I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Is there anything left over from last week? Does everybody have a handout about tofu? Not completely gone. Oh, for if there's blood? Well, it isn't that you have to put it on yourself. It's that you mix it and you pour it, for example, on the cutting board or on the counter or something where there might have been blood. And maybe you just get somebody else to do it. I don't know what else you might be able to use. Or you just... Well, on it? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I know that that's what the health department says.

[01:01]

One to ten. So, if it, if it, even the fumes for, you know, vinegar. So, it's too much. Something that kills blood. Yeah. Alcohol. Yeah, alcohol would certainly do it. Put it on the blood. Yeah, but I think sometimes the fumes are too much for some people. So I was going to start with menu planning, but since there's all this excitement about the tofu, I think I'd better start with the tofu. This essay that's actually written on tofu was written for my cousin, who is a cook and eats meat. So there's actually a reference to meat in there. But at any rate, and some of it is kind of really basic.

[02:01]

But at any rate, also, she's a cook. So it doesn't have, it has ideas. It doesn't have recipes. So I'm not going to read it or review it word for word, just to say that the examples that we made, the two salads with tofu and the two tofu sausages are things that you could make anytime. And the tofu sausage, those two, one of them is German with caraway, garlic, kind of, and pepper and salt. And they both have a little bit of soy sauce for depth of flavor, not, but below the level where you could taste it, but to give it some roundness, fullness. The rice was late. She's talking about dinner at City Center. The rice didn't cook in time at City Center for dinner.

[03:04]

So that's why the City Center reps are late. It's true. Yes. And we'll have a break, and then you guys can taste all the tofu examples. Thank you. Come on in. Thank you. Anyway, the tofu sausage could be, that's sort of a German kind of a thing and a Mexican kind of a one with cumin and garlic and oregano. But you could also make Italian with fennel. Or you could make an Asian kind of flavoring with ginger and soy sauce and garlic and whatever. It's in there. It's in there, actually. Those are things that you, those sausage things are something you might use to flavor a sauce or a soup or the Mexican one, enchiladas, but you're not probably going to serve enchiladas in a zendo, but you could use it as the base of an enchilada filling or a casserole with just layers over there.

[04:13]

Do you just add it to the soup? You could just add it to the soup, yeah. It's not my ideal for a soup, because it's a funny texture. But it would work. It might work better if you could make a chili, like chili and beans, and then use that to flavor it. And then it would just be like hamburger. So that wouldn't be so strange. But in a thin soup, it would be a little odd. But you could also make a thick minestrone kind of soup and put it in. Or the Italian kind of flavor, and then that would also be OK, I think. Or a white bean soup and put it in. Teresa, do you have? In that second paragraph about the water turns cloudy or something else, Just change the water or then throw it away? No, I would toss the tofu also if the water's gotten bad.

[05:16]

I mean mostly, I mean you can always smell it, I mean rinse the tofu off and smell it, but I would toss it. Because usually the water doesn't turn, or it takes a while for the water to turn, so. But it lasts quite, my experience is it lasts pretty long if you keep changing the water. What do you change it to usually? Well, but yeah, but if you didn't use it for a week, then probably you'd want to change it before that. Somebody else have a comment? I was going to say, I think it changes the way we're doing things. It's impossible to do it to a group. I was thinking of water. Well, right, a little bit. But if it's, I think I said if we're cloudy or certainly if it's sour or rank, it would cause it. And especially if you're feeding a group of people. You just don't want to take any chances. Is there some danger from spoiled dog food? You know, I don't know, but I think it's useful to treat it as if it were dairy.

[06:22]

Do you know exactly? I mean, I... Well, I don't know exactly, but I know enough about, you know, laboratory procedures. I mean, it's like, it acts like a medium, just like agar. You know, it has everything it needs to grow, whereas a vegetable doesn't. The sugar has to be broken down in order to eat it. I think it preserves a little better than in soft foods, I would suspect. I don't know. And it's also so much a matter of taste. I don't like extra firm. I don't even, I'm not a big fan of firm tofu. That's one reason I'm here is so we're going to make boingy tofu. Boingy tofu? I like that, boingy. Well, freeze it. Without being extra firm. Freeze it. Freeze it. Frozen tofu develops a lovely rubbery texture that I don't like at all, but some people think it's great.

