hedonist eats | May 2, 2012
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eat like an animal

 

that men
and insects are the same
both transient flecks
of starry dust
that out of nothing came

Don Marquis, from The Adventures of Archy and Mehibatel

 

 

 

 

What is it to be human?

Peel back the layers of history, art, economics, technology, language, wars, and religion, and you might guess that you are basically an animal. Peel back your clothes, and you’ll erase any remaining doubt. It’s about time to start eating like one.

There are many types of animals in this world, from the fiercest of predators to the shyest of prey. All share one common attribute:  all spend most of their time in pursuit of food. (That is, when they’re not chasing tail).  Our fellow fauna eat without guilt or shame, with sensual abandon. Why not you?

Styles do vary, and we humans –gastronomically speaking—have much to learn from the other species.

From the Felines: Eating is adventure. The chase is half the fun. And once caught, playing with one’s food can be very entertaining.

From the Canines: What is done is done. The future exists only in the imagination. Indulge yourself in the pleasure of the moment. This moment. Now, this moment. Now, this moment. Now this moment.

From the Spider: Grace, skill, style, and delicacy are the tools of seduction. Eating, like predation, need not be crass.

From the Vultures: Delicious meals lay in wait if you know how to look. When you do find food, invite all your friends and neighbors. There is plenty for all.

From the Python: Embrace your food. Hold it close. Hold it tight. Take it in whole. Then, when you’re done, relish its slow, luxurious digestion.

From the Deer: Eat a wide variety of fresh, verdant, living, seasonal, local greens. Take all day as you eat course after course after course.

From the Bumblebee: Choose only the finest, most colorful, sweetest-smelling ingredients to concoct life-giving food for the entire community.

From the Cockroach: Eat humbly, and ye shall inherit the earth.

Assignment:  Choose an animal. Any animal will do: your dog, the bird at the feeder, the spider under your desk. Watch as he eats. What is there to learn? Let the spirit of your chosen animal guide you the next time you eat.

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hedonist eats | April 10, 2012
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slow challenges fit for a hedonist

Today’s challenges in Hedonism come from guest blogger, Tim.

I think one way to help extend the enjoyment of the meal is to extend the preparation of the meal. First, you should cherish the time it takes to cook the food you eat. Thinking of what you are about to eat generates the same physiological and psychological responses that come from actually eating.

So make sure you are taking the time to create your own sauces and marinades. Don’t buy prepared sauces. Savor the textures of the ingredients and the transformation that occurs under your skillful hands. Chopping is different from slicing or dicing. Why are you using one technique over another? You have a vision of what you are trying to achieve with the meal. Explore and celebrate that journey.

And speaking of marinades, this is an excellent way to get a head start on on enjoying the meal. Doing the work hours ahead not only frees you from efforts when your guests arrive, but you have hours of time to think about those efforts and wonder about how those favors are being infused in the food. When you eat, you will know. And when you know, you will appreciate all the more.

 

Step back in time. Did you and a friend drive up to Sidney to pick up that side of beef together? Did you grow those sweet potatoes in your front yard. There is toil and triumph in the garden. As you pull those weeds you are also creating memories that you can savor while you place that fork between your lips.

 

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hedonist eats | April 5, 2012
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hurry up and eat spring

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hedonist eats | April 3, 2012
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Slow Food for Slow Hedonists

Let us pause. Take a long moment of silence, and raise a glass of our finest home brew in honour of the founder of the Slow Food Movement.

Salute! Carlo Petrini!

The Hedonist’s Challenge owes much to this hot Italian hedonist who dares to take a stand for your right to enjoy a rich life of producing, sharing, and eating food that is delicious, socially responsible, and ecologically sustainable.

 

Slow Food is founded first and foremost on our right to pleasure and our consequent responsibility to protect our heritage of food, traditions and cultures that go along with it.

The international Slow Food Movement continues to teach us that much pleasure may be shared by eating seasonal, local food grown and prepared by people with whom you might meet, and maybe even share a meal.

Assignment:

Make it last. Challenge yourself from this day forward to more pleasure, more sensation, and more joy by eating more slowly. Simply pausing to say grace or writing in your diary will immediately increase the time it takes you to eat. If anyone asks, just tell them that you’re so inspired by the sharing of this meal with them, that you just had to take some notes. They too will be inspired.

Extra Credit: Challenge others to a slow eating race. Extra blessings go to the one who finishes last.

