If you'll bear with me, I'd like you to follow my train of thought this morning.
We're planning to make a curry tonight, shades of our Sunday night tradition from years ago when we lived in London and used to go to an excellent and cheap restaurant called the 'Shah'. Our recipe book details the spices to be used, and preferably ground in a mortar and pestle by whoever's cooking.
This in turn reminded me of when my cousin gave cooking demos in Cape Town. This was actually for a soy meat substitute and one of the dishes she made was curry. Anyhow, she got into a conversation with a woman of Indian ethnicity, who insisted curry was best when made with freshly ground spices. "Come back tomorrow and taste mine," my cousin suggested, as she'd run out. So the woman did, not knowing whether her suggestion had been followed. But when she tasted the dish, she knew. "But you didn't grind your spices," she said.
So, what did she pick up? I'd like to suggest that freshly ground spices would have been more alive in some way. Yes, we're back to the life force again and starting to look at how it can be destroyed. Machines in particular can damage it. i.e. by grinding the curry powder.
We don't make curry that often, but we do eat bread. And we prefer to slice it ourselves. It's convenient to have a thinner or thicker slice, depending on need and mood and the toaster, but I also think there's a difference when we eat those slices, as opposed to the ready-presliced.
Bread is our staff of life, and wheat connected with the sun. Our wonderful South-African bio-dynamic farmer pioneer used to do something quite wonderful, something she learned overseas which I believe is still customary in some Eastern European countries. And that was, to hold a large loaf against her ample bosom and slice towards her heart. Can't you just see it?
Yes, life, and having it more abundantly, that's what we're after.
