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Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook - Hardcover

Velden, Dana

 
9781623364977: Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1623364973 ISBN 13: 9781623364977
Verlag: Rodale Books, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Many books teach the mechanics of cooking and even inspire us to cook; not many dwell on the kitchen's ability to be a place of awakening and joy. In Finding Yourself in the Kitchen, Dana Velden asks you to seek deeper meaning in this space and explores what cooking can teach about intimacy, failure, curiosity, and beauty.

Finding Yourself in the Kitchen is a book of essays, each focused on a cooking theme that explores how to practice mindfulness in the kitchen--and beyond--to discover a more deeply experienced life. It also offers meditation techniques and practical kitchen tips, including 15 of Velden's own favorite recipes.

What happens when we find ourselves in the kitchen? What vitalizes, challenges, and delights us there? An extension of her popular "Weekend Meditation" column on TheKitchn.com, this book offers you the chance to step back and examine your life in a more inspired way. The result is a reading experience that satisfies, nourishes and inspires.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dana Velden is a Zen priest who lived and studied for 15 years at the San Francisco Zen Center. She has been writing for The Kitchn since 2008 and has contributed to The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women and The Kitchn Cookbook. She lives in Oakland, CA.

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INTIMACY, PART 1:

Spending as much time as we do in the virtual world these days, it is possible that the beautiful, ordinary miracle of the physical world can become lost to us. Occasionally, we manage to lift up our heads, blinking and adjusting our sight to a point farther away than the screen, and it's like we've just woken up. It takes a moment or two to remember where we are and that we have a body, and that it is moving through space and time. The virtual world is alluring and it has its place and promise, but the actual world, the physical world, is still our most fundamental, necessary abode.

Because of this, one of the more modern reasons we cook is for the physicality of it, for the opportunity to turn toward and inhabit our bodies in this very real and basic way. After being in our heads all day, sitting around and thinking and typing on keyboards, we eventually grow restless and depleted. We feel unsatisfied and achy in our bones. What a joy it is, then, to turn away from our devices and go into the kitchen to rustle up some soup from a few onions and last night's chicken carcass. At last, something tangible, something practical, something that satisfies both the body and the spirit.

Cooking is compelling in part because of this physicality. It requires a kind of engagement that is both grounding and practical. Reading and discussing and analyzing a cake recipe will not make the cake. It simply must be done with our bodies, with actual ingredients and implements. We have no choice in this, really, so why not use the practical imperative to cook as a chance to deepen our engagement with our bodies and the world around us? Why not use our time in the kitchen like a counterweight against the ever-present distractions of our thinking and scheming and screen- gazing so that we can be pulled, almost without our knowing, into a more balanced way of being.

Of course, we can cook in a distracted manner, with our heads somewhere else and our bodies on autopilot. But cooking will quickly teach us that we need to be fully present and aware. There's a built-in, heightened sense of alertness when we cook, for the kitchen is fraught with the potential for failure and full of dangerous, sharp, hot, and heavy situations. One second of inattention and we've lost our way in a recipe (shit, did I already add the baking powder?) or missed the part about resting the dough overnight when making bread meant for tonight's dinner. If we want to be good cooks, successful cooks, then we have to pay attention. We have to be fully engaged and in the present moment or dinner won't make it to the table, or it won't be very delicious, or worse.

The Present Moment

People often talk about being in the present moment, sometimes throwing the phrase around as if it were a simple, basic task that anyone can do if they just try hard enough. As if somehow capturing each moment as it whizzes past is possible or even a desirable thing for a human being to do. But anyone who has tried to "be in the present moment" knows that the present moment is an elusive thing. Is it this moment or (a second later) is it this one? Wait, no, it's this one! Or maybe we determinedly vow to be in the present and then suddenly we pop out of a distracted reverie having completely missed the past 10 minutes.

One helpful way to look at it is that the present moment is less a thing that we apprehend and more a state of being that we can sink into. We find this not by trying to grab ahold of it, for that's like trying to hold on to a piece of water by plunging your hands into a moving stream. It is not something that can be done through will or determination. It's more about filling the mind with the act of noticing what is happening right here in front of you, right now. It's about cultivating the capacity for bare attention by stilling our active, thinking mind and allowing the present moment to arrive. It's about receptivity.

This isn't something that will come to us naturally or immediately for we are very accustomed to our distracted, daydreamy minds. (Or to our problem- solving, multitasking, just-one-step-in-front-of-disaster minds.) We are very good at thinking about what needs to happen in the future or getting caught up in what has happened in the past, so to do something different takes practice. Classic forms of meditation help to facilitate this by having us sit still and gaze at the wall or the ground in front of us, with the idea that it will minimize the amount of input and help us to settle down and focus. Which it does, often very well. But it also can provide us with a very large, very blank screen in which we can see, for better or worse, the relentlessness and veracity of our thoughts and inner workings. This can be far from settling, as I discussed previously in the morning tea meditation on page 28.

It's also true that unless we've managed to find ourselves in a monastery, it's doubtful that we will have the chance to sit around all day, focusing on our breath and being present. So while meditation is a good thing to do, it's also helpful to have other practices that remind us to be aware and present--something that doesn't require special situations or circumstances and ideally fits into an already established pattern in our lives. Like making dinner.

A Bowl of Lemons

WHEN I imagine a life without a bowl of lemons, the picture is sad and roughly textured, like burlap or the old crumbly grout that surrounds my kitchen sink that I've been meaning to replace for years now. Lemons offer so much and require so very little, except maybe a few pennies counted out at the market, or the effort of plucking one from your backyard tree if you happen to be so lucky. A single lemon is a nice thing, it's true, but a bowlful of lemons can offer you the world.

I advise keeping a few lemons around at all times, if possible--filling an attractive bowl and setting it on your kitchen table or counter would be perfect. No need to refrigerate them as they'll last a long while if you're diligent to use the ripest first and remove the occasional moldy specimen. Or if you find that doesn't work in your kitchen, refrigerate most of them but keep a small clutch--maybe three--on a plate on your counter. Just to see them, just to pass by them as you go throughout your day, can bring a smile and a twinkle of pleasure. And while these moments of pleasure are far from inconsequential, there are endless, practical reasons for doing this as well.

In the sweet realm, lemons offer the possibility of lemon curd, lemonade, the necessary introduction of a tart note to balance a batch of strawberry jam. They can be coaxed into many types of pie, including the famous lemon meringue and Shaker lemon. Lemon cake: chiffon, £d, layer. Lemon puddings of all sorts, and mousses, and cold things like ice cream or sorbet. Lemon bars!

In the savory realm, there are few things that don't benefit from a final squeeze of lemon that will adjust the flavors with a quick, puckery hit of acid. There's also Moroccan salted lemons, lemon vinaigrette, lemon chicken, the delicious homemade condiment called gremolata, and any number of fish recipes. Risottos, pastas, flatbreads. And, of course, a quick squeeze of lemon can uplift a cup of tea or transform a mug of hot water for your morning tea meditation.

Both of these lists are woefully incomplete, of course, but the point, I hope, is taken. A bowl of lemons on your kitchen table is life-changing. It's essential. It's what good cooks, the best and most happiest cooks, do.

Lemon Curd

Makes about 2 cups

Keeping a jar of lemon curd in your refrigerator means that you will never be short on having 
something delightful and sweet in the house. It means you can ask someone over for an impromptu cup of tea, or make a simple dessert by...

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Verlag
Rodale Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1623364973
ISBN 13 
9781623364977
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Rodale
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/imprints/A6/rodale-books/books

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