Food is one of the first casualties of our hectic pace of life – in the way we eat it as well as in the way we prepare it. The Cake the Buddha Ate – more quiet food asks us to change our attitude to this seemingly mundane human need and make it into a joyful, flavourful journey, full of delights and surprises. These recipes originated at a special place: The Buddhist Retreat Centre (BRC) in Ixopo, KZN, which is renowned for its excellent, innovative vegetarian cuisine for more than thirty years. It published its first collection of recipes in 2005 under the title Quiet food – a recipe for sanity. The Cake the Buddha Ate: more quiet food takes this culinary success story to another level. These are imaginative, tasty and nutritious dishes created by chef, Daniel Jardim, himself a vegetarian, while he cooked at the Centre. But there is more to the BRC than outstanding food. Photographs, anecdotes, poems and haikus offer a glimpse of the Centre’s magnificent setting and the range of workshops and retreats conducted there.