Podcasts about greens restaurant

Teresa Rivera started reading books about Eastern religion while living in France. She liked them but they didn't tell her what to do, how to practice. She found what she wss looking for when she started sitting with Taisen Deshimaru's group in France. In 1973 she arrived at the San Francisco Zen Center. Before long she was living at Tassajara She practiced for years at Green Gulch and worked for years at the SFZC's Greens Restaurant all the while raising three kids. She just turned 90 and is living in a retirement home in San Diego. Here about all that and more in this podcast with her.

Steve Silberman came to the SF Zen Center in 1979 and worked with me, DC, at Greens Restaurant.. He's a writer for Wired Magazine. He talks about his bestselling Neurotribes: the Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. He also wrote Skeleton Key A Dictionary for Deadheads.He talks about all this and more in this podcast. He has done his homework.

Today on the show I interview Katie Reicher. As Executive Chef of the legendary Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, Katie creates comforting, seasonal, and inspired cuisine served in a welcoming environment that makes every guest feel like family. This approach extends to her kitchen staff as well, where each member feels valued, both as an individual and as part of the team, in an environment that is inclusive and rewarding. Since childhood, Katie has been influenced by the culinary traditions from both sides of her large and extended family. Born and raised in New York's Rockland County, Katie enjoyed Sunday dinners at the home of her Italian American paternal grandmother surrounded by family, friends and copious amounts of delicious, heart-warming food. Through her maternal family's Ukrainian side, the philosophy of food-as- comfort was embraced by her mother Nadine who, in addition to being an accomplished cook in her own right, is an avid gardener, beekeeper, and raises hens for their eggs. Throughout her childhood, Katie and her mom explored the magic of seasonal foods, learning how to bring nature's bounty into everyday meals and traditional holidays, as well as those special moments where food plays such an essential and celebratory role. As an accomplished athlete and academic student, Katie began her college career at Cornell University majoring in nutrition, but soon realized that she wanted to take a more hands-on approach with food. She enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY and, as part of that program, had the opportunity to apply for an externship at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. Through this program, Katie was able to work directly with Executive Chef Annie Sommerville (whose tenure ran from 1981 to 2018). This experience gave her first-hand knowledge of the philosophy and approach that has made Greens Restaurant the legendary food destination that it remains today. Upon graduation from CIA in 2016, Katie returned to Greens, working her way through multiple positions before eventually being named Executive Chef in 2020, continuing the rich legacy of female culinary leaders. Katie continues to move the art of vegetarian cuisine forward, incorporating traditional methods while letting the seasons guide her, and by sourcing the best possible products from local artisans and farms such as Green Gulch. Inspired by the restaurant's rich heritage along with her own vision for the limitless potential of vegetarian cuisine, Katie says it best: “My hope is that our guests leave Greens feeling nourished—physically, spiritually, and emotionally.” While not at Greens, Katie enjoys her life in the Bay area with partner Jesse and beloved cat Genji. And underneath her white chef's jacket, you'll find a beautiful tattoo of the snap peas and nasturtiums inspired by her mother's garden, with Meyer lemons and a hummingbird symbolizing her love for the California seasons and the magical bounty it holds. Check out the restaurant's website at https://greensrestaurant.com/about/ Check out the blog at linecookthoughts.com

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. This dharma-talk was given on June 4th, 2022 at his sesshin at Felsentor.

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. This dharma-talk was given on June 2nd, 2022 at his sesshin at Felsentor.

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. This dharma-talk was given on June 1st, 2022 at his sesshin at Felsentor.

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. This dharma-talk was given on Mai 31st, 2022 at his sesshin at Felsentor.

