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Tao of Food Preparation Recipes

Tao of Food Preparation Recipes
'Living' E-book

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Life and Death: Part 1: Eulogy




My dad died Oct. 25, 2014.

I was asked to give a talk at my Dad's viewing ceremony, a Eulogy.

According to the Word Web, 
A Eulogy is a formal expression of praise for someone who has died recently

But If I speak about praise, i will speak about my approval of him and the way he behaved.

I will end up speaking about my opinion of my father.

This means I will interpret the image I have of him in my mind and speak about that.

That is deflating him into an image that I interpret in my mind which is not even real

So, I would like to change that.

Rather than limit him by talking about an image of him - which is my idea of him in my mind,

Let me start a foundation to speak about him in such a way that I can bring out  the real person  - that is my dad,

The fact is, that my dad is a human just like you and me.

So, there is no need to inflate or deflate that fact because that is real.

The benefit of doing this, is that we will not inflate or deflate him in our minds, rather, give a real account of who he is - as a human, just like you and me that is in a way the best he/we could ever be.

Doing that, we are accepting the fact that he is a part of the whole - that is life and that we are a part of the whole - that is life,

This way, I will not misuse this opportunity to talk about him or who he is.

Let me start by writing about his family tree,

Continued in Part 2







Thursday, September 25, 2014

It's All About Me: Awareness Verse




Sharing Some Verses of When We Attended a Workshop

It's All About Me

Words I Speak
Talk About Who I Am
The Sound of My Voice
I Hear Silence and Noise

Resonating and experiencing me 
I Come Face to Face with Myself
Self-forgiving The Charge
We Put Into Words 


Releasing The Self-Imposed Limits
I Expand and Redefine Words
Stretching The Boundary
I Embrace Me

Exposing and Forgiving 
I create from nothingness
As the Creator and Created 
I See Its All About Me





The Earth Is My Plate: Awareness Verse






We attended a Mindfulness Workshop at a Center here in Dallas and we were asked to write verses. 

To The Readers, I am Sharing These Verses I Wrote ,


The Earth Is My Plate

Eating from the earth,
I walk with the plants
that populate the land

Walking with the animals
Roaming in the fields
Realizing they sacrifice their lives 

In gratitude I bow 
For the nourishment they provide

'Cheeseburgers are Not Supposed To Be Black'? Kuro Burger Part 2


Part 1
The Black Burger: Kuro Burger of Japan
http://junejourneytolife.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-black-burger-kuro-burger-of-burger.html

This Blog is a continuation of Part 1

'Cheeseburgers are not supposed to be black.'

In the previous post we saw the meaning of a cheeseburger from the Word Web being,
'A hamburger with melted cheese on it'

I linked to an article about the kuro burger. It said, 'Cheeseburgers are not supposed to be black.'

What makes a cheeseburger - a cheeseburger?

As long as the meat (and vegetable) part is present, with or without the sauce, and there's cheese in it,
it can be called a cheeseburger. A cheeseburger can have anything in it that nourish the body - plus the meat patty (which can be animal or vegetable meat, raw or cooked). A Cheeseburger can have a black bun (cooked with squid ink), a black cheese (smoked in charcoal) a black sauce (with squid ink). It is black but it is essentially a cheeseburger. 

It can also have lettuce in place of the bun and it can be a cheeseburger.

So, cheeseburgers can be any color. It can be black, green, red etc. It can have any bun or bread, lettuce or raw bread - it can be round or square etc.

When we say 'cheeseburgers are not supposed to be black', we put a limit to the expression of the cheeseburger - or to its definition. Instead of the cheeseburger being prepared from the starting point of nutrition, it is being defined from a point of a 'belief' - an idea is also present of what a cheeseburger should be. When I cook it, my food preparation will be from a starting point of 'belief' rather than nutrition and nourishment - which is what food is for - a substance that nourish the body. 

The way I see this, is that the essential meaning of a cheeseburger is first and foremost - the fact that it's food, a form of nourishment for the body.

The essential meaning of the cheeseburger was lost.  Advertising is inflating the meaning of a burger by selling it as a black burger. It can easily mesmerize us. This is the business deciding that a black burger can be beneficial to its marketing campaign. This will easily attract attention. What is missing here is the correct or true starting point. This starting point can help the business but it can stimulate our fears. If we attached the color black to death, the black cheeseburger now resides in our mind as 'death burger'. The people who attached the bun that is colored black (and squid ink) to something new, something tasty and something different will see it as that. 

