“Do not just leave washing the rice or preparing the vegetables to others but use your own hands, your own eyes, your own sincerity. Do not fragment your attention, but see what each moment calls for; if you take care of just one thing then you will be careless of the other. Do not miss the opportunity of offering even a single drop into the ocean of merit or a grain atop the mountain of the roots of beneficial activity.”
– Dogen Zenji, from “The Instruction for the Cook” (1237) Read More
Working in a professional kitchen fills one’s life with crazy little “did that just happen?” moments that we all think, patched together with some semblance of narrative could make a great movie. I can’t count the times that I’ve looked over at one of my co-workers and giggled, “Oh yeah, that’s going in the [enter restaurant name here] movie!” Read More
Seeds are incredible things. They can lay dormant for eons in the most inhospitable soil, waiting for environmental equilibrium and then for no rhyme or reason (perceptible to us big, lumbering bipedal mammals) it will hit that perfect balance of this or that and go Boom! And a living thing will spurt up out of the scrub and welcome the new day. It’s crazy stuff.
The same thing happens once the seed grows into a big, strong, adult, taxpaying plant. The sun and soil send those mysterious vibrations through the ether and the plant goes nuts. Shazam! It sloughs off it’s fruit and abandons any plans to expand it’s meticulously constructed root system and instead builds up and up, higher and higher until it towers above the garden. There, swaying crazily in the breeze it covers itself in flowers and (with a bit of luck) will score some pollination and grow tiny triffid-like capsules meant for the future.
It’s the plant equivalent of leaving a steady job and family and just trucking out to burning man. It’s plants gone wild! And, I’m sorry to report… It’s what most of my garden looks like right now. Read More
Summer. Beer.
No two words have ever been so flawlessly in simpatico. One is the perfect complement to the other, it’s twin and companion. Without one, the other is incomplete. There is nothing like sun, surf and a beer that has been freshly plucked from a slightly sand-crusted cooler’s cold, slushy recesses. Big sunglasses and good tunes naturally accompany such moments and bikini parties are sure to spontaneously occur. It’s science. Read More
The radishes out in the garden started waving their red little bottoms in the air, so I decided it was high time to dig ‘em up. As I was loading this, first harvest of the summer into a basket I beamed like a proud parent, and excitedly (and morbidly, a bit like Saturn and his child) imagined all the ways I was going to cook them.
A salad? No, too pedestrian, and their so large ‘n woody this year. Grilled? Could be. Simmered with some turnips? How Roman Legion-esque. Maybe with just a bit of honey and some thyme. Oh yeah, I know just the recipe, and it’ll look great when I post it on the food blog…
That’s when I realized that I’d already done all this before. I’d thought these thoughts. Cooked this recipe and thrown it up on the blog. The Matrix had reset! A year had passed. Read More