The Mindful Cook: Finding Awareness, Simplicity, and Freedom in the Kitchen

"With humor and vitality, Isaac Cronin's words renew our capacity to delight, to be filled with life. Flavorful recipes welcome our hearts and hands to cook and be nourished.  Our presence in the kitchen makes all the difference."  
--Edward Espe Brown, Zen priest, author of The Tassajara Bread Book and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings

The inner game of cooking--a book of essays, exercises, and recipes designed to help experienced cooks and nov-ices alike find joy and fulfillment in the experience of food preparation.

Many people enjoy cooking; others dread it. This book is for people who want to learn to love it. The Mindful Cook draws on two traditions--meditation, as practiced in East-ern spirituality, and mindfulness, as outlined by Western psychologists and in books like Diane Ackerman's Deep Play--to help experienced cooks and novices alike find a sense of wonder and fulfillment in the essential human act of preparing food. Brief personal essays by food expert Isaac Cronin explore various aspects of food and cooking--history, preparation, the sense of the kitchen as place, balancing flavors, the joy of mistakes--and are followed by exercises that involve both meditation and hands-on ex-perimentation to help make the process of creating food as rewarding as the final result.  
        
Beautifully designed and including twenty-nine delicious recipes, The Mindful Cook enables us to nourish the soul, develop the mind, and eat well at the same time.

In the late 1970s, Isaac Cronin was one of the original participants in the California-based New American food movement. His hands-on experience harvesting food in-cludes several years as a commercial fisherman on Mon-terey Bay. As a specialty produce farmer, he introduced California-grown baby lettuce salad to New York restaurants. Cronin has authored five cookbooks and worked as the marketing director of a cookbook publishing company. He has helped popularize such foods as squid, garlic, and olive oil and regional Chinese cooking. His weekly column on seafood appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other California dailies for a number of years. He co-wrote the highly acclaimed independent film Chan Is Missing, the first feature directed by Wayne Wang. Cronin is married and the father of two children.