Same Food ~ More Grounding Experience

I had salmon pasta with spinach and capers again last night ~ but it was a totally different experience than the meal I wrote about in my last blog.

First of all, it was left-over food from our restaurant dinner four or five days earlier. There obviously wasn't as much, but I heated it up in a pan along with baby spinach leaves. I fixed a salad with crisp, romaine lettuce and sliced some red onions, topped with a drizzle of olive oil and vinegar dressing.

My husband decided he wasn't hungry, so I ate alone. It all felt "right" to me.

This time, I hadn't created an expectation by suggesting we go out for dinner ~ we clearly had two different goals that evening. I was also hungry for connection, and he was just hungry for ~ well, food. As I mentioned earlier, the result was that we both ate too much.

Last night our choices were much healthier and satisfying. My husband didn't eat just because I was eating. He decided he really wasn't hungry, and opted instead to create time and space for himself and read his book. I, too, enjoyed the time to reflect in the quiet, and noticed that I was plenty satisfied with a third of the food I had been served on our night out.

But the other interesting thing here was that we were each connecting with ourselves in this period of solitude. The TV was off ~ and we were each operating in our own "space," with no expectation from the other. It was nice to know that that was just fine ~ for both us.

No one was in a snit or manipulating with silence ~ we've all done that, and we all know how crappy it feels!

What I found interesting was that neither one of us felt drawn to scan the cupboards or troll through the refrigerator later that night ~ perhaps because we had been truly mindful of what we were truly hungry for!