Joy of Food : Friday Five

Thank you to the "holy memes and kosmic blog starters" pod sprouted by suzanne for a 12th week of great ideas and questions! Also thank you to Paisley for this week's great topic - FOOD! YUM! You can also check out other delicious answers of our yummy zaadzsters.

Here are my answers to those wonderful questions. You can see why it took me longer than usual to come up with some answers to this favorite topic of mine... EnJOY!

1) What is your philosophy on food?

I live in order to eat. ☺ Or eat in order to live. Or both. Or neither. Anyway food is an important part of my life and journey. I love food and almost anything related to it. ☺ The more conscious I become, the more appreciation I have and growth I experience. I consider food to be part of a bigger circle of living, a proof of our interconnectedness and thus an essential part of who we are and why we are here now.

Food is so many things. It is a pleasure. It is fuel and energy. It is comfort and obsession. It is delight and guilt. It is joy and health. It is poison and blame. It is over and it is under. It is taste and smell and texture. It is music and movement as well. It is part of the Web of life and it nourishes and nurtures. It can satisfy our needs and desires in essential, basic, primal and elevated ways. It is simple and sacred, dense and spiritual, personal and social, traditional and mystical. It is all elements fused marvelously – earth, wind, fire and water. It reflects all colors, resonates all sounds, and reinforces all energies. It is celebration and gratitude. It is joie de vivre and raison d’etre. It is sacrifice and indulgence. It is cleansing and fasting. It is a wonderful healer and a great teacher too. It is revelation and enlightenment. It is this and that.
It is simple and it is great. It is anything and everything we want it to be. Like us.

“Our food choices reflect the ongoing harmony with ourselves, the world, all of creation and the Divine.” ~ Gabriel Cousins from “Conscious Eating” ~

2) What's your favorite kind of food? Why?

There are so many favorites. It depends on seasons and availability, on hormones and moods, on traditions and healing, on spontaneity and joy, on taste and energy, on intentions and intuition. The simpler, more natural, fresher – the better. Veggies, fruits and nuts are my favorite groups. The Mediterranean trinity – red hot peppers, juicy sweet tomatoes and spicy onions/garlic, is another loved combination. Cherries are my favorite fruit – how can you beat the mixture of taste, sensuality, joy and radiance? Almonds, macadamia and walnuts fight for attention in the nut department, not only because they are such a great source of healthy proteins, good fats and abundant minerals, but also their awesome taste, earthy nature, strength and energy are hard to match. ☺


3) What qualities do you seek in the food you eat?

Ideally food should be live, organic, vegan, fresh, raw, pure and enjoyable. Nutrition respectively would be high in vitamins, minerals and energy, low in sugar, fat, salt and calories, moderate in consumption, individualized to our own needs, corresponding to our states and balancing our energies. It should also align with our intentions – be they to heal, promote and sustain health and wellness (live, raw, fresh, healing herbs & foods), ethical beliefs for non-cruelty (vegetarian and vegan), environmental concerns (organic and local), charitable causes (fasting and calorie restriction for helping others), emotional balance (doshas, constitution, moods, comfort foods), pragmatic reasons (availability, price, freshness, purity, ease), physical cleansing (juicing, detoxification, purgation), spiritual insights, growth and realization (blessing, prayers, holiday rituals, meditative eating and cooking, fasting). If one takes such a holistic and integrative approach, food really offers spiritual nutrition and provides a unique way of guidance, inspiration and service in the integration of our body, mind and spirit.

I have made probably the most radical changes and transformations in my life so far in the area of food and nutrition as a starting point to a whole change in lifestyle, living, thinking and being. It has offered me great lessons and perspectives on myself and the people and things around me all the way from not taking anything we put in our bodies for granted, to being thankful for the abundance, beauty and energy that food provides, channels and circulates through and in us. It has been an invaluable way to continuously explore the great relationship between the assimilation of various type of foods (their nutrients and energy) and the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual experiences that followed as a result of this nutrition and unfolding.

I also enJOY food for food itself and have fun with it as much as I honor and bless it.
I celebrate with food. I cry with food. I reward others and myself with food. I deprive myself from food and detoxify. I overindulge and fast. I waste some and share some. I grow some and give some away. I love the pleasures and experiences it brings when we put our intention and attention to it. It brings me joie de vivre and makes me alive and happy. It makes me appreciate both fullness and lightness. It makes me revere life, love nature and respect people more. It brings the good and the not so good in me for me to see, experience and embrace. It lets me be and enjoy it all one bite and drink at a time.

