-6 garlic cloves, smashed
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon whole peppercorns
Fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, rosemary - optional)
Cold water to cover
Salt (add at the end)

Instructions

Thaw the Chicken

Thaw your frozen chicken safely in the refrigerator for 24 hours, or use the cold water method (submerge in cold water, changing every 30 minutes for 2-3 hours).

Start the Broth

Place the whole raw chicken and frozen roasted marrow bones in a large stockpot (at least 8 quarts).
Add the vinegar or lemon juice - this helps extract minerals from the bones.
Cover everything with cold water, leaving about 2 inches of space at the top of the pot.
Add onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves, and peppercorns.

Initial Simmer

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then immediately reduce to a gentle simmer (small bubbles, not a rolling boil).
Skim off any foam or scum that rises to the surface in the first 15-20 minutes.
Simmer uncovered or with the lid slightly ajar for 45-60 minutes.

Remove the Chicken Meat

After 45-60 minutes, the chicken will be fully cooked. Carefully remove the whole chicken from the pot using tongs or a large slotted spoon.
Let it cool slightly on a cutting board, then pull off all the meat for other uses.
Return the carcass (bones, skin, cartilage) to the pot and continue simmering.

Continue Simmering

Simmer the chicken carcass and marrow bones together for another 1-2 hours (2-3 hours total for chicken bones).
Remove and discard the chicken bones - they've given all they can.
Continue simmering with just the marrow bones for another 2-4 hours (4-6+ hours total for marrow bones).
Add fresh herbs in the last 30 minutes if desired.

Strain and Season

Strain the broth through a fine-mesh strainer or cheesecloth into a large bowl or container.
Discard the solids.
Season with salt to taste.
Let cool, then refrigerate. A layer of fat will solidify on top - you can remove it or stir it back in.

Storage

Refrigerator: 5-7 days
Freezer: 3-6 months (freeze in portions for easy use)

Notes

The broth should gel when cold - this means you've extracted plenty of collagen and gelatin.
For even richer broth, simmer the marrow bones for up to 12-24 hours.
Don't add salt until the end - you want to taste the finished broth before seasoning.
The cooked chicken meat can be used for soups, salads, sandwiches, or any recipe calling for cooked chicken.

Yield

Approximately 3-4 quarts of rich, flavorful broth

Variations

1. Instant Pot Version (Quick & Easy)

Same ingredients, but reduce liquid to ~10 cups.
Cook on Manual/High Pressure for 2 hours, natural release.
Strain and store.
Produces a rich broth in a fraction of the time.

2. Scraps-Only Broth (Waste-Free)

Keep onion skins, carrot tops, celery ends, parsley stems, garlic skins in a freezer bag.
Add bones from roasted chickens or leftover steaks.
When the bag is full, dump into pot, cover with water, and simmer.
Every batch is unique — “kitchen alchemy.”

3. Roasted Bone Broth (Deep Flavor)

Roast bones at 400°F for 30–40 minutes until browned.
Add to pot with vegetables and simmer as usual.
Produces a darker, richer broth with more depth.

4. Luxury Version (Gut-Healing Boosts)

Add 1–2 strips dried kombu (seaweed) for minerals.
Toss in a knob of fresh ginger for digestion.
Add medicinal herbs: astragalus root, shiitake mushrooms, or reishi slices.
Result: a broth that feels like a tonic as much as a food.

Storage & Use

Refrigeration Tip: Once cooled, a layer of fat may solidify on top. Leave it if you like (it seals broth), or scrape off and use for cooking.
Freezing Tip: Freeze in wide-mouth mason jars (leave headspace for expansion) or pour into silicone ice cube trays for single servings.
Daily Use Ideas:

Sip warm in a mug as a morning ritual.
Use instead of water to cook rice, quinoa, or lentils.
Add to sauces for depth.
Stir into scrambled eggs for extra protein.
Blend with miso paste for a quick gut-friendly soup.

When I make broth, it feels like hitting a reset button. The smell fills my home, grounding me. I keep a jar in the fridge and sip it mid-afternoon instead of reaching for caffeine or sugar. It’s not just food — it’s a signal to my body: you are safe, you are nourished, you can rest.