This will impulse our desire for anything NEW, TASTY and DIFFERENT. 

This will tell us advertising is also about words and the definition we give them.

Having a desire for new, tasty and something different can stimulate us to rush to Burger King and buy these burgers so we can taste it and tell our friends about it. Our friends can then attract other friends to buy. This is the domino effect. Ads are made to consciously or unconsciously stimulate our desire for new, tasty food - for one reason, money and profit.

Next time, we want to eat something new, tasty and different, realize that a company or business can make a product that will be sold to us to turn our desire into money and profit.

When we desire a cooked veggie burger that is made with vegetarian meat, there will be vegetarian restaurants that will buy and sell it.

In the raw vegan community, a raw vegan burger made of nuts and beets etc. is now being sold by the raw online stores and restaurants to cater to the palate of raw vegans.  

What we eat can change to align to nutrition the body needs. 

Food Items do not need to be judged. Competition between different diets  or within  the same food categories are  unnecessary.

We have to turn our attention to eating a burger that will benefit our body and give it nourishment. This can lead the way for  stopping comparison  and judgment between food items (making one more than or less than another). The food industry can also make a burger that is nutritious. This can be customized to the nutritional need of the one who will consume it.

It is us that is creating the food industry. So, let's release the blame. 

It is us that needs to take self-responsibility for what we eat. So, let's do that.

Part of the equation here is also creating a world where survival is guaranteed for all - where we all have enough money to buy food and have a product that can track the nutrition in our food - what nutrients are lacking and what we need to prepare in our next meal, so we can give the body enough nutrition the body needs to survive.

Continued

Friday, September 19, 2014

Redefining Food Preparation


Redefining Food Preparation


Cooking Class Vietnamese Banh Mi: Using Baguette or Romaine Lettuce Leaves as Wrap


 


Bread: your choice of baguette (3 and 1/2 ), thin round bread, brioche, lettuce leaves or wrap
Romaine lettuce
Herbs: Cilantro sprigs, green onion, and basil leaves
Siracha/not so hot sauce (optional)

Tomato Sauce
4 med. vine tomatoes chopped very fine
1 and 1/2 T of fish sauce (optional)
1/2 c finely chopped red onion
1/2 c water from meatball boiling water
2 T nutritional yeast (optional)
garlic to taste
salt to taste

Procedure 

Put all ingredients in a pot
Cook on top of a stove
Add the meatballs when tomato mixture is boiling
Cook until tomato sauce  is thick enough for spreading onto the 'bread'

Baguette Bread (same with brioche):
Slice the bread
Add a lettuce leaf
Put the meatballs inside and drizzle with tomato sauce
Add some cilantro sprigs, an onion leaf and few basil leaves
Enjoy

Romaine Lettuce Wrap
Get 2 lettuce leaves
Put the meatballs in and drizzle with tomato sauce
Add some cilantro sprigs, an onion leaf and few basil leaves
Enjoy

Lavash Wrap:
Put the meatballs inside and drizzle with tomato sauce
Add some cilantro sprigs, an onion leaf and few basil leaves
Enjoy

Meatballs

1 lb. minced 'pastured pork'
1 lb. minced 'pastured' beef
4 eggs (small)
salt to taste
3/4 c chopped shallots or onions

Procedure
Mix all ingredients
Scoop with an ice cream scoop
Drop onto a pot with boiling water
Cook until done
Take the meatballs out of the water
Simmer in the tomato sauce

Yield: 8-9 sandwiches
Pictures:









Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The Black Burger: Kuro Burger of Burger King In Japan



The picture of a Kuro Burger was posted by my grandson in Facebook, So, I will look at this Kuro Burger and what's in it.

Here is a write-up about the Black Burger - The Kuro Burger

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/09/burger-king-is-debuting-a-black-burger-in-japan-because-everything-is-terrible

What makes the sauce black?
Squid Ink

What makes the cheese black?
It was smoked with bamboo charcoal

What makes the bun black?
Squid ink

There's this quote from the article, 
'Cheeseburgers are not supposed to be black.'

What is a cheeseburger?


