I’m a piler. I like to pile things; it’s how I put things in order. Currently on my desk, I have: two piles of books, three piles of papers (separated based on topic), and a pile of yarn that I’m making something with. It’s not pretty to look at, but I do, in fact, know …
Category Archives: big meals
brothy soup for murky times.
Buckle in, because I’m going to talk about death, grief, and fatigue – but! There’ll be a great soup recipe at the end! Balance! I hesitated sharing this, because it would appear that I have already talked a lot about death on here. Sorry. Unless you’d prefer I’d talk about one of life’s other inevitabilities, …
tahini zen circles.
There is a meditation practice in the Buddhist tradition of drawing circles. Using a calligraphy brush, the Zen circle is drawn with one quick stroke. It exemplifies directness, simplicity, presence. A dubious ripple indicates an unsteady mind; an unfortunate ovoid betrays overthinking.
grapefruit season of life.
We didn’t grow up eating grapefruit. In terms of citrus, my family ate oranges, with maybe some mandarins here and there on special occasions. In fact, I don’t think I tasted grapefruit until I was an adult living on my own, and its sharp bitter sourness was initially so shocking that I couldn’t understand how …
to soothe and protect.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading these days, of books. Books of all sorts: from research on the intersection of yoga and science, folk stories and the psyche, white fragility (uh oh!), to cookbooks. Books have always been such a comfort to me growing up – a chance to get to step into worlds …
slow down soup.
For someone who makes a living off of telling people to slow down and take their time, I feel like I have very little spare time. I am subject to the same pressures as anyone else – the pressure to perform, to hustle, to get this done, that done – you know the drill. Being …
summer in winter in January.
It has been an exceedingly warm winter this year. Well, it has been warm for the past week. Before that it was -40 degrees Celsius. I have the memory bank of a meerkat, apparently. More importantly, I have reason to participate in the futile art of complaining about the weather: I had really been enjoying …
a poultice of sorts.
When I was little, I was obsessed with the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and the romanticized life of a settler: learning how to live off the land, to make do with what you had, and to be self-sufficient. It was a far cry from the concrete-laden cityscape that I traversed in my red-and-white Keds sneakers, …
retreat-worthy: chickpea potato salad
The winter is a time for heartier fare, but I also like to make these sorts of cooked salads – they are satisfying and nourishing, but digest easily. This is a good example of something that I like to make – it’s also what I served to the students at a silent meditation a few weeks ago. …
retreat-worthy: beet and black rice salad.
The key to successfully cooking for other people while they are on a meditation retreat is to think thoughts of love and compassion, so as to channel those same qualities into the food you make, hence providing nourishment that dares to delve into a world beyond physical. With this intention in mind, I like to …
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