[07:23]

I've actually frozen it and then taken out and fried it. Yeah, well, whatever. Anything fried tastes wonderful. In the kitchen, I know, I don't, I've just seen, I've just glanced at people cooking, and Ross was marinating some tofu, and it wasn't extra firm, and it turned out to be this wonderful texture. Maybe boingy is a little strong. Well, another thing, another thing is to... Boingy. Boingy. It wasn't, it was just good, you know, but he started out with soft. Well, another thing is to press it, to weight it, and then that presses the liquid out of it, and that also makes it more firm. And I don't want that either. But it's purely a matter of taste and preference, you know. And also how much you're willing to taste, and also how careful you're willing to be. Because if you use medium tofu, it's pretty soft. And so if you use medium tofu, you're either going to get mush, or you have to be really careful with it and add it at the last, and blah, blah.

[08:26]

Is this what you said about wiping it and squeezing the water out? If you press it, that squeezes the water out of it, and it makes it more, the texture more firm. You like that texture. No, I do not like it. Oh. But everybody does. It's fine. It just gets completely... I told you I'd try to tell you when it was an opinion, and this is completely my opinion. It's not even an opinion. It's just a preference. Purely a preference. I'd like to know how to stir-fry other than extra virgin oil. I don't know much about it at all. And so... Well, you just do the stir-fry first and then just gently put in the tofu at the very end and season the stir-fry highly and the tofu will just pick it up. I don't know. I think there is, but I don't know. In the packaging, that's what it is. I don't know. The ingredients. What is magnesium? Magnesium to coagulate, you know. It's solid. The other is calcium. But I can't remember.

[09:30]

Oh. It's a natural coagulant. Yeah. And that's the flavor. If you have really fresh tofu, that's what you taste. Tofu? Well, I think so. I know it's not one of those things where you have to eat something else in order to get the benefit of it. Yeah, it's basically just the inside of the bean. They say, you know, we used to think that you had to have rice with beans in order to get it, but I think they don't think that anymore. So let's see. I don't know what else. The salads, I wanted to show you because I think people often don't quite believe that, that tofu can be a salad, a condiment in a salad is, you know, like when you put in tomatoes or cucumbers or capers or carrots or something, and that's a condiment.

[10:56]

So, these salads, well, most people ate it already. Anyway, this is even, these are tofu salads, in effect. They're not, it's not even really a condiment. But it's, the thing is when the, to, to, that it be, that the dressing be pretty intense, and then the tofu picks it up. And, hopefully, there's no taste of its own. It's all what you put in. A little, it has a taste of its own, but it's very subtle. And if it's really fresh tofu, I've, I've actually gotten to where I like it. I don't, like, crave it or anything, but I like it. But, you know, some people really love it. But it is true that it will absorb or reflect any flavoring you put with it. It will. As I think Debra Madison says in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, I think that's where I read it recently, and it certainly is, or maybe, anyway, never mind. It doesn't really take much.

[11:58]

You know, when you marinate it, it doesn't really absorb very much. And it does better, I think, when you cook it. but also, or if you make a sauce, like, I used to make, um, what I would call tofu bourguignon, which was a red wine gravy tofu, which is, I mean, in a way, if you're, if you're naming things, you know, you have to be careful. Because if you put a name that, like, that's a really fancy name, you know, and some people You know, they get all excited and they say, well, it's not the same. And it isn't, you know. But at least at San Francisco Zen Center, if you say tofu stew, then that's a very particular thing that's miso flavored and da da da. And so, it is, it's very delicious. But if you say tofu stew and then you give them something with a red wine gravy, then people get upset. Because we have so much, you know, ideas. You have to figure out. But people want a name for things. So you have to figure out a name. So, no, it didn't work.

