(photo vrindavandham.com) About 60 km northwest of Agra lies an area of India known as Vraja-bhumi or Vrindavana. Although not a huge city (less than 100,000 people), the Vrindavana area is home to no less than 5000 temples. Each year at least 500,000 pilgrims from every corner of the world make their way to this little city of temples and holy places. Why? This region of India lies east of the Thar, or Rajasthani, Desert; south of Delhi; and north of Agra (home of the famous

Good evening! I am attempting to get this out quickly to you, so that you all have time before it becomes Monday to contemplate the menu. Yesterday I had the good fortune to visit for the first time Tower, the South Indian Vegetarian restaurant in Morrisville. It was a great visit, characterized by dee-licious food. First of all, it was just incredibly exciting to go to the buffet, knowing that I could eat every single thing on it. That kind of worry-free eating doesn't happe

It was right about six months ago that I last did a menu with some of these Moroccan dishes on it. Since I am learning the fine art of not reinventing the wheel each time I do something, I re-use previous newsletters so that I only need to change the photos and links for the dishes which I am not repeating. Besides saving me a little bit of time, reusing old newsletters allows me to take a trip down memory lane and remember what it was that I was doing 6 months or a year ago.

Picture a time long ago, in the late 15th century, when Europe was emerging from the darkness of the Middle Ages into a new dawn of intellectualism, art, music, philosophy. Perhaps it is more appropriate to say that what was happening in Europe was an awakening of consciousness, an inquiry into the nature and value of the individual, an inquiry that had not been raised before. And perhaps it can be said that it was the quest for the answer to this inquiry which inspired the p

This evening I attended a lecture by my teacher, Bir Krishna Goswami, on a fascinating topic - that of the archetype of the hero and his or her journey from a mundane situation, through an adventure of unknown lands and experiences, only to return to the world of the familiar, a changed person, equipped with boons that benefit the world at large. This journey was codified by Joseph Campbell, the world-renowned mythologist, who combed the mythologies of the world's great cultu

I truly hope all of you remained safe and warm over this snow weekend. As much as I intend to/fantasize about staying home and taking care of all those little homemaking projects, it only took about 3 hours on Friday morning before I had cabin fever. I can't say that I have come to a point of complete acceptance with who and how I am as a person; however, the level of guilt I feel for my non-domestic goddessry has gone down over time. So anyway embracing my need for adventure

Good morning! Perhaps some of you have been wondering if we are cooking this week. The answer is "Yes. Definitely!" It was just one of those weekends were I misplaced my superwoman cape, and thus couldn't seem to manage to get everything done in time to send this out to you yesterday. I am very grateful to have good friends in my life. I am even more grateful because my friends have birthdays once in a while. Sometimes those friends have birthday parties in interesting pl

The time has come to reflect on the year that has almost completely passed, introspecting and taking stock of who I was and how I showed up this year. This time of year is especially profound for me because my birthday is New Year's day, and as I age I find birthdays to be a good reminder to take a personal inventory. This has not been an easy year, but then again, maybe none of them have been. ;-) Yet as I was reflecting yesterday to a friend, there are those of us who consc

It has been a while since I have done a review for you all. You might surmise that this means that it has been a while since I went out somewhere. That would be the correct thing to surmise. It is easy to get so caught up in cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, that one day bleeds into another and before you know it, entire weeks have gone by. This is especially true when you cook for a living, and especially, especially true when you cook for a living out of your home. Has

To all of you out there who either have or have had young children, I offer you the fist bump of solidarity. Early this morning I was in writing heaven. Ideas were flowing. I was entertaining myself with my cleverness. Then my son woke up. He was in a very cheerful mood... until he realized that I was writing this newsletter and not paying attention to his 13 minute story with 4 divergent plot lines. Ah the Sunday morning struggle... At any rate, the menu is at least writ