MAKING THE UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS

I am not quite sure who said the last thing to discover water would be a fish is, but whoever it was, thank you. Sometimes we are like the fish, it is not until you take us out of our fish bowl that we become conscious of all the blessings in our life. Thich Nhat Hanh in his book Peace Is Every Breath, tells the story about how he remembered to be grateful for the water when the plumbing broke down. Sometimes I forget to give thanks for the electricity, until we have a power outage. I forget to give thanks for my dishwasher until it stops working. I had forgotten what a gift it is to go to the bathroom until I woke up one morning and was unable to urinate. How many things happen in our daily lives that we forget to give thanks for or do not even think of as blessings until we are suddenly and unexpectedly deprived of them

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A Dash of Humility

I have often talked about the importance of cooking with love. It is that secret ingredient which people seem to be able to taste in your cooking. However, I have found that love without humility seems to affect the outcome of the dish. One of my favorite stories about this is told by Mary Beth Crain. She tells the story of making a dish for her mother which she should not have been eating as it was not a diabetic friendly dish.

I feel, however, that I must issue a warning: cooking with love doesn’t always bring great results. Over the holidays I got an old American Home Magazine from 1937, in which I found, of all things, an ad for Royal Baking Powder featuring a recipe from none other than the mother of famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart. For some odd reason I was entranced by the tinted color photo of white-haired old Mother Earhart, looking maternal and saintly, presenting her beautiful platter of fried chicken, gravy and biscuits made with foolproof Royal Baking Powder. The promo read, “’Amelia’s Favorite Dish is My Fried Chicken and Biscuits!’ Says the Mother of the World’s Most Famous Woman Flyer.”

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