[13:01]

And, um, and being ungracious about it didn't work either. So I just started having names. But, um, anyway, but that works fine. Or any, you know, any kind of recipe for, for a stew, if the flavor of the gravy is pretty intense, the tofu would just melt right in there. And another thing is to maybe not make the pieces of tofu real huge so that you get a lot of gravy in each bite of tofu. So I said here something about not being a fan of tofu desserts. that some folks don't mind it or use it in highly flavored desserts such as chocolate. And after I read this, I tasted it, and it was chocolate mousse. And I think it's really good. And not even so bad for you. And we have the recipe.

[14:07]

Do you have it? Well, it's over there. Oh, OK. So the recipe's over there, because we, the others don't have recipes. They just do these things and keep tasting. walk in the spices. Would you care to explain that? Oh, okay. It's W-A-L-K, which means that you use it for the herbs and spices anytime, actually, especially if you're increasing a recipe. I'm getting ahead of myself, but you walk in the herbs and spices. In other words, you get it ready, but you put in a little, and then you taste it, and then you put in a little more. And as you go, you begin to get an idea of what's the right amount. So that's why it's walk it in. Don't run it in. Don't throw it in there. Do it slowly, and let it, you know, and then just keep tasting. Something about adding any ingredient in small amounts, and it's tasting, is that I quickly lose perspective on, like, what it would be like if I approached it from not having tasted it at all, from, like, outside.

[15:14]

I don't know where I am. Well, and that happens to everybody. So one thing, if you can, you go, you know, do something else for a while and come back to it. And that's really kind of the best. And, and if it's something, it's good to keep track of what you're doing. So then the next time you do that, you know, you don't have to start with one teaspoon. You can start with two tablespoons because it turns out, you know, you probably added two and a half or something like that. So then, you know, you don't have to start back so far. But if you've never done it before, I mean, it's really hard picking out little pieces of fennel seeds. They're a trouble. And if you don't have any more tofu to add to it, you know, double the amount or something. That's when you get out the onions or something. Anyhow, so you walk in the season. But we do have the recipe for the, for the mousse. Have you ever served that at any of the den practice places?

[16:16]

I have never served it before today. That's why we kept track of what we were doing, and we definitely walked it together. Actually, I didn't make—Karen made it, but we kind of figured this out as we went. And we just went carefully, so we didn't—we didn't—because there was just so much chocolate, so we didn't want to wind up with too much tofu in it. So we just kept going, and then eventually worked it out and kept track of what we did so that we could duplicate it. I don't know that it has to be, you know, it doesn't have to be exact. Well, if you actually were going to use Grand Marnier, you depending on how your tolerance for alcohol and so on, you could cook it first and boil off most of the alcohol in about, most of it in about five minutes, though it would still have a little bit.

[17:23]

But in, and if you're only using, you know, if you're using like a tablespoon of Grand Marnier in that amount of mousse, maybe two at the most, I would put some water in with it when I cooked it so that it, because you could, you could cook two tablespoons of Grand Marnier or five minutes. You could not boil two tablespoons for five minutes and have anything left. Q. Because it was uncooked, correct? A. Right. So that, yes. So, I mean, a lot of people drink, you know. I mean, it's, you know, two tablespoons of Grand Marnier in that amount, if you're not an alcoholic or something like that, wouldn't be a problem. Now, at, you know, in a Zen center, if you use alcohol, you cook it. I think you should always cook it. Just on general principles, you should cook it. And you wouldn't use, well, you might use some wine and something for the zendo if you cooked it really well. But I mean, that's not zendo food. That's just, that was a tension-getting device. That was to say, look, look at what you can do with tofu.

[18:26]

Open your mind about tofu. And it's also fun. It was, well, it took us, we were here all day, actually. It took about, what, well, if we'd actually known the amounts, it would have taken about 10 minutes. Maybe a little longer to melt the chocolate, but you didn't have to stand there and watch it. Very easy. And also, I talked about stir-frying with tofu. I don't know if you're familiar, there's a lot, you know, in the Asian food section of the market, there's this bottle black bean sauce and so on. If you read the label, some of it has MSG in it and some of it doesn't. But anyway, that kind of stuff, you can just add it to a stir-fry or chili garlic paste or something, or a combination of those two. And it's very simple and it's a very good seasoning. You can, of course, make black bean sauce from scratching. It's also very easy. But those bottled sauces are just fine.

