The Complete Tassajara Cookbook

California's Tassajara Zen Mountain Center has long been renowned for its gourmet vegetarian cuisine. In this comprehensive guide to the Tassajara way of cooking, the retreat center–spa's most celebrated chef, Edward Espe Brown, presents hundreds of recipes using fresh, whole foods; detailed notes on preparing seasonal ingredients; and, perhaps most important, inspiration for cooking with joyful intention and attention. Presented with humor and warmth, this book is full of insights for living a life that celebrates simple food.

The Tassajara Bread Book has been a favorite among renowned chefs and novice bakers alike for more than thirty years. In this deluxe edition, the same gentle, clear instructions and wonderful recipes are presented in a new paperback format with an updated interior design and full-color photos of the breads. Deborah Madison, author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, says, "This little book has long been a guide for those who want to bake but don’t know where to begin, as well as for those who want to go beyond and discover not just recipes, but bread making itself."

When it was first issued, Tassajara Cooking became an overnight classic. Ed Brown's recipes for cooking—for learning to appreciate all the steps involved in making a meal, from selecting the ingredients to serving the finished dish—struck a chord with people who care about food and nutrition. This groundbreaking book, in a completely redesigned format, is just as timely and relevant today, more than thirty years later. Brown discusses methods for working with vegetables, grains, beans, dairy products, and fruits; cooking techniques; and suggestions for planning good tasting, nutritious meals, from soups and salads to desserts. Generously seasoned with illustrations that detail every part of the cooking process, Tassajara Cooking is a comprehensive guide to inspired cooking, with joy.

The author introduces a 100 or so vegetarian recipes with charming stories and poems about where they came from, suggestions for how and when to serve them, and precise instructions for making them perfectly.

Vegetarian lunch, picnic, and appetizer recipes from the legendary Buddhist monastery. “These are delectable dishes worthy of a feast!” —Menupause Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, set deep in California’s Ventana Wilderness, is famous for its healthy gourmet vegetarian cuisine. Guests are known to rave about one particular Tassajara tradition: the bag lunch. Tassajara Cookbook shares these never-before-published recipes for savory sandwich spreads, pâtés and loaves, egg and tofu sandwich fillings, salads, chutneys, sauces, marinades, and butters, as well as recipes for baked goods and sweet treats. “And this is now my most favorite cookbook! It is full of gorgeous spreads, amazing tofu recipes, delicious vegan cookies and salad ideas.” —Mette the Homeopath “The cookies are all of that slightly healthy, hippy ilk, but in a good way. These cookies are perhaps too good for a meditation retreat: I would probably spend more time obsessing which cookies they were putting in my bag lunch, than meditating into a Zen state of detachment . . . but hey, maybe that’s just me.” —The Back Yard Lemon Tree

Dishes made with mindfulness that reflect a “love of Asian flavors and current tastes for lighter vegetarian meals” from the legendary Buddhist monastery (Edible Monterey Bay). In Tassajara: Dinner & Desserts, readers will not only find recipes filled with the flavor of Zen practice but also stories from past guest cooks, such as Deborah Madison, Ed Brown, Gloria Lee, and many others, whose calm and peaceful minds were truly tested behind the doors of the Tassajara kitchen, whose monastic kitchen differs from a normal restaurant kitchen in that the activity of preparing the food is understood to be spiritual practice. The Tassajara Zen Mountain Center teaches that every aspect of one’s day can be lived with mindfulness—even food preparations and choices of what we eat. A few of the fifty recipes include: Frittata with Caramelized Onions, Goat Cheese, and Sage Coconut Curry with Mixed Vegetables Tofu Neatballs Sweet Tapioca Soup with Honeydew Ricotta Chevre with Ginger Berry Compote “The book includes lots of amusing parables from the kitchen and makes Kent the latest in a long lineage of cooks who’ve contributed to the Tassajara mystique.” —Edible Monterey Bay

Dharma Feast Cookbook supports the critical need for sanity, wellness and healing through the conscious use of food. These 200+ recipes are nutritious, delicious, time-efficient and easy to prepare, even for beginners who might need coaching in how to make a meal from scratch. Unlike many cookbooks that advocate one system, these tested recipes are drawn from a variety of food cultures-including vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, gluten-free, raw, and juice-based. In all, this book makes use of readily-available, fresher & lessprocessed ingredients. From sumptuous breakfast alternatives, like Papaya Pudding Smoothie, to summer picnic lunches that might include Potato, Beet and Cabbage Salad, to tried and true winter soups, like German Hokkaido Pumpkin, to hearty daily entrees of Soba Noodles with Asian Sauce, to special occasions menus . . . from India, France or Japan, to desserts of Lemon Sorbet and Cardamom Shortbread . . . this cookbook has it all. As it encourages slowing down, learning about food, preparing it properly, and eating it consciously, Dharma Feast Cookbook helps cooks (and their families and guests) to take a giant step forward in self-esteem and self-understanding. Allowing better care of ourselves, we model for our children and others a relationship with food and life itself that is an expression of beauty and sanity. Dharma Feast is so much more than a cookbook. It is also a Transitional Plan, in three stages, for gently and enjoyably reorienting our diets from “toxic” to life-supporting. This is not gourmet food, but elegant food. And despite its appeal of back to nature, the recipes are chosen for people with busy lives. The book is conveniently indexed, and contains gorgeous black and white photos. A BOOK FOR NATURAL FOOD LOVERS . . . HEALTH CONSCIOUS CONSUMERS . . . BUSY MOMS & DADS . . . YOGA & FITNESS ENTHUSIASTS . . . DHARMA FEAST IS THE NEXT CLASSIC NATURAL-FOODS COOKBOOK! Includes a special section on fighting childhood obesity, with dozens of healthy lunch-box menus.

The million-copy bestselling author of "The Tassajara Bread Book" weaves memories and reflections on food, cooking, and eating into a remarkable book about spirituality and life.