The pause, reflect, bite, chew Method

It sounds simple but I have been having a really tough time with remembering to take each meal slowly. When I do, the energy immediately following my meal is equally softer, slower, and more even. So far I have found that lentils have lent me the most assistance with this shift in perspective.

"Do you ever go to eat a pork sausage... and find it's got hairs growing all over it?"

Heehee, Just felt like it was relevant. Last night I made a pizza and ate three pieces feeling like I had said all I could say in three emails. I felt good, but suddenly anxious. Kierkegard, who now lives over the toilet, says anxiety seeks sorrow as it's beloved. The pizza, eaten too late, woke me up at 4 with a good stomach knot. I immediately drank a teaspoon of vinegar on a whim from a website that said it was good for digestion. The warmth and immediate relief was bizzare. Today, I came home from Artscape to cook some more lovely Kale and beets for my dinner. Only last night's pizza in the microwave almost got me. I microwaved it, but suddenly smelled vinegar so strong that I felt like I was back at last night. Strange but a memory so strong that I could not possibly eat that pizza again.

I have to continue this story because it is missing the tiniest bits of hair-on-the-sausage of the nebulae surrounding my ingestion. I can't forget these hairs from the past two days.

Ice Cream in a warm bath- a sweet feeling of indulgence well deserved
a tiny bit of chocolate mousse cake with a tiny feeling that I took a bite of someone's cake by mistake
a "free" bottle of water
a bottle of water with a tiny bit of racism
a bottle of water with a good feeling from the man who said "thank you sweetheart" as he leaned his arm into my car window
a bottle of grapefruit juice nursed all the way across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, with the image of a grapefruit superinposed over the inner workings of the mammaries. I will explain:
I must link the video I saw that linked breasts to grapefuit to this blog because, wow! The images that I saw were so simple; the carrot cross-section looks like an eye, the tomato looks like the heart, celery like bones( and with the exact same sodium percentage as bones, %23). Food is made for the body? Yes food is made to nourish bodies. How divine!
I bought gourmet kale from the farmer's market because it looked like the lymphatic system.
I think Dal/lentils look like cells
Tonight's dinner was made somewhat indecisively. I came back to make the kale and the beets and rice, but I shouldn't have eaten the rice packet of spices. How salty and nasty! I was thinking about how I was rushing. I was trying to do several things at once. I wanted to take a quick salt soak. I found out that the water heater must be broken. My thoughts raced to the feeling of being happy for having met up with friends, and to my lover in a distant city meeting up with friends. I felt the rushing of anxiety only softer, as though preoccupation is a little less potent with detoxification. I know I cannot remove emotion by detoxification. I simply want to purge the unnatural length of certain emotions; fear, jealousy, anxiety, worry. There are moments where these feelings are fair and due. There are so many other moments where these
feelings are out of place and over-stretched. Cooking this meal I added excitement for going out later, I added a curious development from professor Butterworth who I think of as the height of rationalism. He recommended that I consider Émile Coué's autosugggestion "I am getting better and better every day in every way" as a worthy alternative to reason. I have to boil this thought for a moment. I added these thoughts and thoughts about my lover to the meal.
Note:
I haven't decided when the meal preparation begins and when the meal ends. To me, the meal is a definite event, but its conception occurs before its realization in matter. The thoughts that surround a meal, which enter it, can be an entire day or it can be just a simple meditation aside. I am going to work on making a more conscious effort to sanctify the meal so that the thoughts are limited from without. This way I intend to bring out more of what is within my soul.
To that cup of wine.

On Innovative cooking, disturbing feelings, and Success

This blog is about blending food and emotions properly. Both are necessary. Both can be tricky. Make food your ally for handling the inevitable bad feelings that come up.

What makes a good smoothie?
According to google's first turn up, fat content and high calorie content make a bad smoothie. I want to add to that list. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that a little instant gratification in the food court costs you more than just calories; it costs just a little bit of your soul's manifested energy that day. Seriously.

In order to address that claim, I want to give a real example of how a good smoothie/good meal gives your life much, much more. Let's begin with my breakfast and work back to dinner last night. I had a liquefied peach which I bought yesterday, water and lime juice, frozen strawberries and blueberries. I drank two glasses of it. I woke up still so gloomy that I thought I was going to break the habit of remembering as i ate. I remember worrying through that glass of soft red pulpy deliciousness that I wouldn't be able to let go of my worry. I remember hoping as I tore that peach apart, that I hadn't been too careless with my fingers ripping its flesh. I wanted to be joyful, but I was more like T.S. Eliot in reverse. "I deserve this good peach" feeling almost bitterly that my deepest needs were being ignored somehow by my dearest one. I sat on the couch, cup in hand, cell phone in the other, and listened about 5 times to his wonderful message. When the words finally sank in I left for a run. I succeeded in finishing the drink in an optimistic mood.

