Quotes from The Vajrapani Institute Cookbook

The Vajrapani Institute Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from a Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Center

Compiled by Nina K. Tomkiewicz, edited by Wanda Sisnroy, illustrated by Alexandra Stein

Vajrapani Institute, Boulder Creek, California, 2015.  146 pp.

"Recipes serve as reminders until we don't need them anymore. After cooking for a number of years, I find it hard to believe that I've ever not known how to cook a pot of rice. Or that I used to have my nose in a cookbook in order to make a batch of cookies. That, of course is me taking for granted all the remembering I have had to do, again and again, day after day, in order for these recipes to become a part of my daily habit. . . We can always re-visit what we thought we knew, or understand a different way of doing. Once we "know" how to make a pot of rice, the practice itself is always a fresh beginning and a new opportunity to make the rice delicious and fluffy. Each time, the grains of rice are grains we have never touched before, the pot is one day older, and the water is new to us, too. In this way, recipes can never remind us enough of what we already know."

-- Nina Tomkiewicz,  p. 13

"The initial reason why people come to a Dharma center is not for the food but for the teachings and meditations. . . However the conditions at the center, and especially the food, are a very important support for the teachings and meditations. . . So, I've been thinking for many days to come to the kitchen and explain a short meditation to the cooks. . . Therefore dedicating your life to others and helping them is the best, most exciting thing you can do. Serving them in any way you can and giving them whatever help you can give is what brings the most happiness."

-- Lama Zopa Rinpoche, pp. 17-18

Let's take a glance at the yummy sounding soup recipes from pp. 88-98:
-- How to make your own vegetable stock
-- Creamy squash and zucchini soup
-- Butternut squash soup with tofu
-- Carrot cashew soup
-- Roasted bell pepper and tomato soup
-- White bean and kale stew
-- Simple tomato soup
-- Zucchini garlic soup
-- Curried sweet potato soup
-- Potato spinach soup

One of three food offering prayers is by Ven. Rene Feusi (p. 99):

Thank you all living beings

For giving us this food

May it nourish us

So that we may nourish others.

-- review submitted by Jennifer Knight