something special you have cooked yourself as an offering; and ask him or her to please bless your ingredients. Don’t worry about whether you are doing it right: if you are doing it in good faith, you’re doing it right.
Keep your sacred, blessed ingredients apart from the regular ones, but whenever you refill the sugar bowl, salt shaker, flour bin, etc. add a pinch of the blessed ingredient, and imagine that you are putting light fibers in with the pinch.
Observe that you must never be in a bad mood when you cook, nor must you eat food cooked by someone who is in a bad mood, or even an indifferent one. A burger from a McDonald’s where the employees are a light, happy bunch has more light fiber energy than a plate of organic brown rice from a vegetarian restaurant where the cook is bored or is angry at the manager.
You can easily tell when food has bad vibes. It’s not that it tastes bad per se; rather, it feels wrong or out of place in your mouth – there’s no incentive to chew it and swallow it. Whenever you get a feeling like this about something you are eating, spit it out. Don’t swallow it, even to be polite. Much processed, convenience food “tastes” like this – bland, insipid, effete, enervated – but people get so used to this kind of food that they can’t tell the difference any more. They just assume that feeling lousy all the time is how you’re supposed to feel, and they cease to notice that it is their food which is bringing them down.
Finally, talk to your food. Thank it as if it were alive and could understand you. Not long conversation, just a simple acknowledgment that you are aware of being in the presence of a sentient