Category Archives: Food

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Giving Thanks, Part II

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Today I go down to Illinois to visit with my 4 children.  I am looking forward to seeing them and having some serious conversations about how we want to live on this planet.  They’re all in their 20s now, ripe for pointing their canoes toward the dreams and goals on their horizon and spending the rest of their lives paddling away in the directions of their choice.  I am also at a juncture of my life where I get to decide how to live out the rest of it.  So, what will we make of it?  Will we have some goals in common toward which we can paddle together?  I hope so.  We’ll see.  Family Summit Meeting 2011, here we come.

Oh, yeah.  More food and fun and cuddles all around as well!

Yesterday's table before guests arrived

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Table Talk

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What will you talk about around the table tomorrow?  Politics, religion, people, emotions, the minutiae of your daily life?  Do you talk about ideas with your family or do you avoid certain subjects because of differing opinions?  Do you stick to sports or music or family history?  Do you feel that honesty is the best part of conversation or that getting along is more important?  Do you provide conversation starters or verbal games to focus your group?

When my kids were in high school, I would often try to prime the pump at family gatherings to get them to talk about their values.  I knew their personalities were forming and changing rapidly, and I think I was a bit terrified that I didn’t know them at all.  I would have everyone list things they were thankful for on Thanksgiving and share favorite memories at birthdays.  I even had a book of conversation starters that I set on the table.  I admit that I was also keen on steering them away from pop culture references that they all shared that left out my husband and me.  How many times can you listen to the dialogue to “Anchor Man” at the dinner table before you lose brain cells?

I grew up in a family that talked about many subjects at the table.  An entire wall of reference books stood behind the dining room table.  My father would nip quarreling in the bud by saying, “It’s no use arguing about facts.”  Then he’d look up whatever piece of information was in dispute.  This was before you could Google everything in seconds.  I don’t remember feeling very comfortable talking about my opinions, though.  My father was a very strong authoritarian with a definition of “right” and “wrong” for everything.  I feared his disappointment and his wrath, and I didn’t feel smart enough to legitimize any of my own thoughts.  I would let my older sister or my younger brother engage in differences of opinion while I listened.  I would also look for an opportunity to tell an amusing story and make everyone laugh.  I just wanted to be liked.

Ideas are important.  We live in interesting times.  Values are important, emotions are important, knowing who your children are is important, appreciating your loved ones is important, challenge is important, peace is important, connecting is important.  I usually put in a lot of effort in the kitchen before a holiday meal, and I suppose the payoff is having people be willing to sit down together for a couple of hours minimum.  I’m really glad my kids are all in their 20s now so that is not too much to expect.  But I won’t see them until Friday.  Tomorrow, I’ll have Steve’s family at my table.  I am looking forward to getting to know them better.  I’m hoping we’ll share ideas and opinions and sharpen each other as well as appreciate and love on each other.  I also hope that I will be able to speak honestly about myself and let them get to know me.  And I’ll probably try to make them all laugh.  I can’t help it; I do that.

Ready so far: pecan pie and cranberry-orange relish. More to come.

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Happy Halloween!

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Steve and I enjoy an ongoing game of “arcane book ideas”.   Yesterday, it was The History of Halloween.  I wonder if that book’s ever been written?  In our neighborhood, trick or treating was commuted to Sunday.  There was a block party followed by an hour and a half of trick or treating at certain houses designated by orange and black balloons tied outside.  It was a very organized affair.  An informative flier went out a week ago with a tear-off response section on the bottom.  There was even a neighborhood bank account set up to receive contributions.  As far as I could tell, the block party was moved indoors because of rain.  The barricades remain on the parkway and never went up.  But we could hear the children, teens, and parents slogging through the drizzle in the dark.

