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.