[19:26]

Let's see. Well, I think that's enough. I want to point out to you that, you know, you may go right by this miso tofu, using soft tofu with miso, with red miso, and letting it sit. It's the one, two, three, the fourth paragraph, the first sentence. It's really, you know, I am not somebody that likes this kind of stuff. I don't like healthy I'm not a health food person. And I, this is really good. Charlie Hinkle and I made this up at Tassajara. And it's really good. Tofu and miso, it tastes, it tastes like itself. I shouldn't say it tastes like something else because it's like somebody telling you that carob tastes like chocolate and then of course it doesn't and then you never find out whether you like carob or not because you're always saying, oh, this isn't as good as chocolate. And you never taste the carob, or at least I never have. I mean, I gave up.

[20:33]

It's too, that's too strong of an association. Anyhow, so, but it does taste a little bit like, kind of like a cheddar cheese spread, you know, because it's a saltiness. I know, I know. I'm sorry. Well, you see, just mush up red miso and, and, and soft tofu. No water? No. Tofu's very watery, you know, especially soft tofu. What proportion? To taste. Yes, Carol. One half. You know, like... Walk in the miso, yeah. Speaking of the water part, any recipes that I've come across require that you drain the tofu? Well, yeah. I mean, it's usually packed in water, so I would drain it. And then, like, with making the tofu sausage, you need to We fried it first until, until the water evaporated. Which is why it's kind of a little bit crusty.

[21:35]

Anyway, so it has a lot of water in it. And that's another reason why salad dressing needs to be highly seasoned. Because it's going to, it's going to weep the water into it. And the salad, that's not a kind of dressing that you're going to want to eat after it's been sitting together for half an hour. I don't know, but you can. Well, what you do is you put it on like a cake rack and then you put something on top of it and put a weight on top of that like a can or something. I guess you could. But, you know, here too you could do that. You could take a big rack and put it on a baking sheet turned upside down. And then you put another baking sheet right side up on top of it, and then put some canned tomatoes on top of that, and leave it for at least a half an hour. And that gets more of the water out.

[22:39]

But it changes the texture, so it just depends on how you feel about that. Yeah? It's not that necessary and also a lot of people don't like the texture so much. And there was a time, there was kind of a, I know that people started talking about it not being necessary. No, Rev's wife, Russa, was talking about it a lot at one point and other people started picking it up. I enthusiastically supported it. Not so, not so much anymore. I don't, I mean, that seems like a really horrible thing. But it just depends on, you feel free, you know? I like to eat it, and I eat it. I'll eat it, it's all right.

[23:42]

It's not that big a deal. And it does get some of the liquid out, and I, but I just rather season the sauce more highly. You don't think it makes the tofu take up more marinade? It doesn't, I mean it just doesn't seem to matter very much. You, you cut, you marinate the tofu and then you cut into it and you'll see there's just, if you used a red wine marinade or a soy sauce, you know, it's a strong color. It's just a little tiny thing around the outside. It doesn't really get into it. I think it probably does. I mean, but I usually, I mean tempeh cubes are also, I cook it with a flavoring rather than marinade, just marinade it. And I think cooking tofu with flavoring, also it absorbs it more. And so they make little slices, you know, like quarter-inch, third-inch slices. yeah right and plus the thin of the spice and you know yeah right well that makes you make it with marinade still just a tiny bit it wasn't smooth enough and that could be reused the marinade it's usually good to strain it and then boil it

[25:07]

Because if you can think of tofu as if it were cheese, that's a helpful way to think of it in terms of storing it and caring for it and not letting it sit out for real long periods of time and so on, that it's very perishable. I'd like to move on, if that's OK. We can come back to this. I want to talk about menu planning in general. I think of menu planning in terms of blocks of five or seven days, that kind of thing. So, again, whether you are the person planning for that whole block of time, or here, you're filling out your day in a seven-day session, you still need to use similar principles, I think. One way I think of it is to read

[26:11]

read across, read horizontally, and compare, you know, compare all the breakfasts. And then also read vertically and compare your whole day to the next day. And also notice what you're doing during the day so that you don't serve tomato juice for breakfast and tomato soup for lunch. It's not a hot idea, you know. But also to be, to be noticing what other people are doing, or what's going on from day to day, so you don't serve oatmeal one day, and still cut oats the next. You know, so, if it's five days, you can probably think of five different, really different cereals. And also, not serving cracked wheat one day, and semolina the next. You know, because semolina is just more finely ground wheat. So, it's good to try to, try to have variety, and there's lots of cereals, you know. We could even have millet sometimes.

