The Purloined Letter

On the Hills of God

2010-10-27T08:56:00.003-04:00

Since I plan to start my Lifetime Reading Plan project on 1/1/11, I have spent the last couple of months stuffing myself with contemporary books that will be more-or-less off-limits once the new year begins. Although I don't intend to discuss all that I have read here, I do want to mention a few of my favorites. One of them is a book a friend lent me some time ago--some very long time ago.

I had postponed reading the novel. It is a thick book with small print, and I kept saving it for a time when I would have long stretches of reading time to devote to it. Well, as you know, "long stretches of reading time" and real life with a homeschooling son and an academic side life don't seem to be compatible. So finally I just bit the bullet--and I am so glad I did!

On the Hills of God, written by Ibrahim Fawal, is the story of seventeen-year-old Yousif Safi and his coming of age. What makes the story so powerful is its setting: Palestine in the late 1940s, right as Zionism comes to the fore--and the creation of the state of Israel is about to happen. This time of upheaval utterly transforms the world in which he and his family live.

Yousif is a Palestinian Christian. His two closest friends are Amin (a Muslim) and Isaac (an introspective Jew). When the book begins, it is clear that although the religious labels are in no way invisible, they do not completely separate people--people who all love the Palestinian lands of vast green hills full of olives and oranges and pines.

Soon, however, Yousif and his friends see Zionists surveying the land and beginning to create a separate society. As things become more and more tense over time, violence begins to erupt. A man from their hometown is killed by in a Zionist bombing in Jerusalem. When Isaac's father attends the funeral, he is attacked--and soon his family comes under grave threat as well. They move in with the Safi family, but things only get worse. Eventually, they are forced to move away from the mixed community of Ardallah. They settle in Tel Aviv.

After some time, a violent Zionist group stages an ambush in Ardallah. When caught and unmasked by the town residents, one member of the group turns out to be Isaac. He insists he was forced to join the mission. The young man acknowledges that he is not innocent but he did not want kill anyone, and just as he was forced to come, he knows the Arab community will feel forced to kill him. "We're all victims," Isaac realizes. "We're caught in a war from which we can't escape. "

Yousif pleads for his friend's life--"Isaac is one of us!"--but his Arab townsmen respond with violent reciprocity. When the doctor offers to sedate Yousif in order to ease his emotional turmoil, he refuses, saying, "I want to feel the pain." And that is exactly what the author allows us to do.

How hard it is to avoid participating in discrimination--even violent acts of terrorism--when surrounded by a community declaring that others are evil and threatening! Fawal shows how this is true for every side. It isn't long before Yousif's world has been completely dismantled. As he says, "Everything in this country seems to be soaked with blood."

It is heartbreaking to see Yousif defend his beliefs that all--Muslim, Christian, and Jewish--should act as family. He seems to believe that if he tries hard enough, the people of the Palestinian lands could act that way again and create a community built on love and reconciliation. As he says, "One can always fight. But first, let's try talking to them. I don't think the average Jew likes what's happening. We lived together like good neighbors. They were happy and we were happy. Why can't we just go on like before?"

What happens next is the story of the Nakba--that is, the "great catastrophe" or "Palestinian Exodus" where 700,000 Arabs (Christian and Muslim) experienced the humiliation of occupation and were eventually pushed out of their homes and lands. It is a horrifying story that startlingly few Americans seem to know about at all. Every time I think of it, I can't help but say that modern Jewish prayer: "Never forget." And as you know, this is a story with no happy ending. There are still Palestinians living in refugee camps and in exile--still separated from their homeland and from each other.

As the book begins to come to a close with Yousif's world in tatters around him, he even loses some of the faith he had grown up with. He questions the goodness of his Christian God: "If you would allow your own son to be nailed and stabbed, if you would let his legs be broken, if you would let him die on the cross like a common criminal, you'd probably let our homes burn to the ground. If that's the way you'd treat your own son, to whom should we Palestinians turn for protection?"

Despite all the destruction, the book ends on a note of hope and resolve. "The conscience of the world must be pricked, awakened," say Yousif. This is what the author seeks to do himself. "I promise you this for the sake of all of us who have been dispossessed--the families who have been denied their birthright and are now separated, the children who can't sleep because they're hungry, the babies who journeyed and died from thirst, the dead we left along the trail. Let this moon, which is staring at us like a grave one-eyed God, be my witness: we shall be delivered. We shall return."

* * *

I am Jewish--albeit an atheist Jew--who is too moved by my Judaism-informed beliefs about justice and righteousness to accept what happened "on the hills of God" during this period--or accept what is happening there now.

Although I don't remember for sure, I suspect my friend lent me this book when we were talking about the deeply compassionate (and perhaps even politically feasible, although I know many of you will disagree) argument made in Virginia Tilley's The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock--a one-state solution that is a true and multi-ethnic democracy.

On the Hills of God is a book meant for all people--those who love the land of Palestine and Israel (be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim) and those who are new to the story. It picks no fights and is completely accessible to any reader with a heart, no matter what their politics. A must-read.

Starting Fresh

2010-08-30T09:04:00.005-04:00

Dear Readers,

This blog started as a knitting blog way back in the day, before the birth of Ravelry. It morphed into a food-and-gardening blog. And I've always talked about books, parenting a homeschooled child, religion and disbelief, and anything else that crossed my mind. For the past two years, I've had mixed feelings about the unfocused approach. I liked being able to write about whatever I was thinking, but I also knew that there were times when a bit more form might create a better blog.

With that in mind, I am putting this blog aside (at least for the time being) and starting anew. Please join me at Lifetime Reading Plan.

http://lifetimereadingplan.blogspot.com/

Recently I've been thinking about all the books I want to read, and all the books that I feel I should have already read. Over at Lifetime Reading Plan, I'll write about books, their contexts, and my reactions--beginning with Gilgamesh and the Ancient Greeks, and heading forward through time, hitting everything from Chaucer to Tolstoy to Proust. I would love to have some reading companions who would like to read some of these books with me!

I'm currently making book lists and checking them twice, although I'm sure the plan will grow and change as time goes by. Although I plan to write up some preliminary information about my project soon, the reading will really get underway on 1/1/11.

In addition, I'll be writing roughly once a week over at Food, Glorious Food. This spot will be primarily a place for me to write out a weekly menu for my family. Occasionally I'll share a home-developed recipe, a picture of our kitchen garden, or a cookbook review. If you're eager to know what we are planning to eat, you're welcome to come on over--but Food, Glorious Food will be primarily an organization device for my family.

I hope to see you all soon. Thanks for all the time here. It has been a wonderful pleasure.

I've been ill for the last few weeks, too tired to do much thinking. Meal plans have gotten us through. If I did not have them planned, I would have begged for take-out almost every evening, I think.

So here goes:

M--
Stuffed baked potatoes with mustard greens and New Zealand spinach from our garden, as well as asparagus and garlic scapes from the local farmers market. Topped with sour cream from our Amish dairy source.

Tu--
(Inspired by the offerings at a neighboring farmers market)
Stinging Nettles Soup
Rabbit, Hunter Style
Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble (with a gluten-free topping made with oats and coconut flour)

W--
Chickpea Curry with Turnip Greens and Radishes (both from the garden), served over brown basmati
Cardamom Ice Cream (from the farmers market)
Cocktail of the week: Gin and Tonics

Th--
Potluck party with some gluten-free and some vegan folks. Take a millet/black bean/mustard greens/sweet potato salad? Improvise with whatever comes in our first CSA box of the season.

Fr--
Rice Pasta with any veggies in the fridge or garden
Assorted Salad Greens

(Sa and Su--out of town)

Check out more meal plans at Menu Plan Monday and Mindful Menus.

Gluten-Free from the Garden

2010-05-18T08:36:00.007-04:00

Time for our weekly menu again. Actually, past time...

Three things shape this week's plan:

1. As I mentioned yesterday, I am trying a gluten-free diet for a few weeks. (I started last week, after I had already written the week's menu. I kept the same general plan but changed things to GF bread on Monday and rice-flax pasta on Saturday.)

2. The garden is bursting with salad and cooking greens.

3.) Perhaps because the end of the semester is coming up, we have a tremendously busy evening schedule all week--fairly unusual for us.

* * *

Monday:
Totally Inauthentic and Random Vegetarian Bibimpap
(I stir-fried homegrown turnip greens, chopped radishes, leftover quinoa, a lot of slightly spicy sauerkraut, and sesame seeds. Then I fried eggs on the top of the mixture. We served these with helpings of hot pepper paste to stir in.)

Tuesday:
Enchiladas (with locally-made corn tortillas) filled with leftover roasted chicken, stir-fried homegrown broccoli rapini, and goat cheese, topped with mild tomato salsa.

Wednesday:
Assorted Salad Greens from the garden
Flank Steak with Chimichuri
Roasted Carrots (currently drying up in the fridge)
Strawberries (from the farmer's market) with Balsamic Reduction
(Cocktail of the week: Mojitos with Homegrown Mint)

Thursday:
(Before violin group class)
rice crackers with goat cheese
(After violin)
Back at home: Indian-style chickpeas, sweet potatoes, and homegrown mustard greens, served over millet

Friday:
Picnic at an outdoor performance of The Mikado
Smoked Salmon and Cucumber Sushi
Summer Rolls with Shrimp
Tamari Rice Crackers
Strawberries
Champagne

Saturday:
Party at the home of one of David's colleagues,
then a dinner-date with D. while our son is at a friend's sleepover
(We might make this a meal at home, depending on time)

Sunday:
Appetizers at the Scottish Pub (where we'll be for the Fiddle Session--son on violin)
Brown Rice Pasta with homegrown Arugula Pesto

* * *

Check out more meal plans at Menu Plan Monday and Mindful Menus.

Gluten-Free Girl

2010-05-17T15:11:00.003-04:00

I loved Shauna James Ahern's book, Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too. (If you don't know her blog, make sure you check out her regular posts, too.) I don't have celiac disease, but I felt an enormous connection with Shauna as I read. Sometimes the difficult things we go through in this life help shape our future in a beautiful way. My own health issue led me towards interests and relationships that I am not sure would have developed without the crisis. It is impossible to imagine what my life would have been had I not been hospitalized, but I have trouble imagining that it would have been nearly as rich as it is. For Ahern, a diagnosis of celiac disease and the resulting need to follow a gluten free diet led her to learn to appreciate food and cooking in a whole new and beautiful way. I love the attitude that allows Ahern to write that "going gluten-free has guided me to think about how to eat locally, choose organic, and experience every tast I take more vividly. It has been a gift." (I think I have a bit more anger and mourning about my own medical crisis, but I get where she is coming from, too.) As she writes later, "Do we need a death sentence to allow ourselves to truly taste our lives?"

