2 posts tagged “food”

What's been your worst experience at a restaurant?

There are too many competitors for worst restaurant experience, and they all boil down to the same few problems:  the restaurant is exceedingly noisy - not from the patrons, but from the music being played and the way the dining area is constructed to hold and amplify noise.  Even the smallest sounds are loud.  The waiters are rude or absent - usually absent.  The food is cold, congealed, or badly flavored.  Rinse and repeat.

And I've been blessed with more than my share of good restaurant experiences.  Those are far more diverse.

I found this link from several different sources, including friends who currently live in Chicago:  Weight Watchers.

I find it offers some "food for thought", particularly when it concerns Numenism.  In such small numbers, we aren't likely to attract public notice.  I highly doubt anyone would find us newsworthy.  But we do center all of our celebrations around food.  We aren't the only religion that uses food as a celebratory tool, nor do we have dietary laws and restrictions that would limit our food consumption, not codified ones like some religions do:  Judaism, Muslim, Catholicism to name the most common ones.

We do have a body of lore surrounding food - feasts and fasts of various sorts.  They aren't required by our beliefs, only customary.  And we don't want them to be codified.  We don't want to lay down laws for a number of reasons, the primary one being that such laws are counter to the spirit of Numenism.

The way our celebrations are set up, preparing the feast is integral to the celebration - people arrive, visit the altar, enter the cooking area and commence to preparing the food.  As we cook, we talk about the purpose of the feast - make visits to the altars, check on the food, play a few games, and when the meal is ready - we gather before the altar where the food is served and eat.  The way we deal with food limits consumption.

That - and the fact that we have so few "Thou shalt not"s that we don't overindulge in the one permitted act.  We allow alcohol (and I brew some mighty fine country wines and meads), we allow smoking (I prefer a pipe - I don't smoke it often, maybe a couple of times a year), we allow dancing and music and partying, and we have no restrictions of food or clothing or body modifications.

Moderation is preferred, and in our experience (this may change if Numenism ever becomes popular - or at least more widely known than now), adherents often find they practice moderation as a matter of course.  It's respectful - to oneself, to others, to divinity - to use what is needed, to occassionally indulge in excess, to recycle, and to refrain when it's scarce.  That's why most Numenists don't water the grass in a drought unless there's a need for fire prevention.  We'll water the vegetables and flowers, ourselves and the critters, but not the ground covers and the asphalt streets.  I always cringe when I see water runoff in the streets during droughts - how wasteful and disrespectful.  And that attitude spreads through all of one's life.

Obesity - true obesity caused by over-eating and lack of excercise - isn't a concern among Numenists at this time.  We do have a few members who are overweight by choice (me - I am healthier at my current weight), and a few who are overweight for metabolic reasons.  This so-called "War on Obesity" is something we will watch from the sidelines because it's not relevant.  It probably isn't relevant to most people, either, except the media is hyping it so.

Legislation and artificial "wars" only make bigotry worse, not better.  When we had fewer restrictions on our behaviors, we were able to be more graceful about accepting people's differences.  And when we outlaw more and more behaviors, people will find new ones in which to engage until those are outlawed.  Once we have lost psychotropic drugs, alcohol, tobacco, dancing, music, food, tattooes, piercings - what will we find to do next?  We will find something.  And w'l concentrate heavily on it because we aren't allowed any other recourse.  Instead of spreading or vices and indulges out over a variety of things, we'll only be doing one thing to the exclusion of all else. 

And that can't be good.  It runs counter to every teaching of moderation.