4) How can you use food in worship/ritual/spiritual practices?

Anything, including food, can and is a spiritual practice if we consider it and make it so.
It is about our intention, attention and actions. Or the lack of such. Either way food can be a doorway to higher experiences beyond the sensual with which we usually associate it mostly.

I personally have experienced one of my greatest insights and revelations when tasting cherries, home grown and cared for in our own lovely orchard, picked with the early morning dew in a beautiful July morning as the sun peeked through the mountains and savoring its out-of-this world taste, sweetness and juice, bringing not only sensual delight, but inner bliss from the merging with it all – from this lovely tiny delicious fruit, to the tender leaves, strong branches, deep roots, the fertile soil, the insects and butterflies and birds, the mountain lake and the sun rays all enjoying this moment of One Taste… Moment of oneness with nature, filled with gratitude, joy and peace, blessing the food, the creator and the creation.

Food healing traditions and rituals involving food such as herbology have always been fascinating subjects because of the wonder of nature in its ability to provide us with anything and everything we need right in front, around and within us all the time, anywhere. If we could just open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, our senses to explore, our minds to accept the possibilities and our hearts to have the courage to try and embrace, our spirits to include and transcend… then food can be our greatest teacher, friend, lover and soulmate.

5) What is missing in today's eating habits? What's missing in your eating habits?

Mindfulness and awareness mostly. Then respect for self and all those that have been in energetic interaction with the food. The importance of the quantity, quality and energy of the food we take and its impact on all our bodies, states and levels, not just the physical. The need for discontinuing animal cruelty which will eventually bring even the same attitude toward plants eventually as we evolve and are able to meet our ‘nutritional needs’ energetically, thus moving from vegetarianism, to veganism to breatharianism and beyond.

On a more specific level, some things that are still in minority, but on the rise are:
The growing trends toward healthier live food, organic and environmentally sustainable, cruelty free and vegan, the ‘slow food’ movement, cleansing, fasting, and healing, delighting all the senses, emotionally satisfying by being grown, prepared and shared with love, spiritually uplifting by making it and the actions related to it as a spiritual practice.

And on an even more pragmatic level – the “think global, eat local” approach applies to food as well. Teaching ourselves ‘how to fish’ symbolically is one way to get rid of the poverty, continuous hunger and starvation still experienced in so many parts of the world. Feeding our souls more than our bodies and focusing more on quality than quantity, energy than price are some of the ways to deal with the global food problems.

On a personal level – moderation and mindfulness are key. Limiting quantity and restricting calories, as well as not engaging in emotional or mindless eating are current goals. Experimenting even more with various forms of fasting and the impact of various foods on energy levels and as ways of healing are very interesting as well.
Last but not least enjoying the simple pleasures of food and the joie de vivre that it brings to our unique human experience is a great way to remember the truth & enJOY it too.

I want to learn more about the amazing healing properties of foods and plants, experiment with sprouting, undereating and fasting, explore more the energy benefits of foods and how they enhance and transmute higher energies and states. I also want to enjoy the variety, delicacy, pleasure, satisfaction and joy that food brings to our tables, bodies and souls.

Here’s the progression in what I used to eat in the past to now:

Whatever was there
Whatever was cheapest
Whatever tasted better
Whatever felt good
Whatever was healthy & live
Whatever was organic & cruelty free
Whatever brings joy in all :)

If I had to sum it up I would do more of the following:

Undereat and fast more often
Be more mindful & intuitive
Enjoy, savor more & heal
Stay in-spirit & connected to the Source

Several favorite food quotes:

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
~ Mark Twain ~
The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal
probably eats better than 30% of the people in the world.
~ Robert Orben ~
Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy.
And, cooking done with care is an act of love
~ Craig Clairborne ~
Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.
~ Dorothy Day ~
Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.
~ Charles Baudelaire ~
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
~ Joyce Carol Oates ~
Food should be fun.
~ Thomas Keller ~

And my favorite recipe for desert:

RECIPE FOR FRIENDSHIP
(Author unknown by me :)

2 heaping cups of patience
1 heartful of love
2 handfuls of generosity
1 headful of understanding
A dash of humor
Sprinkle generously with kindness
and plenty of faith
Mix well
Spread over period of a lifetime
Serve to everyone you meet (if you can)

Take Joy in Food & more!