Laurie Senauke started formal Zen practice in 1980 at San Francisco Zen Center; she worked at Greens Restaurant back in the day and lived at Tassajara for three years. In 1989 she married Hozan Alan Senauke, moved to Berkeley Zen Center, and raised their two children with him there. She served as head student (shuso) at BZC in 2003 and is a Practice Leader there. In April 2018, she received priest ordination from Daito Steven Weintraub as Kosei Nyokai – Radiant Vow, Suchness Ocean. In Fall 2018, she served as shuso at Tassajara. She received Dharma Transmission from Steve in 2021.For more on Simplicity Zen Podcast:- https://simplicityzen.com/Berkeley Zen Center:- https://berkeleyzencenter.org/

Bio: John Birdsall grew up near San Francisco and learned to cook at Greens Restaurant in that city. He spent the next seventeen years in professional kitchens there and in Chicago, and did some writing as a side gig, including food stories and restaurant reviews for the San Francisco Sentinel, a pioneering LGBTQ weekly. After leaving the kitchen, he was a restaurant critic and features writer at the Contra Costa Times and East Bay Express, and the editor of SF Weekly's food blog. In 2014, John won a James Beard Award for food and culture writing for “America, Your Food Is So Gay” in Lucky Peach, and another in 2016 for “Straight-Up Passing” in the queer food journal Jarry. He's co-author of the book Hawker Fare (with James Syhabout), published under the Anthony Bourdain imprint for Ecco–HarperCollins in 2018. The New Yorker's Helen Rosner called John's first solo book, The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard(Norton, 2020), “elegant and unvarnished,…beautifully unconventional.” The book was a finalist for a 2021 Lambda Literary Award, a finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and an Amazon Top 100 Best Book of the Year. John has written for Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times, and taught culinary writing at the San Francisco Cooking School, and is a judge for the 2022 Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts and Judy Grahn Awards for gay and lesbian nonfiction. He's married to Perry Lucina, an artist and designer, and lives in Tucson. Website: https://www.john-birdsall.com/ The Man who ate too much. https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Ate-Too-Much/dp/0393635716 This episode is sponsored by Culinary Historians of Northern California, a Bay Area educational group dedicated to the study of food, drink, and culture in human history. To learn more about this organization and their work, please visit their website at www.chnorcal.org If you follow my podcast and enjoy it, I'm on @buymeacoffee. If you like my work, you can buy me a coffee and share your thoughts

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. This dharma talk was given on June 11th, 2021. Support this podcast

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. This dharma talk was given on June 10th, 2021. Support this podcast

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. This dharma talk was given on June 9th, 2021. Support this podcast

Edward Brown has been practicing Zen since 1965. Ordained as a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. He is the subject of the 2007 film How to Cook Your Life. Support this podcast

Michael Phillips is an old friend and for decades a key advisor to the SF Zen Center. Herein he tells about how Greens Restaurant got going and how it developed.

