By Rachael J. Avery
Answering the question, “What’s for dinner?” with a nutritious choice may be easy on a nice, relaxing, crimson-sky Sunday. However, when a loved one calls while you are on the way home at 4:30 p.m.—creeping through red lights and traffic with fast food places screaming quick, cheap and easy every three blocks—even the best of intentions to eat healthy can go right out the window.
When you are pressed for time, remember that unhealthy food temptations are the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to derail your connection with spirit, leaving you at odds with your true values.
The good news is that you can fasten your seatbelt snug around your spirit with intuitive cooking. The great news is that the best venue to build your connection to Source energy through food is convenient, practical, and highly accessible. It’s right underneath your nose, in your own home. It’s called your kitchen and it’s ready whenever you are! Even more spectacular news is that you can practice your newfound faith in the power of food at least three times a day until healthy eating becomes a meaningful ritual rather than a depressing struggle.
Intuitive cooking encompasses the following principles:
1) Align with your health and wellness values
2) Align with your spiritual values
3) Harnesses your creativity
4) Align with your financial values
5) Make it practical to compete with quick, cheap and easy
Mastering intuitive cooking simply means that your inner dialog during the chaotic drive home will sound something like this, “I have everything I need at home to make dinner.” Then you breathe in confidence, ease and comfort.
It will not scream, “I’m tired. I’m stressed. I have people waiting on me at home. I’m just going to pick something quick up.” Then you breathe low with anxiety while reaching for a bag of chips.
Simply, intuitive cooking is channeling your Higher Self or Source to come through and help with any food challenges you may have, such as:
• I need affordable, quick, inspiring meals
• I have allergies to consider
• I have a meal plan I want to stick with in the New Year
• I want to be more “me”
• I just want the one question I must ask myself every day—“What should I eat?”—to be answered with confidence, ease and comfort. That would be nice!
• I want to “want” to eat healthier instead of feeling like it is a struggle to consume the right foods.
So let’s get cookin on the intuitive solution, shall we?
The Tools of Intuitive Cooking
Here are the three most important ingredient in your intuitive cooking recipe:
1. Conduct an EMOTIONAL CHECK whenever you consider eating. Ask yourself, “What’s for dinner?” Identify three words that describe how you are feeling, acknowledge their presence. Then ask Source to transform any negative energy and harness all positive energy, like excitement, creativity, or peace for cooking dinner.
Food holds immense stores of energy, just as we humans do. When we cook, that energy is being exchanged. Therefore, our foods absorb the feelings that we bring into the kitchen. Clearing, channeling, sending intentional positive energy and blessing food during the process of cooking is only possible if we first know what emotions we are cooking with.
2. Before you even step into the kitchen, KNOW YOUR VALES around food, health and wellness. You need to illuminate a heartfelt connection with food. I suggest doing a vision board on food, health and wellness to identify three words that encompass positive values regarding food. Then use those words to ask for help from the universe, source, angels, guides, fairies, mermaids, and so on. You’ve got a whole posse waiting to help you with food! Get them working on steering your cravings towards your values rather than away from them. Think of it as asking your guides to leave a trail of healthy food for you, leading right to your divinity.
3. Once in the kitchen ask yourself, “HOW CAN I LOOK AT WHAT I HAVE DIFFERENTLY?” Ask your higher powers to help illuminate food in positive, creative ways. This expands your existing ingredients. All of a sudden you may start seeing that a tortilla could also be used as a pizza crust or a piece of green leafy lettuce can also be used as a taco shell waiting to be stuffed. Keep asking this question over and over again until you experience the knowing that what you already have is enough to eat healthy and make the correct choices.
As intuitive healers, we are primed to be a powerful conduit in the kitchen. We can receive and accept spiritual guidance regarding food, cooking and even grocery shopping! From my grateful kitchen to yours, I’d like to share with you a blessing for my food right before I eat:
“Bless this food for its intended purpose nothing more and let it be enough”
May the spirit of empowerment infuse your food choices in 2014.
Rachael J. Avery teaches cooking classes in Wesley Chapel, FL. She is the owner of The Grateful Pantry, an online community of grateful spiritual go getters who explore ways in which food, cooking and health challenges empower values. She uses a formula called “The Dinner Equation” to guide grateful cooking. For more information on Rachael’s vision board readings, intuitive dinner planning and coaching and dinner workshops visit www.thegratefulpantry.com.