Although my own health issues had little impact on my food commitments, my tastes were transformed and shaped in several similar ways. Early in her life, Ahern picked up a copy of Laurel's Kitchen,--one of the first whole-grain vegetarian books that shaped America in the 1970s. "In the privacy of my bedroom, I read it, chapters at a time....Mostly I devoured the introduction, which welcomed me into the kitchens of these women as the authors baked bread meditatively, talked about politics and how to raise their families, and made everything from scratch," writes Shauna. "Their world seemed much more at peace than mine, even though they were discussing the worst pertubations of society. They were doing something about it--rebelling--by making their own food." She concludes: "I wanted to be in that kitchen."

For me, I stumbled across Laurel's right as I was learning to cook for myself, when I entered graduate school and left the college cafeteria. I had just finished Francis Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet, a book that had a profound influence on me. At the time I did not know that there were alternatives to the grain-fed meat that was so unjust to the poor of this world. Although I had eaten a vegetarian diet in college to avoid the mystery meat in the school cafeteria, I now became a vegetarian with political commitment. Laurel's Kitchen, along with the absolutely classic Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzan, taught me to cook with my politics in mind. (For those who take my vegetarianism as literal, I should tell you I always ate meat at my parents' house--and in fact usually I ate a meat without a word of protest at the homes of others who were gracious enough to offer to cook for me. At other times, I told people I "ate mostly vegetarian." When one's goals are about justice to the people of the world--rather than animal rights--it doesn't seem quite as hypocritical to make these kinds of exceptions.)

Interestingly, like me, with time, Ahern eventually broadened her diet to include a little sustainable meat--while retaining or even sharpening her politics. So have some famous vegetarian chefs, including Mollie Katzan and the incomparable Deborah Madison.

Ahern is a talented writer, whose book is very hard to put down. It includes a few recipes. (So far, we've tried out her delicious chicken with pomegranate sauce recipe, and the deep roasted cauliflower with paprika and cocoa. Yummy!)

Perhaps the best part of the book is its end. While I'm often irritated with books about strong women that end with marriage, Shauna Ahern totally pulls it off. She tells a story of her tattoo (I won't give it away) that sets it up. The story is beautiful, funny, romantic in ways few books are, charming, and utterly inspiring. She and her husband ("The Chef") are coming out with a cookbook together this fall: Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. I can't wait!

The surprise ending to this story is that after reading this book along with another (which I will review soon), I decided to try out a gluten-free diet for a few weeks in hopes that it might help some auto-immune issues that have flared recently. So far, I'm not sure if the diet is helping or if I am just getting a bit better from this flare, or if I had some little illness other than autoimmune stuff. We'll see. More details forthcoming about my experiences eating gluten-free.

No Words

2010-05-13T08:39:00.005-04:00

These and other photos here. Also check out SkyTruth and Nola.com's oil spill page.

Find and Reuse

2010-05-10T11:32:00.004-04:00

Here in Takoma Park, Mother's Day weekend filled with sunshine and yard sales.

Finds of the weekend:

1. A handwoven hand-dyed mudcloth from Mali, perfect for our dining room table. We found this at a yard sale. The family had bought it a dozen years ago when they were traveling in Africa.

(Oops--I guess it is actually "hand-died")

2. Metal champagne flutes. Since I saw Beth's stainless steel wineglasses over at Fake Plastic Fish, I've been coveting something like these for our picnic basket. We found these at a community yard sale on the grounds of the library. Proceeds went to help finance the local Independence Day celebration.

We put the glasses to use Sunday morning, drinking mimosas in bed as we ate croissants and read the newspaper. (This is an old tradition that David and I had, but only recently is it one that our son could enjoy as well. Granted, his mimosa had seltzer instead of champagne, and he enjoys the comics more than the book section.)

3. A gorgeous cake plate. I'd been dreaming about cake plates all week, ever since I ran across the lovely examples over at This Week for Dinner.

I'm not sure this one should count as a thrifting find, since David found it in our basement, filled with things from his grandmothers which we have not really unpacked since we got them a dozen years ago. I'm so pleased it is finally joining us upstairs!

Check out some other great thrift store finds over at Thrift Share Monday and at Thrifty Treasures.

Garden Fresh

2010-05-09T13:27:00.004-04:00

The menu plan for the upcoming week's meals is all inspired by what vegetables are growing in our garden--and, for our non-vegetarian meals, what meat is eager to be defrosted from the freezer.

Monday:
Radish Greens Soup (from our garden)
Brown-bread Toast with Goat Cheese and Homegrown Radishes
Deviled eggs with Paprika and Homegrown Chives

Tuesday:
Roast Chicken
Homegrown Broccoli Rapini
Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Orange Zest
Arugula and Lemon Balm Salad (from our garden)

Wednesday:
Enchiladas with goat cheese, mushrooms, onions, and homegrown mustard greens
Wednesday Cocktail of the week--Mojitas made with homegrown mint

Thursday:
Chicken soup with Wild Rice, Leeks, and Homegrown Greens (made from leftover chicken from Tuesday)

Friday:
Steak Diane
Homegrown Salad with Arugula, Sorrel, and Radishes
Balsamic Strawberries with Ricotta Cream

Saturday:
Marcella Hazan's Simple Tomato Sauce
Telephone Cord Pasta
Assorted Salad Greens from the garden
Blueberry Muffins (dessert, to be held back from our CSA's "muffin luck" celebration of the opening of the season)

Sunday:
Homemade Vegetarian Sushi
Strawberries

I've found a few great online link lists of meal plans, including Menu Plan Monday and Mindful Menus. Check out all the inspiring links!

A Handmade Salad

2010-05-03T08:36:00.003-04:00

For my birthday, my mother-in-law frequently asks me to figure out something that I love but would not splurge for myself. Although I've been dreaming about beautiful small salad bowls recently, the mass-made ones did not call my name--and the handturned ones seemed a bit out of my price range. What a perfect time for birthdays!

Through Etsy, I found many beautiful bowls, including this one from One of a Kind 2. When we got home from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, the box was waiting for me and I eagerly opened it to see if the bowl was as beautiful in person as it was on the website. And it absolutely is.

I suppose this style of natural-edged bowl made from a fallen tree could be called Wabi Sabi--or Imperfect Beauty, as it is sometimes translated.

My own style tends toward the natural, the authentic, the homemade--and of course, stacks of books and papers, and the odd ball of yarn with a pair of needles...

I can't wait to fill this beautiful bowl tonight with arugula, amaranth leaves, parsley, and sorrel from our garden! Finding the beauty in the things naturally around us--be it wooden bowls and pottery plates, or our homegrown food-- adds so much to my sense of peace and joy while sitting around the table.

Do you have a personal connection to your tableware? Do you eat off your Grandmother's china, or use a clay bowl for salt that your toddler made, or serve homemade bread in a basket bought on the side of the road near Charleston, or cook in clay pots bought in South America, or off of handwoven placemats? I'd love to hear about it.

Meal Planning, Week 3

2010-05-02T17:00:00.023-04:00

Although I've spent most of my life as a seat-of-the-pants cook who loved to invent dinner on the fly out whatever was in season (or in the pantry), I've really enjoyed the last few weeks of planning a week's worth of meals in advance. I've over-ridden my intuitive instincts for a little while--and I'm trying lots of new cookbook recipes. By doing this, I'm learning some new techniques, experimenting with some new flavors, and getting lots of ideas for the future.

Last week's meals were almost exclusively from Aviva Goldfarb's new SOS! The Six O'Clock Scramble to the Rescue: Earth-Friendly, Kid-Pleasing Dinners for Busy Families. She, after all, was the person who got me intrigued with the whole idea of meal planning to begin with. Her recipes are interesting and tasty, beautifully easy to follow, and really quick to make on busy evenings. I loved the meals filled with all the wonderful flavors of spring. And we especially enjoyed her Shrimp and Grits!

We also loved the leftover asparagus soup which we served chilled. David and I ate it for lunch one day (while our son was visiting friends), along with homegrown radishes on toast with fresh butter:

* * *

This week, I thought I'd try out some recipes from the marvelous food memoirs I've been reading.

Monday:
Chicken Thighs with Cinnamon and Dates
   from Kim Sunee's Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Roasted Asparagus

Tuesday:
Wild Greens Turnovers with Lemon Bechamel sauce (vegetarian)
Basil Panna Cotta
   both from Cathy Erway's The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove

Wednesday:
Channa Masala over Brown Basmati Rice (vegetarian)
   from Shoba Narayan's Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes
Homegrown Broccoli Rapini
Mango Lassis

Thursday:
Out for a book signing by one of my son's favorite authors
Travel Salad (vegetarian)
   from Emily Franklin's Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes
Carried "to-go style" in our tiffin

Friday:
Flank Steak with Chimichuri
   inspired by Tara Austen Weaver's The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman's Romp Through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis (but recipe here)
Assorted Salad Greens from the Garden
Sweet Potato Pie

Saturday:
Chicken Thighs Braised in Pomegranate Molasses
Roasted Cauliflower with Smoked Paprika and Cocoa Powder
both from Shauna James Ahern's Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too

Sunday:
Bouchon au Thon
   from Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table
Steamed Asparagus
Strawberries

* * *

I found a few online link lists of meal plans and have really enjoyed clicking to see how everybody makes their menus. Two of my favorites are Menu Plan Monday and Mindful Menus.

What are you thinking about eating this week? Are you being inspired in the kitchen by books? Or are you being most moved by all the asparagus, strawberries, garlic scapes, or fresh peas coming into the farmers market?

Maryland Sheep and Wool

2010-05-01T19:31:00.002-04:00

Every year I look forward to the incredible Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It always falls at such an ideal time: the weekend between my birthday and Mother's Day.

One of the things we always love to watch is the sheep shearing demonstration. This gentleman kept the feisty Scottish Blackface remarkably calm...

...and, using hand shearers, took off the coat in one beautifully big piece:

Of course, sheep demonstrations are a pretty small part of the festival for me. I go for the fiber off the hoof. My stash has gotten ridiculous in the last few years so I promised myself I would not buy a lot of new yarn. I went with one booth in mind: Seacolors.

And from this booth came my only significant purchase. I bought enough yarn for a sweater for myself, in very muted colors (which actually are pretty colorful for me):

* * *

One of the coolest things is seeing blog friends. I'm pretty sure I saw the Fiddlin' Fool and young Jamie from Two Sock Knitters. I also saw, I think, Anne Hanson from Knitspot, accompanied by the gorgeous model for her Hypoteneuse stole. And best of all? While David was waiting for me, sitting on the floor of the main hall knitting squares for the knitted quilt our family is making, Shani recognized him from the pictures on this blog and asked him if he was David!

Great-Granny's Pound Cake

2010-04-28T11:20:00.001-04:00

This has been a week full of celebration. My birthday and my son's birthday fall just two days apart during this beautiful season of azaleas and dogwoods. We both always want the same cake, so we often celebrate with it on the day between our birthdays.

