In my Springtime for Lovers, when the spring season makes the whole world feel alive and crisp and fresh, let’s choose delicious food and cook and eat with awareness and experience a new way of tasting and truly savoring what we eat while we experience the joy of food. Accept the challenge to explore and savor the smells, textures and flavors of food. Start now—or begin again. Let’s take nourishment for the love of luscious.
Beyond eating as a matter of sustenance, we can enjoy eating as a rare and wonderful pleasure of life. Eating is not an ordinary task—another chore that we approach with resignation, disgust, or dread. Many of us relish in the whole process of eating: thoughtfully preparing menus, considering the seasonal harvest and new or traditional recipes; selecting the freshest, most nutritionally rich ingredients; preparing food with playful passion and the best tools we can afford; and serving ourselves and others with loving hearts and hands. In this way, the celebration of food and eating is living in a poem—living in a state of grace.
Food is more than fuel and a way to stave off hunger. Decide right now to spend this springtime with a fresh approach to food. For your inspiration, consider Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. The book’s authors—Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist philosopher and Chueng, a Holistic Nutritionist—pair the practice of mindfulness with the latest nutritional information for healthy eating—that is, of being fully aware of what is going on within us and all around us to draw attention to what and how we eat. A food writer for Booklist offers the following about Savor:
They explore the physical, psychological, cultural, and environmental barriers that may prevent us from controlling our weight, and readers are encouraged to savor food in order to fully nourish both the body and the mind. Savor includes guided meditations on everything from eating an apple to coping with stressful situations and offers advice on selecting and preparing food, staying active and avoiding self-criticism. Complete with a discussion of why healthy eating is also good for the environment, this is a uniquely insightful and positive program for wellness: a book of tested wisdom, practical action and intellectual, emotional, and spiritual nutriments. –D Seaman, Booklist
Yum: what a wonderful way to spend springtime! For the Love of Luscious, add Savor to your reading list and savoring to this Springtime for Lovers, and while you’re perusing your gardening guides and seed catalogs and Rites of Spring menu planner, fall happily, heartily and helplessly in love with the sensual experience of good eating.
Bon Appetit, My Sweet!
Dr Mell
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Nhat Hanh, T & Chueng, L (2011). Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. New York: HarperOne.