Halloween is a big thing here in the Midwest.  I lived in California for 15 years and never saw more than a dozen trick-or-treaters.  (Okay, spell check didn’t like that term and offered me an alternative: trick-or-anteaters.  Can you imagine?  Love the visual on that idea!)  Maybe people there are just way too suspicious of their neighbors and scared to let their children roam.  We were.  My husband used to reminisce about trick-or-treating in his cul de sac with the parents following doing their own trick-or-drinking.  Candy for the kiddies, cocktails for their parents.  Very Californian.  My mother was the most unpopular Halloween hostess on the block.  She kept trying to think of low-sugar alternative treats.  Most years, it was little boxes of raisins.  One year, it was balloons.  Deflated ones.  This was before choking hazards got much press.  Another year, it was nuts in the shell.  Again, before nut allergies got much press.  I was always so embarrassed (and disappointed) by our “candy bowl”.  She was adamant about limiting sugar for the sake of our teeth long before healthy choices were fashionable.  She was also a stickler for sunscreen before SPF was displayed on every bottle.  Now that I’m almost 50, I should thank her every time I look in the mirror and a full set of teeth and a smooth pair of cheeks smile back.

In my day, Halloween had very few rules.  You went to school in costume, partied all day, and then trick-or-treated all night (or for as long as your mom would let you).  When my kids were young, that was the initial routine.  Then the village posted trick-or-treat hours, usually from 4-7pm.  Then there was the year that parents and teachers decided that too much instruction time was being lost on this dress up holiday with occult overtones.  So they had each grade level run a study-themed costume and activity day.  The third graders were doing a prairie unit, so they all dressed in pioneer outfits and made corn-husk dolls and bobbed for apples and that kind of thing.  The fifth graders were doing a Native American unit, so they wove tiny patches of yarn onto looms, deciphered symbols, and ate popcorn.  I really liked the idea.  They got to dress up and have treats and play games, but they were very creatively centered on specific social studies units.  I was rather a serious mom myself.  But my kids got candy.  Sacks of it.  And I raided their stash every year.  One year, when my oldest was just a toddler and we were living in California, I bought some Halloween candy (Mounds, my favorite) and ended up dipping into it myself before the big night.  I figured we wouldn’t get many visitors anyhow.  Well, we got a few more than I expected, and I ran out of candy.   So when the doorbell rang, my darling daughter ran to the door to see the costumes.  “We don’t have any more candy because my mom ate it all,” she explained.  Well, at least I taught her honesty.

I enjoyed my part at the Nature Center as the witch.  I’m glad we did it two weeks ago when the weather was a bit drier and warmer.  The prosthetic nose and chin were rather a pain.  My pointy toed boots were even worse, though, after three hours on my feet.  But the wide-eyed little tykes in fairy wings and hockey gear were just as adorable as ever.  I will never get tired of playing dress up…or eating chocolate.

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Homesteading

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Because I’m going on the road today to visit my children, I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the internet.  So here’s my suggestion: spend the time you may have spent reading my blog checking out this website.

www.urbanhomestead.org

This family is amazing.  They settled in an urban house in Pasadena in 1985 and converted it to a working small farm that produces nearly all of their food and subsistence needs, including biodiesel, clothing, health care products, and much more.  They now have an institute and do educational outreach all over the country.  Having lived in Southern California myself for 11 years, I find this fascinating.  I hope you’re inspired.

 

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Autumn Sentiments

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The autumn years of life.  The harvest of a lifetime.  Gathering together the products of work and character.  There’s something nostalgic and lonesome about autumn, sweet and melancholic.  Glossy photos of food and family and warm colors seem so appetizing.  I am planning to host Thanksgiving dinner for Steve’s family, and I keep daydreaming about how the table will look.  I want my home to be filled with warmth and love, good smells, earthy colors, sparkles of glass, silver, and candlelight.  Of course, this will be on a modest scale.  Martha Stewart does not live anywhere near here.  I have song lyrics stuck in my head from Barry Manilow’s “Paradise Cafe 2:00am” CD… “Oh, how I hate to see October go.”  How will I get my Thanksgiving vegetables now that the farmer’s market is closed?  The acorn squash and broccoli we had last night were delicious, dressed only in butter, salt & pepper.  The earth is so good to us and autumn is the applause before a winter curtain.  How do you feel when you’re giving a standing ovation, damp-faced and shining, heart bursting, swallowing hard, delaying your exodus into the next moment?  I feel that way about autumn.  I remember driving home from dropping one of my children off at preschool one cloudy November day and bursting into tears.  I tried to figure out what that was about and ended up writing this poem:

Change

In autumn, the trees start to sing once again

of the bittersweet mystery of change.

