Sriinaath Raghavan shared a wonderful piece on Fb regarding Bhagawan Ramana's anger at seeing food go to waste.
"Sri Ramana Maharishi was a stickler for Time, Discipline, and Food. He was very particular about these three and if He saw anyone wasting any of it, He would not refrain from reprimanding them.
Once He saw a sizable waste of leftover vegetable peels in the Ashram Kitchen from the day's cooking and He wasn't too happy about it so He inquired immediately, "What are you going to do with all these vegetable peels?"
One of the inmates, an old lady, said, "Sure what can we do but discard it?"
Sri Ramana clearly wasn't happy with the response and said, "Do you know how much Effort, Time, and Discipline Prakriti (Nature) takes to create and sustain Creation? We on the other hand are quick to dispose of anything and everything that we don't deem fit? Wastage is the greatest sin and not knowing what to do with what we have is the greatest ignorance?"
Everyone looked at Ramana with guilty eyes, when Ramana demonstrated what to do next. He collected all the vegetable peels, washed them thoroughly, added some rock salt, green chilies, and curry leaves, and ground them in a mortar. When this "Dheedeer Chutney" or "Sudden Chutney" was served to all the Ashram inmates for supper, they relished it so much that it became a lifelong practice in the days to come. Even today when you visit Sri Ramana Ashramam in Tiruvannamalai, this inimitable "Dheedeer Chutney" is still served with a wise old lesson - "Don't waste what you have, be it Time, Food, or Wealth; else you won't qualify to receive what you deserve!"
I began to cherish food after befriending a colleague at the office I joined in 1980. Prior to taking up the new job with me, he was in the statistics department. Once he lost his way while carrying out his work in the Aborigine settlement in Tanah Rata Cameron Highlands. After several hours he finally walked onto the road heading for the aforementioned small town. His hunger pangs forced him to pick the Hibiscus flowers from the plants that were grown by the local council along the road till he laid his eyes on the town and satisfied his hunger in one of the restaurants. He shared another story that changed both his life and mine. As he was passing along the back lane of the capital city, he chanced to see an old man standing with a vessel. He was collecting the wastewater that was discharged from the sink of a restaurant. On questioning him, the man told him he was collecting grains of rice that were washed out as the dishes were cleaned in the restaurant. He would boil and eat it.
A Muslim colleague from the office who had a Sufi master in Indonesia said that his master would wash his hands in the very plate he ate and drink the water too. When Tavayogi took me to meet Suyamjothi Swami at his Satgurunathar ashram in Ooty, we were served a simple lunch, rice, and soup. If it was home I would have cleaned the plate but as I was in public, I took what came into my hands and left the soup behind. Suyamjothi Swami walked up to me and asked me to drink the remaining soup. When we began to serve cooked food first to the inmates of old folks' and children's homes, later to the homeless on the streets, and finally to the poor in low-cost flats, we began to cherish food more and more. Today we clean the plate and lick our fingers clean.
Just as after Agathiyar came to stay permanently in my home it became his Vanam or garden, just days ago when Agathiyar came he acknowledged the small herbal and vegetable garden my daughter had started telling her that it was his herbal garden. We add home-grown vegetables to our plate of meals these days.
Eating has become all the more sacred now. The moment I take my seat, energy transpires through me. I eat and savor the food in silence. The energy reaches the very core of my cells. I guess prana from the food as with prana from breath was absorbed within the entire body. Let us not waste food for as Bhagawan says, "Don't waste what you have, be it Time, Food, or Wealth; else you won't qualify to receive what you deserve!"