MOUTHWATERING VEGAN - MIRIAM SORRELL

RATING: B

A totally delicious gourmet-style vegan cookbook. If you are/want to be vegan, but enjoy serving fancy food, this is YOUR book! I usually eat simple, basic cook-from-scratch recipes, but every so often I like to eat something different, or I may have guests to entertain. I then love fiddling around in the kitchen to create interesting exotic/gourmet/regular-style recipes - and so have tried a few of these from FB posts prior to purchasing the book itself. (One of our family get togethers polished off 12 of the 14 slices of choc-nut cheesecake within half an hour, for example....)

My only complaints are that I do not have an ice cream maker to make their ice-cream recipes and do not like using tofu/soya products! I can get around this by using other ingredients and skipping the ice cream recipes though. It is inspirational....

I would recommend this cookbook to most people that like cookbooks - because it caters to vegan/vegetarian mouths, but will satisfy most others as well.

ESSENCE OF THE HEART SUTRA - HHDL

RATING:B+

The Heart Sutra is one of the first Buddhist chants I heard during my current life - at a Buddha's Birthday event in the local park, across the street from where I used to dwell. As I first heard it chanted, \i had not previously encountered it – however, later that day, I read about it in a book I had borrowed from the library.

It was much more difficult to study this text than I had imagined, but this might have been due to the fact my father has been ill and I only have half my concentration available. The 37 aspects listing was exceedingly interesting to me. I would like to work with it more, but there are so many texts and sutras/mantras to be learned and studied...

I would recommend this book to those wishing to study this text, read teachings from HHDL, and advance in their practices.