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            Next, bless your key, staple ingredients – salt, flour, sugar, honey, etc.  You can ask any spirit helpers you are presently using to do this for you:  Jesus or Mary, Krishna, nature spirits, etc. can all do the job for you.  Just take them a pound of sugar, salt, or flour; address them in whatever form you are accustomed to; and ask them to please bless your ingredients.  If you don’t have a spirit helper, just take the ingredients to the summit of the largest or most imposing mountain or hill in your immediate area; take the mountain spirit a token portion of something special you have cooked yourself as an offering; and ask him or her to please bless your ingredients.  Don’t worry about whether you are doing it right:  if you are doing it in good faith, you’re doing it right.           

Keep your sacred, blessed ingredients apart from the regular ones, but whenever you refill the sugar bowl, salt shaker, flour bin, etc. add a pinch of the blessed ingredient, and imagine that you are putting light fibers in with the pinch.             

Observe that you must never be in a bad mood when you cook, nor must you eat food cooked by someone who is in a bad mood, or even an indifferent one.  A burger from a McDonald’s where the employees are a light, happy bunch has more light fiber energy than a plate of organic brown rice from a vegetarian restaurant where the cook is bored or is angry at the manager.           

You can easily tell when food has bad vibes.  It’s not that it tastes bad per se; rather, it feels wrong or out of place in your mouth – there’s no incentive to chew it and swallow it.  Whenever you get a feeling like this about something you are eating, spit it out.  Don’t swallow it, even to be polite.  Much processed, convenience food “tastes” like this –  bland, insipid, effete, enervated – but people get so used to this kind of food that they can’t tell the difference any more.  They just assume that feeling lousy all the time is how you’re supposed to feel, and they cease to notice that it is their food which is bringing them down.           

Finally, talk to your food.  Thank it as if it were alive and could understand you.  Not long conversation, just a simple acknowledgment that you are aware of being in the presence of a sentient being who is worthy of your respect, who died for you, and from whom you wish a favor.  You wouldn’t ask a human being for a favor in a surly, disrespectful manner; on the contrary, you would ask humbly and respectfully, and feel gratitude for the favor when granted.  And that is how you must address your food:  take small bites, chew it slowly and mindfully, eat in silence paying attention to the act of eating, and never eat until full.  (excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living) 

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at:  www.dearbrutus.com  Subscribe to Bob Makransky’s free monthly ezine at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac