Introduction

Welcome to the world of Food Nirvana. This endeavor is all about quality of life in eating and how to do it at home. This introduction was new with the creation of the Food Nirvana web page. Prior to creating the web page Food Nirvana existed only as a book in Microsoft Word® doc format. Now, the home chef can access the recipes instantly and individually even using a cell phone, an Ipad® or a notebook PC in the kitchen. The secret is in having the Table of Contents as the web page with direct links to each individual recipe. Like before, the reader can choose to review or to print/save any recipe. I've provided download links to get free full copies of Food Nirvana as well in different formats as described below.

With the 36th edition I culled recipes that I knew I would not make or improve. Now the 47th edition has more great and well tested recipes. As you might guess, that situation is not static, for I add really good recipes fairly often ... the ones I take time to create and/or improve from other sources that turn out to be very special. Certain recipes (about 30) I developed into what I call Teaching recipes, as they provide detailed explanations regarding ingredients and procedures and technical information for making great food. You will see the letter T as the last character of a given quality rating as described in the next paragraph. For example, an excellent recipe with a rating of ☺♥ ... if it is a teaching recipe ... will appear as ☺♥T when the recipe is displayed online or as part of the recipe index of the book version of Food Nirvana.

I decided to introduce icons to represent my opinion of the quality of particular recipes. Here they are: ☺♥♥♥☺ = Super Star, ☺♥ = Excellent, ☺ = Good, ▲ = Okay, ► = In Research & Development, ? = Untested / Looks Promising. You will find the symbols immediately following the name of the food when you display a recipe. The symbols serve as a guide for you to select foods appropriate to your planned meal or party. My goal, of course, is ultimately to enhance any recipe that is less than excellent. Thus, through time the quality level symbol shown for a given recipe may change. In other words, Food Nirvana is always a work in process. In fact, I have only a few recipes that I have elevated to Super Star status, and they are identified with the symbols: ☺♥♥♥☺. The required icon additions to all of the individual recipes have been made to the book version of Food Nirvana as well.

I decided to provide the book version of Food Nirvana in three different formats to meet the variable needs of reader environments, their word processing software and whether or not a given reader was using a desktop pc, a laptop or a tablet/cell phone. The book versions of Food Nirvana continue and will continue to be maintained along with the web page version. This serves the worlds of those who are cooking in environments where they may not be accessing the Internet. The book versions lack most of the pictures and picture references present in the web pages to keep the book file size reasonable. If you want to download a free copy of Food Nirvana then click on one of the book links below.

Download Food Nirvana in Microsoft Word "doc" format

or

Download Food Nirvana in Microsoft Word "docx" format

or

Download Food Nirvana as a PDF file

(The PDF format does not support jumping from the index entry of a recipe name to the page for that recipe, but you can use the page jump feature of Adobe® Reader to do that.)

The 47th edition of the book remains the same in the indexing of recipes, while the online version of Food Nirvana has a major change in the grouping and access of cuisines by country or region. It is a nice improvement. Individual recipes are maintained and the ones not grouped are accessed alphabetically as usual.

The group Pasta and Other Ethnic Foods has not been changed in this 47th edition of the Food Nirvana book, but that recipe heading no longer exists online. Instead, online recipe access addresses some cuisines that are grouped and presented alphabetically within country or region. And to repeat, any recipes not grouped are simply accessed alphabetically, as before.

Well, have fun!

Ray Gardner, Sr.

November 17, 2024