Trending Magazine Official Issue1 20000 | Page 12

Trending Magazine Eat Out So, to wind up a long and stressful day, pay your kitchen a good visit and make something that will be both healing and satisfying. In case you do not know where to start, there is an unlimited number of cookbooks and ooh! YouTube. Kudos to whoever invented that Cooking as therapy E veryone deals with the daily emotional challenges of existence. Living and being alive is not all easy although they keep telling us to be grateful for the gift of life. Sometimes life just keeps throwing you lemons, and once you have made a whole lot of lemonade out of them you eventually end up crying over the fact that everyone else keeps getting other exotic types of fruits. To cook, you must involve a bit of your mental prowess. It needs some level of concentration to whip up a palatable meal. That being said, it keeps you in the moment, and as you concentrate on not getting the house burnt down or your fingers chopped and included in the meal (Yuck!), you kind of let go of your other worries. An obvious point is nutrition. The brain runs on food. The better you eat, the better your brain functions and cooking your own food ensures that is custom made for you, and you use ingredients that are good for your general wellbeing. You get to choose. Aromatherapy. There is something refreshing about the smell of good food. It is healing to say the least. Being in the kitchen helps you to experience these smells first hand, and as they mature when they are heated. There is something therapeutic about using spices, and it cannot be overemphasized That is when we need therapy. This is not to say that you need to see a shrink (although you could), but therapy can be anything that helps to diagnose and treat mental and emotional problems which most of us tend to have at times. You do not need to be a psychopath to need therapy; any emotional or mental disturbance can be cured by a good therapy. Now, cooking can seem like a chore (and it is), but it can also be quite therapeutic. In fact, some therapists use kitchen time as part of their treatment for a wide range of mental and behavioral health conditions. This is how cooking can help you unwind: Appreciation. It is amazing how many problems in life can be solved (or at least minimized) when we practice appreciation. It takes your mind off what is wrong and what could go wrong to all the good things around you. A successfully cooked meal does that for you. You look at it and realize you made something wonderful and satisfying from an array of things, using your own hands (how cool is that?!). So, to wind up a long and stressful day, pay your kitch