Quote from The Complete Tassajara Cookbook

The Complete Tassajara Cookbook: Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections from the Famed Zen Kitchen

by Edward Espe Brown, illustrations by John David Simpkins

Shambhala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts     © 2011     526 pp.

"What bring us to the kitchen is hunger, hunger for food, hunger to feed others. What brings us to the kitchen is love, conviviality, connection -- we're finding a place at the table of life. No simple matter to bring forth food, no simple matter to receive nourishment. Beginning where we are, utilizing our gifts, working with our hinderances, the way to be a cook is to start cooking.

You may be worrying about how the food will turn out, believing that the results have to be just right, measuring up to some imagined or ingrained taste. You may stress that your food is 'not good enough' and that it will reflect poorly on you, and that you are only as good as your last performance. As long as you are busy giving out grades, there's no help for it, so go ahead, give the critic a rest, begin and continue: with yourself, with others, with the vegetables. Begin and continue with what is in front of you." (p. 3)

-- submitted by Jennifer Knight

To visit the blog and see more reviews and quotes from books in the collection of Center for Sacred Sciences' Library, click here https://centerforsacredscienceslibrary.blogspot.com