Bergerac, France (2025)

Awami Conscious Food System

Lessons for Secular Communities from the Zen Monastery

The Awami Food System presents a practical framework for collective cooking, shared care, and intuitive food culture.

The guide is a 27-page resource designed for people who cook together: coliving communities, shared households, cooperatives, and groups who believe food is more than fuel. It proposes a food system that is ecologically conscious, economically realistic, and socially sustaining—without turning daily cooking into a bureaucratic burden.

A table with various bowls and jars of food, including a bowl of mixed nuts, a bowl of dried dates, a jar of jam, a jar of cereal, a bowl of green grapes, and a jar of syrup.
Display of fresh vegetables including pumpkins, ginger roots, red and yellow apples, and red bell peppers on a table at a farmers market.
A table set with various bowls of food including diced vegetables, a salad, and sauces, with a vase of dried flowers in the background.
A woman with gray hair tied in a bun, wearing a gray apron, preparing vegetables in a kitchen.
Person chopping cooked chicken on a cutting board in a kitchen, with fresh herbs and kitchen utensils around.

What Awami Is About

Tenzo Valerie Duvauchelle created the Awami Food System as the crystallization of ten years of living in Japan and studying monastic food systems. She implements these systems in a secular coliving community called the Life Itself Praxis hub in Bergerac, France. Residents frequently describe the system as life-changing.

The system offers simple structures that support:

  • Shared responsibility without burnout

  • Flexible roles instead of rigid chore hierarchies

  • Cooking that adapts to skill levels, moods, seasons, and resources

  • A return to intuition, not perfection

The guide arose from four hours of interviews with Valerie that I converted into a book script and illustrated with watercolor paintings.

Diagram of the five branches of the Awami Conscious Food praxis, including Receiving, Moving, Celebrating, Thinking, and Cooking, each with an illustration and description.
A brochure or informational sheet titled "Oryoki 3 Base Menu" explaining the concept of three bowls in Chinese Zen Buddhism, with descriptions of different types of food: cereal, mixed beans or tofu with cooked vegetables, and raw food. The sheet inc
An illustration accompanying a text about flavors, colors, and textures in conscious eating. The illustration features watercolors of various food items and question marks in different colors, with a bowl of salad, a fried egg, watermelon slices, and
Illustrated guide showing various vegetables and foods categorized by five colors: red, yellow, black, white, and blue/green, with the text 'Balance the Five Colors' in the center.