I’ve been asked why I don’t just use my Kenwood to chop up vegetables for soups. It’s quicker – yes but noisier and not as calming as working steadily through the pile of carrots or whatever with a good kitchen knife.
It’s maybe not as common as doing a walking meditation but after all, if people have been taught that they can meditate when washing dishes, then focussing on the job in hand, slowly, purposefully and not aggressively using a knife to prepare vegetables is not a bad idea.
A soup that has been prepared in this way has more than the goodness of the vegetables One of my favourite DH Lawrence poems – We Are Transmitters, includes the following lines
‘Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding good is the stool…’
Life's a Beach 