Recipe for a Big Bang

One of my favourite things about Buddhism is the recurring references to cooking and food. Granted, most religions are obsessed with food, but it's largely with the rules, rites and rituals of food. So far in my reading, which isn't very far at all yet I admit, Buddhism seems to have one important rule and that is that food be made, served and eaten with loving attention and care. Different branches of Buddhism do seem to adhere to different dietary rules and, from what I gather, monks have an extensive list of rules regarding food and etiquette but, as in all things Buddhist, the most important element is loving attention and care.

As someone who managed to end years of physical pain and suffering by changing her diet, a discovery and alteration that required much attention and care, I appreciate this thoughtfulness towards food. My own healing led me to all sorts of shocking discoveries about the foods we are sold and eat. A lot of what's on your average grocery store's shelves I doubt any intelligent, thoughtful human would willingly choose to eat but our inattentiveness has lead to careless consumption and is allowing our most basic sources of caloric fuel to be irrevocably altered and contaminated.

So I bake gluten free bread for practical reasons yes, but I also bake bread as an act of subversion, spiritual grounding and growth. I spend most Sundays creating chaos in the kitchen, but today, as I folded hemp flour into my mashed bananas to make a hemp banana bread, a worry crossed my mind that my inner hippie might be out of control.

Later, as I set the second loaf, sorghum bread, on the cooling rack I remembered the Freegans and thought, "Or maybe I'm just the new mainstream, relatively speaking." Then I placed the glass loaf pan, still warm, in the sink and it spontaneously combusted. An instantaneous rain of glass shards cascading through the air left me gaping in awe at the remains of my favourite loaf pan and thinking, "Then again, there's nothing more radical than that."