A Dash of Dining

By Namaste Staff Writer

Do you realize that you have a different relationship to food and beverages from the people you share meals with? This is because the way we each learned to eat took place in a different constellation of physical and emotional influences.

One of the important events in my day, just about every day, is dinner time. It was this way in my childhood. It helped that my grandparents and parents were grocers, which fostered an intimate relationship with food.

These were the days before everything was canned or shrink-wrapped. I understood where meat came from because I visited the farmer with my father. Unlike many city kids, I knew how a dairy was run. And I regularly accompanied dad to the mill where the stream turned the millstones that ground the wheat.

Mom prepared dinner each evening, everything made from scratch. Pies––savory and sweet––casseroles, homemade dumplings. But mom wasn’t the only cook in our house. Dad baked bread, and I have vivid memories of it rising in large bowls with damp tea towels over them on the hearth in front of the fireplace.

If our relationship to food is individual, so is our talent for cooking. For some, it comes naturally. It’s that way for my son. He has a flare for it—the ideal combination of spices, the perfect degree of doneness.

For me, learning to cook didn’t come easily. In the movie Mrs Doubtfire, Robin Williams is divorced by his wife. So when the kids come to visit, he has to provide them with a meal. I roared with laughter when I saw this movie because I was once a Mrs Doubtfire. Though I remember many hours passed messily in the kitchen as a child, as my brother and I mixed flour and water in imitation of mom, I emerged into adulthood unable even to boil an egg and get it right­­—the white was either not done, or I cremated it because I got distracted and it boiled dry.

These days dinner guests occasionally say to me, “I could never have you to my home, I couldn’t cook like this.” Amazingly, they are in fact complimenting me. What a transformation a person is capable of experiencing if they are open!

But I think the comment about not having me to their home misses what preparing a meal is all about. Preparing food ought to be a form of self-expression, and fun, not a means of impressing each other.

So I’ve learned to laugh at my Yorkshire puddings when they don’t rise and turn out like hockey putts. Like the first time Helen Hayes cooked turkey for her family, she gave fair warning as she went into the kitchen to ready it for serving. “If it isn’t right,” she said, “I don’t want anybody to say a word. We’ll just get up from the table, without comment, and go down to the hotel for dinner.” When she returned, she found the family seated at the dinner table, wearing their hats and coats.

When we are striving to impress, we undercut the enjoyment of preparing food. Ego generates tension, replacing the flow of pure pleasure. Once in the mindset of impressing someone, we lose what dining is all about.

For me, dining is an exercise in being present in the now, celebrating the wonder of life, enjoying rather than rushing through things. Taking time out each day to dine healthily and heartily is a means of de-stressing. To savor the food instead of inhaling it before you race off to some event—to share dinner time for fun, romance, and relaxation—goes hand-in-hand with a more wholistic lifestyle, a lifestyle of which we in fast-paced western countries are sorely in need.

It’s not more neon signs for fast food that our cities and towns need, it’s a home-cooked, wholesome dinners at the dining table, and more great cookouts with friends.

When there’s more than one of you, dining is an opportunity to reconnect with each other after the hectic pace of the day. It’s a way to touch each other’s hearts, look into each other’s eyes, perhaps with soft candlelight instead of the fluorescents of the office, and share your joys and your concerns. Creativity, connection, conviviality—these are the fruit of a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner at which you dine instead of dash.

Eating, then, is about more than satisfying hunger, more than physical nourishment. A conscious approach to eating means that, as far as possible, you grow food, prepare food, and eat food in a manner that caters to the hunger of the soul.

For me, this is reflected in my devotion to organically produced foods. The extra that organic foods cost are a vote for my health, and a way of caring for the earth by poisoning it as little as possible.

Fresh, wholesome produce tantalizes my palate come evening. From being a person who once hated cooking, I’ve become someone for whom chopping and seasoning is a good way to unwind after the day—a therapy rather than a chore.

Some have remarked, “You mean you cook for just one every night?” I feel like looking around and asking, “Do you see anyone else?” It’s like when you go to a restaurant and the maitre d’ asks, “Just one?”

I hear people say, “It seems pointless to cook for one.” They find fixing dinner for just themselves a lonely experience. But Thomas Merton once said that “a person who fears to be alone, will never be anything but lonely.”

What do you do if it causes you to feel anxious to prepare and eat dinner alone?

There’s a part of us that’s able to step back from our anxieties and watch them from a distance. This part of you that can watch yourself is a deeper you that knows no fear. It’s the you that cannot help but love yourself, nurture yourself. So if you become anxious about eating dinner alone, and you start telling yourself how awful it is, simply become an observer of such thoughts—and amazingly they dissipate. (You can learn more about how to do this from several of our Namaste Publishing books, CDs, and DVDs, found on this website—especially The Presence Process, The Power of Now, Stillness Speaks, and A New Earth.)

We are talking about eating consciously, instead of just going through the motions. The ability to savor food and hold an awareness of our connection to the earth is a barometer of personal development.

In your own unique style, invest time in dining. You may opt to barbecue, or go out to eat, or take a picnic to the beach or the park. One of you may prefer to cook, and one clean up. But whatever your style, savor the entire eating experience.

Become conscious about every aspect of your body and its health. To help you, we offer a wonderful book, Ron Garner’s Conscious Health. It’s about far more than vitamins and minerals. It’s a wholistic approach to life.