Making broth is simple, but it’s also radical. In a world of ultra-processed “instant soups,” simmering bones and scraps is an act of resistance. It’s an edge practice: porous, ancient, alive. Every cup you drink is a reminder that nourishment doesn’t need to be complicated. It is also the food of peasants- made from the scraps of the week. To buy the fancy stuff from the store may be expensive, but to use the leftovers from your weekly meals means it is essentially free- assuming you were going to throw all that shreds and bones out anyways.

In the next chapter, we’ll see the opposite: what happens when the foundation itself is hijacked. If bone broth is the story of nourishment through time, sugar is the story of how industry learned to mimic, manipulate, and exploit the very edges that keep us alive.

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Part I: AWAKENING - Understanding Your Rational Body

Chapter 1: The Forest's Edge

Recipe 1: Healing Bone Broth

Stand at the edge of any forest and try to draw a line where the forest ends and something else begins. You can't do it. The mycorrhizal networks beneath your feet extend for miles, connecting tree roots in an underground network of nutrient sharing. The air you breathe carries pollen, spores, and the exhaled breath of countless organisms. This is how your body works too—not as a separate entity, but as part of an intricate web of life that includes the soil microbes that feed your vegetables, the bacteria in your gut that help you digest, the air and water that enter your body, and the minerals in your bones that came from ancient seas- all recycled, in us. Remember, we are made of stardust. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. We are literally made of the same gasses that made up the planets and stars millions of years ago. When you understand this interconnection, when you understand that we breathe in what other species breath out, our first recipe of making bone broth becomes more than cooking—it becomes a practice of resurrection, of drawing life from what appeared to be dead, of participating in the endless cycle of transformation that connects all living things.

Bison bone broth! (And some serious marrow after 48 hours cooking)
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Our bodies know how to gain extraordinary nourishment from bone broth thanks to our ancestors, who defeated extinction by scavenging for bones left behind by the apex predators of the past. One such nutrient you’ve probably heard of is Collagen.
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Collagen is important to bones, joints, skin, and literally every organ in your body. Collagen strength helps you avoid developing wrinkles, arthritis and even circulatory problems. One of the best ways to improve collagen is to eat some. Bone broth floods your bloodstream with molecules called glycosaminoglycans, which head directly to parts of the body that need collagen the most.
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Broth can also smooth lumpy collagen like cellulite. Irregular cellulite forms where there’s lack of adequate connective tissue struts to support a smooth shape. To get rid of cellulite, combine exercise w a diet full of healthy fats and collagen rich stocks.
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But be cautious where you get your broth. Any animal product should be pasture raised and fed varied, organic diets.
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I’ve been trying different meats and so far bison is my favorite for the bone marrow, but I like using pork pot roast best for meat. Chicken feet stock is easily available so good to keep in rotation too!

Chapter 1 by Me

Chapter 1 AI

Chapter 1: The Forest's Edge

Recipe 1: Healing Bone Broth

"Can you really draw a line around the forest edge, a line that's constantly interacting with more beyond?"

Where Does the Forest Begin?

I believe we need to study ourselves, from the fuel we put into our bodies, to the environment we place ourselves in, and our response to it all.
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Expand that view to include our interactions and impact, not only on our own bodies, but our minds, our ecosystem, immediate world, the greater population, plants and animals and fungi, the environment, and our the people that come after us. Where do we draw the line of where we start and where we end?
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Can you really draw a line around the forest edge, a line that’s constantly interacting with more beyond? Do you include that weed, that bird flying in and out, that raindrop about to fall? Do you count the air breathed, the view from a window miles away, the memory once gone, or the story of its existence?
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We can draw a line in the sand to say this is my world, my home, the space where my impact ends, but how deep into the ground do you go, how high? Are we more than that which exists within our skin barrier? How does our energy change the room? How do we influence the air and interact with those around us? How far into yourself do you look, how far into your mind where your entire universe dwells? What impact have we imprinted onto others in the few years we’ve lived?

—-

Why not try it? Stand at the edge of any forest and try to draw a line where it begins. You can't do it. Which overlapping leaf do you count? Which rain cloud? What about those seeds being taken away in a bird’s beak? The forest's influence extends far beyond its shade, creating microclimates that nurture specific plants and attract particular animals- changing temperatures many miles away. .

Beneath your feet, impossible to see without a microscope, mycorrhizal networks take over, tiny mushroom threads connecting tree roots in an underground network of nutrient- and signal- sharing. Just a spoonful of this hummus, this dark brown dirt, holds miles of these networks. The air you breathe carries pollen, spores, and the exhaled breath of countless organisms. A single handful of forest soil contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth.

