First things first: How deliciously GORGEOUS is that chocolate cake?! Nope, I didn't make it. (I wish!) Our dear friends brought it to us this weekend (along with the yummy lemon coconut cake behind it) from Silver Moon Bakery in New York. I did "style it up" by adding the fruit, though. I could've taken hundreds of photographs of those two cakes, if everyone wasn't clamoring to gobble them up. (I can't say that I blame them!) Okay, moving away from the cakes...(sigh)
Lately, I've been reading (more like inhaling) the wise words of Thich Nhat Hanh. In his book Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, one of my favorite chapters is called "Meditation on an Apple." (You can download the chapter for free at this link, but you won't be wasting any money if you spring for the whole book.)
In it, he writes about how our obsession with quick, convenient snacks on-the-go (in marketing terms: "snackability") leads us to eat without thinking about what we're shoveling into our mouths. We overeat, and we eat unhealthy things, because junk food and snack food is the stuff that's usually pre-packaged for us (in non-earth-friendly packaging).
Thich Nhat Hanh is all about mindfulness, so essentially, he asks us to think before we bite.
Inspired by his book...and these two cakes...and Medieval Times (I'll get to that in a second!), here are my top six tips to stop eating mindlessly and focus on your food:
1. Wake up and smell the coffee--and the rest of your food, too. If you take the time to inhale the scents of your meal, appreciating its aroma, you're less likely to shovel it mindlessly into your mouth.
2. Eat with your fingers (occasionally). Sure, we always tell the kids to stop playing with their food, but that has more to do with keeping their dinnertime under the three-hour mark. When you touch your food with your fingertips instead of your fork, you notice its texture instead of just its taste. We took the kids to Medieval Times a couple of weeks ago (campy and fun!), where the dinner during the show had no utensils (because there were no utensils back in the "olde days"). It was part of the whole (messy) experience, and it was a blast. (I'm still a little peeved that the server gave my husband a spoon for his veggie stew--I was really looking forward to watching him eat THAT without utensils!)
3. Don't surf while you eat. I'll be the first to admit that I love to read while I'm eating. There are few things more pleasurable to me than sitting out on the porch on a sunny day, having breakfast while reading a really good book. But if you're scanning the headlines on your computer or smart phone while you eat, not only might you get indigestion from the latest scandals and trumped-up news, but you're also eating without noticing your food.
4. Don't chat on the phone while you eat. Sure, it's great to multi-task sometimes. But, when you "eat while you phone", your conversations will be garbled and--worse--you could end up choking. I don't know about you, but I'm not so comfortable with the idea of giving myself the Heimlich maneuver!
5. Pretend you're a food stylist. When you take time to arrange your food into edible works of art, you're making time to appreciate its beauty. (And isn't that so much better than sticking your hand mindlessly into a big bag of chips and discovering you've hit the greasy bottom of it!)
6. Take a picture of your plated creation. That tip goes hand-in-hand with #5. As you compose the picture, you'll truly appreciate the visual beauty of the food.
All six points boil down to this: Take time to appreciate really good food. Like those cakes! They might not have been healthy (hey, I did add fruit--do I get points for that?), but they were decadent and delightful, and...
we
savored
every
single
bite.
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