[27:14]

When we had this meeting to talk about Maile, I said the one thing I would say is millet cereal, which she used to love to serve. And I think I'm probably going to do that. If I ever serve millet cereal, you'll know that I say hello. Channeling Maile at this end. So check vertically and horizontally, and think about variety. It's back to, I think we talked about this last week, about that the food needs to be interesting enough so that people eat it, and not so fascinating that that becomes the focus of the Sishin order. So one of the ways you think about that is in terms of variety. You know, the Tenzo in the instructions, the Tenzo and the Tenzo Kyokuma, talks about making special meals sometimes, and Dogen talks about serving meals full of variety for the monks.

[28:18]

He also says, use humble ingredients and make good things and so on. But you need to think about that and so as to not duplicate too much. we used to sometimes have theme days when I was a guest cook. We would try not to, but then we, you know, it would all be already all in place, and we'd realize that we were having green beans for, you know, three meals in a row or something. You know, not, not as the vegetable, but, you know, as a feature of a, of a dish. So, try to think about that when you're, when you're filling in your line. And if, if the person the day before had steel cutouts and fruit and nuts, then don't make oatmeal fruit and nuts. You know, even if they're really different fruits or whatever. One day it's a fruit salad, and the next day it's banana, and the next day it's buttermilk. Still, it's very, you know, surely you could think of something else.

[29:21]

And, um, I... Besides miso soup? Yeah. Well, um, I think of them in terms of trying to alternate a sweet breakfast one day and a savory breakfast the next. And it may often involve fruit in one way or another. You know, that the second bowl might be, might be, well, it might be stew fruit, but it might be cran-apple juice, and then the third bowl, scrambled tofu or tofu cabbage grill or something. which I would think of as a savory breakfast, because you'd have two out of three that were savory. And you could have tomato juice, either cold or hot tomato juice, in the middle, in the second bowl. And so there's tofu cabbage grill, and there's scrambled tofu, and there's maybe sesame soybeans.

[30:25]

I'm going to do that. I'm going to cook soybeans without a pressure cooker and see how long it takes. I don't know how long. It takes, because I've never done it without a pressure cooker, so I just want to see if it's... I was told it was two days, and then we saw a recipe from the Bailey's that said cook it all morning, which is... So, all day. Yeah. Oh, yes. But, so that all morning is only about an hour and a half to two hours. So, so I don't know. I'm going to find out. I'm going to find out. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't even think about it. Anyway, so those are just, those are some examples for apples in the middle bowl and cheese chunks in the third bowl. I was going to say, for those especially who cook for BCC, the recipe box is arranged by first bowl, breakfast, second bowl, breakfast, third bowl, breakfast, and then goes into lunch for second, third bowl. So there are specific suggestions for those who don't, you know,

[31:28]

searching for a different idea. And you can also always talk to people that have been cooking around here for a long time. There are a lot of experienced cooks here. And here's another opinion, which is, well, I want to back up about variety. were in that neighborhood, that it shouldn't be too spicy, and it should also not be too bland. But the danger is more usually on the too spicy, and especially not hot, chili hot, and that kind of thing. It's hard for people who's in there. Some people have very low tolerance for it. And in our culture, it's really unusual. I mean, if you were in India, They would be weird if it weren't spicy, but here, that's not true.

[32:41]

Oh, that's, yeah, but you still have to use your gin. But, I mean, it's, I remember somebody wants to make baked apples for their apple chunks for breakfast. And she put butter in it and all this. It was delicious, but it tasted like dessert. It tasted like apple pie filling. And that's not breakfast, especially if it's not breakfast the way we usually eat breakfast. Usually, you cook them with apple juice maybe a little bit or something like that, which is the kind of sweetness. That's something we haven't done. What is it? Apples and yam chunks. Well, he certainly didn't approve of onions and garlic. I don't know about hot spices. It probably didn't come up. How is it that we have not taken that up?

