Kitchen Report

Elmo and Michelle Obama made quick friends on Sesame Street recently to give a public service announcement for parents: Eat right and exercise and your kids will, too.

This is a far, far cry from the habits that Cookie Monster used to teach us when I was watching Sesame Street religiously in the early 1970s. (Think “C is for Cookie.”) So much for early education. I suppose we also should have been wearing helmets when we rode our Big Wheels.

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This has been some week of  deep thinking about food.

First, I went to Boston University’s free conference on the Future of Food.

There were a lot of wonderful thinkers there for the morning sessions that I attended. But the thing that has stuck with me the most was a comment that had nothing to do with food. Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk, shared some wisdom he learned from begging (this is how monks subsist). He said that if someone gave him food, he was grateful. If someone didn’t give him food, he was also grateful – because it was an opportunity to fast.

Wow. Chew on that for a few minutes. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been irked by not getting what I want when I want it. I’ll try practicing gratitude next time and see what happens.

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