Chop Nuts, Carry Pastry

I love sweets.
This is not a surprise; many Americans do as shown by the sheer quantity of places for sweets, types of sweets and thousands and thousandsof pounds of sugar consumed in the US each year.
I have noticed that as I have been working on mindfulness that my relationship to sweets has changed.

Heavily processed sweets no longer taste good to me (eg, there are very few American candy bars I like, with exceptions such as peanut butter cups and fresh bakery cupcakes with icing-with or without a holiday decoration on a little plastic spike). I have found myself looking for other types. I look locally and have found lovely treats like New Orleans snowballs, Mexican sugar cookies in coconut (not chocolate, just coconut) fudge in San Antonio and the unchanged, ever delicious Berger cookies in Baltimore with a swath of thick dark chocolate icing on top of a soft, vanilla cakelike cookie not unlike the cookie base in New York's black and white cookies. I love the Russian chocolates from my local Russian deli, Sticky Fingers' local vegan cupcakes and tiny soft caraway cookies at the Persian market-but even reputable ones such as Trader Joe's and Ben and Jerry's are not much of a pleasure to me now.

Around the blogosphere, there have been calls for austerity; throw away clutter, work towards empty shelves, bicycle, cut out sugar; while I am happy with ideas that help people lead better lives, I believe that we can be in right relationship and mindful of our sweets.

For a few months, at my apartment, we have had no ready prepared sweets--only ones we have baked, assembled or churned (or rather have had churned by a 21st c. ice cream maker). This was not Setting A Goal or a prepared simplification, it just happened. I love baking and like having it as part of the home, so I had been doing that and one of my sweeties had got an ice cream maker. It makes such a difference making one's own sweets. It is a reminder that sweets are work and do not actually just appear and I also think that it makes a difference in wanting-if one bakes brownies, it takes much longer to do and can make one redetermine what the exact need is that sweets would fill (and thinking about that may make someone able to find a root desire that might be surprising.

I find that there is a mindfulness to making sweets; once one is focused on caramel (for example) there can be nothing else in one's mind but stirring and stirring, focusing on the heat, the smell and the texture until it is done. It can be a meditative act and I have found that when stress hits, making cakes, chocolates or dough can be very comforting. It engages all my senses and keeps me focused on one thing at a time. The ritual of measuring, mixing, cooking and cleanup can be very peaceful.

I share a lot with friends(and coworkers and more). I  like that this particular manifestation of mindfulness goes out into the world to bring some pleasure and that it tastes delicious.

I realize this may not be an option or to everyone's taste due to health, dietary restrictions or personal preference, but for me it has been fascinating to watch this all unfold. If slow food is popular, I also champion the cause of slow, mindful sweets.