I love preparing wholesome meals for my husband, Brad, and myself.  It brings me joy to cut up veggies! Weird, right? I believe that cooking should be done with love and then the dish will give back the love with the way it tastes and the nutrients it provides your body. Sometimes I’ll turn on my favorite music and sing along as I cook. It makes me happy and gives me some extra energy to prepare the meal. I remember talking about cooking with one of my fellow classmates in Yoga Teacher Training several years ago. Lina loved to cook as well, but we were always baffled by the fact that although it took us 30 minutes to prepare a meal, once served, it was gone in less than 5!  Why do we eat so fast or without even tasting and appreciating it? I read an excerpt from Andrew Weil in one of his cookbooks that really hit home with this subject, and I would like to share it with you here.

EATING MINDFULLY

An exercise in mindfulness training, a Buddhist meditation practice, is to put a
raisin in your mouth and see how long you can keep it there while paying
attention to its taste and texture. Mindfulness is the technique of bringing all of our
awareness to the here and now, to the sensations in our bodies and our
breathing, for example, rather than letting much of it slip away in contemplation of the
past and future or of other subjects that are not real. The assumption is that
when we act with full awareness, our actions are more likely to achieve what we
intend, and that when we feel with full awareness, we are more likely to feel
fulfilled.
Many people perform the act of eating semiconsciously, swallowing food
without really tasting it or focusing their attention on the next bite before they
have enjoyed the present one. Others talk, read, or watch television while
eating, directing their attention incompletely to their food. One consequence of
unmindful eating is overeating. Who has not mindlessly shoveled in quantities
of popcorn or chips while watching a movie or staring at a television screen?
Another consequence of unmindful eating is failure to get full sensory pleasure
from food.
I notice that if food is really good, conversation at the table is reduced to a
minimum, and people concentrate on the enjoyment of the moment. Then they
are likely to eat less and enjoy it more.
We eat automatically out of habit. To break the habit requires motivation
and practice. Try the raisin exercise to see how long you can go without chewing
it up or swallowing it. When food is served to you, take a moment to fully appreciate
its appearance and aroma before starting to eat. When you first taste it,
try to give it your full attention. I think you will find, as I have, that eating mind-
fully heightens the pleasure of the experience.

An excerpt from The Healthy Kitchen, by Andrew Weil, M.D. and Rosie Daley, 2002.