I'm considering doing a retreat with Bernie Glassman. He wrote the book Instructions to the Cook, which uses cooking as an analogy for his Zen teaching. This inspires me to blog about a mindfulness-cooking analogy. - - - - - - - - - - - - - There are some stews that don't quite taste right until you add salt. And then, when you add just a teaspoon of salt to a big pot of stew, it becomes delicious. You could give a child two different cups of the stew to compare, one cup without the salt, and one cup with the salt. The child might not be able to articulate why one stew tastes better, but she'll eat all of the stew she likes and leave the stew that she doesn't like. Lemon juice can work in a similar way for lentil soup, or for some salads. There can be a type of brightness to the flavor of a summer salad with a little lemon juice. Without the lemon, there can be a dullness. Excellent chefs are trained in combining small amounts of just th...