Is it beauty or pain now attached to my soul?

Is it grief…or relief…or nostalgia?

In the scarlet and gold,

the blood-red of life’s hold…on my heart

and the warmth of its love

mingles memories and years

into afternoon tears

falling softly…as leaves…to the ground.

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Cats and the Philosophy of Health Care

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At our Socrates Cafe meeting on Saturday, we discussed the ethics of rationing health care.  How are decisions made about administering medical care?  Should health care be awarded to the wealthiest, the most fit, the least at-risk or the most at-risk?  Is health care a commodity that can be administered according to social and economic guidelines?  Is health care distinct from “illness care”?  And so on.  Our group is rather small and not especially representative of any particular demographic.  I don’t think we’re “solving” anything, we’re just enjoying discussion and engagement and some brain activity.  I’m exploring the results of allowing other people to comment on the products of my own bizarre thinking.  Which is kind of what blogging is about as well.

As I put in my own perspective on this issue, I realize that I speak from experiences that have centered mostly around my husband’s illness and death and from observances of non-human beings.  Jim used to chalk up a lot of his medical interventions as “better living through technology”.  He was the recipient of some very technical and somewhat heroic (although now pretty standard) procedures.  It was a complicated arena of insurance issues, multiple specializing doctors, drug interactions and availability, and the donor list system.  There were layers of decision-making involved and a fabric of responsibility that was pretty nebulous.  When his pulmonologist found out that he’d died, he asked me, “What are you doing about it?”  I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.  “I’m grieving!” I answered.  “I mean legally,” he explained.

Who is responsible for my health?

As for the observance of non-humans and their health, I look to the pets I have known.  Specifically cats.  I learned a lot from Pinkle, who somehow got injured up in the attic one day.  She simply stopped using her back legs until they had healed.  She slept.  She ate.  She tried out putting weight on them gradually, and eventually got back to doing all the things she had been doing.  She didn’t complain.  She didn’t seem miserable.  She didn’t worry or push herself or engage in any neurotic behavior that we could detect.  She took responsibility for herself, for the most part, and we provided food and shelter and quiet.  Phantom is another cat I have observed.  She is 16 years old now, and not living with me any more.  She had some urinary tract issues in the past when I did care for her.  I gave her antibiotics in pill and liquid form (which was an ordeal she did not welcome) and changed her food.  She had a bladder stone removed surgically as well.  That was maybe 10 years ago.  Her litter mate died of cancer a couple of years ago.  Cats don’t complain about pain much, and they don’t complain about death.  My kids tell me that Tabitha was purring as she died of the injection that ended her suffering.  Cats (and many other animals) have a tendency to seek out a quiet place to die.  They don’t make a big fuss.  We’re the ones who fuss.

Phantom del'Opera

Pinkle Purr (see poem by A.A. Milne)

What if we focused on healthy living and didn’t sweat so much about “illness care”?  What if we made it our social/economic/political responsibility to work hard to provide clean water, clean air, healthy food, shelter, education about health, and quiet (less stress) for as many of us as we can, and let illness play out as it would naturally?  What if we as a community took responsibility for supporting health but abstained from taking responsibility for preventing death?  It’s not like we’d be successful in that effort ultimately anyway, right?  We’d do our best to give you the basic needs, and the rest is up to you and nature.  That’s how human life went before technology kicked in, and plenty of people lived to reproduce (or we wouldn’t be here today).   Is there anything wrong with that model?

That’s my two cents for the health care debate.

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Mad Farmers

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I picked up a book of Wendell Berry’s poetry from off Steve’s shelf.  The book is called The Country of Marriage, and this poem is contained therein.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer. 

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it. 

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed. 

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest. 

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years. 

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men. 

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth? 

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts. 

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. 

