The Next Big Thing

This week my blog is slightly different then usual. L T Bentley invited me to be part of this blog hopping journey called The Next Big Thing. I think the purpose is to help us discover the next great book that we absolute have to read or an author whose works might just resonate with our spirits. I had never heard of her work before, but given that I am a Gemini, I am looking forward to reading something outside of the norm for me, her book Shattered Gemini, is a psychological murder mystery. Who knows her work might be the Next Big Thing, or perhaps mine is. Who knows? I have never written fiction that is unless you think about my life as a piece of fiction, which is a work in process. In my life story, then I am the main character and everyone else in my life are the supporting cast of characters.
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Innovative or Wacky

While my passion for Iron Chef America has waned over the last few years, I am for various reasons amazed by the Next Iron Chef American competition and glad that Alex Guarnaschelli is doing so well again this season (go Team Alex). What has inspired me this week were two things: the chairman’s challenge for this past week of innovation and my friend Warren Caterson’s post on Facebook about this being Wacky Wednesday. Personally, I think he created this day, but I can always use a “reason” to be wacky. For those of you who did not watch this episode, there were three global street foods, tacos, falafel, and bahn mi’s. The chefs were assigned one of these three street foods and then told to be innovative and create a new approach to it. While Chef Faulkner’s bahn mi pasta did not appease the palettes of the judges, her idea reminded me of bruschetta pasta I had made once that was really quite good.
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Food and Numbers

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time at all, you know I usually write from my heart. Today, started no differently. Every time I sat down to write I found myself thinking about numbers and not food. After trying to focus on food, cooking, and the principles of Zen for several hours, I ultimately wound up back at numbers. Seeking inspiration, I pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks and randomly opened a page, which talked about the three basics of soup making. So here I was ultimately back at numbers again.
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It’s not your Mama’s ground beef

Growing up my mother had a pretty set relationship with ground beef. You used it for a set number of dishes: hamburgers, meatballs, and stuffed cabbage. The only one of the three that was, what I as a young child, considered palatable was the stuffed cabbage. The hamburgers were, like any other meat, either still mooing or tasted like shoe leather. The meatballs were normally dry and tasteless and were not even craved by our dog Puggy. In her stuffed cabbage, however, somehow she managed to transform this everyday kind of ingredient into something special. I no longer have her recipe
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An artist’s kitchen

Cooking for me, as it is for many foodies and chefs, is a form of art. Others may use pastels, oils, acrylics, etc. I paint with words in my blogs and writings and with food when I am cooking. Even when something looks simple, like tomato soup, I want people to appreciate the layers of flavor, which are beneath that red silky appearance. I have come to realize how important a few things are for me to be present in my studio and what facilitates my being in the state of flow, or optimal experience, and what can throw me out of it. One thing, for example, is not being able to find the spice or other ingredient I need at a crucial moment.
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Tebowing in my kitchen

A fellow food blogger, Warren Caterson, whose sense of humor, I love wrote a piece called Excuse Me While I Chill Some Wine and Take a Few Moments to Tebow. In it he started by talking about Tim Tebow and how when he does well on the field, he drops down to one knee and prays. After talking about football for a moment, he brought it to a place I could relate to on a personal level. He said, “For me, culinary expertise is a gift just like any talent. The ability to taste, to tweak, to cook is all on loan.” I could not agree more. I know that everything I learn about food, every gift I have in the kitchen, every smell that comes alive, the aroma that fills the air, the way the foods change textures as I work with them. All of these things are a gift from the Infinite. Warren jokingly said, “So if my next meal pleases the palates of my guests? Perhaps you just might catch a glimpse of me "Tebowing" in the darkness of my pantry. Because being thankful for whatever talent I might have is something I will strive for.”
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Teikkai

It can be a bit of a challenge to curl up anywhere to read a 700 plus page book. Yet this is what I found myself doing today as I began reading Deborah Madison’s book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. As I looked at this book for a moment, I had this wave of feelings that went through me as I wondered, for a moment, what I had just committed to doing this year as I cook my way through her book, seeking to develop a deeper relationship with the plant offerings I eat, developing my culinary skills, seeking to modify them when needed to be diabetic friendly, and inspire me to create new dishes. At the same time, there was this wave of excitement. This cookbook about vegetarian cooking has been compared to Julia Child’s cookbook on French cooking. So until I am done cooking the over 1400 recipes in this book, it will be Sharon and Deborah, just like it was Julie and Julia. Then the journey began and like Bastian in The Never Ending Story, I opened the book and began reading the Introduction to my new culinary and spiritual adventure
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Up!

I remember when I first started the Zenful Kitchen reading a piece by Warren Caterson aka Chef Warren who wrote about being criticized at times for not having pictures in his blogs. He had written one that had pictures which looked as if they were created on an etch a sketch. (Yes Warren, I did read that blog post.) It made me want to go out and buy an etch a sketch. I understand what he was saying though. I know we eat with our eyes, or so I have been told, although some of my friends don’t look long enough to take it in, they just eat. Not always having access to a camera (probably should put that on my wish list); sometimes I do not put pictures of my food with my blogs. One of these days, I will invest in one of my own or have a professional photographer in my life who is here taking photos as I am preparing something.
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The Inner Kitchen

Not sure how many of you sign up to receive daily inspirational messages from anybody. Even though I post a daily thought for the day here, I enjoy receiving food for my own spiritual journey. Today was no exception. I received this daily inspiration from Don Miguel Ruiz, one of my favorite spiritual writers, which read, “Your heart is like a magical kitchen. Your heart can create any amount of love, not just for yourself, but also for the whole world. Open your heart, open your magical kitchen, and refuse to walk around the world begging for love. In your heart is all the love you need.” This really made me stop and think for a moment. So often, we think of the kitchen as this physical space where we create amazing food.
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Albert Einstein is my sous chef.

Ok, so maybe he is not exactly my sous chef in the literal sense, but so much of what he has said and written inspires me in my life and in my cooking. For example, one of the things he said that most people have heard is “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” I have had my insanity experiences with food. I remember eating this broccoli and cheese casserole my mother had made once. It looked so good and you know everyone says you eat with your eyes first. And so I am looking at this casserole and it looked so good and so I put a significant serving on my plate and expected it to taste as good as it looked. It didn’t. And then I thought ok, it really can’t taste as bad as I thought that it tasted. It did. It took me taking a few more bites of it, for some reason expecting that the next bite would somehow taste better or different before I realized that this whole process was insane.
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