There’s one thing every great cook I know agrees upon: Love is an essential ingredient for delicious food.

With this in mind, we have a simple challenge for you this week:

Try and infuse an extra dose of love into your food preparation and mealtimes.  Not only will your cooking probably taste better, but the process of creating and eating the nourishment that fuels our existence can become it’s own healthy mindfulness practice.

There have even been a few recent studies, including one performed at University of Minnesota and another at University of Maryland, proving that added care in the kitchen can make our meals tastier.  In a nutshell, data revealed that that food prepared with good intentions and mindfulness was more enjoyable than food made and consumed in a rush.  Another more ethereal study by Japanese artist Masaru Emoto examined how emotions and energy affect the molecular structure of water, which, of course, is in all food.  In this study, entitled Messages from Water, Emoto photographed how various “words of intent” positively or negatively affected the molecular structure of water.

Modern science aside, it’s an age-old belief that love and positive energy begets love and positive energy.  Challenge yourself to step into that more loving space this weekend.  If you’re in a funk, please take a moment before cooking or eating to connect with your breath. Cultivate gratitude for who you are and the fact you have nourishing, fresh food to prepare  (a true gift!). Simply doing this can quell whatever negativity was there.  While eating, take time to appreciate the flavor and texture of each bite. Honor the powerful and nourishing fact that we can shift our perception and deepen our awareness.

I’d like to leave you with a favorite quote of mine. It’s one that also never fails to lift me up when I’m feeling down or indifferent. Feel free to carry it with you today.

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices on the night.”

– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

by Sophie Slater