Ever wonder how a groundbreaking, pioneering, and award-winning chef and cookbook author came to such a place? Today, we'll find out from Deborah Madison. After working at breakthrough restaurants Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Greens in San Francisco, Deborah Madison made her mark in Rome, opened Cafe Escalera in Santa Fe, and became a prolific writer of cookbooks and articles about foods for places like "Gourmet" magazine and "Food & Wine." Her latest book, which is entitled, "An Onion In My Pocket," is a memoir. It has been very positively reviewed in many places with terms like "beguiling, honest, and captivating." And in the words of Marion Nestle, a well-known figure in the food area, the book shows how the path that carried Deborah to become what Marian said is, "The consummate vegetarian cook and cookbook writer."   Interview Summary   So your book, "An Onion In My Pocket" - that's a really intriguing title. How did you come to that?   Well, there was an onion in my pocket one day. And I just was writing about it, maybe telling my editor about it, and she said, "Oh, we should use that for the title!" There was an onion in my pocket because I had been cooking with a friend and these onions were leftover from a pizza we were making. They were beautiful onions and I took it home with me. And then I went to Spanish class and it was in my pocket along with my pencils and papers and things like that. And I took it out, put it on the desk, and people started to laugh. And I thought, to me it's normal that I have an onion in my pocket or I could have anything in my pocket. I've even had a snake in my purse that I brought home once because it was going to eat gophers, which I really appreciate. So that's how that came about.   Wow, all kinds of interesting things show up in your pocket, in your purse. So in your book, you write about some of your other 14 cookbooks and what was involved in writing and publishing them. Which ones mean the most to you?   Well, I think Local Flavors does, Seasonal Food Desserts and above all, Vegetable Literacy. And they mean something to me because actually the first chant that we learned at Tassajara, which is the Zen monastery I was at was: 72 labors brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us. And all these books are indirectly about how food comes to us and the stories of food. And they're interesting to me and I'm still very interested in that question. So those are my favorites.   So Deborah you mentioned something that I find fascinating about the story of food. Does it seem to you like it does to me that more and more people are becoming interested in the story of their food, and do you think this is a positive trend?   Well, I feel like it's both positive and not so positive. I hope we're not going to lose what we've gained in variety, particularly of vegetables because it's been a long, long fight. You know 40 years ago there was nothing, there was really nothing to eat and now there's a lot. And yet people are going back to old things as vegetables become harder to get. I've even cooked corn dogs for my husband who requested them. And I thought, Oh really? I've never even had a corn dog. What is a corn dog? I had to go online to learn how to make one. I think that there's kind of a retrograde happening right now in the pandemic at the same time I think that people are interested in the story of their food and they have to be because it's disappearing.   As I look out there and I see more and more restaurants have a board on the wall that lists the farmers where the food comes from and you hear people talk about food miles or the environmental impact of the foods they're purchasing or consuming. And you know, people are interested in animal welfare or others are interested in some other issue of theirs, but when you put it all together it seems to me that the number of people care about these things has gone way up. And then I at least see that as a very positive trend. But I appreciate your thoughts on that.   I think it's a positive trend too. And I like it and I hope people really do what they say for here in New Mexico. People would say, "Oh, we use local food" and they'd order a pound of lettuce or something like that. And it would run out. But I think people are doing more. You can taste the difference. You can see the difference customers aren't stupid. You know, especially if they shop at farmer's markets there they're familiar. And if they have gardens and I think more and more people are gardening, at least judging by the seeds and how they're disappearing from companies who take breaks and fulfilling orders and that kind of thing. But I think you're right. I think there is more of a concern than there has been in the past.   So you write about what you call Kitchen Lessons things that you've learned often from customers. Can you share some example?   The one I was really interested in was 'Don't Apologize.' The example I used in the book was with a customer who said he loved the smoky flavor and the mushroom soup we had made. I know I knew there wasn't supposed to be a smokey flavor. So I just said, thank you very much because why make him feel terrible about misjudging or not recognizing that the solids have fallen to the bottom of the pot and were scorched. And that that's what he was tasting. So that was a lesson that I did learn very much from customers.   Other lessons I knew or I learned were to one eat in the dining room. Like a customer is very, very important as a way to getting to know your food treat everybody the same for sure you have to do that. And I mean I learned these lessons in the most painful ways possible. Marion Cunningham taught us a really good lesson when she said, "Debbie, dear do you not believe in salt?" And then she talked about salting food and how you should salt as you go, when you cook. Let's see be gracious always to everybody. You know, people would come into the kitchen and tell me that that was the best meal they'd had. And I'd wanna say, "you're kidding." "What do you eat normally?" You know, but I finally had to learn that their experience was very different from mine and that it was just important to say, "I'm so glad you enjoyed it," and actually mean it.   And the last lesson, wasn't so much a lesson but a hint of things to come, which was; know that the six months in the beginning will be the hardest but you will get to leave one day. And that did happen almost to the day. And I was reflecting upon that and thinking at the time, "Oh six months have gone by, I've made it, we've made it." And now Greens is over 40 years old. It's amazing.   