Food as a Medium of Exchange

In “Kitchen, Food, and Family”, chapter two of Elizabeth Perez’s, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions, she talks about the emphasis on feeding the gods in Black Atlantic traditions and that practitioners “use food as a medium of exchange with their deities” (61). Reading this made me think of a similar practice we do in my family, but instead of feeding the gods, we feed our ancestors. My family’s participation in the religion that we’ve been following has diminished over the years, but my mom continues to be an active practitioner. There is an altar (butsudan) in the room upstairs of my house for our ancestors. Most, if not all the families in the church we belong to have an ancestor altar, and the responsibility of each family is to maintain cleanliness of the altar and make daily food offerings, as well as pray to their ancestor spirits. My mom will take small portions of the dinner that we have prepared for the family to eat that night (we can’t serve them with microwavable meals, fast food, etc.), and then before she offers it to them, she will pray. The purpose of this ceremonial care of our ancestors is to cleanse them of any spiritual impurities. It is said that if we do not follow this ceremonial ritual of caring for our ancestors, then disturbances to individuals will follow. This sounds a bit dark, but like mentioned above, food is used as a medium of exchange- in exchange for feeding our ancestors, we live in harmony.  I think watching this ceremonial process a number of times over the years has shown me the importance of food- even ancestors and deities need it. 

This does not really tie closely into deities, but more with the significance of preparation of food and the ability that food has in connecting us with people and filling us with emotion. I watched an episode of Netflix’s show, “Chef’s Table” centered around a Buddhist Korean nun  for professor Timm’s, Sacred Texts of Asia class. Jeong Kwan prepares vegan meals for her community at the temple she is a part of. One thing that was emphasized in the episode was her preparation of the food. All ingredients excluded meat and fish, seasonal vegetables grown in the temple garden are used, and she does not include garlic, onions, scallions, chives, or leeks in her cooking, all of which are sources of too much spiritual energy. This is because temple food focuses on keeping a person’s mind calm and static- consumption of those foods leads to distraction and prevents a person from achieving a state of calmness. I found this to be fascinating because I never thought of specific foods as having the capabilities of distracting the mind (excluding spice, foods that one is allergic to or do not like). Love and care are put into food when it is prepared in the way that Jeong Kwan does it. Food is not just food. It serves many purposes, such as connecting people together, teaching us life lessons, bringing us all sorts of emotions (mainly joy), etc.