Food for the Body

Thoughts about eating well to feed your body and spirit.

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    Furlough Week Two — Sutras

    ByElizabeth

    First too hot, now cool.

    It wasn’t until the weather cooled and the reality of a second week of work not being done that needs to be done to meet deadlines that the impulse arose to make the first batch of homemade granola of the season.  This batch could be called maple nut granola with raisins.

    Harvested last of the sweet banana peppers and a fire engine red cayenne pepper.  Also picked as a baby one last eggplant before pulling the plant to make way for tat soi.

    Most of the tomatoes I found on the ground still unripe.  With a generous portion of red wine and nice herbs, and the traditional way of cooking them for hours and then running through a food mill, and then reducing until reaching the desired thickness, it won’t matter that the tomatoes ripened on the counter.

    Assorted apples from the farmer’s market.  Dried fruit is different when it goes into the dehydrator within a couple of days of having been picked and early in the season when the apples are best.  An upside of being required to stay around home is that I have been able to experiment with the dehydrator that was a most generous birthday gift.

    There’s a bunch of difficult stuff going on, but there is no need to write about it anywhere except possibly in my journal, for much of it.  And as for the shutdown and its impact on real people around the globe (and all that interconnectedness stuff), I prefer today to write about granola and stuff from the garden.

    Anyway, I’m thinking I would just be preaching to the choir if I wrote another blog post about the importance of trying to keep up and understand as much as possible, speaking with others to shape your understanding and your voice, being in contact with your elected officials and signing petitions, and reaching out to friends and family open to such discussions to invite them to be engaged.

    It is times like these when I think of Patanjali’s sutra:  heyam duhkham anagatam (the pain that has yet to come can be avoided.)  I have contemplated this sutra much over a long period.  It is a good one for when I am reaching into the yoga teachings for insight into how I might respond more optimally under the circumstances at hand, especially that which is entirely out of my control.

    furlough 1a furlough 1b furlough 1c furlough 1d

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    There’s Alot of Yard Work Going On

    ByElizabeth

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    When we were winding up and preparing to be locked out of our jobs, I said to a co-worker that I planned to get out a stepstool and clean the cat hair off of the ceiling fans.

    He replied that he had plenty of yard work to do.

    I was out in the garden for some time this morning.  A squirrel or other garden terrorist had knocked some almost ripe and some green tomatoes off the vine. I brought them inside to turn into something, I don’t yet know what.

    What I thought when I was in the garden picking peppers was that I bet there are a lot of nonessential feds doing yardwork today.

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    Let There Be Vegan Kimchee

    ByElizabeth

    I was at Eastern Market earlier today.  As kimchee has been on my mind (given the recent and resounding success with homemade sauerkraut), I checked for napa cabbage and daikon radish.  I didn’t see it, but decided to ask anyway (after all, if we don’t ask for what we want, it is far less likely that we will get it–whether it is ingredients for kimchee, or help from a yoga teacher, or needs met in relationship).

    Yes, they had a gorgeous napa cabbage and a big, beautiful daikon radish.  They sell their own fresh made kimchee (it’s delicious), so I thought they might have the other key ingredient I needed:  powdered Korean hot pepper.

    I said that I enjoyed their kimchee and that I guessed they made it the traditional way, with a rice flour slurry and anchovies.

    Yes, indeed, they do it that way.

    I said I was making a simpler version, but did want the right kind of pepper.  Did they have some?

    The woman serving me, said yes, went in the back, cut open an enormous bag of powdered pepper and, along with the vegetables, sold me a few ounces of the pepper.  From this enterprise, I’ve  already made a deeper connection to one of my local small businesses, and in a week or two, I’ll also have a big batch of kimchee.

    ps.  I used Michael Pollan’s recipe as a rough guide.  What I like especially about the recipe is that it expects variation based on quality and age of produce and personal taste.  The cook is invited to pay attention instead of just follow by rote.

    kimchee ingredients

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    The Goddess(es) and the Green Tomatoes

    ByElizabeth

    When someone tells me I need to see the Divine I can get anxious that they mean I’m supposed to see whatever that person thinks is “the Divine.”  I don’t think anyone ever should be required to do so by anybody else.  I am, however, all for being reminded to see the divine if such exhortation is to look on whatever I encounter with the most gratitude and compassion and wonder I can muster.

    Here:  two kinds of tomatoes with two versions of the goddess (Tara and Uma (a/k/a Parvati)).   I had only a large tomato or two per week throughout the summer; with the equinox passing, the vines are for some inexplicable reason now abundant.  I will either be making a good sauce in October or pickling green tomatoes, depending on how soon we get a frost.  Or perhaps both.

    the goddess and the tomatoes too the goddess and the tomatoes

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    Pickles

    ByElizabeth

    Soon after this article on making your own pickles was published in the New York Times, a friend and mentor sent it to me.  Though she is a mentor for reiki and energetic practices, and I see her regularly for massages, I’m quite sure she wasn’t trying to encourage me to eat more raw food or get into the fermentation fad (but you can read lots about how some raw foodists fetishize fermented food by using your favorite search engine).  I think she just thought I’d like making pickles, and she was right.

    I’m now on my fifth or sixth batch.  The first batch I did exactly according to the directions in the article.  The second, I did exactly according to Mark Bittman’s recipe in How to Cook Everything, which I found used a few years ago at my favorite used bookstore in DC–The Lantern-A Bryn Mawr Bookshop.  After that, I experimented with a little less salt, a change of spices, and different ways of slicing the cucumbers.  The cucumbers for this most recent batch were a little older and seedier so I added carrots and ginger to improve the flavor of the cucumbers.   I also added garlic, a few chili peppers, and some coriander seeds from the garden. A grape leaf or two helps make the vegetables stay crisper; they aren’t needed, but if one has a grape vine in the garden, as I do, why not?

    For my birthday, though you don’t really need one, I just bought myself a nice fermentation crock.  First up:  sauerkraut and then when I’ve had an opportunity to go shopping in Chinatown for supplies, a big batch of kimchee.

    This latest kitchen venture, is mostly because I’ve always loved the taste of pickled food, and because it is amazingly easy to make them.  Pickles and other fermented foods are now added to my list of  love to make foods that with a little attention and some planning and patience yield big results (like sprouting and slow cooker beans and stews).  That my yogi friends who are crazy into raw food would also be excited about what eating fermented foods might be doing for my health is just a bonus.

    pickles