On My Library Table - Ex Libris VII

Somehow or other, the book page took a left turn at the bridge during its first appearance and assumed the shape of a nice linear laundry list of sorts, something which bothered me at the time and has been tugging away at my sensibilities since, because I have never cared for nice straight up-and-down laundry lists. Is there such a thing as a circular list, I wonder? This was not supposed to be just another list, and so it is returning to the shape I envisioned for it in the first place: a short page popping up at random moments here and there and holding one or two books which are being read and enjoyed in any given week. There is only one book here this week, but it's a doozy.

EveryDay Greens, Annie Somerville,
(Scribners) ISBN: 0743216253

In 1979, the Greens Restaurant opened in an old warehouse overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge in Fort Mason, California, the inspiration of the San Francisco Zen Center and Richard Baker Roshi, SFZC's abbot at the time. The place has become something of a legend since it opened because the cuisine is vegetarian, eclectic and very innovative, and all ingredients are purchased locally from organic producers - for example, produce used in the Greens kitchen comes from the nearby and equally famous Green Gulch Farm (known to us Zen types as the Green Dragon Temple or Soryu-j). Fare dished out at Greens is redolent of exotic spices and faraway places, and consuming it is an experience which is almost indecently sumptuous and a true feast for the senses. Can one hear one's food as well as seeing, smelling, touching and tasting it? Does food sing as it sits there on its plate before us? Here are other koans to contemplate.

Annie Somerville, the eminent chef who presides over the Greens kitchen, is the author of this book, and she is a creative culinary genius (just as you are, Karina). If I ever make it to Fort Mason, I am going to live close by and I am going to spend a lot of my time at Greens. In the meantime, I pull out her gorgeous cookbook on cold northern winter nights and sit happily browsing through it for hours, visualizing countless fragrant and artistic meals composed of vegetarian dishes which take their inspiration from every blessed culture on this island earth. (I also visualize living somewhere warmer and without snow at this time of the year, but that is another matter entirely.)

The recipes are magnificent, and just looking through this book is a sensuous experience - it was illustrated by Mayumi Oda, one of my favorite artists and Buddhist thinkers, and her illustrations are out of this world. If I subsisted entirely on "takeaway" food, shunned cookware and never had occasion to set foot in a kitchen, I would still love this book.