Food as love

I am the kind of girl who listens to cosmic direction, and believe me- I get it where I can. Last week, my lovely page- a- day Joy of Cooking calendar (thanks, Mom!) had this quote from Ethan Becker, one of the authors of that classic cookbook: "Whether you are feeding your family, friends, or even strangers, cooking can be an expression of affection and connection, both of which are good for the mind and body." Lovely sentiment, and obvious perhaps, but then I received a very wonderful gift this weekend (thank you, Jeff!)- it is the quintessential seventies cookbook, so earnestly named, Earth Water Fire Air. One of the first pages reads, in huge block letters these instructions: "Knead love into the bread you bake." That got my attention.

Ok, so eating is a biological act turned cultural. It is an extremely intimate act- we take something from the outside, bring it inside, and it becomes us. Eating, indeed food, is very sensual. It is a gift- hopefully one we are able to share. Thinking of my food's origins, seed, plant, fruit- farmer, market, cook, all of that work and energy- for me. It takes months to produce even a bite of food, and that deserves a moment of reverence and gratitude.

For a while last summer, I was obsessed with the book, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse; The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee. (I even made a pilgrimage and everything...) Anyway, the book is fantastic because it reaches beyond the business of food to the consciousness food brings and fosters. McNamee quotes Alice Waters saying: "It’s important to encourage all the other values that are beyond nourishment and sustainability and the basic things. Beauty. When you set a table, you know, take time to do that- teaching the pleasure of work- that’s probably one of the most important lessons. It’s also about diversity. It’s about replenishing. It’s about concentration. It’s about sensuality. It’s about purity. It’s about love. It’s about compassion. It’s about sharing. How many things? All those, just in the experience of eating, if you decide you’re going to eat in a very specific way. It changes your life, and it changes the world around you."

What and how we eat does matter, just as the words we choose ultimately matter. Food, whether we like it or not, is biological, cultural and political. How we choose to interact with food is a personal choice that affects others- those we know and those we don't (yet) know. This point was driven home when I passed a billboard with a photo of a breakfast burrito that said: "This is what I would make at home. If I cooked." Yikes! Choose not to be removed from your food's production- choose instead to participate in a way that gives you joy. Then share.