Let those who have ears hear _______

I remember, when I was still pastoring, asking my congregation a very simple question; when was the last time you had a conversation with a stone? Most of them, and I guess most of you reading this have never done that. My guess is that most of you are also wondering why I would even ask you such a question and what does this have to do with anything spiritual or food. It might not seem as much of a stretch if I asked you how many of you have ever had a conversation with a plant. It might seem even less of a stretch, if I asked how many of you talk to your pets. Those of us who have, or have had, animal members of our family know that there is an exchanging of information with our birds, cats, dogs, or whatever else is living in our home. It is not that they can speak to us, but somehow as we spend time with them and get to know them, we intuitively begin to understand each other through an exchange of energy. Over time, one’s ability to communicate with their pets enhances. We tend to pick up information all the time about what they are feeling and thinking.
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Eating the Four Agreements

For the last few years, I have been working on living the four agreements as presented by don Miguel Ruiz. However, tonight I realized I had not thought about applying these agreements to a specific aspect of my life, my relationship with my body. I had focused on my mind and my spirit, but not my body. I had this epiphany while reading Marianne Williamson’s book A Course on Weight Loss. One of the things she wrote about was how it is not about the food, it is about your mind.
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Satori and the Senses

There is this experience in Zen Buddhism called Satori. In its most simplistic terms, it is about seeing the self-nature. While this has traditionally been used to talk about the journey of one’s personal journey to enlightenment, it has also been an important concept for me in terms of my cooking. When I come to appreciate the true nature of the foods with which I am working, it changes the way I experience them sensorally. There is this moment when what I have created looks right, tastes right, smells right and as a whole dish makes sense.
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Looking in more then one place

I have been thinking some more about the quote from Basho though I reflected on last week. Matsuo Basho, a Japanese Haiku poet, once wrote, “When journeying upon the path of wisdom, do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. Seek the meaning behind their footsteps, and not upon the steps themselves. For in seeking the footsteps you shall be glancing only upon the next footprint. And you’re sure to stumble upon an unforeseen obstacle. But in seeking the meaning behind their footsteps you’re sure to see ahead; comparable to looking up while walking.
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Seek, But Do Not Follow

Matsuo Basho, a Japanese Haiku poet, once wrote, When journeying upon the path of wisdom, do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. Seek the meaning behind their footsteps, and not upon the steps themselves. For in seeking the footsteps you shall be glancing only upon the next footprint. And you’re sure to stumble upon an unforeseen obstacle. But in seeking the meaning behind their footsteps you’re sure to see ahead; comparable to looking up while walking. Thus allowing you to easily maneuver around the hurdles on the path you walk. …And if you walk like this long enough, you’ll one day, to your surprise, find yourself among the wise.
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Honey, Healing, and Holiness

Maybe it was what I learned from reading Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees that drew my interest to honey, also known as the nectar of the Gods. Maybe it was the memory of my mother making me drink a cup of tea with lemon and honey when I had a cold or a teaspoon of honey when my stomach was upset. Or maybe it was a combination of all of the above. All I know is that as I lay in bed last night for hours with an upset stomach and unable to sleep, I could hear my mother’s voice telling me to go have some honey. So I dragged myself out of bed and took a teaspoon of honey and within a few minutes, I could feel my stomach calming down and I was finally able to go to sleep. When I finally fell asleep, my dreams were filled with honey. I had dreams about these bears that were so hungry for the taste of honey that they were willing to undergo being stung to get to that hive. I remembered a scene from Fried Green Tomatoes where Iggy was a bee charmer. I dreamt about making beeswax candles as a child.
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A New Reverence for Dates

When I was in seminary, which now seems a lifetime ago, in one of my preaching classes we were assigned to take a scripture which involved violence against women and develop a sermon on it in a way which was honest, but empowering. The result was a sermon I wrote called Take Back the Night, which was what I envisioned Tamar would have said if Tamar had been invited to speak at a Take Back the Night March. One of the things I learned while I was researching this scripture was about the name Tamar. Tamar means date palm. In biblical times, people’s names were a prophesy about their lives. Date palm might not seem like much of a prophesy, but it is. You see the date palm is said to be the oldest cultivated tree. For the people of her area, the date palm held particular symbolic significance.
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We want it to sell, not smell.