We also find that the forest edge is a bit magical. More than entering a new realm of fairytales, the edge is where ecosystems meet. Food resources at the edges are able to tap into multiple environments and add to the diversity of sustainability. We need the deep forests beyond just the edges for animals and all kinds of species that require it, but the edges are still transportable places in story and medicine—places where different worlds meet and create something richer than either could do alone.

This is exactly how your body works—not as a separate entity with clear boundaries, but as part of an intricate web of life- an open ecosystem that includes the soil microbes that feed your vegetables, the bacteria in your gut that help you digest, and the minerals in your bones that came from ancient rocks broken by the seas.

When you understand this interconnection, making bone broth becomes more than cooking—it becomes a practice of resurrection, of drawing life from what appeared to be dead, of participating in the endless cycle of transformation that connects all living things.

The Alchemy of Bones

My mom made the most amazing bone broth—by simmering the bones from a rotisserie chicken for 4 hours, until they gave up their secrets, until what had supported life became life-supporting once again- in different form.

My mom grew up on a farm in Croatia, moving to Canada at 11 years old, then to the US for college. She never allowed us to eat from a can. "Gross," she would say, "it just tastes like the can." Walking through the grocery store as a kid, I always craved those soups with their glossy pictures on the labels that made them look so good. Then I tried them in college, after I lost her at 17 years old, and understood exactly what she meant. They were gross. I missed her soup desperately.

No matter how many times I've made her recipe since, mine will never be as good as the one she made me. But everyone else says it's pretty darn good. I still love it, but I miss her hands making it for me—the untold ways she made it her own- the unconscious knowledge in her movements, the love that somehow made its way into every spoonful.

She would cook it for us whenever we were sick, or whenever she felt like it. Coming home from school, we'd beg her to let us have it sooner because it smelled so good. But she always made us wait the 4 hours.

And now, I hold my own son 20 years later, creating our own memories.

She would always add angel hair pasta, cooked right in the broth itself so it fattened with all that liquid gold. Today, I just use a fresh pasta, or one made of gluten free flour.

She would add some vegetables in the last hour of cooking so they'd be soft but not totally disintegrated, and I just add some of the week’s discarded vegetable pieces, all frozen until ready to use- on top of those new vegetables.

She would give us goldfish crackers on the side. I may choose some more boogey version of crackers with no artificial coloring.

And we both use lots of shredded rotisserie chicken, cooked or store bought, pending what I have time for.

I also love to buy a store bought broth, especially from a local butcher who uses grass fed bones.

But most differently, I like to use marrow bones, roasting them before cooking, to get the full benefit of life’s most nutrient dense ingredient (other than maybe oysters).

She knew that the soup made from bones had a different quality than soup made from meat alone. It had body- literally. It had substance. It satisfied in a way that went deeper than just filling your stomach—it filled something more fundamental, something cellular.

What she was witnessing, without knowing the science behind it, was one of nature's most elegant transformations: the slow dissolution of structured minerals and proteins back into their bioavailable forms, ready to become part of new life.

Broth is not all that different from a tea, or a coffee. Hot water is able to draw out the nutrients of other chemicals, absorbing and transporting their properties into liquid form. Some explain this as if water holds memory. Even the snowman in the Disney movie Frozen says so.

And bones have something very special to give us. Bones are more than just the immobile structures holding up our bodies like a ladder. They're living tissue, constantly breaking down and rebuilding, storing minerals like a biological bank account. When you simmer bones gently for hours, you're essentially asking them to share their accumulated wealth—the calcium and phosphorus, the collagen and elastin, the trace minerals they've collected and concentrated over the lifetime of an animal.

It's the same process that happens when fallen leaves decompose into rich soil, or algae at the bottom of the ocean, when death becomes the foundation for new growth. Your kitchen becomes a laboratory for this ancient alchemy, transforming what appears to be waste into liquid medicine- all before the fungi can take over, and the mold turns dead things back into a new form of life.

The Stories Bones Tell

There's a story I love about a butcher and his wife who were both quite short. They fed their son bone broth every week throughout his childhood, and he grew to be way taller than either of them. Old wives' tale or not, I think of bone broth as that kind of growth serum—not just for height, but for the deep structural health that radiates from strong bones, flexible joints, and resilient connective tissue.

