remember this.

More and more the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, sit up on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have time to practice the simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, and to be a part of some impressive project is so strong, that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans; not to organize people around an urgent cause; not to feel that you are working directly with social progress—but I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and to tell your own. To let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them but you really love them.

--Henri Nouwen

collecting quotes

Part of what I do all day in this office is read.  A lot.  I read something, which leads me to something else, and then I decide that I need to become an expert in some arcane field of research so I ask my grad student friends to order books through the inter-library loan for me, and then I read more and more and more.

I suddenly understand why it takes some people twenty years to finish their Ph.D.s  I mean, I couldn't possibly write even a sentence on how people learn and become proficient in a skill without first consulting The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (only 899 pages), right?  (If you're curious, that's the paper on which Malcolm Gladwell based his 10,000 hour rule.)  Shoot me now.

Anyway, in all of this reading, I'm coming across some really lovely thoughts on food and cooking.  I've been recording them on sheets of butcher paper I've hung on the walls and stuck to my desktop, but I keep wanting to share them with you, and also to type them up and have them somewhere so I can refer to them.  So I think I'm going to start posting them here from time to time.

I hope they inspire and teach you as they have done for me.

Recipes do not make food taste good; people do.
--Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook

Experience is a good predictor of how you'll need to season and adjust food, but it is no substitute for vigilant tasting.  --Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook

This is not a manual of cookery, but a book about enjoying food....Anyone who loves to eat, can soon learn to cook well.
--Jane Grigson, Good Things

No amount of cooking skill in the kitchen can produce a fine meal on the table, unless it is preceded by selective skill in the market.
--Roy Andries de Groot, Feasts for All Seasons


p.s. I actually only have to read two short chapters in the big book.  I'm not that insane.

The most beautiful paintings and sculptures, the greatest poetry, have not always been born from torment or bitterness. Often they have sprung from contemplation, from joy, from an instinct or wonder toward all things. To create from joy, to create from wonder, demands a continual discipline, a great compassion...With time and sincerity, you will discover a way to work and write that does not harm you spiritually, that does not tempt you to vanity, that is the deepest expression of your spirituality. You will find a voice that is not your voice only, but the voice of Reality itself. If you can be empty enough, that voice can speak through you. If you can be humble enough, that voice can inhabit and use you.


-- Thuksey Rinpoche




(thank you for this, amy!)