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

 Has much changed since 1971? Are there mad farmers occupying Wall Street?
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Squirrely Business

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A whole lot of chattering is going on in the trees outside my bedroom window.  A whole lot of rustling is going on below.  Animals are harvesting and gathering and hiding food away for the winter.  We have a special friend whom I call Itchy Twitchy.  He sits on the fence above our landlord’s garbage can and munches on whatever he’s gleaned from inside it.  He has (or his friends have) chewed a couple of holes in the plastic can big enough to fit through, so he has easy access to the people food in the bottom.  I have found him working on Eggo waffles and chicken legs before.  When he’s not eating, he’s itching and scratching.  He probably has some kind of insect parasite problem.  He has to do some pretty nifty acrobatics to clean thoroughly while still perched on the fence.

 

Sometimes it looks as if he has a belly ache from something he ate.

I really appreciate his visits.  He reminds me that despite my suburban surroundings, there are other critters making a living here besides the human neighbors.  Steve and I were talking about hubris and anthropocentricism at dinner again, and we keep coming back to a desire to be open to the wider world.  I think my landlord considers Itchy a pest, and he keeps saying, “Yeah, I need to get a new can.”  But he hasn’t done it yet.  I’m not sure waffles are the best squirrel food, though.  Maybe it would be better to fix the can and put out the occasional corn cob or plant sunflowers and echinacea?

I have grand ideas about saving the planet, but maybe I should start in my own back yard and figure out how to have a good relationship with the squirrels first.  In other words, address my own hubris.

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Harvest and Hunting

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Next Saturday will be the last Farmer’s Market day for ‘Tosa.  Today’s was spectacular, though.  Here’s a picture of my morning harvest.

Oh, it’s so beautiful, I have to show you another:

As we walked to the market place in the village, we noticed a deer on someone’s front lawn grazing on fallen crabapples as the leaves blew around her.  Such a picturesque view of Fall, but unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me.  This evening,  I made a risotto using the Japanese eggplant, green beans, garlic, onion, and red pepper.  Supplemented with a couple of unfinished bottles of red wine plus a loaf of Kalamata rosemary bread, also from the Farmer’s Market.  Dessert was Amaretto and brownies.

In the afternoon, Steve and I went walking in the Vernon State Wildlife Area.  Emily will remember this place.   Oh, and we took the D.H. Lawrence novel we’re reading with us.

Our reading spot

Our reading was punctuated by the sound of rifle fire not far away.  Also, up the river was a duck blind and a bunch of decoys.

Not the real thing

We had a lot of questions.  Are there supposed to be people hunting waterfowl in a wildlife refuge?  The signs that were posted were confusing.  There’s no waterfowl hunting whatever beyond certain signs.  No one is allowed in the refuge area from Sept. 1 to November 30 except for gun deer hunters.  You can’t hunt on the dikes between the signs.  We took the long way around the perimeter of the area, and ended up on the railroad tracks for a while to avoid the marshy path.

Taking a higher road out of the marsh

We finally got back to the parking lot at about 4:30pm and noted more cars and people in camouflage gear with guns taking to the trails.  What was going on?  The sign in the parking lot did indicate that Hunting was one of the features of this wildlife area.  But is it deer hunting season already?  As concerned citizens, we wanted to know.  Steve jumped online when we returned home and learned that this weekend is Youth Deer Hunt weekend.  The Wildlife Area is a public hunting area, and only a portion of it is a refuge.  From the Department of Natural Resources website: “Youth hunting events give hunters ages 10 to 15 an opportunity to hunt and gain valuable experience without competing against adult hunters. Special seasons for a variety of species allow only youngsters to hunt during these days under the supervision of their mentor.”  Here is a picture:

From the DNR website

This morning, we were talking about children taking responsibility and how there ought to be a way to give kids a more meaningful role in society – somewhere between child labor and “playing” at adult roles while mom or dad do all the real stuff because adults are more efficient.  So I’m asking myself, is “hunter” a meaningful role in today’s society?  Are these kids helping the family to eat for the winter?  Are they participating in a traditional family role?  Do they partake in any ritual of acknowledging the deer’s part in this event, as many hunting cultures do?  I don’t want to be dogmatic, and I don’t like killing for sport.  I wonder what these kids are taught by their “mentors” about hunting.  I suppose I would have to speak to a hunter to find out.  I have questions.