[33:43]

We're not Japanese. That's right. Japanese people don't eat garlic. Well, that's true. That's true. But anyway, um... I'm interested in art because my sister took all the museum classes many years ago. This is a place, this is a monastery. Well, we'll cook. I could cook. But yeah, I went to this... You should eat at their restaurant. In Japan, I went to this monastery. So, I booked a room in Japan. It was turned into a museum. I think they still, people still sat there, but it was like... There's a stele, like a stone stele, at the entrance. It's that those who smell of sake and onions cannot enter. And garlic. Probably the garlic didn't even arise. Maybe it's... Yeah, well, if you eat a lot of garlic, it comes out your pores. I mean, it shouldn't be...

[34:45]

And the zendo, I mean, it shouldn't be intense. It shouldn't be like going to this different rose or to what's it called, cafe sport, where they put raw garlic on top of everything. So some subtlety. But we just, you know, there have been times, I think there have been practice periods, where somebody's, you know, somebody leading this, I don't know, garlic and elephants, this practice period. But it is an interesting practice to do. But I would find it, I mean, I could do that, but I wouldn't like it. I'm glad. I almost felt like, oh, good, it didn't happen to me. What about ginger? Ginger, I think, is OK. Well, I mean, ginger is OK in Japanese cooking. They really don't use garlic very much. They do use onions. So I don't know. But in terms of too spicy, that's something to pay attention to, to not put in so much ginger that it's too hot. But some people have trouble with that, because ginger is a very hot spice. I tried to alternate on days so that one day the breakfast might well be pretty much fruit-based and say stewed fruit and yogurt and then the next day at least one of those second two bowls would be a savory thing.

[36:15]

That's what I tried to do. Well, it's partly a matter of taste. I wouldn't serve, I probably wouldn't serve like fruit salad or something with this scrambled tofu, but I might serve cran-apple juice. Yeah. It would be like orange juice and eggs. Yes, Dana. Dana, first. A lot of people, all the time, are like, so these guys are really like, Japanese breakfast, like rice, or... And they say it's good, like, hearty, energizing.

[37:16]

Do you think that's true, or is that, is that, if you think in that way too, like where you are in the, in the machine, like halfway through, you're gonna give up ground? Yes. I do think that. Have I told you that? I think so. I told you that probably, yes, I do believe that, I do think that. Or at a certain point. Yeah. I don't know about the, that, I mean, I find that breakfast is comfort food to me. So I often make that breakfast. I make that breakfast here a lot. And I don't, I think maybe people find it a good way to start fishing, really, because it feels, it's traditional, and it feels like sinking into something, you know. Now this is different, you know. So they could get that breakfast any old day. That's it. Can I say a little bit? Yes. Again, this largely applies to the people cooking at Berkeley. Whether it's Saturday morning or the first meal of the Sashim day, we only have six burgers.

[38:27]

And if we have four pots cooking the cereal, we cannot, usually, you cannot make three cooked dishes. Right. So you have to recall that when you're planning your breakfast, even if you have Sashim help itself. Yeah. Or you can put the cereal in the oven. Yeah, but especially for a Saturday, you don't want to go all out and re-cook dishes, I think, because it's kind of ostentatious to do that. You have to, you also, well, you have to also, you have to think in terms of what it is. Like, you know, a custard that goes together quickly, and you just put it in the oven, and you serve it in the things you cook it in, that's easy. But I wanted to talk also first about what Dana had asked about, you know, about thinking in terms of where you are in this machine. Now, that's not so easy here. I mean, if I happen to be cooking the third day, I do have this thing about, you know, some people have a really hard time the second day and some people have a really hard time the third day, right?

[39:32]

So I think that that's the time to give them the brownies. By the fifth day or the seventh day, They don't need brownies. They're fine now. You can give them fruit, and they'll be thrilled. So that you need, you need somebody that, you know, the brownies are to encourage people in the middle, not at the end. And so, I do think that. And I used to always serve chili on the last day, just because that's, that's what Kathy Gustin used to do at Green Gulch when I, when I first started sitting at the machines. It sort of felt like Party food or something, you know. Let's see. Yes. Somebody asked him about why we had to wash shoe at night.