The cake we both love so much is from a recipe my great-grandmother (for whom I was named) brought over from England when she immigrated. Her daughter made it often, her granddaughter made it often, I make it often, and now my son can help continue the tradition.

* * *

Great-Granny's Pound Cake

3 cups sugar
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
6 eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup heavy cream
1 lemon, zested and juiced

1. Bring the butter and eggs to room temperature.

2. Prepare a tube pan or a bundt pan by greasing it with butter. Sprinkle flour in the pan and shake to distribute. Dump out any remaining flour.

3. Cream the butter and sugar until light and smooth. A good stand mixer makes this process much easier, but you can do it with a hand egg beater if you are patient and strong.

4. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat them in well.

5. Mix in the lemon zest and lemon juice.

6. Alternately add a little flour and a little cream and mix until all is incorporated. Don't overbeat.

7. Pour into the prepared cake mold, using a rubber spatula to get every last bit.

8. Put the pan into a cold oven and set the temperature to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook for 90 minutes or until it is golden brown and smells heavenly.

9. Let it cool a bit, if you can wait--especially if you're putting wax candles in, which will melt into the cake otherwise!

* * *

One of the tricks that makes this cake turn out so well is to use cream, butter, and eggs from grassfed animals. I know those are the only things my great-grandmother had access to, but it means making a decision these days. Going grass-fed means this gastronomical splurge is a bit better for you since these ingredients will be higher in vitamin E, omega 3 fatty acids, and conjugated linoleic acid than conventional eggs and dairy would be. (You're also reducing the chance of food poisioning if you lick the delicious batter from the bowl!)

"Scrambling" for a Spring Menu Plan

2010-04-25T19:00:00.019-04:00

Last week, I made an official meal plan for the first time--and loved the relaxed feeling it gave me at 5:30 or 6pm when I carried my laptop into the kitchen and turned on a podcast (often The Splendid Table) while I cut veggies for a meal already thought out. Although I've always adored reading cookbooks, I've rarely actually followed a recipe without major changes. I did this week--and we had a couple of meals that were quite different from the meals I normally create.

We did change a few things around. I forgot to defrost the chicken, so we had stuffed potatoes with goat cheese and rapini that night (instead of chicken, baked potatoes, and sauteed rapini). I changed the meal plan to reflect how we actually ate.

One of the best things about the week of meals had nothing to do with the planning itself. This was the first week when our local farmers market sold asparagus! We ate it for two meals--one roasted, and one steamed. Perhaps because we've spent a long winter deprived of these offerings, or perhaps because of my spring birthday, asparagus and strawberries are my absolute favorite foods ever. Well--and okra. And Brussels sprouts. Oh--and oysters, or shrimp.... And I couldn't live without rice.... (Yep, I'm a coastal South Carolina girl at heart, no matter where I live now.)

For those of you who read my first meal-planning post last week, you may remember that I was inspired to try meal planning by conversations with--and then a book talk by--Aviva Goldfarb, creator of The Six O'Clock Scramble and the author of the fabulous new eco-cookbook SOS! The Six O'Clock Scramble to the Rescue: Earth-Friendly, Kid-Pleasing Dinners for Busy Families.

This week will be a plan almost entirely inspired by recipes from Goldfarb's book. All of these main dish recipes--and even many of the side dishes that accompany the mains--are hers (more or less), with the exception of Saturday evening.

* * *

Monday:
A Night at the Opera
Beef Empanadas (made with homemade dough)
Kale
Carried "to-go style" in our tiffin

Tuesday:
Indian-spiced Salmon over Brown Basmati Rice
Spinach with Mushrooms
Mango Lassi (dessert)

Wednesday:
Orzo Salad with Peas and Feta Cheese (vegetarian)

Thursday:
Cream of Asparagus Soup (vegetarian)
Assorted Salad Greens with Raisins, Cashews, and Sunflower seeds
Homemade Sourdough Bread

Friday:
Spice-tossed Shrimp with Parmesan Grits
Lemon-Pepper Broccoli
Rhubarb Crisp (dessert)

Saturday:
A Day at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival
Homemade Mushroom Pizza topped with Homegrown Arugula (vegetarian)
(dough recipe from The Greens Cookbook)

Sunday:
Lemon Parmesan Fusilli with Asparagus and Spinach (vegetarian)
Strawberries topped with Greek Honey Yogurt

* * *

I found a few online link lists of meal plans and have really enjoyed clicking to see how everybody makes their menus. Two of my favorites are Menu Plan Monday and Mindful Menus.

Next week: menus from great food memoirs!

Maple Sugaring

2010-04-23T09:49:00.000-04:00

Early spring is the time when the sap starts running in the trees. While we were at farm camp a few weeks ago, the children had the opportunity to collect maple sap to make syrup and other maple products.

In order to express their appreciation of the gifts of the trees, the children hiked into the woods and formed a circle under the trees. They joined with others to read poems and say blessings...

...and sing songs together.

The sap was poured into vats and fires were stoked underneath.

With the hours boiling over the fire, water in the sap slowly evaporated and the liquid got thicker, more viscous, and sweet as the sugar concentrated.

Ten gallons of sap makes only about one quart of syrup.

On the last day at camp, we had a feast of whole-wheat pancakes, which we soaked with the glorious maple syrup we had helped make. Its wonderful sweetness was magnified for us by our participation in the process.

Food, and Cognitive Dissonance

2010-04-19T12:00:00.000-04:00

My 10yo son and I are reading next to each other on the couch.

My book: Cathy Erway's The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove. This book is a lighthearted romp through adventurous but non-restaurant-based eating in New York City. The author incorporates everything from news of her love life, details of parties, friendly information about food politics, and great recipes. It is all about the pleasures of food.

My son's book, being read for the local library's "Banned Books Club": Upton Sinclair's 1906 The Jungle. This book was perhaps the first major food expose, highlighting in VERY graphic ways the horrors of the meat-packing industry. If you think information about factory farms is grotesque, this book will blow you away. (Think workers falling in the rendering vat and being ground up with animal parts.) Although the author's intention was to analyze the terrible working conditions of working class and immigrant laborers, most readers came away shocked by food safety issues and ready to demand changes. As Sinclair said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Menu Planning

2010-04-18T18:17:00.014-04:00

Last night, we went to a fabulous talk at my favorite bookstore (ie, the first bookstore I knew was carrying my book). Aviva Goldfarb, creator of The Six-O'Clock Scramble meal planning service, talked about her brand new book, SOS! The Six O'Clock Scramble to the Rescue: Earth-Friendly, Kid-Pleasing Dinners for Busy Families. Aviva worked with David many years ago, and when we found out that she too was obsessed with food and the environment, he was thrilled to reconnect a bit with her.

For those of you who have read my blog for a while, you know I am a dyed-in-the-wool hippie who tries to live in an ecologically sound fashion--and that I often try to challenge myself to create new behaviors that reflect my commitments. Goldfarb's book introduces her readers to the importance of many of the actions my family has taken over the years, from carrying our own bags and shopping at farmers market to eating meat responsibly and beginning to compost. Her book is a great intro to eco-eating for those who are interested in the issue but haven't gotten deeply involved yet.

Although those of us who have been labeled "deep green" or "already off the deep end" may not learn much new green info, the thing I really like about Goldfarb's book is her emphasis on having a plan for the week's meals.

I love to cook and love to invent recipes on the fly. Although I've made detailed plans for Passover or for family visits where things get a bit more challenging, I rarely do more than sketch out a few possibilities for the coming week. Over the last year of so, I have occasionally signed on to Meal Outlaw to try to flesh out a bit of a plan and to spy on other people's methods--but often I wind up logging meals in retrospect. In my usual real life, I just buy whatever looks great at the market and go from there.

This fly-by-night method works well for my personality about 75% of the time. It is an utter failure at other times. We wind up going out to eat or I talk my 10yo son into cooking or my husband into putting something together at some late hour. I think I get enough pleasure from the relaxed intuitive cooking during the height of gardening and CSA season that I'm not 100% sure I am ready to totally abandon my method. I suspect that even if I do get hooked on planning, I won't really be sticking to other people's recipes much of the time.

But when I started hearing about Goldfarb's planning method, I was inspired to try something new. I am eager to try out her recipes now that I own her cookbook. But before I bought it, I spent the past week with a bunch of cookbooks from the library, a pad of paper for making a map of the week, and the commitment to try things this different way.

In poking around online for alternative sources for meal planning, I also found two super-cool blog collectives, Menu Plan Monday and Mindful Menus. Reading the linked posts gave me lots of ideas and further inspiration.

* * *

So here is this experimental week:

Sunday:
Chicken Penne with Pesto and Artichoke Cream
     from Robin Rescues Dinner: 52 Weeks of Quick-Fix Meals, 350 Recipes, and a Realistic Plan to Get Weeknight Dinners on the Table
Roasted Asparagus

Monday:
Caribbean Vegetable Stew (vegan)
     from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day
Brown Rice
Papaya Salad with Ginger-Lime Dressing

Tuesday:
Egyptian Pasta en Crema
     from Hands-Off Cooking: Low-Supervision, High-Flavor Meals for Busy People
Assorted Salad Greens with Papaya Seed Dressing

Wednesday:
North African Cauliflower Soup (vegan)
     from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day
Assorted Salad Greens with Papaya Seed Dressing
Warmed Bread (from the farmer's market)

Thursday:
Butternut Squash Enchiladas with Spinach (vegetarian)
     from Hands-Off Cooking: Low-Supervision, High-Flavor Meals for Busy People
Crunchy Salad

Friday:
Baked Potatoes topped with Goat Cheese, Sauteed Rapini, Leeks, and Mushroom (vegetarian)
     to be improvised

Saturday:
***FAMILY BIRTHDAY DINNER***
Macaroni and Yeast with Broccoli (a special request and an old favorite) (vegan recipe)
   from Vegan Vittles: Recipes Inspired by the Critters of Farm Sanctuary
Assorted Salad Greens
Great-Granny's Lemon Pound Cake
   recipe forthcoming

Sunday:
Shrimp Pomodoro over Angel Hair
     from Robin Rescues Dinner: 52 Weeks of Quick-Fix Meals, 350 Recipes, and a Realistic Plan to Get Weeknight Dinners on the Table
Steamed Asparagus

* * *

I am hungry already...

Do you meal plan? I'd love to hear more about your experiences!

Cooking Together

2010-04-13T08:50:00.001-04:00

I've been enjoying Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes by Emily Franklin in short spurts over the last few afternoons. It is a great book for picking up in those odd quiet moments that seem to happen here every once in a while--times when I know I can't get deeply into a project or serious book but do want to celebrate the few seconds I have.