Another story: a butcher's son who dreamed of eating the expensive cuts of meat that always sold out first. On his sixteenth birthday, his father finally splurged on the prime steak his son had craved. The boy took a bite and... was completely underwhelmed. He preferred the humble cuts his family made him every day- they tasted better to him, those tough pieces that needed long, slow cooking, the "ugly" parts rich with fat and flavor and all the nutrients that expensive muscle meat lacks.

These stories capture something essential about what nutrients do for us: they’re often found in the parts we discard, the scraps we think are worthless, the humble ingredients that require patience and understanding to reveal their gifts. But I like to think of it as a magical elixer that can help sick people heal, or potentially help my kids grow taller. This isn’t only about vanity- it’s about feeding our body things that it understands and can use easily.

We live in a culture that values the flashy, the convenient, the immediately gratifying. But the deepest healing often comes from what appears unremarkable—bones that look like garbage, vegetables that grow like weeds, practices that seem old-fashioned in our fast-paced world.

There is wisdom in eating our vegetables. There is a biochemistry in cooking, where flavors pop and explode when combined in certain chemical combinations. Old recipes like cooking turmeric with pepper, heated over olive oil enhances all of their properties that makes them all greater than the sum of their parts. In chemistry, and cooking, 1 + 1 is greater than 2.

The Marrow of Life: Your Ultimate First Food

Grass-fed marrow bones aren't just an addition to your broth—they're the marrow of life itself. This was my son's first food, a surprisingly safe first food for babies who can just suck on the bone, or you can whip it up into a fluffy spoon fed meal, getting the most nourishing substance possible for your little baby.

Birds understand this instinctively. Some - mostly vultures- will drop bones from even 500 feet, well above the height of the Statue of Liberty, to access that precious marrow. Those bones make up to 90% of their diet. Maybe there’s something nutritious enough in those bones that we should pay attention to. And in fact, modern science tells us this is so. Nobody told me bone marrow would be a good first food, we were just eating it, and looked it up if it were safe. And once again, we fell into a community of people who praise it as the BEST first food possible. There are few things to choke on, and full of great stuff.

Humans learned a lot from our animal ancestors. It wouldn’t be surprising if this was one of those things we learned from the birds. We watch how squirrels bite off the top of trees for nutrients at specific times of year, when chemicals are drawn up or down based on the season. Most of our trails were once animal trails. There is an instinctual wisdom we forgot how to listen to, but many of our best “inventions” are modeled off things we see in nature.

Historically, broths were actually the first restaurants in Europe, created after women were making healing chicken broth soups for people in the hospital, then they started making them for sale for everyone else. The word "restaurant" originates from the French verb "restaurer," meaning "to restore oneself," bringing us back to Paris in the 1700’s and their "bouillon restaurants". This tradition of bone-based healing soup goes back thousands of years, and for good reason—marrow contains stem cells, growth factors, and nutrients that literally build blood and support immune function. We find bone based stone soups dating back in the stone age, around 10,000 years ago, but also in a Qesem Cave in Israel from 400,000 years ago (half a million years!). Also in China around 2,500 years ago, and even in the bible 3,000 years ago, with broth prepared as an offering to the Jewish god, well before the Christian god of 0 BC. Tribes like the Sioux and Navajo Native Americans simmered bones as a base for soups, especially during harsh winters.

Families used to pass around bones from a large animal, each adding them to their soup pot, night after night. This means you can actually use the bones more than once—they continue to give up minerals and nutrients after cooking with it several times.

My favorite way to pull out every bit of nutrition from grass-fed bones is given at the end of this chapter, but it is pretty simple.

First, roast the bones at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes, until fully cooked. Here, you can eat the marrow or reserve it for whipping it up. You’ll want to save it- there is more than enough to pull from the rest of the bones. You’ll know when they are done when they are bubbling and golden. Then drop the bones in a large pot of filtered cold water, covering the bones by a few inches. Once the boiling starts, turn the water down to a sizzle, and let it cook for several hours. For chicken bones alone, we do at least 4 hours. For marrow bones, you can go for 2 days. I usually do about 8 hours. I add a splash of apple cider vinegar, and a bunch of herbs, sometimes even a dried reishi mushroom- the king mushroom.

I like to throw in some veggies part of the way through. These cook faster, so frozen discarded veggies from the week can be added at any time, then strained out. Like my mom, i like to throw in some baby carrots, and an onion and garlic cloves about an hour before it’s all ready - all as items to eat in the soup. I like to add plenty of salt, and even boullion paste for additional flavor. My mom would use boullion cubes, but my chef friends told me this was better.