[40:34]

And he gave some answers. I asked him that, and he said, because I like it. Well, he had just about said that. He didn't quite say that, but that was in effect. That was during dinner. That was it. There's gomasho during dinner here, and it's... Meal used to be medicine. Well, the rule wasn't spicy enough. The tentacles were spicy. Right. Yeah, there are people that really disapprove of it, of serving, you know, like gamacho and sour cream when you serve chili sec, or potatoes. to be served with roasted potatoes to serve gomasio and also either ketchup or sour cream or something like that.

[41:38]

Or at Tassajara, when I would do the miso soup breakfast, I used to serve pickles as the second condiment. Yeah. So it is good to check with whoever's leading the practice period or the sashimi and stuff. My feeling is that it made more sense. At Tassajara, when you're eating in a zendo all the time for three months straight, then you have a little more need for that kind of variety, a little leeway every so often. But here, you know, we, we have, like at City Center, there's a condiment tray, and there's all this stuff, and if you want to go get ketchup, you can always go get ketchup or whatever. So, you know, you're, we're doing it for seven days. So it just seems to me that you probably stand to not, to, you know, to not have a hint. When you're planning the menus, I mean, one of the things is you get a chance to see your own desire, and you get a chance to see your ego.

[42:39]

You know, oh, I want to do this. Oh, wouldn't it be great to have minestrone with cheese, and then have gamacho, and then have polenta. Well, yeah, but this is cooking for sashimi. just cooking it for tomorrow or something. So, you know, see if you can think of something else. You know, and then some other time, some Friday night, or just a whole day. You can always have cheese with soup. Well, if it's if that's the third goal, but yeah, and I have I have a This is also extremely in the area of preference. I'm not a big fan of nuts in the third goal I find them hard to eat because they're so dry and also I think of nuts as kind of oil and protein and not much food value so that was some I used to serve those as a as a second condiment at Casa Hanna and

[43:51]

There was also a lot of bake-ups in that particular practice period. I don't know, but I have trouble eating stewed fruit without some kind of dairy cutter. It's too intense. Anyway, it would be a good idea to check. And then, I think it came up, and this is something that Dolly was talking about, you know, that if you have three hot things, that's difficult. And you have to think, too, about the serve-up. So when you're planning a menu, also think about serve-up and how it's going to be. And I think I said last week, you might think, oh, semolina, it just comes together in a flash, so that's really an easy cereal. Well, actually, it's a hard cereal. because you have to make it just when you're about ready to do the serve up. Whereas cracked wheat, it's just cooking along.

[44:52]

Here often what you do is you make the cereal up and you put it in the oven and then you stir it occasionally. You add water or whatever, but it just does with it. Then you put it in those endo pots and you put it in the oven. And it's great. This is mainly, I think mainly It works well and it doesn't stick usually. You start it on top of the stove and then you put it in the pots and then you just have to stir it occasionally. And so that is actually an easy one, even though it has to cook a long time because you can just forget about it. So, oh no, 325, maybe 350 max. Well, cracked wheat or nine grain. But anything. No, I wouldn't do that. Steel cut oats, yes. Oh, absolutely. Rice, yeah. Well, you have to stir it. No, you don't ever forget about it.

[45:53]

You could cook it in the oven. I cook it in the oven. Well, I started the night before. I cook it the night before when I cook rice and cereal. Oh, rice gruel, I think, or rice cream. Oh, rice, cracked rice, aka cracked rice. Yes. Yes, you could do that with cracked rice. But you just have to stir it, and you have to, you could start it, like with polenta, you can, you know, you have to stir it for a while until it decides that it's going to stay suspended, right? Or else you'd be very sorry. So, so, but then once it's done that, then you can put it in the oven. In, in, in the pots? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you said, don't forget larger quantities take longer to cook. Is that true with oatmeal? Well, it would take longer to come back to the boil and all. Oh, right. In oatmeal, the less you stir it, the happier everyone will be. The less you stir it? That's right. Yes. I learned from Andrea, pretty much leave it alone and only stir it.