Franklin's book is filled with stories of cooking and eating with her children. She leaves this reader laughing, inspired, and occasionally feeling really lucky to have only one child! Her stories are a great window into the life of her family--full of that patient-but-very-amused parenting style which feels just right in a book. It is often too easy for cooks or parents writing memoirs to slip into what seems like a holier-than-thou attitude--and it is equally easy to be too self-critical. Franklin takes a comfortable playful middle road, where she laughs gently at herself and her family in a way that shows how much she loves the whole shebang. As she writes in one recipe, after mixing the ingredients into a batter, "let stand for 8-10 minutes or however long it takes you to change diaper/ send e-mail/ sing song/ divert toddler/ explain who Nixon was, or any other kid-related issue."

I immediately identified with the author when she recounts being with her mother in a kitchen shop--a scene which shapes the entire book: "Contained within the shelves there, packed away amidst the plain white plates and jelly jar glasses, were meals as yet uncooked, conversations unspoken, a whole future of smells and tastes and togetherness." From the beginning, she knew that kitchens and cooking were about connections, about possibilities, and about love.

"There's an old saying..."

2010-04-11T09:57:00.000-04:00

Last night we had a fabulous dinner with new friends in our town--and played a great game totally new to us: Wise and Otherwise. It brought out both our funny sides, out poetic sides, and our most generous selves.

One player draws a card and reads the beginning of a saying from another culture. Other players have to guess or make up an ending and write it down. Players then vote for what they think it the right answer--or the funniest.

An example:

There is an old Russion saying, "No grease...":

1. No grease makes the iron pot brittle.
2. No grease could make Lenin's vodka smooth
3. No grease, no ride.
4. No grease make the blinis burn.
5. No grease makes a strong heart.
(answer in the comments)

A few other favorites from the evening--only one of which was true (answer in the comments):

1. There is an old Italian saying, "Old meat makes...the wisest salami."

2. There is an old saying, "You can saddle a horse and ride it well, but you can't lead it to water."

3. There is an old saying, "Water does not cleanse us to the bone"

4. There us an old saying, "The sea never buys fish."

5. There is an old Swedish saying, "Don't throw out the old watering can until you buy a new one from Ikea."

Highly recommended for mixed-age groups!

Chicken Whisperers

2010-04-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

And one escapes all this loving attention:

Interlude: A Knitted Quilt

2010-04-09T13:19:00.001-04:00

The amazing group of homeschoolers with whom we attended farm camp has done many projects together. The most recent is this lovely pieced afghan or blanket--made up of 6-inch garter stitch squares made by the children and their parents. (My family had a blast making squares during this season's Snowpocalypse.) Many of the squares were knit from hand spun yarn, and several were hand dyed as well. What a lovely project to work on together!

We auctioned off the quilt to raise money for Haiti Projects, a multi-pronged non-profit working in Fond des Blancs, Haiti. Some of its projects are a craft cooperative that provides work and much needed cash for women, a tuition program to help poor families send their children to school, a family health care clinic which offers planning services to those who wish to control their family's size, a community library to encourage reading skills among local citizens, and a micro-lending program to help farmers borrow money for tools and animal raising.

In 10 days, our homeschooling group sold 143 raffle tickets, raising $1,430 for Haiti Projects!

While we were thrilled that a local kindergarten teacher received the quilt, we were sorry to see it go, too. It has inspired my family to try making our own blanket. The squares have just begun. More details soon!

Playground with Cows

2010-04-08T09:02:00.002-04:00

After all the hours in the car driving up to New York state, the kids in the homeschooling group were ready to brave the rainy day and let off a little energy. They were all thrilled to see a space at the farm all set up for a little boisterous play. And the children loved the proximity of their playground to the cows' playspace:

They paused in their play to watch the cows begin their afternoon parade to the barn for a little hay:

How wonderful when the calves came onto the playground to play with the human kids!

Mamas were both watchful and patient:

(to be continued)

Growing

2010-04-06T09:51:00.004-04:00

My family spent the last week living on a dairy farm in New York state--chaperoning twelve homeschooled children at farm camp. It was an amazing, exhausting week full of both laughter and tears, stress and quiet peace.

The biodynamic farm we visited is the same farm that Colin Beavan ("No Impact Man") visited with his family. Although it was the first time David and I had been up there, it was the third year of camp for many of the children.

In the next few posts, I'll talk more about some of the incredible things we got to do and see.

Today I'll leave you with a few observations about what went on in my own head during those times we were acting as chaperones:

1. I was flooded with memories of the deep pain of homesickness I experienced when I first went to camp when I was a child.

2. I was overwhelmed by the intense memories of how cruel and exclusionary I was (usually unintentionally) when I was eleven years old.

3. I was surprised that the boys, still physically immature, were far more modest than the girls, many of whom are beginning to develop.

4. I was much more aware of the weather's effect on our attitudes and behaviors than I am at home in our suburban world, full of inside activities to blunt the connection with nature.

5. I was very amused to watch the entire group of children embrace whatever chores they were offered, even chores they complain about at home. All were eager to help in any way they could, whether it was taking out compost, beating rugs, or washing dishes. At the end of the week as we said our goodbyes, I invited any of them to come to help at our house whenever they were missing camp!

* * *

It is good to be home--back to the beginning of sprouting radishes and arugula in our backyard, back to our own beds and pillows, back to our usual routines. But spending this spring week in a place of such obvious rebirth and growth emphasizes to me how important it is to remember our connections to the land and to each other.

More details about the farm to follow in the coming days.

Moving to the Foreground

2010-03-26T09:35:00.001-04:00

Last weekend, the weather was glorious in the DC area. Several days of sun and warmth rewarded us for surviving the snowiest winter our region had ever seen.

Of course, the gorgeous days called us to the garden. This year we've decided to expand our gardening space to the front yard. The backyard garden, which has produced much for us, has gotten shadier and shadier as the years go by.

We decided to construct raised beds the easy way.

After laying out a design, we went to the lumber store and purchased 2 boards 8 feet long and 2 boards 10 feet long. We asked the store to cut 3 1/2 foot lengths off each board.

Because we have absolutely no skills, we decided to buy decking L's. I don't know what these are actually called, but they make it possible to create perfect right angles by sliding boards into slots. It made laying out the beds quite easy. (You can see the metal L's at the base of each corner.) We then screwed the tops of the boards together.

After an afternoon of work, we had all four beds laid out. There is a large space in the middle so we can have picnics, play in the grass, and enjoy the sun. We might put a table in the center. If we feel a need for more gardening space at some point in the future, we might construct a 4x4 diamond or something in the center.

We then lined the beds with cardboard we'd been collecting all winter. Many of the large pieces came from the cool refrigerator we recently purchased.

David always appreciates photos that show him to such advantage:

Our son, old enough now to be a big help in construction projects like this, was wiped out after an afternoon of work. He was very pleased to find new beds exactly where he wanted them:

After his nap, our son soaked the cardboard down--using the leak in our hose as the main source of water distribution.

After filling the beds with cardboard and watering it in so well, we're really hoping to raise some full-sized boxes by the end of the season... (Do you know Edward Lear's nonsense botany? I think he could draw the box plants better than I ever could.)

Tomorrow, we're having 3 cubic yards of topsoil delivered. David plans to go with a friend to collect composted horse manure from a local stable to amend the dirt. And then soon, we will start planting spring seeds and then summer transplants. Here we are at the beginning of our own front-yard victory garden!

Statistics

2010-03-25T08:14:00.000-04:00

According to a new Harris Interactive poll, conservatives have some pretty strong feelings about Obama.

67% of Republicans think the President is a socialist, and 57% believe he is a Muslim. 51% believe he wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government.

Perhaps the most astonishing statistic is that 24% of Republicans believe that Obama "may be the Anti-Christ." (Only 6% of self-identified Democrats believe he may be the Anti-Christ. WHAT?!)

Be sure to check out some of the other lovely little tidbits at the poll site.

Nothing

2010-03-24T19:03:00.001-04:00

I just finished Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy. What a great read! I'll say straight up that while I am an academic historian, I know precious little about economics. Luckily, Patel assumes his readers know, well, nothing--and yet he treat us as intelligent and thoughtful people at the same time.

He also has a sense of humor. I loved the lightbulb jokes that showed his point. I loved his pithy snippets of wisdom that pepper the book and had me reading lines outloud to my partner. Best of all, he has FABULOUS footnotes--ones that simply support his textual comments but also literate inciteful ones that add depth to the comments he makes in the body. (Footnoting TS Eliot in an economic analysis? You get points from me.)

Before I read the book, I had heard that it was commie pinko drivel. Well, with all honesty, that just does not condemn a book for me. In fact, as a driveling commie pinko myself, that always makes me hope to find a soulmate.

But of course Raj Patel, while remaining a soulmate in many ways, is certainly not spouting radical leftist stuff. He's talking in a more intellectual way (and perhaps a more thoughtful way) about more or less what Michael Moore was talking about in Capitalism: A Love Story: how unfettered capitalism can absolutely destroy true democracy.

I especially love chapter six. Here Patel talks about everything from the demise of the commons and the rise of accusations of witchcraft--to the creation of colonialism and the idea of the "savage"--to territorial use rights of fisheries. At other places in the book he talks about the politics of breastfeeding (a subject near and dear to my heart which also exemplifies many of his points). The whole book is a feast of ideas, combined with a critical thesis. Go, now, to your local independent bookstore or to your library and get thee a'readin'!

Cooling Things Down

2010-03-16T10:31:00.000-04:00

or, Purchasing an Extremely Energy Efficient Refrigerator
...and reducing our electric bill by almost 40% overnight.

Since my partner David and I moved into our house a dozen years ago, we've been thinking about the day when we would have to replace the 1970 refrigerator. As the years passed, the old white Kenmore continued to work perfectly--but it was incredibly inefficient, using about 1800 kilowatts per year.

Because the refrigerator was relatively small and surrounded by cabinets, our choices were quite limited. Unless we wanted to redo that entire half of our tiny kitchen, we would need to stick with a super-small model. When we first started looking at our options...continued here

The Unplugged Schoolhouse

2010-03-04T07:36:00.001-05:00

During the month of March, my homeschooled son and I have decided that our "one small change" will be to pull the plug on all electrical use during at least one school day per week.

For a while, my family has celebrated--albeit inconsistently--a weekly powerdown evening where (after the meal is prepared) we spend the rest of the evening together without using electricity. We light the table with beeswax candles, spend time together reading aloud and playing recorder trios and just talking, and go up to bed on the early side. I hope we will get back in the habit this month.

For our unplugged schoolhouse, however, the challenge will be a bit different. My son and I plan to turn off any lights as well as the laptop by 8:3O or 9 am, depending on when we wake up. Everything will stay off until 3:30 or 4. Although these are traditional school times for many children, most of that time is not actually "school" for us. Instead, it is time for music practice, free reading, yoga or running around outside, and other pursuits such as knitting or drawing or folding paper airplanes. (My son would add that his chore of taking out the compost also falls during this time.)