Let's talk about that a little bit. So if you think back to those days when you worked at places like Greens and Chez Panisse, how are those or similar restaurants different today than they were back then? Certainly they're more popular and visible, but beyond that have things changed much within the restaurants?   Oh yes, I'm sure they have especially Chez Panisse because I never, ever could walk in and get a job like I did then. I just wanted to work there so badly and it made so much sense to me, their food made so much sense to me. And I don't think I would have been able to do that today for sure. Alice isn't there so much, like she was then and it wasn't some new greens for one is the dinners are all a carte menus. They're much more expensive. They're beautiful. And menus are printed on heavy paper stock. The waiters know the difference between espresso and espresso, which we didn't really understand, so much then we thought that coffee drink was to get you going. And it is, but it's not an express as espresso is pressed, things like that. So I think they are different but I think in some ways they're the same. Their commitments are the same. They're just many more restaurants that are doing that kind of thing too.   I scanned the titles of your books. Nine of the mentioned vegetables in the title but you say you're not a vegetarian, what is that?   Well, I just find it's too limiting. It's just too limiting. I think I'm probably a natural vegetarian and that's the food I really love to cook and eat. But if we are a nation meat eaters and I really think we are I feel it's important to know what that's about. And that's why I've been on the board of the Southwest Grass-fed Livestock Alliance twice. And if somebody, I know like my husband, for example wants meat and he was raised with meat, I'm happy to cook it for him. I don't like the limits of vegetarianism or any kind of food title. I don't really care to have a label attached to what I eat.   So given that you're so prominent and writing books for people who are vegetarian do you get any pushback yourself for the fact that you're not strictly vegetarian yourself?   That's the strange thing is I don't I have never gotten pushed back. Maybe people are horrified. I don't know, but in my book, 'Local Flavors' I actually did have 11 recipes that were for meat because meat was appearing in the market. And this was about the farmer's market movement across the United States. Nobody seemed to notice nobody commented. I don't know. It's odd. I haven't gotten pushback. On the contrary, I feel that people are sort of relieved with this book in a way. I'm not super strict about anything. I'm just not, I have a hard time being struck. Research about the vegetables I eat, I want high quality.   So what do you really think matters about food and how do you define the concept of nourishment?   Well, food that's cooked with a mind of kindness and generosity, care, thoughtfulness, maybe even simplicity. I think that that's, what's important as much more important than what is on the plate, whether there's a meat or not. And I actually did end the book with a lot of stories about meals I remembered and some of them had meat some of them didn't, but the point was that they were so generously given and prepared for me that I remembered them. Some of them happened quite a long time ago.   You know what's fascinating to hear you use words like generosity and kindness and describing how food can be given and received. How does that come through in the way say a restaurant can provide food to people or how families can do it? Cause it sounds like that's very important.   Well, it is. And I've always found that to be true at Chez Panisse. I love, for example, when people come into a restaurant they're welcomed with kindness with, "hello, can I help you?" And “Oh, you have a reservation with time and please follow me” and there's bread on the table. All those are something good. And that's a kind of food kindness that can be extended to strangers. I was writing in my book about more personal kinds of kindness, but not always. In fact, the first story I tell was a meal in Scotland that I had, and it really pointed me to my 'North star', which was about how food in season and in its place is the best food always. And you know, that was because a woman agreed to feed this older woman that I was traveling with and myself and we was really hungry and we sat and waited and we looked at the garden and we looked at the Lake and pretty soon she came in with a platter with the vegetables, from the garden and fish in the Lake. It was beautiful. It was really quite stunning   Bio Deborah Madison is an American chef, food writer and cooking teacher. She has been called an expert on vegetarian cooking and her gourmet repertoire showcases fresh garden produce. Her work also highlights Slow Food, local foods and farmers' markets. Madison grew up in Davis, California, and earned a bachelor's degree with high honors in sociology/city planning in 1968 from Cowell College at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She then cooked at Chez Panisse and was a student for eighteen years at the San Francisco Zen Center. She was the founding chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco which opened in 1979. She then cooked for a year at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. She has written for the magazines Gourmet, Saveur, Food and Wine, Kitchen Gardener, Fine Cooking, Orion, Organic Gardening and Eating Well, and for the Time-Life Cookbook Series. She has also written for Martha Stewart Living, Bon Appetite, Diversions, Kiplingers, Garden Design, Kitchen Garden, Cooks, Vegetarian Times, Metropolitan Home, East-West Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Home and Garden, and the International Slow Food Journal. When she first moved to New Mexico, Madison managed the Santa Fe Farmers' Market and served on its board for a number of year. Madison has been active in the Slow Food movement, founded the Santa Fe Chapter, was active on the ARK committee and served on the scientific committee of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. She is on the board of the Seed Savers Exchange and the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Association, and is the co-director of the Edible Kitchen garden at Monte del Sol Charter School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the founding chef at Café Escalara in Santa Fe.  

