Mountain kitchen

Fourteenth century monk/poet Shiwu (Stonehouse) spent thirty penniless years living in a hut by a spring near a mountaintop in eastern China.

My circumstances are (so far) palatial compared to his, but in the hut I've made an effort to keep things minimalist, as a kind of exercise in privation preparedness. 

The altar is the focal point of the hut but one's attention is often drawn toward mealtime. Quite a few of Shiwu's Mountain Poems are about food, concerning which he tells us he is not worried, but admits he is certainly preoccupied. 

Lunch in my mountain kitchen
there’s a shimmering springwater sauce
a well-cooked stew of preserved bamboo
a fragrant pot of hard-grain rice
blue-cap mushrooms fried in oil
purple-bud ginger vinaigrette
none of them heavenly dishes
but why should I cater to gods

--Tr. Red Pine

I keep a Mason jar filled with rice handy, along with a jar of oatmeal, a jar of cracked mixed grains, and a jar of noodles. There's a salt shaker. And a jar of crushed (almost powdered) vegetable leaf flakes, made from surplus garden foliage which I dehydrate in a homemade solar dryer and then dry-blend. Mason jars are mouse-proof, a consideration in a quiet, isolated hut.

The "veggie powder" can be used in small quantities or large, depending on whether you're thinking of it at the moment as seasoning, trace nutrients, or a substantial part of the meal.

The routine is to put some water in the reservoir of the rice steamer, water and grain and veggie powder and salt in the bowl in the steamer basket, and set the timer. One then does morning service (sometimes this is in the afternoon) and a meal is ready by the time this is over.

I also either have water or tea. Our water comes from a well and I bring it, half a gallon at a time, from the house, as the water in the long garden hose to the hut tends to have algae and micro particles of neoprene in it and so is suspect.

Having read somewhere about using foraged wild or garden foliage for tea (tisane), I have formed the habit of hunting around for what's available on the acre, often gathering enough for the purpose as I go directly from the house to the hut. In season, I may find chicory, dandelions, nipplewort, narrow leaf plantain, crimson clover, deadnettle, cat’s ears, blackberry leaves, fir or spruce needles, money plant, Bigleaf maple flowers, and crop foliage such as kale, chard, beet greens, squash blossoms and leaves, pea and bean foliage, corn silk, and the like. 

I layer these into the filter basket of a small four-cup coffee maker, add two cups or more of water, and there's the tea in the carafe in three or four minutes. If I need extra punch, I can add a teabag of black or green tea as needed.

If I've chosen foliage that makes good cooked greens, well, there they are in the filter basket, cooked, and I can add them directly to the rice, cracked grains or noodles. If I prefer soup, I can add the liquid from the carafe to the bowl.

I imagine this, frugal as it is, may be even a more nutritious and varied diet than Shiwu's, and he lived, relatively healthy and spry, into his eighties.

Makes one wonder what a supermarket is for.

Yunyan was boiling some tea. Daowu asked who he was making it for. Yunyan answered, "nobody special."
-- Soto Zen Ancestors in China, Mitchell, 72