We're honestly fairly removed from a lot of plugged-in entertainment compared to many families, I guess. We don't own a TV or some game system or anything like that. But significant amounts of our days disappear to the hungry soul of this laptop. We've fallen into the habit of using it as a teacher sometimes--especially enjoying things like Thinkwell and the free Hippocampus. My son loves to watch old Pink Panther cartoons and Buster Keaton movies--as well as Myth Busters--on Netflix instant-watch. Not that these things are bad; they certainly aren't occasionally. But too much always seems to leave us further removed from any real-life connection than I think either of us wants.

A powered-down homeschool day also forces us to get out the solar oven and cook in the sun at least one lunch a week. On days that are very cloudy, we'll have cold sandwiches.

By not starting the day until 8:30, I can make a pot of tea for myself and encase it in my homemade recycled-sweater tea cozy to keep it warm for a while. Cheating? Maybe. But a hot beverage seems to be the only way I can stand freezing our buns off this season.

We're allowing ourselves the liberty of deciding which day to celebrate the unplugged schoolhouse. Mondays are our free day. When we are home, it will be ideal. But we do sometimes go on adventures in downtown DC on Mondays and would therefore be mooching off a museum's electrical supply. On Tuesdays, my son has a piano lesson at home. The room with our piano is one of the darker rooms in our house--and our deal is that if it is a cloudy day, it will be perfectly acceptable for my son and his piano teacher to turn on the light in that room during the lesson. This Tuesday was our first day and although it was cloudy, neither bothered to turn on the lights when they walked in the room. (The teacher has no idea about this game, by the way.)

Just like last month's small change of not eating out, this day of powerdown is not something I imagine keeping rigidly for the rest of our lives. Instead, I hope that this month will get us in the habit of relying on ourselves rather than our devices--and making us more conscious of the role of electricity in our lives all the time.

Anyone want to join us?

One Small Change: Eating In Recap

2010-03-03T14:06:00.001-05:00

Last month, my "one small change" was to eat dinner every night at home. The month was quite a success--more than I could have predicted.

There were a few rough spots, but not many. On one afternoon, I was craving take-out pizza as we came home from a day at the Smithsonian museums, but by dinnertime we were ready to spend the effort for a home-cooked meal. On the night where I could just not stand the idea of cooking at all, my partner David took over the complete preparations.

One evening, our 10yo son served us a lovely candlelight dinner. He played both chief cook and waiter. He was even the evening entertainment, serenading us with his violin. (He did not play the role of chief bottle-washer, unfortunately.)

We went to a party at friends' house one evening where we had vegan take-out from a locally-owned Middle Eastern restaurant in town. It was yummy and we did not feel like we were cheating at all. There is something about time with friends that changes all the rules.

On the last night of the month, I stayed home recovering from a stomach bug while my fiddling son and his Papa went to a local Scottish pub for a children's Irish music session. (As odd as it sounds, I suspect Irish and Scottish pubs in this country probably do a lot of crossing over....) Like eating at our friends' house, this meal seemed right, even though it technically broke the rules.

So what is it that made these seem like times to bend our self-imposed regulations? I think it is because both times we were after something special--not just the default position. A special event, a time of togetherness, a celebration--these are things I do not want to miss as time goes forward. Even a special meal--be it a cuisine I've never tasted, or a meal at a new downtown restaurant in our little inner suburb, or a feast at an organic or local restaurant--could certainly count. We have no intention of continuing this "one small change" in its extremity--but it has set us up to be more deliberate about our choices.

Of course, when I began to eat again after my stomach bug, it was March--and we immediately went out to my favorite Pho soup restaurant. (David chose a vegan dish, mostly to avoid what is probably CAFO meat. Sometimes, especially in the face of Pho, he is simply a better person than I am.)

I knew I had soul-mates on this eating-in journey, but I had no idea how many I would find. As I mentioned before, my initial inspiration came from The Conscious Shopper--but during the course of February, I also discovered Cathy Erway's blog and also her brand-new book The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove. To celebrate the release of the book, Huffington post sponsored The Week of Eating In--which drew an enormous number of other folks to the same challenge I was setting for myself. And what I thought might be a challenge that could isolate us introduced us to a whole new online community!

Tomorrow: One Small Change for March.

Cherries in Winter

2010-02-22T08:25:00.006-05:00

When magazine writer Suzan Colon lost her job as the economic crisis came to a head, she found something even more wonderful to replace it: a beautiful life, and a brilliant and thoughtful idea for a book:Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times.

The book--a quick read with print large enough even for those of us who just might be starting to need bifocals--revolves around how Colon's family history sustains her and inspires her through times of trouble. While they cook classic family recipes, Colon's mother tells her stories about her family's past. And then Suzan finds the writings and recipes of her "Nana" Matilda, who created a life during the Great Depression and WWII years with strength and verve. The lesson that Suzan Colon uncovers from her family allows her to recognize her own ability to weather the storms occuring in her own life.

Cherries in Winter is a lovely and relaxing book--but it isn't the perfect read in all circumstances. Clearly, it is not a political or analytical discussion of the economic crisis. Neither will it make much sense to anyone who has struggled with any real poverty or hunger. She and her family have plenty to live a comfortable life--just not the upscale life they had led before (of $200 haircuts and fancy meals). A husband with a job and a substantial savings account protect them.

But nevertheless, the shock and the changes for Colon's family have been very real. As the author says, "I used to tell my parents they'd never have to worry about their old age, that I would take care of them. Can I say that now?"

Of course, many people have weathered much worse during this crisis--and many had faced more difficult situations even before the recession started. If you are expecting a guide through any substantial struggle, this is not the book for you. Instead, it will probably appeal to those of us who have been required to cut back on our luxuries but are still doing OK--and those of us who have chosen a simpler life during this time (or before the economic crisis began).

There are several recipes in addition to the gentle storytelling. None really inspired me to cook them, but they did make me think of the foods that had been passed down to me in the history of my own family.

The title of the book, Cherries in Winter, is the author's articulation, handed down from the matriarchs of her family, of the idea that very occasional and very special treats can help us maintain a sense of balance: the importance of "spending extra, just once in a while, where there is no extra to be spent. Because." Why? "It's a deep breath reminding us not to become miserly in spirit. We may be broke but we're not poor."

What is your extravagance, your "cherries in winter"?

In the end, Colon recognizes her bounty: "It wasn't at all bad--sometimes what looked at first like more rotten luck turned out to be fate's little crooked smile."

I highly recommend this light but thoughtful book as the thing to pick up as you relax with a cup of tea in front of the fire--or as you sit in your garden on a warm summer day (a day I am dreaming about through this cold and snowy winter).

One Small Change: Staying Home

2010-02-09T07:00:00.003-05:00

Last month, my "one small change" was to take reusable containers with us when we were out of the house. We were very good about making sure we had not only our stainless steel water bottles or coffee cups as well as cloth bags with us--perhaps because these have been habits for years. But this month we were much more consistent about bringing utensils, cloth napkins, and even tiffins or lunchbots with us when we went to restaurants, so we could pack away our leftovers.

This month, inspired by the Conscious Shopper, our goal is to avoid going out to restaurants at all. For a long time we've been committed to spending the majority of our restaurant dollars at locally-owned places--but for this month, every dinner will be cooked and served at home.

This one small change will dramatically reduce our wastes, potentially reduce our waists as well, definitely lead to healthier meals, lead to a healthier pocketbook, save a bit of gasoline, and give us some extra family time to boot.

I'm a bit late getting this post up--but that simply means I've already had a week on this challenge. Although I did have one evening where I was craving pizza and a movie, we survived on leftovers and a movie instead. One of the keys to success seems to be to have the makings for both easy throw-together meals and meals that satisfy the foodie in me.

Although many people swear by having a fixed menu plan, I really like having a list of meals for the week, then stocking the fridge and pantry with those ingredients so we can have the flexibility to choose each afternoon or evening what we would like to prepare.

Things have been really easy for the last few days--since we've been snowed in!

We've set ourselves this challenge just for the short month of February. We have no intention to keep ourselves completely out of restaurants after the month is over--but I want us to learn from this one small change to keep eating out special--to always be conscious of the choice rather than have it as a default when we're tired.

Snow!

2010-02-08T09:32:00.001-05:00

Here in the Mid-Atlantic, we've been buried with more snow than I have ever seen:

Our house

Our street

Out the front door

Out the back door

A path!

But where do we put it?

* * *

The forecast calls for a new storm to begin tomorrow afternoon--and bring us 5-10 inches more snow...

5pm UPDATE: The National Weather Service is now saying 10 to 20 inches of additional snow. Yikes.

Beating Hearts: The Humanist Symposium

2010-01-31T07:49:00.004-05:00

As you might guess from the title of this blog, I am a bit obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe.

Imagine my surprise when I began to read through the submissions for this week's edition of the Humanist Symposium and came across Michael Campbell's clever post, "Edgar Allan Poe Should've Read Carl Sagan." Quoting from Poe's "Sonnet: To Science" (Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart?), Campbell points out that it is pure nonsense to imply that science and its emphasis on reality steals all beauty from life. Instead of imagining that science kills poetry, we should open our eyes to see the majesty of the cosmos. At the same time, Campbell acknowledges that poetry has a special beauty of its own, one that depends on its subjectivity to reveal "the complex nature of what it means to be human." (Those of you who want to redeem your faith in Poe might want to check out this essay which addresses the question of Poe's potential humanism/atheism.)

Steven Handel suggests that it is precisely this "poet's heart," beating solidly in each human, that gives our lives meaning. As he writes, "In some sense I find that creativity in humans is just as important as our need for air. What we express through art can give us our first sense of worth and purpose." After a thoughtful discussion of the ways creativity can enhance our lives, he offers many ways to be express one's inner life even for those of us who don't think of ourselves as artists.

In a fascinating essay over at Daylight Atheism, Adam Lee anazlyzes how creativity can be stifled by fundamentalism. He reviews a book about Christian pop culture and learns about the Christian version of Woodstock, called Cornerstone. One of the long-time participants at the music festival eventually abandoned his religious faith--as has a prominent Christian comedian. Lee argues that since "evangelicalism is a creed built on certainty and on having all the answers," it is incompatible with true and honest expression. In order for the poet's heart to beat, it "requires self-doubt, introspection, and self-questioning."

Recently Greta Christina headed out to the Edwardian Ball, where a weekend-long celebration of poet/author/artist Edward Gorey is a place where "Goth, steampunk, ballroom, and historical recreation society scenes collide in a magnificent explosion" complete with "live music, ballroom dancing, costumes, art, exhibitions, absinthe cocktails, trapeze performances, weird taxidermy displays, and more." (Now this is an event I am sure Edgar Allan Poe would not want to miss.) What Greta realizes is that, as she says, "the Edwardian Ball is a near-perfect example of what I think of as the atheist meaning of life." Go read her wonderfully-written and inspiring post.

