Flavor and health, expertly preserved -
Atina Foods adapts traditional practices to incorporate global taste with locally available produce for unusually delicious fermented and preserved condiments that help to balance your life.
WIth a specialization on traditional preservation of marginalized regional produce, our Vision at ATINA FOODS is to produce and share holistic food based on traditional knowledge systems in unique ways. Seeking to solve the relationship of food as medicine, we follow the sacred wisdom that food is medicine and are keen on shortening the supply chain and supporting regional food and farms. Founded in Catskill NY, 2015, by married team, Carrie and Suresh, Atina Foods proudly assists adventurous, health conscious home cooks in enlivening simple dishes
Recipes evolved from Suresh's traditional upbringing in Kerala, India, ancestral home of Ayurvedic health practices where eating for health is customary and are adapted and expanded to our home in Upstate NY. Each condiment has a carefully considered beneficial combinations and handcrafted to balance 6 basic tastes classified in **Ayurveda as Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, Pungent (hot) and Astringent (earthy / fermented**), to generate a unique complexity of taste that is as delicious as it is beneficial to your health!
Fermented and Preserved Condiments -
Herbal Jams, translated from the traditional Ayurvedic word Leyham, a medicinal concoction of fruits, roots, spices and herbs preserved in Jaggery, an unrefined raw sugar cane from India.
Pickles or Ferments, Lacto-fermented probiotic rich, made with only salt (no vinegar, no water) and our special spice combinations. In Kerala, these are called, Upillitathy, meaning vegetables in salt.
Our line of condiments are designed to bring out the best taste in food, helping you to Eat The Food That's Good For You! Using whole ingredients, spices, roots, fruits and herbs, nothing is pre-processed.
Our product range presently consists of shelf stable jarred foods, supplemented with snacks and other edibles. With an interest in sharing the basics of these healthful practices, we have begun cooking lessons and sometimes host family style meals at our Studio Kitchen when the season abides. See our Events page and follow us on Instagram for updates
Homestore. You can visit our HOMESTORE, located on our property in Catskill, NY. Generally open Saturday and Sunday 12-5pm throughout the summer and fall. It doesn’t hurt to message us ahead of time. You can always stop by and use the honor system with venmo.
Food in Ayurveda is meant to generate Agni Deepti (Fire of brilliance) to the Jataragni (Fire inside the stomach), this is the preliminary process of digestion before food is converted into nutrition and energy. The practice of making food, is to bring out the potency of the materials used in the food to give the body and mind a nourishing experience through taste. It is important that food tastes great and is made up of healthy whole (not processed) ingredients, optimizing the nutritious and delicious benefits.
ATINA is the legendary Corn Goddess of the Mohicans, whose land we live on. Please visit this beautiful story about her.
Materials -
Our Ayurvedic condiments are made from whole, high quality, all natural ingredients, local when possible, otherwise from their country of origin. Local ingredients are generally organic (certified and un certified) with continuously evolving local recipes! We have good relationships with local farmers and a clear level of transparency. We have test gardens for recipe and small batch incubation. With an expanding list of farm friends, here are a few that we regularly work with; Honey Dog Farm, Samascott Orchards, Shaul Farms, The Kitchen Garden Farm. Our original recipes are crafted from Suresh's years of cooking, travel and eating. As a young boy, Suresh learned to cook from his mother and other family matriarchs in Kerala, South India. Honing his craft through travel and tasting as recipes of the Indian diaspora have migrated through the Middle East, South Americas and to our home in Upstate, New York. We have adapted ancient spice combinations with regional and global - fruit, roots and spices, to create our unique and delicious ATINA FOODS taste!
Eat the Food That’s Good for you with Atina Foods!
Team
Carrie and Suresh
Carrie and Suresh run Atina Foods. They met in a cyclone and have been continuing the tradition ever since in their new found native homeland of Upstate, New York. From their small property speckled with gardens and birds, they watch the wall of Manitou. Also known as the beginning of the Catskill Mountain range, watched over by ATINA, Corn Goddess of the Mohicans.
Carrie Dashow
With a background as a performance, media and visual artist, and as an educator, Carrie has taught arts and media to students of all ages and continues to produce performance and participatory artworks. You can see some of her projects on her website.
Check out this great opportunity for Carrie to talk about the intersection of Art and Food and life growing! On Speaking Broadly with Dana Cowen! Feb 2021
Suresh Pillai
Suresh hails from Kerala, South India, homeland to the traditional practices of Ayurveda. As a consummate cultural practitioner, he has been engaged in numerous projects from building community museums to journalism and making films. He learned to cook traditional foods at a young age from the women in his household and has traveled extensively, picking up methods of making great tastes along the way.
In Residence / Artist 2024
Daniela Rivero
Artist, educator, and herbalist, Daniela’s work engages tools, strategies, and teachings for restoring relationship with the land through reciprocal tending, creative exploration, and working with food as medicine. They are guided by their lineage -- ancestors and descendants-- as a participant in the death, transformation, and creation involved in healing from colonialism and capitalism, and regrowing future possibilities through ancestral wisdom.
Atina Foods is thrilled to welcome Daniela to our land!
What they will be doing here: Besides helping out Atina Foods operations, Daniela is invited to work on her own plant medicine food project in relation to her ancestry, whereby 3 workshop offerings will be presented throughout her time here.
Evenings on:
Tuesday, August 20, 2024 Mugwort Medicine Dream Lab, opening the portal
Tuesday, September 17 Mugwort Medicine Dream Lab, walking the path
Thursday, October 19th Culmination: Artemesia Milagrosa, beyond the dream
Artemisia Milagrosa - Grandmother Medicine
Artemisia Milagrosa - Grandmother Medicine is a partnership between Daniela Rivero and Mugwort, Artemisia Vulgaris while in residency at Atina Foods.
Widely regarded as a common weed, Mugwort is a keeper of portals, and a generous relative that thrives in the margins. As plant medicine, they help to digest, metabolize, and clear illnesses and parasites. As a Grandmother plant, they nourish, cleanse, and protect our spirits, dreams, and emotional bodies. This project offers a practice of working closely with Mugwort through community events where participants will be invited into ceremony, relationship, and creative collaboration.
WORKSHOPS and NEWSLETTER Project Manager
Kate Ray
Kate is a plant based chef and cooking teacher, who loves to work with vegetables and mushrooms in fun and weird ways. Her goal is to help people of all ages learn to trust their own tastes in the kitchen and express themselves through cooking.
Kate publishes Soft Leaves, a newsletter about food and health — where health encompasses nutrition, mental balance in a destabilizing world, and the resilience of our communities.
Atina Foods welcomes Kate Ray to our team and to upstate New York! Kate is helping us to organize our workshops and newsletters.
