Customer Reviews

Wake up and Cook: Kitchen Buddhism in Words and Recipes

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This book is an enjoyable collection of short essays on Buddhism, some related directly to food and some not, and about 60 recipes. The recipes include both vegetarian selections and recipes with meat, and run from the simple ("Laura Carter Holloway Langford's Canned Corn") to the more complex ("Fish Chowder" with prawns, crab & mussels) and to the free-form poetic (Gary Snyder's "How to Make Stew in the Pinacate Desert - Recipe for Locke & Drum"). This book is much like purchasing a fountain for your meditation area, not essential, but often very nice to look at.

I know, it doesn't seem as if those two things go together - but even if you have achieved enlightenment, you still got to eat.
There are various chants and prayers to help you bring mindfulness into your meals.
Don't think you have to deprive yourself to follow this path - there are wonderful recipes for such desserts as chocolate mousse as well as rice pudding. There is also "plain" food, such as lentil soup - but this is no ordinary soup. To think about your cooking, to keep those who you cook for in your mind as you prepare the meal as well as a great recipe makes this lentil soup totally different form other lentil soups you may have tried. And the steak fajitas, well, it's not something you expect to find in a Buddhist cookbook.
Try this book for the simple act of becoming re-acquainted with the art of cooking and you'll stick with the book for the wonderful recipes, as well as the various poems, prayers and insights that the book has in ample measure

A buddhist cookbook containing recipes containing meat is neither mindful or buddhist, why do us westerners think its ok to call ourselves buddhists as soon as we attend our first yoga classes and put a namaste sticker on our subaru. Buddhist teachings do not say cut back on meat, they say NO meat, this is even sillier than the practice of "Mindful Drinking"