The other day, I shared with some of my friends on Facebook that I was starting work on my first book, Gastrospirituality. It will build off what I have been writing here in The Zenful Kitchen and be a blend of recipes, stories, and spiritual insights gained from the ingredients, preparation, and stories behind the food. One of my friends asked if I needed intestinal testimonies. I was not quite sure what he meant by that. I wasn’t sure whether he was asking if I needed people to taste and evaluate the recipes or whether I was wanting to know about how one’s intestines were responding to the food. His response was “We want it to sell, not smell.”
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The must have and the go for it lesson.

This week I had this epiphany while I was baking. I baked dozens of biscuits and loaves of bread and in the process of being creative with my bread and biscuit making; I had one of those AHA moments. You know that moment when you see something you have never been able to see before. Or maybe you saw it before, but now you are seeing it in a new way. I have been aware of how my ability to become increasingly creative in the kitchen has enabled me to tap into a zenful state that avoids me when I am following someone else’s recipe. For me, it is like those shoes that feel great when you first try them on in the store, but after walking in them for a few hours, you realize they are nice, but not exactly what you are looking for. Unlike the shoes, I can adapt the recipe to the needs of my palette or that of the person or people for which I am cooking.
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Waffles Can Be Zenful Too

My guess is that when most people think about Zen the last thing they think about is a waffle. My guess is that very few people even think about cooking when they are thinking about Zen. For me, cooking is just one of the many ways that I work through all the programming and rules I have consciously and unconsciously agreed to in life. It is through the acknowledgment of the existence of the rules, but also the willingness to not limit myself to them, which allows me to find the Zen in cooking. It is when I tap into my intuitive creativity and my ability to express myself through my cooking that I am able to move beyond the boundaries and rules, experience, and create in a way I am not able to otherwise. I literally chop my way through barriers. As I was explaining this to a friend of mine the other day, she asked me if I had experienced this when I made waffles for Zoë’s surprise birthday party a few years ago. As I thought about it, I came to realize that it was through my waffle creations that day which I experienced Zen. I guess I should explain
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The door is open, enter.

For the last year or so, I have been blogging about the lessons I have learned while preparing foods and working with various ingredients in my kitchen, a place where I experience Zen as I prepare food made with love to serve to those whom I love. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the Zen of cooking. The other day, however, I had this epiphany that there are not only spiritual lessons to be learned from the preparation of the food, but about the choices about what we eat. A Chinese proverb says, “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.” somebody can cook whatever they want for me, but I am the one who makes the decision to eat the food. A different type of food can be prepared, but if I do not eat it then I will never know if I like it or not. I will never know what I am not experiencing.
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Making a way out of no way.

I had started writing this reflection a few days ago, but something kept me from posting it to my website. Perhaps, it was because I needed to go to Zoë’s last chemotherapy session first. A conversation with one of the husband’s there touched my heart. His wife was going through her third bout with cancer, this time in her throat. It was hard to get her to eat because nothing tasted good. He was beating himself up because he could not find a way to make food taste good to her. When you are on chemotherapy it affects your taste buds in ways you cannot describe to anyone else. For those preparing the food, it is a constant guessing game because what tasted good on Monday does not taste good on Tuesday. It can take the Zen out of cooking even for those who experience Zen while cooking. Learning how to make things taste good for Zoe has challenged me to really listen to why something does not taste good, so I can think about what will make it taste good. This is what I had asked this gentleman. What are her complaints?
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Keep it simple

The last week has been a challenging one, as Zoë’s taste buds have seemed to go on vacation one more time. It is hard to find the motivation to eat when you cannot taste what you are eating. It is also a challenge to cook for someone whose taste buds are temporarily on vacation. However, through it all I have learned an important lesson. Sometimes simple is best. It really hit home for me tonight as I was watching a rerun of Rachel vs. Guy Celebrity Cook-off where Taylor Dayne simple tomato basil sauce beat out Joey Fatone. The reason she won was the simplicity of her sauce. They could taste the tomato, the cheese, and the basil. Sometimes simple is better. After trying a wide diversity of things this last week to tantalize Zoë’s taste buds, the one thing that tasted good for her was chicken salad.
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The milk of human kindness

