spirituality in/from the kitchen?

Did you know you can get a "never-been-frozen" chicken around here? Bay Area Meat Market on Kirby Road has it. I found it two days ago. Yesterday I curried it Indonesian style with coconut milk and all. It tasted really good. I also experimented with a Cabbage and Chinese Celery dish. That did not work. Eatable but not that tasty at all. We ate it but I will not cook that again. In the afternoon, I added 2 eggs to the regular recipe of short bread just to see what it does to the bread. It turned the short bread into not so short bread. Eggs fluffed it up. Will likes it. I may repeat it again. The night before, I made meat loaf from my friend Kendra's recipe - to which I also added 1 extra egg, 2 tbs of curry powder and 2 oz more tomato juice. It tasted good. And I made a pot of beef stew which we will eat tonight. So, why am I writing all of this in my blog??? I do have an answer to that question. Here it goes: Cooking makes me always: happy nwind relaxed rof anger let go of anxiety rid of sadness rid of stress and be joyful. In my time of grieving over my mother's death, undiscerning my call to ministry and just sorting stuff in life, cooking is one of the right things for my soul. What makes me happy equally to cooking is having people to eat/enjoy what I cook. Needless to say among my favorite passages are: Ps. 34:8-10, which reads, " O taste and see that the Lords is good: happy are those who take refuge in him O fear the Lord, you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want." and I Corinthians 15: 32b-34 in which Paul said, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Do not be deceived: "Bad company ruins good morals." Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more; ..." Especially this I Corinthians passage - this has been one of my favorites since 1980. I took a class called I Corinthians at the Bible College. The professor had just returned from the U.S. studying for his Th.M. In the class room he told us about how drinking wine is not considered a "Sin" by the Presbyterians in general. I got the eat part from my father long before College. This professor explained to me about this passage including the drink part over a "Chinese Checker Game" in the Common Lounge of the College. Just the two of us. I liked his teaching on the passage a lot and obviously I still do. Shall I tell you, I beat the professor on the game. I really beat him because that's the game I played with my father regularly as a child. I was pretty good at it. As for the rest of the semester, he did get better on the game as I did in I Corinthians. He was such a good professor, many moons later I wrote my own Th.M Thesis on Paul in I Corinthians. Like my professor, I defended Paul. The professor's name was Zuala. A wonderful professor he was. I have been blessed like that in my journey of life all along.