Earlier this year I unexpectedly had an aha moment when I had gone too long without eating. I was in the Los Angeles area working my way through my to do list with the end goal of going to a little café I had read about in several magazines that sounded good. As often happens with me I had taken much longer at each place I went as well as having gotten sidetracked by some places I saw along the way. By time I got to the café it was late afternoon and I was quite hungry. Eager to try a new place I walked in only to quickly be unfavorably impressed. It was a bit too cramped and clutter-y for my tastes, a quick look at the day’s selections did not look very attractive, along with higher prices than I had expected. When I was finally greeted it felt a bit curt as if they were annoyed at having to stop and serve a customer. Given all the bad marks that had already piled up against them I seriously thought about going elsewhere but with having gone too long without food I needed to eat something soon to keep from getting sick. With no other restaurant options close by I glanced at the board one more time and ordered a bowl of cauliflower-turmeric soup to tide me over. The soup arrived fairly quickly, hot, with a nice lemony green color. However I was not done adding to the unfavorable impression list and upon first sip I immediately bemoaned that the soup was incredible bland. Thoroughly irritated now that insult had been added to injury, but still needing to eat, as well as not wanting to waste food, I turned back to the book I had brought, continued to eat, and tried not to think about how lacking the soup was.
As I did my best to ignore the tasteless soup the funny thing was the soup was precisely what started to come to the forefront. It was then I realized that while the soup was unarguably bland I was, nonetheless, enjoying it on one level, noting other flavors and nuances that might have gone unnoticed if it had been better executed. That’s when I sat back in my chair realizing just like silencing our minds to the noise of the world opens us up to being attuned to God in a deeper way, so too ‘silence’ in eating had opened me to experience my lunch in a more profound way, appreciating subtleties lost to me before.
When I cook and bake, while I usually make simple and unfussy dishes and baked goods—no making laminated dough for this girl—I do try to make my food flavorful and tasty. Eating that bland soup that day made me realize that by giving my taste buds some ‘silence’ it brought out another aspect of eating. Removing the extraneous ‘noise’ of a well flavored soup allowed me to enjoy and appreciate my food in a new way. I don’t have to wow my taste buds constantly any more than I need to have other worldly noise constantly. Taking a break from noise of all kinds provides a space for greater reflection and now I see how I can even do that with food.
I replicated this soup several times this past winter, each time slowing down and enjoying what new tastes the blandness allowed to come forward, and it has fast become a favorite recipe of mine. I plan to make it again when the weather cools, enjoying silence in eating.
The link below is to a good review of Cardinal Sarah's book The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise. I have not yet read this book, but it is on my short list. From what I've read about it, it could be very beneficial for how to create that silent space in our lives in a very noisy, hostile, and busy world. https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/06/27/cardinal-sarah-dictatorship-noise/