Extra, Extra Credit: Learn more about Carlo Petrini and the Slow Food Movement.

 

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hedonist eats | April 2, 2012
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slow down

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

 Søren Kierkegaard in Either/Or

How long can you make a good thing last? Today we savor the secrets of slowing down.

The benefits of eating slowly include

  • More pleasure
  • More sensation
  • More appreciation

Eating slowly requires a special kind of endurance that may be acquired with effort and intention. Be patient. Learning to eat slowly cannot be rushed.

How to Make It Last

Eating slowly doesn’t have to be some grand and showy performance (though it certainly helps if it is). All you need to eat more slowly is time, intention, and a willingness to savor the riches of experience.

Still in a hurry? Follow these tips, and before you know it, you’ll be eating at a snail’s pace.

  • Say grace.
  • Raise a toast to each of your guests.
  • Look and notice.
  • Sniff and smell.
  • Listen and hear.
  • Touch and feel.
  • Take itty bittty bites and chew and chew and chew.
  • Draw in long, slow breaths between morsels.
  • Feel the pleasure and murmur expressions of gratitude.
  • Raise another toast to all your loved ones present an past who could not be here with you as you share this meal.
  • Rather than loading your plate with many dishes at once, eat in courses.
  • Flirt with a guest.
  • Raise a toast to the chef.
  • Discuss the origins of the food and the recipes and traditions behind its preparation.
  • Play footsies under the table.
  • Wink at the host.
  • Raise a toast to Grandma and to all the ancestors for the wisdom of culinary traditions passed on to you.
  • Set your spoon, fork, chopsticks, bowl down between bites.
  • Chew.
  • Savor the presence of the other people at the table. Look deeply into their eyes and talk to them. Listen to them. Make special contact with the cutest one and quote Charles Baudelaire.
  • Raise a toast to good health.
  • If you’re eating alone, toast to your own good health and thank yourself for taking the time to be with yourself in pleasure.

 

Category: eating, hedonism, transformation, Uncategorized |
hedonist eats | March 28, 2012
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bless your food, part two

Today’s Challenge: Say Grace.

Godless Hedonists like you may give thanks to the bounty that has been bestowed unto you. Here’s how.

Simply take a moment or two to collect your thoughts, anticipate the deliciousness that awaits you on your plate, charge the energy field with a deep, cleansing breath, and become mindfully present to your feelings of gratitude. Atheists may not reap all the benefits bestowed upon God-fearing Hedonists, but then again you might.

 

Other helpful tips:

  • Holding hands with attractive guests is always nice. Savor with a moment or two of silence.
  • The toast is also a form of grace. If the attitude of gratitude is present, a simple cheers and a clinking of the glasses will do.
  • If your appetite seems lacking, continue to say grace until you are good and hungry. Your guests may not appreciate the delay at first, but they will certainly enjoy the opportunity to eat even more by the time you’re finished talking.

Extra Credit: The Do-It-Yourself Blessing

While it’s always helpful to be in God’s good graces, you don’t really need to ask God for blessing. You can do it yourself!

While cooking or otherwise preparing a meal hold your hands palm down over the ingredients. Move your hands freely about over the food in circles at a moderate speed. Breathe deeply and add a little noise with your breath. Feel the energy of the food and the energy emanating from your hands. Allow those energies to spiral together as one. If you’d like, you can say a few words, like “I bless this food, making all nutritious and wholesome bringing heath and vitality to all who eat it.”

Even more convincingly, you can moan in the delight of anticipation (see our make a joyful noise challenge) as a spontaneous expression of good will and well-being for both the food and its intended recipients.

Extra Extra Credit: Say grace in Italian. No need to know what the words mean. God will understand.

Benedici Signore noi e il cibo che stiamo per prendere, fà che non manchi mai a nessuno in nessuna parte del mondo, specialmente ai bambini.

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hedonist eats | March 27, 2012
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bless your food

God* loves Hedonists.

In fact, of all the creatures, God loves Hedonists best. Who, but the Hedonist, better appreciates the divinity of deep sensual experience? Who strives above all to find inspiration and joy in God’s creation? Put yourself in God’s sandals.  Whom would you favor, the child who spends her days in toil and strife, working and worrying, complaining that she’s not worthy, or the child who plays in the sunshine, splashes in puddles, and laps up every ounce of divinely blessed sensual pleasure sent her way?

Today’s challenge:  From this day forward, before each meal and snack, stop, give thanks, and bless your food.

