We are fed by more than just the food we eat. I mean like, “I’m hungry I want a burger” or “I feel low on energy, I need a cup of coffee.” Sure that feeds us. We eat the burger and the hunger pains are gone. We drink a cup of coffee the adrenals kick in and we feel energized.
When I go to a seafood restaurant and I am craving my Yugoslavian Grandmother’s crab cioppine, I search the menu for cioppino and I order it. Unfortunately more often than not it does not satisfy my craving. It is good. It satiates my hunger pains, but very rarely does it “hit the spot”. My memory of her crab cioppine saturates my senses: the ” warm buttery tomato crab broth aroma” that filled every room in her house when she was cooking, the joy exuding from the kitchen while in her blue homemade apron she anticipated our visit and the meal she had planned so carefully: Crab Cioppine with Hot White Rice and Apricot Cobbbler with Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream. Being glued to my favorite big chair surrounded by the mood waiting for her to notice I was still in the house while my 5 brothers and sisters were outside playing after a long 8 hour drive from southern California to Northern California, I did not want to leave the warmth and aroma. She would notice me in the living room and invite me into the kitchen at last to taste and see what I thought of the cioppine. What a treat! I can still feel what it was like to be there all afternoon watching her and waiting for dinner.
How often do we or our children experience food in that way? Is it only around the holidays or not even then? There seems to be a modern epidemic of considering food as a supplement in our lives just to keep us going. Like popping a pill for this or that. And there also seems to be a movement of “Foodies” who are moving towards the joy of cooking and eating to counter our addiction to fast this and fast that.
In the French language one would never say: ” I am feeding my kids.” In French one only “feeds” animals. One nourishes one’s kids. Hmmmm. So I challenge our habit of hurrying here and there while fitting in a bite to eat, to consider what this might be doing over time to our nervous systems, our adrenals, our digestion?
What would our lives be like if at least once a day we strolled away from the table in love with life again because every cell in our body had just had an experience, an experience called: Dinner
*side note: If any of the conclusions I am making in this blog escape you, rent the movies, “Like Water for Chocolate” and “Babette’s Feast”. Or more recently the movie, “The 100 foot Journey” is a good one too!