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You’re Grounded!

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I have this thing about wanting to do things “right”.  I grew up with a strict father who had a clear sense of what he thought was right, and I was always trying to please him.  I find myself feeling anxious about whether or not I’ve made the right decisions or acted in the best possible way or been “good” in every way I can.  The more interactions I have, the more I have to feel anxious about.  So, in a busy week, I feel more stress.  Yesterday, I spent 7 hours making pea soup.  It turned out fine, although I had to do some re-direction and repair in the middle (turns out that whole dried peas don’t cook the same way as split peas).  Not a big deal, but I felt like I had “failed” to be super-efficient and triumphant in that endeavor.  My relationship with my cooking contained some anxiety and thus drained energy from me rather than invigorating me.  We have a relationship to everything on the planet, and this is living.  Living can be a drain, or it can be energizing, or anywhere in between.  It depends on whether you’re blocking energy or “surfing” on it.  In other words, you can be at war with life, or you can be at peace with it.  Our relationship with food is a good example of this.  Did you know that the use of pesticides and herbicides came out of the technology of WWI?  The chemicals that were developed for warfare were applied to food production.  Agribusiness declared war on the earth in order to use its technology and generate a wartime economy.  Conflict, manipulation, “strong-arming” the earth in order to wrestle food from it is a particular kind of relationship.  Organic farming uses a more peaceful relationship to obtain food, working with nature and not against it.

I have been trained, in a way, to think that doing things in a prescribed “right” way is the least stressful.  I have been a pretty compliant person.  But this anxiety of compliance also produces stress.  Is there another way?  Yes.  Being grounded and open.  I’m never going to know the “right” way to do everything because there isn’t a right way.  There are a million ways.  And that’s okay.  Steve and my sister share a birthday.  They both have a way of reminding me that the way I am is wonderful, but it’s not the only way.  They both play “devil’s advocate” and bring up something that I hadn’t thought about without saying I’m wrong.  It took me some time to take this as a gift and not as a chastisement.  I was used to taking everything short of complete praise as chastisement.  I used to be somewhat afraid of both of these important people whom I love so much.  They are challenging (and they are smarter than I am).  I have a relationship with them that can be conflictual or peaceful depending on my posture of defensiveness or openness.

So, I’m still thinking about all my relationships to the residents of earth, from the dominant one I have with Steve (three year anniversary today of our very first date) to the invisible ones I have with the bacteria in my own body.   My sister points out that “What are you feeling?” is perhaps a better question than “How are you feeling?”  What am I feeling in these relationships?  Am I feeling energized?  Drained?  Peaceful?  Afraid? Stiff? Open? Anxious?  Sad? Mad? Glad?  Being open to what I’m feeling allows discussion and movement and flow and change.

Letting go of the anxiety of having “right” relationships and exploring what I feel is what I mean by being grounded and open.  What surfaces in our relationships to other species when we do this?  Here’s one thing that came to mind: the euthanizing of animals who have attacked humans.  I have read several news articles lately about grizzly bear attacks, wild cat attacks and even a deer attack (a buck with antlers that inflicted some serious wounds) that ended with the report that these animals “had to be euthanized”.  I always thought that euthanasia was “mercy killing”, like putting a wounded animal out of its misery.  These stories don’t indicate that the animals were in misery, they were simply protecting territory or defending themselves from a perceived threat.  It seems that they were killed as a punishment for attacking a human.  Some of the articles mention that the possibility of rabies warrants “mercy”, but the animal is killed before any diagnosis of rabies is made.   What is the feeling?  Do these animals need to be punished because they’ve injured a human?  Is this about anger and a preference for humans?  Are we at war with animals?  If we end up in the same place at the same time, is it kill or be killed because you are my enemy?   Why shouldn’t an animal take out a human who has shot at it or who represents a food source in a depleted environment?  Are we somehow exempt from being in that kind of relationship?  Why?  For that matter, are we supposed to be exempt from being on the “losing” side of a relationship with listeria bacteria?  Are we “better” or “more valuable”?  Why? (or why not?)

How much can we be open to in our relationships with the world?

What do you feel about buzzards?

What about lotus flowers?