I might as well rip my heart out, because it always stops when my guests take their first bite. I hover and press for reactions, but usually I don't even need a verbal response. To a skilled and dedicated emotional feeder such as myself, their faces are a dead giveaway, rippling with subtle shifts and tics that mark the difference between ecstasy and mere politeness. The world is full of other folks with this, well, not disorder , exactly, more of a penchant for really feeding people, body and soul. We're the ones who came up with the post-funeral procession of casseroles.
Chefs are lucky.
They get paid to obsess about what other people are putting in their mouths. They're striving for a total dining experience, and they don't necessarily mean finger bowls and gentle background music. They aim for utter rapture, a digestive trance. They don't know you, but they want your bliss. Anyway, if I did ever go to a therapist for emotional feeding, we'd have to go back a long way back to get to the root.