Acceptance

There is a lot of acceptance in the air this week.  Friends and family are having their fair share of suffering.  A conversation with a colleague lead us both to recognize the power of surrender, yes, of giving up, letting go, release, laying down, and all the ways this is shown.  Acceptance is the finest color of this idea, with the attendant peace, or at least clarity of seeing.  Stories can then be put aside, folded and placed on the mind's back shelf.  My kitchen, the garden and the home then move to the front as places of refuge and renewal, like a small universe of tranquility.  May your days be filled with clear seeing and not the clutter of storytelling.

D.

End of summer

Autumn Haiku

Sunlight slants
In the garden
Leaves prepare to fall


There is a wistful quality to the fall, when nature begins the return to dormancy, to rest from its unbounded growth of the summer, when the cicadas finally stop singing their relentless heat mongering drone, and the change of light signals just how powerful its influence is over us all.

I like the autumn season.  It makes me want to cook warm unctuous things that nurture the spirit and mimics the light, the change.  I turn to recipes of biscuits and creamed squash, and want to surround myself in orange and gold, bringing out new towels for the kitchen and new seasonal arrivals like pumpkins and gourds.

But here in Texas it is a little soon. Hot afternoons of 97 degrees hardly say sweater, and yet there is this presence in the air, a softer light in the southern sky and the knowing of the body that says to get ready, as if a guest is about to arrive and will want to share some stories, ones that we have heard each year before, perhaps some new ones to add, some new grace to be perceived.

Come Away With Me

I seem to begin my years on my birthday, so most of 2013 was spent up until August, my birth month,  with an influence that I consider slow and plodding.  That is obvious given the few posts here.  However, I am ready for a new start.  I wanted this site to make an appeal to people to consider their food in a more spiritual light because that is how it has been for me.  Unfortunately, it was a weak year in the kitchen, perhaps mirroring my own inner state, a paucity of intention and attention.  I have learned that life is just sometimes like that, and to try and accept without much judgement and frustration is the best way to approach these soul searching experiences.

I am a teacher at two community colleges and am under contract to both, part-time at both, and this leads to a sense of powerlessness in regard to growth in the academic career.  Many are in the same situation and will certainly understand, whether it is contract work for a school or otherwise.  But this decade has whittled away much of my resolve and so I turned to the kitchen to find some intimacy in the creative function of life.  Well, it wasn't as creative as I had hoped, but I am going to soldier on anyway.

I hope that some may check back from time to time as I find my way through and to.

On a note of success, my kitchen garden, my first, was a brief  reward until the Texas sun took it out and all turned to potato chip crispness.  But I just loved bringing in the ripe tomatoes and squash and herbs.  That small connection to the earth, even just a 8 x 8 foot space like mine, is very fulfilling.  I suggest everyone give it a shot, even if it is just one herb on a balcony.  This was a new form of grace for me, that which was given from the small bundle of energy, the seed.  It is no wonder the seed is such a metaphor for beginnings and the bounty that can spring forth.

School starts today.  I am a teacher by profession, cook by love.  The first day of class is always a flurry of must-dos and joys of seeing colleagues.  After a long, graceful holiday season, it is time to get back into the routine of daily life.  I aim, in this new year, to approach the kitchen with greater freshness on all levels, from the ingredients to the attitude.  Part of awareness in life is to make peace with the whole, the scale of contrast from light to dark.  In art, we call this kind of lighting, chiaroscuro, literally meaning clear to dark.  The kitchen has this range as well and it is time for me to take stock of that gift and reinvigorate the process, the materials and the mindset. 

Thanks for coming back by.   I know it has been a while, but let's go forward together, shall we?

Dennis

Today the kitchen was elided due to service to my mother. We worked in her garden and enjoyed putting together an arbor that we varnished and then dug holes to bury the legs in the ground. I strung a line of wire from a tree to her house so her Queen Elizabeth grandiflora could continue its climb and we were at times graceful and at times bitchy, but always in the background, or perhaps the foreground, there was love. I came home after many hours and did yoga and meditated. Mom went to bed. Tonight I made gluten free vegan tacos with TVP and they were almost authentic. I called Mom and she had turned to the ice pack for cold comfort. Ah, these bodies, like our climbing roses, yearning to reach and bloom but feeling held up by a thin, almost imperceptible wire. And tomorrow, more growth.

"If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it." (Bhagavad-gita. 9.26) Offering has many forms but always leads to the same result, a selfless act of devotion, received in loving-kindness. To think of your kitchen in this manner brings a bounty that lives far beyond the threshold of the senses. To be "graceful" or "with grace" in your food life, first begin with this idea. Keep it in the foreground, in the pan, on the fork, at counter's height and table's reach. In this way one begins the knowing of grace as an ingredient, and without it, true nourishment is not possible.

Welcome to my site. I have begun this site to explore the subject of cooking with awareness due to the lack of positive intention and consciousness-based approaches to the culinary experience. Food is really the heart of our lives, one that supports and nourishes us both physically and mentally. With this in mind, I hope to explicate the tenderness involved in the kitchen environment. Yes, tenderness. Insults and harrowing, hurried tales of the culinary world might make interesting reality television, but something deeper is sacrificed, mainly awareness. In the east, particularly in India, the cook is considered essential to a person's well-being in part due to the conscious awareness brought to the act of creating a meal. It is thought that their state of mind imbues the food with a subtlety that is extremely important. I hope to examine this idea here as a direct manifestation of personal experience from my own life and, with hope, from examples that others choose to share.