Some of my friends swear by cooking raw chicken straight in with the broth- whole or just breasts or whatever cuts that you have. My mom would throw in the carcass of the rotisserie chicken. It is all really flexible here. The point is the water will pull out the nutrients, and the bones need the most time to do its work.

I love to see as many bones as possible in my pot. The real goal is to get a gelatin once it is all cooled down in the fridge, but of course you won’t know if you’ve done this until you’ve strained it all out and placed it in the fridge overnight. The easiest way to get good at this is to make this part of your regular rhythm—roasting marrow bones early in the week, enjoying the marrow as a special treat, then use those same bones plus your chicken leftovers and any cuts of frozen vegetables to create a rich, healing broth that will feed your family all week long. My suggestion would be to make a chicken dish once a week, collect the bones and make the broth once a month.

My favorite tip is to use the broth to make any noodles or rice- since kids often don’t like to sip on broth by itself. I also like to save it in ice cube trays, to warm up as a drink on its own, or add to other dishes as a base, even reheating leftovers with it.

I see this as more than just cooking—it's taking part in an ancient practice of extracting every bit of nutrition from the foods that keep us vibrant, honoring the sacrifice of the animal, and plants, by using every part, creating medicine from what others might throw away.

Because when you think about it, every meal is a sacrifice. No matter if you eat plants or animals or fish or mushrooms, something had to die to be there on your plate. It doesn’t matter if you think that food had feelings or not, it was once alive, and not very long ago. Most of us don’t see that even our grass is something we often try to keep alive with constant watering year round. I like to ask the question, why can’t that blade of grass have a soul, if we do? Some used to argue that women don’t even have one - all solely based on the politics and religious discussions at the time.

Making healing bone broth for your family is like a meditation on transformation, a practice of patience, a way of being part of the ancient alchemy that turns death into life. Alchemy was the practice of trying to turn things into gold. I would argue our genetics and epiginetics is the best thing we can pass on, the real inheritence we should be striving to protect- a treasure that can’t be squandered so easily in a single generation. More than buying nice clothes or a fancy car, what could be more important than spending money on than the food that makes your skin and hair and teeth, and children’s bones vibrant, forming just as they were meant to. Bone broth is one of the cheapest things you can make, made from your scraps of the week, but I always urge to go organic and grass fed, if at all possible. Subsidies make cheap food look cheap, but in reality, we pay for everything in our health costs, in our energy. Good quality bones is possibly the best thing to splurge on.

Think of it like composting, but for food: you're taking something that appears to be waste and creating the richest possible thing you can make in your kitchen. You know how food grows mold? That is nature taking something once living, and recycling it for the next use. If you put that in the ground, it will help create humus in the soil, a rich, deep soil quite different from dust or dirt. With this broth, you are adding one more use to the foods that otherwise go unappreciated.

The Science of Transformation

What happens during those long hours of simmering is nothing short of miraculous, and modern science helps us appreciate the elegance of what our ancestors were doing.

The gentle heat breaks down the protein structures in bones and connective tissue, releasing amino acids like glycine, proline, and (forgive my pronunciation) hydroxyproline—all of which are the building blocks your body uses to repair its own collagen. It support gut health, and keeps your joints flexible. These aren't random nutrients; they're the exact raw materials your body needs the most.

Our DNA is made up of proteins. RNA sees enough patterns time after time, and eventually turns itself into DNA. But it all starts with proteins.

And minerals stored in bone—calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium— and all of these become available in forms your body can easily absorb and use, when simmered in water for long periods of time. Water can carve stone, and it can also break down bones. This isn't like taking a calcium supplement, a long-dead nutrient ground up as a single isolated compound that your body may or may not be able to use effectively. This is the kind of calcium in the context of all the other nutrients that naturally occurs with it, in the ratios that support optimal absorption. So its the form our body understands and recognizes, with all the other good things science has not yet understood enough yet to name.

The gelatin that forms when the broth cools is collagen that has been gently transformed by heat and time. When you eat it, you're giving your body the raw materials it needs to strengthen its own structural proteins—the ones that keep your skin supple, your joints comfortable, and your gut lining intact.

But the part that fascinates me as an engineer is that nutrition, and flavor, is information. Your body reads the molecular messages in bone broth and responds by strengthening the very systems that the broth was created from. Bone forming bone, in essence. It's like getting a software update that teaches your cells how to build themselves better.