Deborah Madison put vegetarian gourmet cooking on the map—and yet she's not a vegetarian. She learned to cook at the San Francisco Zen Center and the restaurant Chez Panisse, and then co-founded Greens Restaurant in San Francisco in 1979. She’s a chef and is author of over a dozen books on food and cooking; her latest is a memoir called, An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables.  

An Onion in My Pocket, My Life with Vegetables Presented by Deborah Madison Thanks to her beloved cookbooks and groundbreaking work as the chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, Deborah Madison, though not a vegetarian herself, has long been revered as this country’s leading authority on vegetables. She profoundly changed the way generations of Americans think about cooking with vegetables, helping to transform “vegetarian” from a dirty word into a mainstream way of eating. But before she became a household name, Madison spent almost twenty years as an ordained Buddhist priest, coming of age in the midst of counterculture San Francisco. In this charmingly intimate and refreshingly frank memoir, she tells her story–and with it the story of the vegetarian movement–for the very first time. From her childhood in Big Ag Northern California to working in the kitchen of the then-new Chez Panisse, and from the birth of food TV to the age of green markets everywhere, An Onion in My Pocket is as much the story of the evolution of American foodways as it is the memoir of the woman at the forefront. It is a deeply personal look at the rise of vegetable-forward cooking, and a manifesto for how to eat well. Recorded via Zoom on December 9, 2020. http://www.CulinaryHistorians.org

Day 1 of ZCNS' virtual residency with Edward Brown on September 17th 2020. Edward was ordained in 1971 by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who gave him the Dharma name Jusan Kainei, which means "Longevity Mountain, Peaceful Sea." Edward has been practicing Zen since 1965 and also has done extensive vipassana practice, yoga, and chi gung. He leads regular sitting groups and meditation retreats in Northern California and offers workshops in the U.S. and internationally on a variety of subjects, including cooking, handwriting change, and Mindfulness Touch. Edward is an accomplished chef, who helped found Greens Restaurant in San Francisco and worked with Deborah Madison in writing The Greens Cookbook. Edward's other books include The Tassajara Bread Book, Tassajara Cooking, The Tassajara Recipe Book, and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. He also edited Not Always So, a collection of Suzuki Roshi's lectures. In 2007, Edward was the subject of a critically acclaimed feature-length documentary film entitled How to Cook Your Life, directed by Doris Dörrie.

This is Part 2 of a 3 part series covering the food of San Francisco. In today episode we explore the healthy foods of San Fran. Covering Shizen Sushi Bar and Izakaya, Nourish Cafe, Greens Restaurant, and Milennium Restaurant. Video version;  https://youtu.be/_WsAS45DnCQ Connect with me: Instagram | @howtotravelvegan & @tomsimak YouTube | http://bit.ly/veganyoutube Website | www.tomsimak.com   Go ECO while you travel Keep cup for coffees and smoothies - https://amzn.to/302JHpj Stainless steel straw - https://amzn.to/308pU7E Drink Bottle - https://amzn.to/2HXtpYq Bamboo cutlery kit - https://amzn.to/2I1mE7Z   Subscribe to the podcast: Itunes | https://apple.co/2Xet1KQ Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2Z079TX Stitcher | http://bit.ly/2Xa4VAR   Much love,