Benefits of saying grace include:

  • prolonged anticipation that leads to your enhanced pleasure
  • the opportunity to show appreciation for those who made this meal possible
  • the opportunity for others to witness and learn from your Hedonistic lifestyle
  • better tasting, more nutritious food (Proven fact: Food, when properly blessed, tastes better and is better for you.)

If you really want to do it right, follow these guidelines.

 

Recipe for Effective Blessing

Ingredients:

One part gratitude for the delicious meal set before you.

One part gratitude for people present and not present who made this meal possible.

One dash humble request for blessing.

Mix according to taste. Garnish with hand-holding, moments-of-silence, candle-lighting, glass-clinking, song-and-dance routines, playful orgiastic sacrifice.  It simply isn’t possible to overdo grace.

 

Academy Award-Winning Grace Over a Humble Meal

I am so very thankful for this raisin for which I am about to eat.  Many thanks to the growers of the grape, the tenders of the vine, the sunshine in the fields, to the rain, to the irrigation engineers, to the dirt, to grape vines, to the planters, to the pickers, to the dehydrators, to the to the graphic designers and the marketers and the cardboard constructionists, and all who did their part in packaging this raisin, for the truck drivers and the loading dock workers and the teamster union bosses and all who helped distribute this raisin to me, to all those I have failed to mention and, most of all, to the raisin itself for its sacrifice for joining its sweet little life with mine. May the Creatrix of the earth and of all things bless this raisin and bless me so that all my thoughts, deeds, and actions fueled by the energy passed on to me through this food be worthy of these, Thy gifts.

Amen

Oh, and Mom and Dad and all the folks back home, if you’re watching, thank you too!

 

*Or Goddess, or Gods, or Goddesses, or The Universe, or the Creator, or Yahweh, or Great Spirit or Divine Providence, or Gaia, or Jehovah, or the Unmoved Mover, or Allah, or Vishnu … you know Who I mean.

 

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hedonist eats | March 23, 2012
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Come to your senses

To the Hedonist, sensual pleasure is key. But what do we mean when we talk about senses?  How many senses do you think you have?

Aristotle said humans have five.

Rudolph Steiner said twelve.

Some writers, like Guy Murchie, can’t stop counting.

What do you have going on in your sensory tool belt?

Today’s Challenge: Celebrate your senses.

Option One: Start with Aristotle’s basic five. As you eat, pay special attention to pleasure each sense can bring. Look at your food with the eyes of a lover. Hold your food up to the light and notice the color, the shadows, the patterns, and the structure of the surfaces. Breathe deeply as you take in the aroma. Explore the texture with your lips. Take a bite. Notice what you feel in your mouth.  What are the sounds you hear as you chew? How does it taste? Notice the nuances of the flavors, the complexities. Enjoy the flood of associations and thoughts dancing about in your head. Allow each bite to stimulate each sense. Invite new awareness to inform each bite.

Option Two: Choose one sense and search within to find more senses. Take taste, for instance. How many distinct tastes do you sense? What are some of the other tastes that cannot be described with the basic sweet, salty, tang, and bitter? Notice the nuances and appreciate.

Option Three: Experiment with experience. Review the lists of the many senses listed above. Is there a sense you suspect might be missing? Eat a meal where you discover a new description for a familiar sensation for which you have no name. Dine with the intention of discovery. Share your discoveries with a friend, a lover, or the world wide web.

Option Five: How might your intuitive and emotional senses show up at the table? What about your sense of pride, sense of humor, sense of beauty, sense of adventure? What about your sense of rhythm and of timing? What happens when you invite these uncommon senses to dine with you?

Option Six: Have you lost your senses? Sometimes it’s best to abandon all common sense and enjoy the full experience of eating without all that naming and classifying and analyzing and counting. As you eat, let all the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures wash over you as one integrated flood of sensation. Notice. Pause. Then let all your efforts go. Surrender to the pleasure of the moment. What might you notice when you stop noticing?

Option Seven: Check out the Food and Sensory Education curriculum at SlowFood.org. Enjoy!

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hedonist eats | March 21, 2012
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the Hedonist’s creed

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hedonist eats | March 20, 2012
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the hedonist asks

 

 

 

Today the challenge is to pay attention to pleasure. Let it come. Notice with all your senses. Notice what feels good to eat. Notice what feels good after you’re finished eating it. Maybe all that goodness is good for you, too.

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