Steve, You've touched on a topic that I love-- Food IS a spiritual experience. And if a man is hungry, he can't hear his spirit speaking over the rumbling in his stomach. (Jesus understood that.) Think how we mark every important occasion with food, from birthday parties to wakes, from wedding feasts to chicken soup for the ill. And the movies that revolve around the emotional aspect of food!-Like WAter for Chocolate, Babette's Feast, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, and those Italian brothers who open the restaurant (can't remember the name--)
This week a friend of mine came home from the hospital minus 3/4 of her intestines. I was taking her lunch and went into a panic because of the dietary restrictions. She'd been living on jello and mashed potatoes. So I went online and spent about 5 hours reading recipes and about Short Bowel Syndrome which she has and wound up in a Chat Room called the No Guts COuntry Club with a bunch of the nicest people with great senses of humor. I wound up making shells with a white sauce from lactose-free milk and a little garlic and dill. ANd some baked fruit with a little brown sugar-curry sauce, and apple-cinnamon biscuits. A very bland and easy meal, but she was so touched and she ate a lot, raving about it. I believe that when we cook with love, it adds a whole separate dimension to a meal--and that sounds like what you do.
Which is probably why on some bad days, my most elaborate attempts are met with grimaces from my family. I must have seasoned with irritability (salted with snarls and peppered with pouts) |
