Sacred Secrets of Cooking

“The consciousness of food depends mostly on the consciousness of cook”. – Sri Chinmoy

Cooking topic is not something that you would think of when you think about femininity. However, woman and cooking are directly connected in a very ancient, sacred and spiritual way. Food is basically the manifestation of pure love through cooking, especially if woman the one who cooks. Today I would like to share some intriguing oriental secrets of why cooking is a true spiritual practice, why eating at home is healthier and how it is all connected to femininity.

Role of Woman in Cooking

Everything in the world is energy. When we interact with something, we always exchange energies. We can see how even our thoughts influence water from the experiment with water crystals. (insert link?). According to ancient Vedic knowledge, when we cook we should do it with positive loving thoughts, with good intentions and in good mood. The food we touch will take it all in and the taste of food will be different depending on how we were feeling when we were cooking. Traditions of praying before cooking or eating, or performing some sort of ritual have the same idea, because when we eat, it is not only food that we take in. We also ingest vibrations and “consciousness” of products and meal.

Woman is someone who is in the center of the home, so cooking and creating a comfortable and pleasant home environment is considered one of her sacred duties, according to Vedic and Slavic traditions. She can make a real sacred meal out of simple cooking. In many ancient cultures woman was the one who always cooked and was a true family healer. Food cooked with love is truly a healing tool that can address many different issues. When woman cooks, she infuses the food with all her love, which then nourishes all family members. Which in turns helps her family to live a wealthy and healthy life.

Where does cooking start?

Cooking starts with the act of buying the products, actually. How and where and from whom we buy them are all very important factors that will also reflect in the final meal. Everything we buy, especially from a farmer’s market type of place, should be from the people with good intentions, smiling and in good mood. We should be able to feel good about them, intuitively. Besides the seller, the product itself has to be good as well: look nice and fresh, with good color and in good shape. It is not beneficial to save money on food in buying something of less quality. Good food means wealthy household, and it works in both ways.

Kitchen as sacred space

Kitchen is where all the cooking magic happens, where love enters the house, directly through food. That is why it is so very important to keep it as clean as possible. Everything, including stove top, counters, tables and fridge, pantries should be clean at all times, and especially before we start cooking. After we are done, all dishes should be washed and put right away, tables should be wiped clean and trash should be taken away regularly as well.

Colors of the kitchen should be warm and welcoming, something that uplifts the mood every time we are there. According to Feng Shui (What is it explain), best colors for kitchen are: red, yellow and orange. They promote better digestion and overall good mood.

Clean kitchen means not only on physical but spiritual, mental level. It is always a good idea to turn off TV or radio with random information and to turn on some pleasant music.

There are many ways of making your kitchen a true sacred space: candles and incenses, figurines of goddesses, flowers, crystals, altar, etc.

Importance of good intentions

Like I have already mentioned earlier, food can absorb the energy easily. When you cook, everything you transmit outside, like your emotions, feelings, your mood, can end up in your final meal. So our health and health of our loved ones will depend on it, if we cook at home. This explains the fact that the same meal can have different taste if cooked by different people. There are a few simple rules to ensure we “infuse” our food with good energy and love.

1. Try to always cook in good mood. Do not start cooking when you are mad, upset, irritated or even tired. The kind of food you’ll end up with will act almost like a poison in the long-term health. A good way of setting the right mood would be to either meditate prior to that, have some rest, listen to good music, pray, sing, dance, or even do some Hoʻoponopono – a Hawaiian practice of forgiveness. You should be in complete harmony and at peace when you start cooking.
2. Prepare your space. Clean it, open the windows, bring some light in. If you do these preparations regularly, your mind will get used to it and will be synchronized you’re your body automatically.
3. You can “program” your food mentally with some beautiful affirmations while cooking. If you cook for yourself, you can say something like “Everything I do is wonderful”, “I am the healthiest and happiest person”, “All my wishes come true easily”. If you cook for your man or family, you can come up with something along the lines “All my family is healthy and happy”, “All family members love and respect each other”, “We always spend beautiful time together”.
4. Before you start cooking, make sure you have everything you need handy. It will save you time and energy. And plus, it will give you more inspiration to dive in the sacred process of cooking love 😉
5. The energy of food depends not only on our mental peace and clarity, but also on our physical cleanliness. That is why our home clothes should be not only comfortable but clean and pretty looking.

Oriental secrets of cooking

Knowing all this now, we can think of the quality of the food prepared and cooked in cafes and restaurants, and anywhere outside the house. Often times, this process is full of stress, in a rush, possible anger or other negative emotions. Unless you go to the rare place, where you can actually see who cooks for you and how. The importance of cooking and eating at home in this case becomes obvious.

There are some secrets in the actual cooking process that were a norm in ancient cultures of Asia.

• A woman can easily influence her relationships with her man and whole family with her cooking. Simply by preparing the bread dough, she already participates in this magic. It is recommended to knead the dough, as well stirring the soups and other dishes in clockwise direction. When woman does it, she should be mentally wishing happiness to all her family members, and meditate on good relationships. By stirring the dish counter clock wise, a woman may create a conflict in the family and break up in relationships.

• The longer the dish is being cooked, the better the relationships are. In families, where people eat mostly in restaurants or fast food, relationships also become fast and shallow.

• The more diverse the food is, the more rich and deep the relationships are.

• Every new dish in the family a man sees as a new “gift” from his woman. Which means, in turn it may make him offer some gifts to his woman as well.

Quality of products

The best quality products are fresh and organic. It is preferable to pick those whenever you have a chance and opportunity. They have the most amount of prana as well, or energy. Seasonal, local products are also the best ones you can use. Following this logic, everything processed, canned or old have little value for our energetic health.

Using the best quality water is also very important. It is not always accessible for everyone naturally, that is why the good idea would be to use filters or getting water elsewhere other than straight from the faucet.

The best type of stove is gas, with an actual fire. It will charge the food and infuse it with good healthy energy. After that one goes electrical stove, that is even less beneficial. On the last place is a microwave. It literally kills all prana in our food, and destroys food on physical and energetic levels.

Last but not the least, try to cook only what you can eat at once. Freshly cooked food is the one that will give us most amount of health, it has large amount of prana as oppose to the food from the fridge, like leftovers.

Stay healthy from head to toes, lovelies!