* * *

Of course, having a heart isn't just about personal expression and creative exploration. It is also about kindness and caring about all of humanity. There is a long history of people arguing that people who do not believe in God cannot be good people. As Ophelia Benson points out that old line of attack is still alive and well. She quotes an inflammatory article in the National Catholic Register which asks, "Why is other human life worth anything if there is no God?" Most humanists would argue that valuing human lives happens simply because we feel empathy and connection with all humanity. When you click through to Butterflies and Wheels, make sure you don't miss that great conversation going on in the comments.

Sometimes the critiques of non-believers feel mean-spirited. But at other times, we can tell our best interests are fully in the hearts of those who confront us. Hemant Mehta (The Friendly [and Handsome] Atheist) shares with us a beautiful and hilarious letter to a young atheist from his Christian grandmother.

* * *

Edgar Allan Poe wrote (in the sonnet mentioned above) that science is all about "dull realities." While he was wrong that science is dull and cannot show us beauty, he was correct that what is at the heart of science is reality--that is, what can be measured, what can be studied, what can be observed. Several of this week's posts concern this issue.

Secular Guy points out that it is totally unnatural to believe in the supernatural. As he says, "Isn't accepting the universe on its own terms more realistic than trying to change it by fruitlessly praying for miracles?" As the Secular Guy's wife argues, embracing the natural can set us free.

One way we can be set free is to recognize that our social conventions and beliefs hold us back from acknowledging scientific research. Andrew Bernardin chronicles how students in his class are asked to take sides on a heated issue (same-sex parenting) and use information from a textbook to support their positions. Invariably, many of the students attempt to use their own experiences and beliefs instead to back up their ideas. Bernardin finds himself saying again and again, "While that sounds true, is there any research that supports it?" And now, new research has come out!

Russell Blackford presents a thought-provoking review of Robert Wright's The Evolution of God. Although Blackford makes it clear that the subject is fascinating and that the writing is compelling, he is disturbed by Wright's repeated hints that "the narrative of religion's cultural evolution may be evidence for something divine behind it all." At times, that "divinity" seems to refer to Natural Selection. At other times, it is "just something [still] unknown to us, something of great significance that stands in relation to us, who are ignorant of it." But Wright is being intellectually dishonest--or perhaps disingenuous: ignorance and imagination does not a God make.

David Michael tackles the same kind of question by asking what will happen to religion in the future. "Religion probably originates either from a desire to grasp the ungraspable and control the uncontrollable," he writes, "or to gain political power, or some combination of both." He predicts a future world of more interaction and more debate--and therefore less rigid orthodoxy. The consequence will be less powerful religion. As David Michael says, "In a post-religious world the appealing myths of religion will seem only that: appealing, and nothing more."

* * *

Finally, you can't miss the generous heart of Chanson. She writes a post about attending a fundamentalist Mormon service and getting to know a group of people with beliefs and practices very different from her own. When meeting a "sister-wife" (in a sea of folks dressed as pioneers) in a polygamist family, Chanson stammers a bit and "explained to her that I was visiting the AUB church because I wanted to learn more about my Mormon heritage." Chanson continued that her great-great-great-great aunt was one of the wives of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism. Looking back, says Chanson, "I figure I was either motivated by a pathological desire to fit in under any circumstances or I’m secretly proud of my strange Mormon-history claim-to-fame and figured that if anyone would be impressed by it, it would be the polygamists."

* * *

If you still have it in you to read a bit more Poe, make sure you check out my favorite piece of his, The Tell-Tale Heart.

* * *

The next Humanist Symposium will be hosted on Feb 21, 2010. You can find more information at Daylight Atheism or over at the carnival homepage. And if you are interested in hosting an upcoming Symposium, email ebonmusings at gmail dot com.

In the Pot

2010-01-29T07:32:00.008-05:00

One of the presents I received for the holidays was a beautiful 4.5 quart enameled cast iron Le Creuset French Oven (usually called a Dutch Oven in this part of the world).

As a big fan of both non-enameled cast iron skillets and slow cookers, I had a feeling that this would be a pot I would love. And I certainly do: the "French Oven" holds heat tremendously well, it is naturally nonstick (more or less), and it looks absolutely beautiful sitting on the stove or on the table.

Some people love all the bright colors that Le Creuset comes in--but as a confirmed plain-jane, I'm ecstatic about onyx (pure black) and dune (off-white).

* * *

In these cold days and in our cold house, stews and braises feel just perfect. I scoured the library for cookbooks and found several--and know I can adjust slow cooker recipes as well. I'm looking forward to more experiments with this pot.

I also found an interesting cookbook called Glorious One-Pot Meals which uses a technique very different from slow braising. Instead, you layer raw ingredients into the pot, cover, and cook in a very hot oven for forty-five minutes or so.

The technique, which author Elizabeth Yarnell calls the infusion method, is incredibly convenient. All the cook needs to do is chop the ingredients, layer them in the pot, insert the pot in the oven, and head to the couch with a glass of wine and some good company to await the glorious smells which will soon emerge from the kitchen.

The recipes in Yarnell's book are all fairly vegetable-heavy. As a confirmed veggie fanatic who loves to cook but hates to clean up, I thought I might have found a perfect match with this book.

After cooking a few dishes, though, I am only partly convinced.

While the meals are easy to put together, easy to clean up, and in general quite healthy, they sometimes are a bit pedestrian in their flavors. Although Yarnell takes inspiration from a variety of ethnic cuisines, the recipes are all substantially Americanized--or perhaps "Mid-Westernized" would be more accurate. Fine--I can spice things up to my own tastes. And pedestrian is just fine for most of our weeknight meals, anyway.

The larger problem for me is that the individual ingredients don't always need the same amount of cooking time, even though by definition that is what they get in this cooking method. Last night's meal (Argentinian Beef) featured both mildly crunchy rice and somewhat limp broccoli. Perhaps the special South Carolina-grown rice I used had too much bite for this cooking method? I plan to do a bit more experimenting to see what will work.

One of the things I do like about the cookbook is that while it offers plenty of recipes, it also emphasizes the wide range of possibilities this method makes available to a cook adventurous enough to try out his or her own combinations. The author actively encourages the reader to imagine new possibilities. What if I were to skip the rice and add a few root veggies instead? What if I were to replace the broccoli with mustard greens? In fact, for tonight's meal, we'll be replacing chicken with some tempeh we've had in our freezer for much too long.

On a cold day, a hot stew coming out of the dutch oven can be just the thing to make us warm. But having stew after stew, night after night, can get old. Yarnells's Glorious One-Pot Meals are recipes that are not simply more stews. Although the ingredients are all cooked together, they in general remain quite distinct. This makes for a nice variation from usual Dutch Oven recipes.

Another thing I really like about the cookbook is that the recipes are written for just two people. For our family of three, I usually double the recipes (which the author encourages) and pack leftovers for lunch the next day. But cooking a single recipe--and augmenting with salad or soup or dessert if we need to--might make a lot of sense for us sometimes.

So, in summary: although I do have some reservations about this cookbook, it seems like it will add ease and variety to our basic no-time-to-think weeknight meals. We'll probably use some of the recipes for nights when we do have time, too. But I don't foresee this being a go-to cookbook for special meals with company.

Have any of you tried out this book? Do you have other favorite cookbooks or recipes for the Dutch Oven?

A Young Omnivore's Dilemma

2010-01-25T11:05:00.003-05:00

A guest post by my 10yo son Abe, who has just started a new blog. Check out his beautiful first post over there!

The The Omnivore's Dilemma talks about four meals the author eats that can teach us about the different ways food is produced and eaten in the United States. I read the new version for young readers, The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat.

First, the fast food meal.
For his first meal, Michael Pollan ate the classic fast food meal, a hamburger. But what a hamburger means now is very different from the what it used to mean. Farmers get paid very little and aren't always treated fairly. Both chickens and cows often live in feedlots where they are tightly packed together and often kept in the dark. It turns out that cows are not even eating grass anymore. Instead, they now eat corn. And the corn they eat is sprayed with harmful chemicals. Cows eating corn is not healthy for cows and is not healthy for people who eat hamburger, either. One of the problems is that when a cow eats corn, a type of harmful e-coli can develop more easily. The bacteria live in the meat and can kill people who eat it. Raising food this way is also harmful to the environment.

Second, the industrial organic meal.
For this meal, Pollan cooks only with organic ingredients—that is, foods that are grown without pesticides and chemical fertilizers. With meat, the situation is often the same as above, except the corn is not sprayed. When you eat organic vegetables, you can guarantee that fewer chemicals get in your body. So organic is definitely a step better than the conventional fast food meal. But the way the animals are raised is still a problem and the ways workers are treated also needs fixing. Also, the food has to be shipped a long way from where it is grown, meaning it requires a lot of oil to get food to the grocery store. This is bad for the environment.

Third, food grown on a farm.
Joel Salatin calls himself a grass farmer. His cows feed on grass and weeds in the farm's large open pastures. The cows' manure attracts flies and then his chickens eat the flies as natural protein. The manure also feeds the grass and weeds which his cows eat. It is a natural circle that continues without any pesticides or fertilizers or food grown elsewhere. Salatin’s farm Polyface is near DC. I have friends who get their meat from there. Michael has friends that live near Joel’s farm too and so he travelled there to cook a meal for them. On the menu was applewood-smoked BBQ chicken, roasted sweet corn, arugula "rocket" salad, and a chocolate soufflé. This sounds so delicious! Pollan knew the animals on the farm had lived a good life, the workers there were treated well, and the food was healthier.

Fourth, a hunter-gatherer meal.
For this meal, Pollan only served food that was hunted, gathered, or grown by someone he knew. Angelo Garro is an avid hunter and mushroom gatherer who also fishes and gathers wild plants like fennel. Michael hunted boar with him and also went mushroom foraging. He then held a party and almost everyone who came brought something they had created themselves from special ingredients they found or grew. I like the way the author talks about how connection with the food we eat means our meals become special.

* * *

This book talks about how the food system works. It explains how much is bad and how we can start to fix the problems. I thought the book was really inspiring. I knew a lot of the information already from my parents (who read the grown-up version when it came out), but reading this book myself really pressed the information home for me. Now I often don't order eating meat at a restaurant if I think was raised on feedlots. (Though I still love Vietnamese Pho soup....)

I highly recommend this book to young readers, as well as to anyone who doesn't have a lot of time or background about food issues.

In a Pickle

2010-01-22T06:45:00.004-05:00

I am very excited about participating in the Tigress' Can Jam this year.

Participants can one fruit or vegetable a month throughout the year--and this month's choice is CITRUS.