[46:57]

Maybe one more time if you have to. Well, you turn off the flame, and you leave it alone, and it'll reabsorb. Right. So this is the sound because I forgot to turn the tape over during my class, so I'm just kind of dictating this or reading it into the tape. That last was a reference. oatmeal, but you don't stir it a lot. And if it sticks, if any cereal sticks to the pot, you turn the flame off and it will reabsorb it. I may say that later somewhere. At any rate, to continue general notions about menu planning, Think in terms of serve up so that you don't have three hot items to serve up at any one time, especially if you're not able to have something already in its serving pot in the oven.

[48:00]

If you do that, then you could have three hot things without it being too hard. Think in terms of the weather. In cold weather, you probably want to emphasize hot food. in hot weather you emphasize cold food. Be aware of the circumstances, whether there's a work period or not, for example, during the Sashin, because if there is a work period, especially if it's right after the break after lunch, then you could serve, and you might want to serve, a heavier lunch. For example, bean dishes or other heavy dishes work fine if there is a work period. And you may even need to if the work being done is relatively heavy work, as opposed to... If there's no work period, you might do well to avoid things like heavy bean soups.

[49:08]

Maybe you serve a soup with some beans in it for the protein, but not something really thick with beans or other heavy beans. Also, whether or not there's a stretching period is right after lunch. You would not, I think, put curry powder in the salad dressing.

[50:27]

Or if you were serving an Asian stir-fry, you would not serve bread with that. Or if you were serving miso soup, for example, you would not serve bread with a miso soup. You serve something that goes better. For example, you'd serve rice with a miso soup. And with your salad dressing, you try to have something with an Asian flavor to it. If you were serving miso soup or Asian stir fry, you use rice vinegar. Maybe you put in a little tiny bit of sesame oil, for example. think, too, about how it looks when you're planning your meal. You don't want it to be all one color, if you can avoid it. So that if you serve brown rice cereal and sesame soybeans, think about serving something in the middle bowl that has some color to it. Some citrus fruit or some hot or cold tomato juice or some cran-apple juice, for that matter, or cranberry juice that has some red color to it. Something with some color.

[51:30]

Think, too, about texture. So you don't serve meals with just one texture. So if they're very soft, then have something crunchy. Or if you have little nuggets of things, don't serve a cereal that also has little nuggets of things. Serve a cereal that's maybe very smooth. Remember to think about the gruel, too, when you're planning your menu. We'll talk about gruel later, but just think in terms of having enough for leftovers, which makes it good also for the zendo, because then you don't have to worry about whether you're going to run out of food. So make plenty of soup and plenty of the grain at lunch, and think about it, too, with breakfast, especially if you're making a savory. If you're making scrambled tofu, you could make a lot because that's an excellent thing to put into gruel. And finally, about sort of general menu planning, have a backup plan for either not enough, you know, once you cook something and you realize there's just no way, or for disasters.

[52:46]

One example is instant couscous or quick-cooking pasta and pasta sauce. You just have those things available and always having a pot of water boiling so that you can either cook the pasta or make couscous very quickly. At Berkeley's Ant Center, you know where things are at Berkeley Bowl, and it would be useful to have a disaster kit available in the kitchen. Next, I want to talk about protein. It's not clear that it's necessary at every meal. There are some people that think so. I know someone that thinks that she gets a headache if she doesn't have protein at every meal. As I think was discussed earlier in this class, I think that what makes sense is to think of it over the whole day.

[53:48]

But people are happier if you serve protein at each meal and it does make it easier to kind of space it out over the day anyway. The usual sources for protein are tofu, beans, dairy, eggs, nuts, and legumes, by which I mean things like split peas or lentils. And remember that you can serve, for example, tofu in the salad. It doesn't have to be in the First, it doesn't have to be in a soup or stew in the second bowl. It can be as a salad condiment or a main ingredient in a salad in the third bowl. And likewise, beans. or nuts, and even legumes, sprouted lentils or beans or sprouted garbanzos as a salad condiment is an excellent way to get protein into the meal when your soup is kind of light.

[54:55]

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