STORY WATER A story is like water That you heat for your bath. It takes messages between the fire and your skin. It lets them meet, and it cleans you! Very few can sit down in the middle of the fire itself, like a salamander, or Abraham. We need intermediaries. A feeling of fullness comes, but usually it takes some bread to bring it. Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it. The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal the light that’s blazing inside your presence. Water, stories, the body, all the things we do, are mediums that hide and show what’s hidden. Study them, and enjoy this being washed with a secret we sometimes know, and then not. EDWARD ESPE BROWN began cooking and practicing Zen in 1965. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, serving as busboy, waiter, floor manager, wine buyer, cashier, host, and manager. Ordained a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, he has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several cookbooks and the editor of Not Always So, a book of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He is also the subject of the critically acclaimed 2007 film How to Cook Your Life.

Edward Espe Brown is a Zen priest and the former head cook at Tassajara Mountain Zen Mountain Center who helped found Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. He is the author of No Recipe and the classic Tassajara Bread Book. With Sounds True, he is publishing The Most Important Point: Zen Teachings of Edward Espe Brown. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Edward about the origin of his newest book: a quote from his teacher Suzuki Roshi, who said, "The most important point is to find out what the most important point is." Edward describes his discipleship with Suzuki Roshi and why Zen practice can sometimes be like feeling your way through pitch darkness. Tami and Edward talk about the tradition of "taking the backward step" and moments of realization that transcend your expected practice. Finally, they talk about Edward's path away from extremely low self-esteem and the role of difficult emotions in Zen contemplative practice. (77 minutes)

Edward Espe Brown is a renowned chef and Zen teacher who is best known as the first head cook at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. In addition to writing several cookbooks including the classic Tassajara Bread Book, Edward founded Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. With Sounds True, he has published No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Edward about Zen teachings on what it means to have to feel our way through the dark—both in the kitchen and on the spiritual path. They talk about cooking as a form of offering and why working with food can be one of the most potent ways to express our hearts in wholeness. Edward shares what he learned in his turbulent first days as the head cook for a spiritual community, including insights from his first Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Finally, Edward and Tami discuss what it means to seek out our heart's true desire, as well as how to embody that search in all that we do. (72 minutes)

On Sunday May 6th, Soto Priest and famed former "Tenzo" (Head Cook) at the Tassajara Zen Monastery Rev. Edward Espe Brown offered a very special Zazenkai and Talk, live from California and Treeleaf Tsukuba. Edward Espe Brown, a Soto Zen Buddhist priest, was was ordained in 1971 by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and he received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996. He was the first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to 1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco [then operated by San Francisco Zen Center], serving as busboy, waiter, floor manager, wine buyer, cashier, host, and manager. He has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several books and also has edited a book of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. Ed is the founder and teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha. Further reading and discussion for this talk are available on the Treeleaf forum:ATTENTION: Special Zazenkai SUNDAY with Rev. EDWARD ESPE BROWN (The Tassajara Tenzo) »

Annie Somerville is the Executive Chef of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, an innovator of farm-to-table and vegetarian food since 1979. Greens is owned by the San Francisco Zen Center, buys much of their produce from the Zen Center’s Green Gulch farm, and has an exclusively vegetarian menu. The restaurant occupies a decommissioned army pier on the San Francisco Bay with views of the fog rolling into the bay. Annie is the author of two cookbooks, Fields of Greens and Everyday Greens. In this episode, Annie talks with Devon about learning to cook in the Tassajara Zen Monastery, building relationships with farmers, and supporting workers through San Francisco’s housing crisis. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on Sierra Club Radio:Steve Blackledge, U.S. PIRG's public health program director, tells us about efforts to stop the overuse of antibiotics in meatInvestigative journalist Antonia Juhasz discusses her recent piece on Shell Oil and the Arctic.Executive chef Annie Sommerville of Greens Restaurant offers tips and recipes for Thanksgiving. From Sierra Club Radio