New and exicting adventures

As of right now, I am off to a country in Central America for two weeks.

Yesterday I taught a cooking workshop at the Sivananda Yoga Farm, a beautiful ashram in Grass Valley California. *Be sure to check out the menu and pictures that I will be posting soon from the workshop! It was a lot of fun to guide 11 or so people in what I do on almost a daily basis.

Aside from my culinary adventures at home, the ashram is the place that propelled me to pursue my culinary passion. After a lapse of visiting the kitchen playground for some years, assigned karma yoga (selfless service) brought me back into the kitchen. Since then, I have been having adventures in the kitchen, both home and commercial. My deepest gratitude goes to the ashram for allowing me to serve them and opening the gates of opportunity to me in the culinary field, as well as on and off the yoga mat. Through hatha yoga, bhakti yoga, and karma yoga, I really began to feel the spiritual aspect of the practice at the ashram. And through this practice, I am more readily equipped to handle the unique stimulating kitchen environment.

I noticed one very important difference between yoga and cooking. In yoga and meditation, you want to keep focused on one single thing - breath, mantra, drishti, asana, etc. However, when executing a multi-course menu in the span of a couple of hours, you have to have a few projects going - dough rising, beans cooking, prepping vegetables, etc. All goes on at the same time and at times, actually a lot of times, I feel as if my brain is going to short circuit from the over-stimulation of thoughts. The way I approach this challenge is to write a detailed and ordered prep list and with each task, I focus (even if it's for a few moments) on the task at hand. And I really put my heart into it, even though my mind may be elsewhere.