Book Review by Lin Rolens, News-Press Correspondent,
Santa Barbara News- Press, May 18, 2003

IN BUDDHA'S KITCHEN: COOKING, BEING COOKED AND OTHER ADVENTURES IN A MEDITATION CENTER
By Kimberley Snow
Shambhala, $18.95

Santa Barbara's Kimberley Snow is reverently irreverent, or it that irreverently reverent? Ms. Snow's spiritual journey is engaging because she understands and honors the humor in her own foibles and those of others as her sweetly irregular life and pursuit of enlightenment take her to places she could not have imagined.

For all the spirituality of this book, there is never a moment of sanctimony, never a moment when suffering is either deserved or the point ("Pain is given, suffering an option."): the point is compassionate action and an egoless mindfulness that allows us to "surf that moment." This may sound abstracted, but Ms. Snow's book is joyfully grounded in character and the world. She explains the difference between Zen Buddhism and the Tibetan form that draws her: "Forget the bowing, the silence, the respect. Add color, noise, and chaos. Add a kitchen full of people."

The kitchen Ms. Snow refers to is not metaphoric: after fleeing a burgeoning academic career and a divorce, she searched for a suitable job but found they "all required subservience, respectability, panty hose." Cooking had always been a pleasure, a connection to the immediate that the academy eschewed, and she became bent on becoming a chef. With no formal training and brief stint in pizza hell she found a job in a restaurant, and, as she made her way through the ranks, discovered both the general madness and the pleasure that attend cooking professionally; although rage drives many kitchens, there is no place but the moment and the wonderful physicality and sensuality of the process.

Recovering from her South Carolina Presbyterian childhood, Ms. Snow was drawn to Tibetan Buddhism, to the horror of her family: when she opted for a long stay at a Buddhist retreat center, he mother expressed disgust at her daughter living with "all those heathens," and added, "And don't start telling me about that Ricochet of yours."

Unsure and eager, she initially found the long meditation postures painful and ritual and Tibetan chanting difficult, resorting at times to repeating, "Pasta primavera, pasta primavera," so that her lips would be moving. Her eagerness led her to volunteer her kitchen expertise, and immediate regret overwhelmed her as she realized that she had placed herself, literally and figuratively, right back into the heat of the kitchen, perhaps not the easiest place to find enlightenment. But Karma is true.
Ms. Snow's kitchen lessons make are apt and make for delightful reading. After initially overplanning elaborately for an event "in a way that only Southern women can manage," she settled in to the rhythm of the kitchen and those who passed through. She learned to deal compassionately with the psychotic Eastern European girl who gleefully switched the lights on and off until someone lost it, who quietly changed spice labels, who cranked the oven to 500 every time she slipped by.

Ms. Snow saw a friend and kitchen coworker through the dying of her beautiful young daughter. While blending egg whites and chocolate for a mousse, she came to understand the foolishness of insisting on dualisms. She earned a nickname, not the glorious variety she hoped for, but humble and appropriate. And then, in the midst of the whirl and hubbub of the kitchen, she decided to practice silence for a while. Of all her lessons, this became a key. People treated her differently and she saw the world from a slightly removed, more centered place; what had been din changed as in the sound of the huge mixer: she was "hearing it for the first time as a sculpture of sound rather than an irritating noise one must talk over."

And then her mother became ill, and Ms. Snow was thrust into the kind of family ordeal that is always a test. Her sister worried about idols in the house and the possibility of a shaved head; her sister in law (the one with "the Twelve days of Christmas placemats that she changes daily for all Twelve days") quietly filched the good china, and her mother, still outrageous and demanding, was a little old lady who needed her help.

Early on, the person who was to become her primary teacher, told Kimberley Snow, "You know, all these projects, you're just rearranging the clouds. What you really need is to concentrate on the nature of the sky." In her latest book, full of Buddhist wisdom and funny stories, Ms. Snow lets us enjoy both clouds and sky.

What Neal Crosbie thought of In Buddha's Kitchen:

From Publishers Weekly May 2003

The sweet potato queens meet Pema Chodron in this book about "enlightenment having"-as a Tibetan teacher might phrase it-in the kitchen of a California Tibetan Buddhist retreat center. Southern-born, Presbyterian-bred author Snow lays out a buffet of episodes from her life before and during her tenure as cook in the center. She's a divorced ex-gourmet chef and refugee from academia, "always leaving, never staying to work it out." In this book, the Buddhist dharma (teaching) comes from the stove instead of the meditation cushion, making it concrete, engaging and generally highly entertaining. In addition to her raconteur ability, Snow has a gift for applying Tibetan Buddhist teaching, which can seem foreign or esoteric, to real life with its quirky demands and characters. One chapter is even entitled "Dzogchenpa among the Presbyterians." Narrative progression in the first half of the book is a little choppy as the author relates life episodes in no apparent logical order, but later chapters gather steam, providing background that unrolls to drive the book forward to a resolution of dawning wisdom. Some of the episodes could go on longer, because characters are so memorably sketched that it's a shame to leave them so quickly. Overall, this is a small jewel, and it's altogether refreshing to read a Buddhist book with a sense of humor.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"You can smell the savory scent of enlightenment in
this delightful memoir. Kimberley Snow stirs up a story to make
you laugh from the gut and embrace the honesty of her quest through fast
paced hot steamy kitchens to the hard sit of silent meditation. The
surprising challenges and blessings of both are a joyful
encounter with a wise and witty woman you'd love to have for tea."

Eve Bazylewicz
Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA