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Holistic Budo: The Writings of Robert Van Valkenburgh

Holistic Budo: The Writings of Robert Van Valkenburgh

As in Life, so too in Budo. As in Budo, so too in Life.

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Category: The Way of Cooking

A Culinary Framework for Delicious Simplicity

“One of the secrets to success is not unbound freedom, but selecting the proper constraints.” — Tim Ferriss Being a husband, father, employee, and business owner, I have to make a lot of decisions every day. All decisions requires some degree of time, energy, and attention, each of which is in limited supply. Added decisions…

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Complexity Does Not Equate To Quality

“There is always a market for the highest quality.” —Tim Ferriss Complexity is a means of hiding poor quality, not improving it. It is better to start with fewer, higher quality ingredients, to intentionally limit yourself, and to highlight those ingredients than it is to start with a larger quantity of low quality ingredients and…

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Fundamentals for the Soul

“There is a sushi chef in Japan who has made maybe the same forty cuts of sushi for seventy years and he’s still trying to get it right. There is a guy in Spain who does nothing but grill stuff and that’s where all of the chefs want to eat. Very straightforward, very soulful food…

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Art is the Expression of Essence

“I’ve found that this dish takes a lot of black pepper.” -Chef David Chang Taste is subjective. It is a personal and/or cultural preference. Essence, on the other hand, precedes and transcends taste. It is the thing that just looks, sounds, tastes, or feels ‘right’ even if we cannot exactly describe why. Essence is the…

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Steamed Crabs and a Beginner’s Mind

“You are doing it wrong. Let me show you how to do it the right way.” One of the summer rituals in Maryland is eating steamed crabs. This is especially true where I live, near the Chesapeake Bay. I have been eating steamed blue crabs with Old Bay seasoning (a spice blend native to this…

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