A SpokenFood.com Meditation
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Let’s talk about taking more time. We are becoming automatons with our food: eat, discard, move on, repeat. The fast-food drive-thru rules the realm, rings the dinner bell, the rule rather than the exception. And when we finally do cook at home, more often than not, we’re opening cans and dumping boxes. It’s a tired song, so let’s change the station to one that brings the song’s searing flavor back to our days.
Let’s bring back real intention.
This is not about technique. This is about reverence and process: conscious peeling and chopping, observant simmering, mindful and slowwww taste-checks…waiting and enjoying the wait between the beats. Breathe the new kitchen air as it changes, let the anticipation grow and become a swelling ember in your bones.
Great food doesn’t come from secrets—it comes from time, patience, and presence. It comes from connection. I want these words to be a meditation, something you can revert back to and draw from as you take back control.
It’s not a race. The eating will not be a finish line, but another step in your new agency. A breath, a scent, a sight, a taste to take in and consider. Let it build while you cook. Let anticipation join the fun.
Anticipation is its own ingredient in any cooking. If you have anticipation, you can harness that patience and presence, just as you would saddling a powerful horse. You determine the direction, you make the decisions, you are the all-being master of time, space and dimension – right in your own kitchen or your tiny apartment or your backyard grilling station – it demands and deserves your unfragmented attention. In that moment, you are exactly where you’re meant to be, fully present—awake, capable, and grounded.
Chop the onion, or carrot or celery or herb, and then lift the board to your nose and smell it. Take it in, deeply. Take the time to draw it in deeply through your nose. Let your brain digest it. Later, when it’s sautéing in the pan with some olive oil and salt and pepper, maybe a sprig of thyme, take another deep whiff. Notice the scent change. The color. The texture. It’s yielding to your direction.
That, my friends, is power. That’s command. That’s agency.
Observe your food during this time you’ve taken back. Slow your roll. Become unhurried. You’ll discover power you never thought you had. By showing respect and reverence for your food, by taking all the time you need, you open up your senses and your world to something incredibly grounding:
You have ultimate control.
Big Food? Go ahead and raise your prices. You’ll never take this from us. This agency, this autonomy, this freeing time. We’re one in the moment right now with the food we’re preparing and cooking and braising and roasting…and anticipating. We’re plating a whole new dish of meaning.
Congratulations to you. THIS is inhabiting life, in the most self-endearing and loving way: by joining your food in a partnership as you both take a higher path to what sustains you, and the world becomes your oyster once again. It’s not about vying for control. It’s about being joined in communion with the air and the soil and sun and the food that grows from it and you’ll start seeing yourself more clearly than ever before.
Nothing and no one can take from you if you choose to be in this moment. The air suddenly becomes fragrant and peaceful, the light softens. There are no hard edges. Nothing dares irritate you when you’ve embraced this notion, and you wouldn’t recognize it if it did, for emotion dissolves and all that is left is…clarity.
Take this time – all the time necessary – make it yours to inhabit this wondrous life. And that afterglow? That’s permanent from now on.
Welcome home. Bon appétit.
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