An amazing week of miracles beyond ... beyond.
This weekend I was poking through a cook book we borrowed from a friend. I normally source out what I have for ingredients and then do a search on the internet for the infamous recipe that will tie them all together and make something tasty and delicious. Well, this time I opted to set forth and try the traditional method of flipping pages and sourcing out ingredients on purpose and make it a weekend project. After Blair and I set out with a page long list of fresh ingredients to make home-made vegetable soup stock for some other soup recipes we were headed to the grocery to seek our treasures and load up. A car load later we had all the wonderfully colourful goodies to make what we planned.
Today was the mixing, chopping, sautéing, browning, stirring and smelling part of the project. WOW! Now I know why cooks LOVE to cook. The smells from all of the tasty morsels was intoxicating. From basil, leeks, onions, coriander seeds, crushed peppercorns, sage, thyme, carrots and yes, even a couple of apples (never heard of that before in soup stock)... the concoction was simmering and smelling up the whole neighbourhood in just a matter of minutes. I even coaxed Blair in from mowing the lawn to take a real whiff of the tantalizing mixture bubbling and brewing in the great big stock-pot on the stove. It was truly almost an orgasmic sensation of smells that surrounded my while mixing and stirring.
The dinner tonight is going to be an amazing blend of Summer Harvest Chowder. A medley of corn, potatoes (donated from this morning's brunch with some of our Miracle Sharing group of friends), tomatoes, red peppers, more basil, more onions... mmm mmm mmm... and even some lovely cream to add to the mixture to top it off. Just imagining all of these ingredients that we have added to our wonderful meal today have come from the earth has got me buzzing. When we do things that really give us great pleasure… like cooking can be for me… we sink into almost a trance-like state that allows us to really BE in the moment… to feel the moment for what it is gifting us. When we enjoy so much what we are doing, we rarely sink into the judgements of the things around us. We are literally in that moment and loving every minute of it. Feeling the energy of all of these ingredients as they started smelling so… so… mmmm mouth wateringly tasty.
…it makes me want to think about what I would grow in a garden now and how it would all work out so tastily for us and our friends. So here's to finding things that bring you to those ecstasy-type moments and allow you to sink in to absolute bliss. …enjoy!