RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL
Utilitarian Cooking and Much More…
The companion journal, food memoir & cookbook chronicles the development of the hugely popular Manhattan Neighborhood Network utilitarian cooking show, RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL from it’s conception to its present day status. Much more than a ‘cookbook’, each of the half-hour television shows,as well as her essays, are anchored by gentle Dharma messages. Compelled by an inner voice to pursue artistic ventures this web-log documents a personal transformation proving the importance of mind training and disciplines leading to place of tranquility and self-confidence. RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL is more than kitchen Dharma, the recipes and essays are guidelines for life and living.
It was following my umpteenth late night tirade at a celebrity chef that I began to self produce a lock off camera cooking show in my East Village apartment. Stripping the commercial world of ‘Food TV’ to its bones and mocking the parody of the ‘celebrity chef’ D, our Host, Producer, and Director shares not only basic cooking techniques but also highlights the simplicity and intuitive nature to cooking. Discounting the commercial cooking shows’ flaunting use of Fry-a-lators, and Cuininarts on a prop filled kitchen set, RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL premiered Thursday, April 3rd ’97 at 9:30 PM on Manhattan’s public access channel 17. As the show ran in the dead half-hour following Seinfeld and before ER, RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL exploded into an overnight sensation. RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL stuck upon a huge untapped market. It is overwhelming just how broad a range the demographics that RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL appeals to.
The notion of maintaining basic food staples in ones hOMe, the importance of being mindful along with simple exercises to overcome laziness, the first of the six root delusions, are diligently reiterated in each of the, (eighty-five) recipes and episodes produced. With this book “D” hopes to share with people how ‘working out’ in the kitchen, this mindful and resourceful way of cooking, ‘utilitarian cooking’ can be as therapeutic when practiced in much the same way that many do as going to the gym, writing or mediating. No more than $ 4.00 is spent on “additional ingredients” to make any of the recipes and for the most part no more than four ingredients are used in any given recipe. Optional or alternative ingredients are cited for those that might choose to take a recipe a little further. The essays and recipes are health supportive and transformational. RECIPE$ 4 $URVIVAL, Utilitarian Cooking and Much More … imparts how the kitchen and cooking is a place and time for transformation on many levels.
