First, the seventy-two labors brought us this food,
We should know how it comes to us.

— meal gatha

A few times a year I go up a mountain and participate in meditation intensives at a Zen monastery. This is a very good thing for me to do. Last weekend I sat my final sesshin of 2008, and despite some congestion and a few fiercely difficult emotional patches, it was a nourishing experience. Sometimes the last thing I want to do is to face myself, let alone for 10 hours a day.

Two of the three meals each day are formal meals, called oryoki. It’s a combination of a liturgical ceremony and a meal, and difficult to describe until you’ve done it. Outside of the chanting done at certain junctures in the meal, it’s done in complete silence, and with complete and total mindfulness.

I get something different from each oryoki meal I have, but there are threads that run through it. One is the direct experience of something I take for granted most of the time. I love to cook and eat, but so often when I eat, I’m not paying attention. Thinking about how to improve the meal for next time, thinking about the next meal, so absorbed in conversation that I don’t even taste the food. I ate, sure, but where was I during the process?

The second thread is considering the food itself. There’s a gatha – a poem – chanted before the first bite of food that’s taken that brings up the question of eating. It starts with “first, the seventy-two brought us this food, we should know how it comes to us.” This encourages us to think about where the food came from, how many people, how much work, how many natural resources, are involved in its being in our bowls. Sitting quietly, carefully scooping rice with my wooden spoon and letting the immensity of what’s happening in this everyday moment is incredibly powerful.

The third thread is maybe the hardest, but one that gains power as I study Zen. And that’s that the question “why do I eat?” I’m present for the meal. I’m aware of the boundless nature of the food. But why am I eating? This is just another way of asking the ever-popular “why do I continue to exist?” The gatha concludes with a few good reasons to eat:

We eat to stop all evil,
to practice good,
to save all sentient beings,
and to accomplish our Buddha way together.

Vegans tend to think about food more than most people I’ve met, partly from practically necessity, and partly because we care about our food. We care about where our food comes from, who makes it, and what it means to eat this or not eat that. Sometimes, though, I think that we think about it for a while, make some good decisions, and then go on auto pilot. It’s easy to get pulled into resentment and anger. Reconnecting with our compassionate nature and feeling the connectedness with the impulses that make us vegan in the first place is important.

You don’t have to have the oryoki experience to get the oryoki experience. Try to eat a meal mindfully, quietly. Experience every bite; feel yourself chew and swallow. Feel the boundless abundance of the universe fill you, nourish you, and prepare you for all the amazingness that will unfold as you live your life.

I’ve been entertaining friends from out of town this week, which has resulted in some quality eating out. There aren’t a metric ton of places in Boston to eat well as a vegan, but more than most places have, so I won’t complain.

One of the friends was the first vegan I ever met, and while not encouraging me to be vegan, became a great role model for me. Looking back I’m surprised how little I realized his influence. Thank you Terry, for being awesome! Also thank you for the Flight of the Conchords CD. Business Time, indeed.

I’m dashing out the door in about 10 minutes, so I’ll have to finish answering the second half of Jess’s (of Get Sconed) quiz on Monday when I get back. In the meantime, be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!!

I’m back, baby! I have a messy kitchen and a metric ton of oatmeal raisin cookies.

V made “meat”loaf last night which was much better than I remember meat loaf being. “Meat” and “loaf” are two words I don’t usually want to hear together, unless we’re talking about the singer, and then only at appropriate times.

As an extra bonus, here’s some hott vegan weaving! I bought a loom earlier this year on Craigslist, and have finally gotten around to learning how to use it in recent months. Feast your eyes upon this linen scarf I’m working on right now:

This, of course, means that I’ll likely be churning out placemats and tea towels for everyone I know for the next decade or two.

Thank you all for your food suggestions and well-wishing. If you can believe it, I’m just starting to feel healthy again. It’s left my life looking like an incredibly messy kitchen where every pot and is in the sink, some with food still stuck to the bottom, and when you walk the floor sticks in an old-movie-theater way. A moth flutters near the pantry, and there’s a lingering fear that there are a few thousand others hiding in a long-forgotten package of pastry flour.

Today’s post is about getting back on the horse when you fall off. I fall of metaphorical horses all the time, but thankfully never a real horse. Being sick is one of the worst ways for me to fall off, because it doesn’t involve a failing of will but more of a confluence of bad luck, and it means that despite best efforts I fall off of many, many horses at once. This is why I’m glad they are metaphorical horses because I’d be hard pressed to do that and not break the laws of time and space.

Lots has fallen by the wayside. Cooking, for the most part, because I haven’t been all that hungry. Eating, for the same reason. And then there’s the pesky details of my job and the rest of my life. So I’m one dusty mofo, looking at the indefinite number of metaphorical of horses I just fell off of. It’s daunting at times to even think about getting back on, because there are so many.

But dernit, I’ve got to do it. I’ll take things as they come. When a horse appears, grab it by the reins in a cruelty-free and compassionate way and get back on.

And then ride like the wind.

Why hello there! October hasn’t exactly given me the winningest hand. I’ve been busy as heck up until a few days ago, when I got sick. I’ve been aggressively resting since Monday evening in hopes that I can cut it off before the “weeks and weeks of lingering illness” stage, and I might be succeeding. It feels a bit luxurious to be lounging around in bed reading and sleeping, though I know it’s what’s needed.

Sick time is not the time for fancy meals. There are three things my mom gave me when I was sick: Sprite, saltines, and Lipton cup-o-noodles (I think the amount of chicken involved would need to be measured by chemists, but still not vegan). To this day, it’s still what I want. Amy’s has a nice “no-chicken” noodle soup that hits the salty broth spot, not to mention a vegetable bouillon cube dissolved in water. For dinner I branched out to some tater tots and a Chick’n patty. Not exactly adventuresome eating, but nourishing and comforting.

What do y’all want to eat when you get sick? Share with me, so that the next time I get felled by germs I can kick it up a notch or three.

Here are Isa’s chocolate chip brownie waffles made as a cake. I’m curious as to how far this can go. If I take the cake and crumble it up and put it into cookies, I can have brownie waffle cake cookies. And then if I take those cookies and put them into some brownies, I can complete the cycle with brownie waffle cake cookie brownies.

This is definitely a waffle-y cake. Perfect for election season?

It’s that time of year, the Vegan Month of Food (a.k.a VeganMoFo)! It’s time to celebrate veganism and cooking and vegan cooking – in Blog Form! This is a fun event that has bloggers from all over the place sharing their stuff and fostering a real sense of community, even across the Internets.

I’ve got a list of things to write about, and another list of things to cook. Let’s enjoy this MoFo!