Why love really is the most important ingredient in any Recipe

We’ve probably all heard it… "love is the most important ingredient".

These days, more and more as I open a healthy cookie wrapper or a packet of kale chips etc, at the bottom of the ingredient list is the word ‘love’. It’d be easy to write it off… like ‘oh those hippies… so sweet’. But let me explain why I think this is a real thing… and these people putting ‘love’ on their ingredient list understand an important truth.

What if love really is an ingredient? Or more than an ingredient—it’s a condition that affects the complex alchemy of the dish. This also goes for any other emotion you may be feeling and expressing as you go about the cooking process.

There’s something about when your Mom (or Mum as us Aussies say) cooks you something… or your grandma… there are those ‘Mama vibes’ in there… and you can taste them right?

Or have you ever cooked a meal and you’re just not feeling inspired, or you’re in a bad mood, or sick, or tired and it just comes out like ‘blah’ even if you used the exact same ingredients and recipe you used another day when it turned out amazingly?

It reminds me of the Mexican movie from the 90’s, ’Like Water For Chocolate’ (Para Agua Para Chocolate).

Tita (who has a very deep connection with food and cooking… she was even born in the kitchen), falls in love with their neighbor Pedro. Due to a family tradition, it’s decided that Pedro will marry Tita’s younger sister instead. Tita is beyond heartbroken.

She proceeds to cook for the wedding, but heartbroken, she cries and cries and her tears pour into the food.

As the guests eat her food, they all begin feeling intense passion as Tita does… it’s such a beautiful scene to me… of course it’s heightened with magical realism… but it shows so beautifully how emotions do in fact go into food and carry across to the person eating the meal.

I think this is a metaphor for any other creative process in life. When you put love/feeling into what you’re doing, there’s a magical thing that happens… and the people experiencing your creation can feel it too.

xo Bonnie