Veggiyana: The Dharma of Cooking: With 108 Deliciously Easy Vegetarian Recipes
Release date: 2011 / 278
Synopsis (from the back cover): The kitchen is the most vital place on Earth, even now in the age of iPads and hadron colliders, survival still depends on wholesome, nutritious food. In keeping with this simple truth, Veggiyana provides 108 tasty, beloved, and simple recipes from around the world, generously sprinkled throughout with perfectly spiced morsels of time-tested wisdom on how to live a life that nourishes both body and spirit.
First Sentence:About 775 years ago, the seminal Zen Buddhist teacher Dogen Zenji noted in one of his most teachings, Instructions to the Monastery Cook, that taking diligent care in the kitchen enables all members of the community to fulfill their lives in the most stable way.
Review: A few years ago, Sandra Garson studied Dharma in Nepal and noticed the sickly state of the children; her mission became clear: to spread the message that “ordinary food is extraordinarily powerful.” This mission took the form of “Veggiyana, a vegetable path that leads to liberation from unnecessary physical suffering, freeing people to engage positively with the world, since those who feel good can do good” (xiii).
In her introduction, Garson contemplates the gift of survival that has been bequeathed through the years: “If we had not inherited the way to preserve milk as yogurt or leach toxins out of soybeans, boil bread (which is the original description of making noodles)… if all this knowledge had been hoarded, monopolized, or buried like other treasure, instead of being freely shared, none of us would be here now, enjoying life…” (1). After all, as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin proclaimed, “The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star” (1).
Garson continues this tradition through her 108 recipes, each chosen to represent “reach-fors: beloved items we choose again and again because they can always be trusted to be just right” and because they represent GUSTO: Generosity (ingredients that cause no harm), Universality (affordable, attainable ingredients), Simplicity (common pans and little time required), Tasty, and Offering (worthy of being served to loved ones) (2-3).
Although Veggiyana is inspired by Buddhist principles and is enriched by short essays throughout, it also stands alone as a user-friendly, original cookbook. I’m afraid I’m going to hang on to this one 
But many more giveaways coming up soon! Thank you to Shelf Awareness for allowing me to review this work!
Yes, it sounds weird to describe noodles as boiled bread, but that’s referring to Chinese steamed bread not our Western style baked bread.
Generosity (ingredients that cause no harm). I wonder how that is defined, exactly. I’d have to read the book, I guess. But pretty much all actions and products involve harming others.