Mindfulness and eating

My dinner at Sjávarkjallarinn as a visa commercial:

-Sunflower seed encrusted dark bread with mango sauce and crushed peanuts: free

-Slowly cooked salmon with melon salsa, lime jam, and a lime cracker: free

-reindeer carrpacio with cream cheese, cherry jelly, hazelnuts, balsamic cherry glaze sauce and beer oatmeal crackers: 2900 Icelandic Kroner ($23)

-Salmon with garlic potatomash, carrot purre, and asparagus; tuna with a purple potatomash rolled in mixed nuts and zeshuan pepper whipped cream; blue ling with smoked haddock and turmerick mash and artichoke purre; salted cod with peach purre, polenta, and miso foam: 4900 ISK ($38)

-Gianduja chocolate cake with cherry filling, cherries in syrup, pecan crumble, and cherryblossom icecream: 1900 ISK ($15)

-generous (by Icelandic standards) tip for excellent service from a beautiful waitress indulgent enough to write down all of the descriptions she verbalized: 1500 ISK ($12)

-insight into the nature of experience: priceless

I realize now that I had approached the gourmet food experience in entirely the wrong way up until this dinner, as epitomized by my annoyance at the price to quantity and quality disparity the night before. I had always evaluated food by how much good food you could get for how little money. This night, however, I decided to forget price entirely and simply order whatever looked good. In doing so I realized why gourmet food is so delicious. It isn't really the better ingredients, the expertise put into it, the presentation, the atmosphere, the service, etc. What gourmet meals really do is to get you to think that your meal is worth the outlandish price you are paying. I always did this backwards: I tasted the food and then tried to evaluate what it was worth. The better way is to decide that the food is worth what you are paying for it (or more) and then be determined to get that much pleasure out of it. If you think every mouthful of the meal you are eating is worth as much as an entire meal at another restaurant you don't just wolf down your food and you don't half pay attention to it while you watch TV or listen to your dinner companions or think about what you are going to do later that night; you give your full attention to the taste and texture of the forkful of food in your mouth.

My favorite idea from Buddhism is the concept of mindfulness, of truly experiencing the present as it happens and to completely paying attention to it. Life is so much richer and more enjoyable when you can get into a mindful mindset: you see profound beauty in the smallest details that you would never even notice otherwise. Gourmet food essentially is a foray into mindfulness for non-Buddhists. When I realized this I also realized that I don't need the gourmet price tag to experience the pleasure that a foodie gets from a gourmet meal. A fifty cent mango now brings me more joy than any meal could ever had given me before. The money I spent on this meal was a minuscule price to pay for this new perspective where every morsel, every sip of water, is priceless.