Living the Practice

Bone broth doesn’t have to be a special occasion food, or a thing you make only when you get sick. It's meant to be a regular part of your nutritional landscape, like vegetables or clean water.

My best suggestion is to make this a habit. We are creatures of habit, and this is important enough to try to make as a monthly ritual. Save bones and vegetable scraps throughout the week. Make a big batch once you have enough of them to fill a big pot. The practice becomes a mantra—nothing goes to waste, and the most healing thing you can create comes from what others might throw away.

If you don't have time to make it from scratch, there is nothing wrong with buying this from frozen or fresh from a local butcher that ideally uses grass-fed animal bones. They just tend to seriously overcharge for something that is quite easy to make yourself.

Beyond Nutrition: The Ritual

A home made broth offers something beyond its impressive nutrients. In a world that's forgotten how to be patient, the process of making bone broth is itself a medicine.

There's something deeply satisfying about smelling it for hours, adding to the anticipation, knowing and visualizing the nutrients being pulled from the ingredients.

The smell that fills your kitchen simmers like a memory of security, of being cared for, of home. It's the smell that you can create, of time and attention being transformed into healing.

Every time you cook anything, you're participating in an ancient practice that connects you to generations of humans who understood certain foods in various combinations were both delicious and necessary for survival. Our medicine became our favorites.

The Forest Mind

Time can transform what seems useless into something precious. We just have to put the right things in the right moments, and we get something amazing out of it. Someone has already done the work for us in telling us what to put together.

In a forest, every fallen leaf becomes soil. Every fallen tree becomes life for hundreds of creatures. Every death becomes the foundation for new life. The underground mushroom networks ensure that resources are shared. Mother trees provide nutrients and signals through these mycorizal lines. There's no waste because everything is food for something else.

Your body operates on the same principles. The minerals from ancient seas that became part of the animal's bones can become part of your bones. The amino acids that built the animal's connective tissue can repair your connective tissue. We should care about soil health, because the nutrients pass from soil to plant to animal to you, in an unbroken chain of transformation that connects you to the very beginning of life on Earth. You are made of star dust. You are magic.

This understanding changes how you see everything. Your kitchen becomes part of the ecosystem. Your meals become participation in the web of life. Your body becomes more than a machine that needs fuel, to a living system that needs attention. We start building an empathy for our body that cannot speak to us, or at least, not in a voice we are used to listening to.

The Edge of Understanding

All boundaries are illusions. The forest doesn't end where the trees stop, and we have way more than five senses. Our hearts impact others within 5 feet of one another, our neuropathways work with electricity.

Your body doesn't end at your skin. It extends to the bacteria that help you digest, the air you breathe, the water you drink. You are not separate from the web of life—you are an integral part of it, constantly exchanging matter and vibrations and energy with everything around you.

Cooking can teach you that eating is about connection and healing as much as nourishment.

This is where we begin—at the edge of the forest, at the edge of yourself, learning to see that the boundaries we thought were solid are actually places of the richest exchange, where transformation is not just possible but unavoidable. We are creatures that thrive and require interdependence. Nobody can live in isolation. Being lonely causes as much stress on your body as smoking 14 cigarettes a day. We can run fast alone, but further together.

Food connects us to each other, yes, but also to all once living things.

The forest's edge isn't where something ends—it's where the real magic begins.

In the forest, nothing is waste. Every fallen leaf becomes soil, every ending becomes a beginning. Your kitchen can be the same—a place where simple ingredients transform into profound nourishment, where patience becomes medicine, and a place where you participate in the ancient alchemy that connects all living things.

Recipe 1: Healing Bone Broth

Step 1: Roast the Marrow Bones Preheat oven to 400°F. Place grass-fed marrow bones cut-side up on a baking sheet. Roast for 25-30 minutes until the marrow is bubbling and golden.

