Cooking
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
It is important when preparing and cooking food to look at how you are energetically affecting your food. We can cook with intention if we focus our minds on the task at hand, think positively, and feel gratitude toward the food we are preparing. The environment we are preparing and cooking food in also affects the energy of the meal we will later eat. What is the noise level in your house like when you cook? Is it contributing to the energy you want to channel into your food? Are you concentrating on cooking or on something else, such as the radio or television? Is there a lot of clutter in your kitchen? What are your emotions like when you cook?
If you come home from work with high levels of stress, it can be beneficial to let go of your day before engaging in preparing food. Perhaps you can take a bath, change your clothes, take a few deep breaths, or meditate. Think about what energy you want to receive from your food and how you can go about creating this energy.
In addition to the energetic qualities of preparing food, there are some ways that you can bring higher levels of health to the process of cooking. To preserve as many of the nutrients in foods, it is helpful to cook at low temperatures, even if this means that your food takes longer to cook. Steaming foods doesn’t remove as many of the nutrients as frying or boiling them. Don’t use Teflon pans for cooking because toxic gases and carcinogens are released into your food. Additionally, the oils that you use to cook vary in how they affect your body. Since oils can quickly oxidize from heat and go rancid before you ingest them, it is important to cook with oils that are the most stable when heated. Coconut oil is the most stable, followed by olive oil. (Please see the section of this paper called Fats for further information on oils.)