* * *

I have a lot of excuses for not getting it done yet. Really. And some of them are pretty good. Yep.

But nevertheless, the citrus is whole and the jars are still in the box, and they are going to be staying there all day. Instead, I will be rushing around to meet the requirements of a day filled with activities and a special evening occurring at our house.

In short, I am in too much of a pickle to can jam today.

Instead, I am preparing my canning fiesta for tomorrow, using a recipe for spiced oranges from The Joy of Pickling, Revised Edition: 250 Flavor-Packed Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market.

Citrus in a pickle? An experiment too hard to resist!

No Waste, but Lots of History

2010-01-21T07:00:00.002-05:00

I recently dug out my childhood lunchbox, decorated with Charlie Brown and Lucy (and even the only cartoon character I ever had a crush on, Schroeder the pianist)--and marred with a few dents, a little rust in spots, and some tape that used to secure my name to the lunchbox:

This was a Hanukkah gift for my partner David--not for our son who is homeschooled and therefore only packs a lunch occasionally

I filled the Peanuts lunch box present with cheerful Graze Organic bags, a product my son and I fell in love with when we spotted them on Fake Plastic Fish.

For lunch today, I filled the bags with a cheese sandwich, some pretzels left over from our travel snacks, some carrot coins, a little pack of organic raisins leftover from our Halloween stash, and a napkin. I think a clementine made it in the box as well.

The lunch bags are made from unbleached organic cotton, printed with water-based inks, and contain no plastic except for the velcro closure. Of course they aren't the right packages for the leftovers that usually go with David for lunch--but they are fantastic for adding to the retro-schoolkid-lunchbox to hold basic sandwiches, grapes or cherries, cherry tomatoes, carrot or celery sticks, pretzels, or treats like cookies. They can go in the washing machine but usually are fine after a good shake or a bit of spot cleaning in the kitchen sink.

Packing your own lunch is the easiest way to TakeOutWithOut--especially if you are trying to stay out of restaurants...

* * *

David happily carried the lunchbox to his work--a federal government office filled with health care professionals. I can't wait to hear the reaction!

School Gardens and the Seeds of Change

2010-01-20T06:55:00.004-05:00

Poster uploaded by Joan Thewlis

Have you seen the critique of school gardens published recently in The Atlantic?

Imagine that as a young and desperately poor Mexican man, you had made the dangerous and illegal journey to California to work in the fields with other migrants. There, you performed stoop labor, picking lettuce and bell peppers and table grapes; what made such an existence bearable was the dream of a better life. You met a woman and had a child with her, and because that child was born in the U.S., he was made a citizen of this great country. He will lead a life entirely different from yours; he will be educated. Now that child is about to begin middle school in the American city whose name is synonymous with higher learning, as it is the home of one of the greatest universities in the world: Berkeley. On the first day of sixth grade, the boy walks though the imposing double doors of his new school, stows his backpack, and then heads out to the field, where he stoops under a hot sun and begins to pick lettuce.

The author continues that schools should never be "a venue in which to advance a social agenda." They should not try to teach self-sufficiency in the growing and eating of healthy food. She suggests, although rates of diabetes and heart disease are astoundingly high among inner-city communities and others living in poverty, the "suicidal dietary choices of so many poor people are the result of a problem, not the problem itself." Instead of teaching students about gardening and cooking, "the solution lies in an education that will propel students into a higher economic class, where they will live better and therefore eat better." Therefore, the only question educators should consider is "What are you doing to prepare these kids for college?"

At a certain level, I agree with the author: poverty is the problem at the root of so many of our society's ills. And I also agree that the answer to addressing poverty goes way beyond school gardens.

But honestly, addressing poverty also goes way beyond trying to send all students to college.

Students raised in a family and community with less than they need often struggle in academic settings. Yes--college is absolutely a way out of poverty for exceptionally bright students who can fight against the odds. But poverty also prevents many just reasonably bright students from succeeding in academia, no matter how much their teachers drill them in test-taking skills or even teach them great literature. This is terribly wrong--but it is true none the less. Those of us who grew up middle class with educated parents often have an easy time in the classroom, even if we're NOT reasonably bright. And honestly, not all students (and this has nothing to do with whether they are poor or rich) should be told that college is their only option for creating a productive life.

While school gardens might not solve the problems of poverty, I do believe that they begin to address far more than just the eating habits of students.

Berkeley's Edible Schoolyard is located at a school with a high number of brand new immigrants who speak little or no English yet. While learning English can happen in a classroom with a textbook, language also gets learned in real life when students of many cultures come together in a more relaxed place to grow, cook, and eat food together. They share their native plants, the recipes of their cultures, and their traditions of hospitality. This makes for a place where people can both appreciate each others' differences and see each others' similarities.

For those students who do struggle in the classrooms, the garden offers a place where learning happens in a different fashion--just as the art classroom and the music rooms can. Should these subjects be offered completely INSTEAD of teaching a skill that (as the author states) clearly "improves a child’s chances of doing well on the state tests that will determine his or her future"? No--but leaving these other subjects completely behind--and suggesting they are not at all valuable as real education--denigrates those who now create their lives in fields like these. And of course denigrating the growing of food means that that farmers will never be paid enough or respected enough. It is a vicious circle.

As our world moves rapidly into a time when we have to confront both climate change and severe resource depletion, it seems likely that farmers will be in great demand and treated with much more respect than they have been recently. All students--those who have grown up in families of farmers and those who have grown up thinking food comes from Wal-Mart, those who are living in poverty and those who are living in McMansions--need to know about how sustainable agriculture works.

Barbara Kingsolver approached these issues long before the author of the Atlantic article wrote her inflammatory attention-seeking piece:

The baby boom psyche embraces a powerful presumption that education is a key to moving away from manual labor, and dirt--two undeniable ingredients in farming. It's good enough for us that somebody, somewhere, knows food production well enough to serve the rest of us with all we need to eat, each day of our lives.

It is our disconnect from growing food and our disrespect for the manual labor that sustains us that leads Americans to, as Kingsolver says, "consider the food industry to be a thing rather than a person. We obligingly give 85 cents of our every food dollar to that thing, too--the processors, marketers, and transporters." The corporatization of our food supply and the high degree of food processing have made farmers almost invisible. If we were more educated about the process of what farmers do to grow our food, perhaps we would "want to compensate or think about these hardworking people."

* * *

So my family plants a few seeds in our tiny garden--partly to produce a few treats here and there and partly to remind ourselves of the skills and labor of those who grow more. We have a CSA share and we meet the amazing growers who work there. We shop at the farmer's market in order to remind ourselves that the food we grow has been nurtured by human hands.

My homeschooled son jokes that this is our own school garden, our own edible schoolyard.

Keeping Warm in the Winter

2010-01-19T08:24:00.004-05:00

We keep our house on the chilly side during the winter. We all wrap up in layers of knitwear to keep warm. We moved our microwave (which we rarely use) upstairs for the winter so we can heat up cherry-pit warmers. We keep so many blankets and quilts on our bed that it sometimes feels the weight will crush us. And I have even been known to sleep in my gloves.

Last year we replaced the windows downstairs with extremely efficient windows, and we plan to replace our upstairs windows this year. That will make it a little safer to turn the heat up a bit. Until we do it, I wonder if our heater single-handedly causes global warming whenever we turn up our heat--since every bit seems to seep out into the world and heat the outside as much as the inside.

Often during the night I scoot closer to my partner David, a source of both emotional comfort and physical warmth, as I shiver in and out of sleep. As I was commenting yesterday that when we sleep closer together we're so much warmer, he pointed out that this was not quite true: "I move closer to you because I love you, but moving closer to you means getting COLDER!"

Peace and Justice

2010-01-18T07:00:00.002-05:00

reposted from 2007

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
--Martin Luther King

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
--Mahatma Gandhi

* * *

During the 1950s and 1960s, my parents were involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the town where they were then living. I grew up hearing stories about my father passing out candy bars to protesting African Americans sitting down at the segregated lunch counter at the drugstore. For this, his graduate school took away his fellowship.

I also heard stories of my father's father and his critiques of the Ku Klux Klan. He believed they were cowardly for hiding their faces when they should be proud of what they believed and fought for.

What a long way my father came from how he grew up.

I grew up with images of people wearing their Sunday best, proud and strong, marching peacefully to express their refusal to accept segregation--and images of those same people being sprayed to the ground by fire hoses strong enough to peel bark off trees. The hoses were held by police officers. Whenever people told me that policemen were our friends, I cringed.

I sang with my parents on every long car trip, learning the words to many many freedom songs, including a few turned-around verses written by the few liberal white southerners in the movement: "If you miss me at the front of the bus, I'll be sitting in the back...."

* * *

Yesterday we watched as our community celebrated Martin Luther King day in the way that seems to be becoming the traditional commemoration in the United States: rather than a day committed to justice and nonviolence (which one might expect and want), it is a day of service (which seems less edgy or dangerous, I suppose).

The service projects in the DC area that accepted children as volunteers all seemed to be more about making the kids feel connected and enjoy their experiences than actually get anything substantial done. We went to a Day of Service fair that sometimes just felt like a make-crafts-with-plastic-crap festival. In my cynical mood, I walked around the noisy hotel ballroom, frustrated that the charities represented there were not even allowed to have posters explaining the point of their organizations. Making dice out of recycled boxes or making decorations for a party to thank donors to the Republican party basically cannot help me memorialize Martin Luther King.

And then, as usual, fiber stopped me in my tracks.

Using the idea of the prayer shawl ministry where volunteers knit shawls for people in need of comfort and prayers, the local hospice program decided to have volunteers decorate fleece shawls to offer to the hospice patients and to their family members "to wrap them in the comfort hospice can provide." I sat down with polar fleece, scissors, Red Heart yarn, and a needle barely sharp enough to pierce the fabric--and started to cry. After I made mine, Son came to start one as well:

Some people made really elaborate scarves:

I then made a flower from tissue paper for the a local shelter for abused and homeless women including those with families. The flowers would be used by the children there to help them prepare corsages for Mother's Day. Can you imagine what it must be like to be spending your first Mother's Day in a shelter because you were a brave enough and strong enough mother to take yourself and your children away from a batterer?

Do the fleece-and-sequins-and-glue shawls or the tissue paper flowers really do any good in the world? Perhaps not. But despite my reluctance, the process of making them DOES do a lot of good in the world. Making those of us with plenty feel connected to the incredibly deep needs of others may be more important than anything we could actually do for people in need in just an hour or so. It is not their lives we change but our own. (And of course, most of us are both "us" and "them" at various points in our lives.)

And now I am off to finish a scarf for Food and Friends, cast on a scarf for the Orphan Foundation's Red Scarf Project, and finish plans to put together with my family an afghan for Afghans for Afghans. Anybody want to join me?