This morning a friend of ours came over to fix a light switch for us. In preparation for his arrival, I made a fresh pot of coffee (his favorite beverage), had milk, and sugar for him to mix in his morning coffee. He said, after I finish the switch. He went to the bedroom, left to get a new switch, returned, and made the repairs. When I asked him how much we owed him, he said nothing. We paid him for the part, but he would accept nothing for his time, travel, gas, or labor. I felt so blessed and humbled. He said it was nothing, but having light on the side of the bed so Zoë could read at night was a real blessing to us. As I have been sitting here thinking about this experience this morning, I found myself wondering if this was how Dr Howard Kelly had felt when he was a young boy.
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Spiritual Spaghetti

This morning I got an email from the Food Network letting me know it was National Spaghetti Day. I never realized how many foods have their own National Days and today is Spaghetti’s. While I enjoyed spaghetti more as a child, especially slurping it and having it slap your face and leaving it covered with sauce, it is no longer one of my favorite pastas. However, I can still whip together a few spaghetti dishes, which my friends and family enjoy. The thing about spaghetti I have found most interesting is that there is more to its history then I knew. When I think spaghetti, I think Italian and my guess is that most people do. However, it seems that the development of pasta, spaghetti in particular, has its roots in China and Arabic cooking.
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It was more then just a cookie.

Last week, I wrote about Zoë’s cousin Bruce and his request for lemon drop cookies. To be honest, I have never made them before. I figured they could not be that hard to make, but it was one of the things he remembered about his wife who had passed away. So the morning he was leaving, I woke up early and began making lemon drop cookies and quiche he had requested. I knew this was exactly what he had wanted this holiday season, so I knew he was going to be excited. What I was not prepared for was the depth of his response. He had no idea I was going to make him two quiche to bring home, along with a myriad of other leftovers from Christmas breakfast and lunch. So that in itself excited him. I am not sure he expected I would actually do this for him.
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H is for Healing.

There is this mystery writer, Sue Grafton, whose books all begin with a letter and a word. For me this week, I have come to discover that H is for healing. I should probably say that Q and L are for healing, but that would not make sense to most people. Well, at least not at first. However, the day after our wedding, I came to realize that food has the ability to help people heal emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Zoë’s cousin Bruce came for the wedding and the day after we had this awesome conversation. You know the kind that linger in your memory for a while and leave you knowing something special just happened between the two of you. It was after some left over home fries and eggs that Bruce began talking to me about his first wife who had died many years ago after a battle with cancer
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It’s like riding a bike.

After about six years of eating a vegetarian diet, Zoë came home from running errands to tell me she had a cheeseburger. Well, it was not quite that simple. All the vegetarian protein options I could come up with tasted like nothing, not even cardboard. Being on chemo, she needed lots of protein. A cheeseburger tasted good, not great, but at least it had some taste. So now, I am blowing the dust off my recipes and my meat cooking skills. She made this decision just in time for Thanksgiving. So once again, I made our annual turkey along with a vegetarian option to contribute to our open house potluck dinner where we always have far more food then one needs. Once again, I decided to brine the turkey.
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Tebowing in my kitchen

A fellow food blogger, Warren Caterson, whose sense of humor, I love wrote a piece called Excuse Me While I Chill Some Wine and Take a Few Moments to Tebow. In it he started by talking about Tim Tebow and how when he does well on the field, he drops down to one knee and prays. After talking about football for a moment, he brought it to a place I could relate to on a personal level. He said, “For me, culinary expertise is a gift just like any talent. The ability to taste, to tweak, to cook is all on loan.” I could not agree more. I know that everything I learn about food, every gift I have in the kitchen, every smell that comes alive, the aroma that fills the air, the way the foods change textures as I work with them. All of these things are a gift from the Infinite. Warren jokingly said, “So if my next meal pleases the palates of my guests? Perhaps you just might catch a glimpse of me "Tebowing" in the darkness of my pantry. Because being thankful for whatever talent I might have is something I will strive for.”
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