Step 2: Eat the Marrow Use a small spoon or knife to scoop out the warm, creamy marrow. Spread it on toast, eat it plain, or mix it into your weekly chicken and vegetable soup. This is pure nutrition—the richest source of fat-soluble vitamins and stem cell factors you can consume.
Step 3: Use the Bones for Broth After enjoying the marrow, add these same bones to your broth pot along with your weekly chicken (whether rotisserie or raw parts) and leftover frozen vegetables. The bones will continue to release minerals, collagen, and nutrients into your broth.
The Flexible Approach My mom used to buy a rotisserie chicken, pull off the ready-to-eat meat and skin, then put the rest into the soup—simple and effective. I have friends who cook full chicken parts in the soup raw, getting all the benefits of the meat as it slowly cooks in the broth. Some people prefer starting with just bones and vegetables. Whatever works for your family is the right approach.
Getting the Cleanest Bones Really try to get the cleanest possible grass-fed marrow bones. Get them frozen if needed—many health food stores and butchers can order them for you. The investment in quality here pays dividends in nutrition. Conventional marrow bones can contain concentrated toxins and hormones, while grass-fed bones contain the nutrients that come from animals eating their natural diet.
For Babies and Children Bone marrow was traditionally one of the first foods given to babies, and for good reason. It's soft, easily digestible, and incredibly nutrient-dense. Babies can safely suck on larger marrow bones (supervised, of course), getting concentrated nutrition that supports their rapid brain and body development.

The Ingredients:

3-4 pounds of bones (chicken, beef, lamb, or a mixture—from the happiest, healthiest animals you can find)
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
Enough filtered water to cover bones by 2 inches
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 carrots, roughly chopped
2 celery stalks, roughly chopped
1 piece of dried reishi mushroom (optional, but magical)
Small handful of fresh herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage—whatever speaks to you)
Sea salt and black pepper to taste

The Process:

Hour 1: The Awakening Place your bones in a large pot or slow cooker. If you're using raw bones, you can roast them first at 400°F for 30 minutes—this isn't necessary, but it adds depth of flavor, like the difference between a whisper and a song.

Add the apple cider vinegar and let the bones sit for 30 minutes before adding water. The acid helps draw minerals from the bones, beginning the transformation even before heat is applied. This is your first act of patience, your first lesson in trusting the process.

Cover with filtered water by about 2 inches. The exact amount doesn't matter—you're not following a chemical formula but participating in an ancient process that's more forgiving than precise.

Hours 2-12: The Patience Bring to a gentle simmer—not a rolling boil, which would make the broth cloudy and harsh. You want just enough heat to keep the transformation happening, like a gentle conversation rather than an argument.

If foam rises to the surface in the first hour, skim it off. This isn't strictly necessary, but it makes for a clearer, more beautiful broth. Think of it as removing anything that doesn't serve the final creation.

Let it simmer. For chicken bones, 12-24 hours is plenty. For larger bones from beef or lamb, 24-48 hours will extract more goodness. The longer you go, the more the bones will give up their structure to become nourishment.

This is where modern life rebels against ancient wisdom. Everything in our world demands speed, efficiency, instant results. But bones teach you a different rhythm—the slow, steady pace of transformation that can't be rushed or optimized or hacked.

Hours 12-24: The Community About halfway through the cooking time, add your vegetables and herbs. They don't need to cook as long as the bones, but they add their own gifts to the transformation—minerals from the earth, aromatic compounds that speak to something ancient in our cells.

Watch how the broth deepens in color and richness. Smell how the kitchen fills with an aroma that's somehow both comforting and energizing. This is what home is supposed to smell like—not synthetic air fresheners, but the deep, satisfying scent of real nourishment being created.

The Final Hours: The Completion You'll know the broth is ready when the bones begin to crumble at a touch, when they've given all they can give. The liquid should be rich and golden (or deep brown if you used roasted bones), and it should gel when cooled—a sign that the collagen has transformed into gelatin, ready to become part of you.

Strain through a fine-mesh strainer, pressing gently on the solids to extract every drop of nourishment. Let it cool enough that you can taste it safely, then season with salt and pepper. The salt isn't just for flavor—it helps your body absorb the minerals the bones have shared.

For the Kids Who Won't Eat Soup If your kids don't like eating the soup itself, give them the noodles—angel hair pasta or any small noodles—cooked directly in the broth. They'll fatten with all that liquid gold and carry the nutrition with them. Then toss with a little grass-fed butter and good mineral sea salt. They're getting all the benefits of the bone broth without knowing they're eating "health food."

Use this liquid gold for everything: as the base for cooking rice or quinoa, for reheating leftovers, for making soups and stews that actually satisfy. Drink it warm from a mug when you need comfort. Keep some in your freezer in ice cube trays—then you can add a cube or two to any dish that could benefit from depth and minerals.