The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

The best methods of food preparation preserve nature's delicateflavors. The daily wisdom of long ago enabled people to make thevarious kinds of vegetable pickles, such as sun-dried pickles, salt-pickles,bran-pickles, and miso-pickles, so that the flavor of the vegetable itselfwas also preserved.The art of cooking begins with sea salt and a crackling fire. Whenfood is prepared by someone sensitive to the fundamentals of cookery, itmaintains its natural flavor. If, by being cooked, food takes on somestrange and exotic flavor, and if the purpose of this change is merely todelight the palate, this is false cooking.Culture is usually thought of as something created, maintained, anddeveloped by humanity's efforts alone. But culture always originates inthe partnership of man and nature. When the union of human society andnature is realized, culture takes shape of itself. Culture has always beenclosely connected with daily life, and so has been passed on to futuregenerations, and has been preserved up to the present time.Something born from human pride and the quest for pleasure cannotbe considered true culture. True culture is born within nature, and issimple, humble, and pure. Lacking true culture, humanity will perish.When people rejected natural food and took up refined food instead,society set out on a path toward its own destruction. This is because suchfood is not the product of true culture. Food is life, and life must not stepaway from nature.138