That smoothie wasn't half bad.

Sometimes food is the best thing you can do to calm and soothe yourself. It is wonderful when you can do this in the healthiest possible way. I made this cheap and extremely healthy meal under emotional duress.

Brown Lentils and carrots with Cumin and garlic
Curry Mung beans and Radishes with dried cranberries cooked in almond milk
Collard Greens with salt and pepper

I was happy to prepare the food. I cut the radishes into pretty circles and sprinkled the mung beans ontop right there on the cutting board. The circles and curved lines married sensually. Until then I had no idea that the curry would include both physical ingredients. I only know that radishes are good for the liver and that they were joining my meal somehow. Yet I was watching my thoughts carefully and sensing how lonely and left behind I felt as I cooked. I knew that I was putting these things into the food. I still am not sure how to cook properly with emotions as strong as loneliness and fear. I only know that they need to be digested when they are part of your everyday troubles. They need to be digested in a really healthy way. So my alchemy blends them with liver cleansing herbs and brainfood greens. I couldn't finish my thoughts on the particular topic that bothered me by the end of the meal, however, and even down to the last lentil I felt like I was still considering how to address my deep concern.

It wasn't until my run the next day that I really found my peace. I thought to myself as I was cooling down from the double trip around the reservoir, "What if it really is fine? What if I just let it go? " I finally accepted that there are some things outside of my control. But in the meantime all my disturbing feelings were met with good clean food. The choices I made supported my digestive tract, my liver, my bladder, my heart, my brain and my energy for life. The disturbing feelings subsided and I found myself nourished and at peace with the very same situation that had hurt me deeply with repetitive worry. Who knows? Maybe the food was being digested along with the thoughts, and bits of resolution were finding their way into my cells, glad for new energy. That, my friends, is success!!!

When you give in to feelings do you paint, write, or perhaps eat?

I had a stomach problem all last year. Call it Saturn in Virgo returning if you speak astrology. Call it post-abortive trauma if you speak medicalese. Call it 'aging' if you are cynical. Call it. Call it because that is what I am up to; the description of what occurs to a body at work with its 'food'. I was waking up screaming in pain. I was not, 'not facing' my feelings. I was in the meat grinder of my feelings, and they and I were being stuffed in, and jammed down, and expressed all as loosely and madly as dream's seams.
Some days are really good. Some days are a little strange. Tuesday I gave in and ate a tomato, kraft processed cheese slice, and mustard sandwich on white blue-ribbon bread. I ate with Co-workers.
Aside:
We talked about genetics. I want to know how eating affects the composition of the "junk" promotor DNA. It is only mistakes that geneticists note. I wonder about the quality of the information of two identical pieces of DNA. Can an amino acid be weak or strong as well as being exact?
That aside:
I don't think I went so far astray to eat that processed cheese. I processed it with concern for my health. I regretted it though(something to note). Later I ate leftover rice noodles with tomato sauce while I was at work doing massages. I also ate a lot of cherries. I forgot to plan for dinner. I didn't stop for more vegetables. Once I got home an hour later, I broke down into my feelings but I don't like how I handled it. I fed the cats and then I felt so lonely and pissed that I cried about eating green peppers and onions over rice noodles. I wanted something else. Someone near to help me out of feeling so...
I ate:
2 chocolate covered graham crackers
1 bowl of chicken noodle soup(chunky) with six wheat club crackers
2 more crackers covered in chocolate
water.
The fact is. I am not eating so many calories that I am afraid of emotional weight. That would be exactly the problem for someone who is heavy. But for me, I instead gain negative energy and continue negative emotions. This leads to stomach pain. I realize that everyone processes differently. This is my process and I am one human being.
I drank some water and went to bed.
Today I feel like I carried over a bit of sadness from yesterday. I put it into the soup with the heavy dose of black pepper. With this kind of processing I can think about today like a new day separate from the feelings of last night. I can remember to buy fresh fruit and vegetables and to eat with a clear present mind. Although I know feelings will come along, I will be listening to the process and digesting more than just what I choose in the produce section. 'Til soon.

The real "processed" food is when you think about what you eat

This is not a novel idea. But each individual must discover their own process surrounding food. This is to say; no understanding about the history of food in various cultures, no tradition that one can refer to, can change the reality that each person must discover own intimate discourse with self that occurs when ingesting. That being said. Here is what happened next...

I ate three things:
A fat free sugar free popsicle from a vending machine in Chuckee Cheese(the only moderate choice)
A piece of Chocolate Cake(after I received a wonderful phone call)
A foccacia sandwich with chicken and real lettuce(only after offered to me and out of respect and friendship was it eaten)

All these things were eaten with the memory of what occured around the ingestion. I was holding back from consumption in a place where consumption and noise reigns king, or at least shares the title with an ominous band of oversized stuffed mammals and one duck. I was really in a state of shock, with the reality that I am going to be spending some time alone sinking in, while being with so many people physically inside of one building. Food is not what you need when you feel that way. The senna leaf was also kicking in.
I was on the beginning of a cleanse, but I was doing it the hard way. You see. I forgot I was going to be at Chuckee Cheese later. I drank the Senna thinking I would be buying lemons and good syrup and drinking only the cleanse. It went differently because I couldn't get the right ingredients and my plan was only to begin the cleansing now. The processing is actually spending time thinking about what comes in and why. That much I am truly beginning.

I decided later on that I would only buy vegetables and cleanse through diet at first. The safeway didn't have Grade B Maple syrup. I decided then and there that I would buy beets. Beets represent cleaner to me. They have dinner and breakfast in them. Before I went to the store I went on really long run. I ate greens with lemon and cumin seeds that evening and rested in the sheer ability to fall asleep alone and tired, but with a pleasant feeling.

day
Breakfast in the morning was apple, carrot, and beet smoothie. It was thick and warm. It felt good to be so good. My thoughts were of handling jealousy as I made the smoothie. I tried to think about my own good qualities. I didn't intentionally think of this as I blended the fruit and vegetables; my mind presented itself to me. I decided to do more exercise because it makes me feel good about myself. I had a yam for lunch and went through all my waiting bills and papers. I have found that processing more consciously leads to organization of the nubulae surrounding finances.
I had a massage which I had scheduled last week.
I took the beets and the carrots and ate the other half of the apple and a packet of rice spaguetti. I drove for 45 minutes.
I then went and gave a massage which I scheduled yesterday.
Later I made dinner of the noodles, beet greens, onions, garlic, and carrots with a thai peanut sauce. I felt great. I felt like I was transcending the deep lonliness of lonliness with a feeling of healthy solitude. To top off this fudge sundae of self-understanding, I watched "About Schmidt" and vowed that I will avoid the misery of marriage somehow. With that I fell asleep to interesting dreams.
That, was an evening, a day, and a night processed by a human being.

Useful unicorns like, I ate yesterday morning for breakfast

Did I really laugh at the piece of journalistic brilliance about "modern jackass moments" yesterday in the car? Why? It is about people all who are like me, who reach the limits of knowledge everyday. But it was also a satire, comparing the idiotic half-historical truths people spout, to belief in unicorns. I would like to say that there are a couple useful unicorns. the way I write about food and its impact on my whole being and my whole being's impact on my food choices is a 'useful unicorn.' Let me explain the NPR story.
The story begins elegantly, in some other country. The commentator is recounting how a couple of friends are walking through this amazing old building and then one of their friends starts saying that it is built in the Moorish style. Of course once questioned about that style, it is implied that there is really little-to-no understanding beyond that point. I laughed, but even though the stories became more rediculous like the story of a woman who still believed in unicorns until a casual party conversation in her twenties, I think it is actually sad. I laughed but in defense of all humans, I believe that we all know much more than we can say. I believe we all can know more but other things stand in our way to remembering. The story was funny and sad and has very little to do with food but has to do with memory and knowledge. It has to do with ignorance. That is the only reason why it is a relevant topic.

That is what this blog is about. I feel like science has not quite said what needs to be said about food and emotions.
I believe yesterday's toast, once eaten with yesterday's omelette, brought up the first feeling of anger and sadness of the day before. I believe that the potion of existence we have been drinking has utterly changed. Reality has been repaved, and we are now much more able to eat and know but we haven't learned how to deal with it yet. There has always been too much to know, and we have always been consuming and flooding ourselves. Now abstention, and rejection of food, as well as clear digestion of information is important. I didn't eat anything else yet. Yesterday's breakfast waits for interpretation. This blog is about food. It is about food and knowledge.

Smooth Move Tea
four buttered slices of wheat toast slightly burned from reheating. I coughed when the burned pieces hit my throat.
Some cheese and mushroom omelette from Joey's breakfast
water

I felt the first sadness of the day after I ate the food. It seems like I could seek out food that makes me feel extremely good. It also must be able to bring back very old memories and to help in the development of character. Can food do all this? Are all things connected to food? Are all things that you experience and think, also like food and also chose by the self?

I feel like when I chose to eat your breakfast again, I was choosing to feel closer to you, but to feel you with me and to feel the feelings that I felt yesterday. Does it matter that the food didn't have the feelings in it? I chose to feel yesterday. I CHOSE TO FEEL YESTERDAY. Try to eat with good feelings. So simple. So unrelated to architechture in Turkey. But if one wants to really be a "modern jackass" one is entitled to use the very mind they have; to push back against the onslaught from within and without. To discovering the best food for thought