Tuesday, March 3, 2009

A recipe

I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time cooking lately. Now that we can no longer afford to eat out, I have been trying to bring variety and interest to our meals by using recipes. My husband, who has been semi-retired (out of work) for six months, goes a bit stir-crazy with just me and the computer for company so we've been inviting family and guests to share these meals with us.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm not always the happiest of chefs, even when I know that cooking provides some wonderful quiet time, time when I can place myself fully in the now, and as the Buddhists would say, cut the carrots in order to cut the carrots.

I want to finish my next book and write the two articles I've got slated for publication later this year. I don't really want to cook. And, there's the difficulty in finding focused concentrated meditation time.

Perhaps all that God wants of me right now is to accept what is. To be there for others, to put my own plans on hold and to give thanks that we've got food to share. To take each moment as the gift it is no matter what that moment consists of, including cooking.

2 comments:

Stratoz said...

I don't mind cooking. but walking to the kitchen can be a task that requires great motivation. why is it that things we enjoy doing can be so hard to get to???

Sheila Deeth said...

I don't mind the cooking, or the cleaning, or any of that, though I'd like someone to notice I was doing it. I like your advice though. God notices.

About Me

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Beryl is the author of The Scent of God: A Memoir published by Counterpoint NY in 2006 and A View of the Lake published by Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. in 2001. She’s been living on Lake Superior for seventeen wonderful years, and spent 10 years writing two popular columns for the Cook County News Herald: Newcomer Notes and Putting Down Roots. Beryl is past president of the Schroeder Area Historical Society and a long-time chair of its Oral History and Marketing committees. She is a past board member of the Violence Prevention Center in Grand Marais and committee member for the Grand Marais Art Colony’s first ever annual North Shore Reader and Writers Festival. She’s been published in the Sun Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, Lake Superior Magazine, and The Trenton Times and in the anthologies, Surviving Ophelia published by Perseus Publications in 2001 and The New Writer's Handbook, Vol. 2, published by Scarletta Press in 2008 and was named Best of Minnesota Writers by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She is currently working on her third memoir: the sequel to The Scent of God.