All I know is that the first time I ate a cheeseburger, it was from McDonald and my mom got it for me when I was young. It made me full. The ketchup and the burger plus some fries gave me different taste sensations and because we were going out to enjoy ourselves at that time, the taste of the burger became associated with 'fun times' , family and somehow being special, because where I grew up, before we can get a burger, we had to dress up, ride a vehicle to arrive to McDonald and all of these require some money. So, only the ones with money can get a burger


Now that I am an adult, I question what food is. I recently expanded Food to mean 'a substance that nourish the physical body'. 


All my life, I saw food as a form of entertainment. The problem is, 'how will I change the way I look at food and align it to its essential meaning - food as a form of nourishment?' I will answer that in posts to come.


Let's look at the definition of a Cheeseburger


Word Web

Definition of a Cheeseburger
A hamburger with melted cheese on it

What is in a Cheeseburger?

A bun 
Cheese
Lettuce
Tomato
Onion
Pickles
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Sauce
Meat
Bacon (sometimes)

Let;s look at the definition of these words

Word Web
A bun - a  small rounded bread
Cheese -a  solid food prepared from the pressed curd of milk
Lettuce - leaves of a cultivated plant (Lactuca sativa) often eaten in salads
Tomato - a widely cultivated plant that produces tomatoes as fruit, native to South America
Sauce - flavorful relish, dressing or topping served as an accompaniment to food
Onion - The bulb of an onion plant
Pickles - Vegetables (especially cucumbers) preserved in brine or vinegar
Mustard - Pungent powder or paste prepared from ground mustard seeds
Meat - The flesh of animals (including fishes and birds and snails) used as food 
(can also be vegetable based meat)

The addition of the squid ink made the Kuro Burger the center of attention in newspapers, tv and the internet. Let's look at it:


Squid - widely distributed fast-moving ten-armed cephalopod mollusk having a long tapered body with triangular tail fins


Ink -Dark protective fluid ejected into the water by cuttlefish and other cephalopods


What did we forget to look at here?


That all of these ingredients to make a cheeseburger comes from the earth and it was made for all to support all to survive. But the way this world is set up is that, only some who has the money can buy food and that is true where I come from, the Philippines. The poor cannot buy a burger, they mostly survive eating boiled bananas, boiled sweet potato or boiled rice with salt..


So, we have to assist in making ingredients the body need to survive, accessible for all and look at a living income that will support all to get food with nutrition their body needs.


These burger ingredients can be recombined and cooked to make something else - an open faced sandwich, a salad etc.. The portions can be different for each one because our body is different from each other, 


Here's the Nutrition in a regular cheeseburger from the web:




Video: Bill Nye on Nutrition:
Continued.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Coping With What We Have Vs Birthing A World That Equally Benefits All


I saw this posted by one of my friends in Facebook:
An anthropologist thought he would test these African children. He placed a bowl of fruit underneath a tree and told them that the first one to reach the tree could have the fruit. When he told the children to run, they all took each others' hands and ran together. They all enjoyed the fruit together. This is the African concept of Ubuntu...

When asked why they didn't run the course alone, they answered, UBUNTU! How can we be happy when others are sad?

====

I will share with you my mind pattern that is parallel to this:

Mind Pattern:
>I am one of the underprivileged
>we come from a third world country 
>we have to share whatever we have to the underprivileged like us 
>we have to sympathize with each other 
>we cannot be happy when others are sad? 

Here, there is self-judgment and a projection of ones judgments, beliefs and ideas unto others to give pity and help a little bit as a way of coping, hoping that this will change the situation or solve the problem. This justifies the value judgments we pass onto each other and the pity and help that is done from a starting point of coping instead of realizing that we have done this before many times and that this is not changing our world.

We have charity organizations that is always helping others by giving them a little bit of help but this is not done long term and not done from a starting point of one walking with another as an equal where we give all the basic necessities to survive.

In a world set up this way, the kids will be expressing themselves in ways we have never imagined. Equality will be expressed through individual self-expression that outflows to the community.

So, instead of coping in this present system, I would help make a world instead who gives everyone equal share from the produce of the earth where corporations are given the privilege of giving part of its earnings from raw materials like water, electricity etc.as a guaranteed living income for other 'under- privileged' so that this way, we can redefine the word privilege in terms of benefits enjoyed by all and NOT benefits enjoyed by only a few.

Word Web
The Word 'Privilege' means:
A special advantage, immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all

Expanding The Word 'Privilege'
advantage or benefit enjoyed by all 


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