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Food is a multi-sensory art form; it’s about touch, scents, colors, texture, composition, and taste. Part of it’s magic is that you can put all your time, energy and love into your work of art and all you have to show for it at the end of an evening are memories (and dishes)! This makes cooking the ultimate metaphor for life. The treasures of the heart, like memories of long evenings around the table with loved ones, are the only ones we get to take with us when we leave this planet and our physical bodies.

Cooking is a transcendental art form, but also one connected to tribal issues – childhood, security, comfort, grounding and surviving. And it’s extremely intimate. The ones we share our art with will put it inside their bodies! Call me a nerd, but I find that a meal prepared with love is one of the most magical ways we give each other energy.

A Family Meal Prepared With Love

When I go back to Sweden to see my family, our together-time revolves around cooking. First, we spend the morning discussing what we’re going to cook. There is always the surprise element — one of us will have tasted something somewhere that simply needs to be shared; a brilliant way to roast vegetables in the oven, or a classic, Boef Bourguignon slightly improved (”that will bring tears to your eyes!”).

The morning session is followed by the shopping for all the right ingredients and the wine. That is, unless my father, the impeccable wine specialist, has already prepared these top notes of the dinner composition.

Next, it’s cooking time. All of us in the kitchen, dad deeply focused by the stove and his pre-dinner whiskey within reach. Mom coordinating it all. The rest of us (me, my two sisters, my brother, girlfriends, boyfriends, nephews) running around, setting the table, tasting things, gossiping, sipping light wine that will disappear as soon as the food is being served.

Once seated, we usually spend the first 15 minutes talking about the food in front of us. Does it work? Is it as delicious as mom said it would be? Does the wine match the food? Then we usually move on to fiery discussions about the essence of money or the power of thought, followed by giggling sessions triggered by memories and wine.

Coffee and one of mom’s killer desserts, like her pure chocolate & pear browniecake, will give us no other option than to crash at the end of the evening in the big brown patchwork leather couch that has survived three decades and still miraculously fits us all. The food fest is over…and the following day…we will start all over again.

So here’s my suggestion: Pick a day and cook for a loved one. Pour all your love and energy into the food you’re cooking and just see what happens.

[Photo by ||!prliignore0||]