Where neuroscience meets nourishment
a chef's journey from the laboratory to the postpartum kitchen.
Monika Knapp
Founder & Chef
From research to Brooklyn to California to motherhood
Before Mothership, there was a laboratory bench at the University of Pennsylvania's Smell & Taste Center, where Monika Knapp studied the intricate pathways through which the human brain interprets flavor. Long before she understood the profound metabolic demands of postpartum recovery, she was mapping the neural architecture of taste perception: measuring threshold sensitivities, documenting chemoreceptor responses, understanding how a single volatile compound could unlock memory, emotion, comfort.
This was not research divorced from lived experience. It was, she would come to understand, preparation.
After graduating from Penn with a B.A. in Biological Basis of Behavior, with minors in Psychology and Sociology, Monika moved to Brooklyn, where her apartment kitchen became a new kind of laboratory. Inspired by the borough's vibrant food culture, she began experimenting with fermentation in earnest: crafting fermented hot sauces, various preserves, and diving deep into the world of koji and miso. The principles of microbiology she'd studied in academia now took tangible form in bubbling crocks and aging pastes.
This period was a bridge between scientific theory and culinary practice, where Monika discovered that the controlled variables of the lab translated beautifully into the transformative magic of fermentation.
When Monika arrived in California in 2019, she founded Colony Culture, a sourdough microbakery and mobile catering company in Atascadero. The principles of microbiology, fermentation kinetics, and enzymatic transformation became the foundation of her craft. She maintained a locally grown rye flour starter requiring twice-daily feeding, tended fermented vegetables and miso pastes, and created pop-up menus that showcased the depth of flavor only patient fermentation can achieve.
Each loaf of naturally leavened bread was an experiment in controlled wildness: wild yeasts and lactobacilli converting starches into acids and gases, creating structure, aroma, and that complex interplay of tang and sweetness. She learned to taste with precision, to identify the bright acidity of acetic acid versus the mellow roundness of lactic acid, to distinguish the caramelized notes of Maillard reactions from the fruity esters produced during fermentation. As she would say, “sour makes everything else pop.”
And then she became a mother.
Pregnancy initiated a cascade of physiological changes that Monika observed with both wonder and scientific curiosity. Her body was orchestrating an extraordinary feat of biological engineering, building new tissue, expanding blood volume by nearly fifty percent, recalibrating hormonal systems, preparing for the metabolic marathon of childbirth and lactation. The research she consumed during those months revealed an entire culinary tradition she had somehow missed in all her years of training: the science of postpartum nourishment.
She discovered The First Forty Days by Heng Ou, and suddenly, ancient wisdom and modern physiology aligned with crystalline clarity. The warming soups, the bone broths rich with glycine and proline for tissue repair, the gentle spices that stimulated circulation without overtaxing digestion, the easily digestible grains that provided sustained energy without inflammatory load. These weren't merely comfort foods. They were precisely calibrated interventions, developed over millennia, designed to support a body engaged in the profound work of recovery and milk production.
When her own postpartum period arrived, Monika wanted nothing more than to remain in bed, cocooned in warmth, nourished by these precise, healing foods. But circumstances, as they so often do, had other plans.
The gap between what her body needed and what she could access in those early weeks became the founding principle of Mothership. As a chef trained in the careful observation of fermentation and flavor, as a scientist who understood the neurochemistry of nourishment, Monika recognized that she could show up for other mothers in the way she wished someone had shown up for her.
Mothership emerged from this dual expertise: the precision of laboratory method and the intuition of culinary craft. Every meal is designed with the same rigor she once brought to her research at Penn's Smell & Taste Center.
Monika's approach is grounded in key principles, each supported by both traditional practice and modern research
Ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, and black pepper contain compounds that stimulate circulation and are known to support a healthy inflammation response. These warming spices support a body working to recover from the physical demands of childbirth.
Long-simmered bone broths are rich in collagen, gelatin, glycine, and proline: amino acids essential for connective tissue health and gut lining integrity.
Monika designs meals that are nutrient-dense yet gentle: slow-cooked stews where proteins are partially broken down, fermented foods rich in beneficial bacteria.
Traditional galactagogues (fenugreek, fennel, oats, brewer's yeast, flaxseed) appear throughout Mothership's menu, thoughtfully incorporated to support milk production.
If there is a through line in Monika's work, from the Smell & Taste Center to Colony Culture to Mothership, it is this: an understanding that nourishment is both biochemical and deeply human.
“Food, prepared with attention and knowledge, can be a form of medicine. Each mother's recovery is unique. Each body has its own timeline, its own needs, its own relationship to food and comfort.”
Mothership exists because Monika Knapp knows, from both scientific training and lived experience, that the fourth trimester is not an afterthought. It is a critical window of recovery, adaptation, and transformation. And every mother deserves to be nourished through it.
Let me nourish you through your fourth trimester, the way I wished someone had nourished me through mine.
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