* * *

After we left the hotel ballroom, we stopped by our favorite movie rental place to pick up an episode or two of Eyes on the Prize, the phenomenal documentary about the Civil Rights Movement. The video store did not have it (and I've now put it on hold at the library) so we went back to one of MLK's roots and checked out Gandhi. Although I know it would be made differently now and has some factual problems as well, we were all overwhelmed with the power of the movie.

The two moral centers of my personal universe are honesty and pacifism--although I constantly fail at my efforts to be an honest person who never relies on violence--even verbal violence--to win my way. (Perhaps the fact that these are weaknesses is why I am so committed to the ideals?) I completely realize that people's ethical commitments can vary tremendously and even completely conflict with each other, and both people can still be very ethical people. So please, if you don't share my pacifist beliefs, understand that I realize that this is my own path and not necessarily that of my readers.

I believe that force can never win true and lasting change. I believe that violence cannot create a world based on respect and peace.

Nonviolence is not just an ethical practice. It is a successful strategy. Ghandi talked a great deal about how the nonviolent soldier had to be just as committed to engagement and just as prepared to lay down his or her life for the cause as any military soldier would be. Instead of accepting domination, fight by refusing it, both in small ways and large, symbolic ways and tangible ones.

Gandhi, resisting the dominance of the British markets, encouraged Indians to reconnect to skills that could insure their independence. When the empire required that salt be bought from Britain, Gandhi marched to the sea and made salt. When the empire required that cloth be bought from Britain, Gandhi mobilized an entire country to spin their own thread and weave and wear homespun garments. (Ah yes, it all comes back to the fiber arts.)

When faced with violence, don't turn back. Violence shows the weakness of those we fight against. When you do nothing but vigorously challenge oppression, the person hitting you may be able to see your humanity. If he or she does not, at least the people across the world learning of the story will be able to understand your side. Yes, there will be pain and death--but will there be more pain and death than there would be in military battle? And will change come about because of force, change that cannot last, or will justice come because we finally see the greater humanity that links us all?

* * *

Imagine a world committed to both justice and nonviolence. What if we had that in the US? Can you even think what the War on Terror would mean if that was our starting point? What if Palestinians and Israelis had moral leaders like Gandhi or MLK?

May we never loose the ability to see such a world.

Carbon Diaries

2010-01-15T06:30:00.001-05:00

In the young adult novel The Carbon Diaries, Laura Brown documents the events of the year 2015. As the book begins, the global climate has declined so precipitously that the United Kingdom has made the unilateral decision to cut its carbon emissions by 60 percent. In this modern epistolary novel (a diary format supplemented with few emails to a cousin), 16yo Laura chronicles her own experiences during this year of great change.

Due to an extremely severe European storm, Britain decides to implement carbon rationing. During the course of the following year, incredible drought, extreme cold, riots, forest fires, and serious flooding shape the daily experiences of the central characters. The UK is the first country in the world to respond to the global-warming crisis by setting strict limits on how much energy people can use. Everyone is given a carbon allowance of 200 Carbon Points per month that can be spent on food, heating, and travel. These ration points came on top of the higher prices people already pay now that the carbon usage of each commodity has been factored into the item's cost.

As Laura's family confronts carbon rationing and the effects of global warming, they each find themselves going in new directions. Unable to withstand the pressures of carbon rationing, Laura's parents decide to separate. Her mother becomes involved with a militant women's commune, while her father develops into an urban homesteader--raising a pig, tearing down neighborhood fences to create a common field with his neighbors and taking a job driving a horse-drawn delivery wagon.

On top of the difficulties Britain faces due to climate chance and rationing, Laura tries to keep her eco-punk band (the Dirty Angels) together, negotiate family tensions, survive the complications of teen friendships, and get the attention of the cute boy next door.

I highly recommend this book, but be aware that the amount of British teen-speak may make you feel both old and foreign. It is not great literature, but it is compellingly written and endlessly thought provoking.

I can't wait to read the sequel, The Carbon Diaries, 2017!

Handmade Holidays, pt 2

2010-01-14T10:00:00.001-05:00

(continued from this earlier post)

I was sneaky and knit a couple of items without my son or partner catching me:

For David, a subtly striped scarf:

And for our son, this playful death-mask balaclava which he doesn't want me to block:

David knitted this beautiful scarf for my mother:

And our 10yo son designed, cross-stiched, and sewed up this needle case for his Grandmama:

Together, my son and I learned to sew while making tank-top reusable bags, which we gave as gifts:

Turning Off Your Brain

2010-01-12T08:04:00.004-05:00

Although we do not have a television at home, my entire family gets sucked in by TV when we're staying in hotels. In our travels over the last three weeks, we've fallen in love with the Food Channel.

The fact that it is such a draw and manages to eat up so much time is exactly why we don't have a TV at home!

I especially enjoyed the focus on local and sustainable cooking during the White House Iron Chef show. Did you hear about it?

But last night, as we watched the terrific television personality Alton Brown, I was stunned by the commercials for high fructose corn syrup. Despite all the medical concerns suggesting that its safety is not a given and the agricultural/environmental concerns about monocropping corn, the Corn Refiners Association has put out a set of advertisements designed to get us not to question their product.

Every ad I saw seemed to follow the same basic plot-line. One person would suggest that the other should not eat something because it contained HFCS. The other would dismissively say something like, "Why? Because it is natural, has no more calories than sugar, and is part of a healthy diet when eaten in moderation?" And then person A would reach out his or her grateful hand and scarf down the product containing high fructose corn syrup. In each case, the person trying to avoid the product seems not to have any idea why her or she is avoiding it, and the person who supports us can persuade person A just by saying that it is fine to eat it. There is no real convincing, just Consumer A waiting for permission to eat some forbidden fruit and someone else telling him or her to just do it.

Honestly, even if you read a non-politicized article about the process used to make high fructose corn syrup, I have trouble believing that anyone thinks it is natural. Sweet? Yes, although many complain about the flavor compared to table sugar. Cheap? Yes, thanks to government subsidies. Useful in making processed foods last longer on the shelf, and therefore a boon for corporations? Supposedly yes, although this is totally freaky. But NATURAL?

I am especially amused that on the website the advertisement leads the viewer to, the refiners make the argument that HFCS is natural because it is made from corn--but then argue that it is very unlikely to be allergenic since any corn proteins left in the product are so altered.

The website also states that HFCS has no discernable corn DNA in the product (in the effort to say that using GMO corn to make HFCS is not a problem). If there is no corn DNA in it, doesn't that make it clear that it is not a natural corn product?

I'm not out to convince anybody to avoid HFCS. But I do strongly urge you to watch advertisements critically and realize when the ads are designed to shut down your critical brain.

One Small Change: Greening Up Away from Home

2010-01-11T06:15:00.004-05:00

While my family decides how best to approach our green resolution for the year (to figure out how to reach the "Hanukkah Standard"), it is really nice to have some little doable steps to take along the way. With a goal as complex and amorphous as ours, it seems especially important to be able to reach milestones along the path.

Hip Mountain Mama suggests that we all try to make one small change a month to work towards our goals. I've had a wonderful time reading through all the participants' ideas and can't wait to see how everyone fares this month. It looks like an inspiring community!

We've begun the month traveling an enormous amount. We've visited both sets of grandparents as well as attended a conference in a place which has a lot of history for both David and for me. But by Wednesday morning, we'll be back home with plans to stay there for the rest of the month.

In the past, we've often felt that we cannot make any real changes while we're away from home. As soon as we get home, we'll get started...

But on these trips, we've done a pretty good job at using our reusables, producing less garbage, and trying to do right by the planet. We haven't been perfect--but we've tried hard and are starting to build habits for our long trips.

1. We packed our Klean Kanteens and our reusable coffee mugs--and used them regularly. For coffee out, we've used our mugs for years. And for years we've carried our reusable water bottles for hiking and for outside festivals, etc. But on longer trips, we've never used our Klean Kanteens before.

For a family who drinks no soda at home, we have always managed to stack up a zillion Diet Coke bottles when we were on long drives. This year we were much better. We had water in our Klean Kanteens handy which we could replenish from the tap at rest stops. And David even filled up his Klean Kanteen with Diet Coke a couple of times when he was craving a cold caffiene hit.

2. We carried not only reusable bags with us but cloth napkins, cloth hankies (which came in handy when I came down with a cold), reusable cutlery as well as a sharp knife we bought along the way--and even a small box of stemless wineglasses which we used for our evening picnic date one evening in south Florida.

3. We brought snacks from home when we could--and acquired some snacks from grocery stores (like baby carrots and rice cakes) rather than gas stations on the highway. When we stopped at restaurants, we made sure they were locally-owned places instead of chains.

4. We carried a tiffin and a lunchbot with us so we could pack up leftovers in restaurants. Although we've talked for a long time about our need to make this change, we finally started doing it regularly and are committed to continuing the practice.

* * *

Our goal for the rest of the month is to continue these habits. Many of them are things we've done for a long time at home, but #4 is not a habit yet. Strangely, I think starting it while on a trip made it easier. Since we were in the car so much of the time, we always had the tiffin with us. When we're at home in Takoma Park, our car is far less convenient as a storage spot.

David takes a filled tiffin (and the car) to work with him most days. But our 10yo homeschooled son and I explore DC on foot and using public transportation. It is not uncommon for us to have a violin and a fencing bag with us--as well as all the books and knitting projects that have to accompany at all times in case I get a free moment. Without really planning ahead of time, the containers (shamefully including my coffee mug!) just don't make it out of the house with us. But from now on, I'm committing to making that plan. I'll update you at the end of the month to let you know how things go.

We are already looking forward to February's changes!

Six Degrees

2010-01-08T06:30:00.000-05:00

Mark Lynas's Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet is a powerful book. In 2001, the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report projecting average global surface temperatures to rise between 1.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. Analyzing what such temperature rises would mean for the planet, Lynas sets out to track what geologists, glaciologists, oceanographers, climate scientists, and paleoclimatologists expect, as well as what "major scientific projections" from computer modelers suggest.

Lynas divides his findings into six main chapters representing the consequences of a one- to six-degree shift in temperature rise:

Plus 1° C, the American West (from California to the Great Plains) could suffer a mega-drought lasting decades or centuries, devastating agriculture and evicting inhabitants on a scale far larger then the 1930s dustbowl. Over-exploited aquifers will fail as powerful dust and sandstorms engulf entire states. Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia will face similar challenges.

Plus 2° C will bring thirst to parched cities across China. Facing a chronic shortage of water, China won't struggle to develop a more affluent lifestyle; it will fight to feed itself. Warmer seas will struggle to continue to absorb additional greenhouse gas emissions, radically altering the ecosystems that cover 70 % of the globe. On top of that, by 2040 Europe could experience temperatures endemic to North Africa today and the consequent death toll during searing summer heat waves may reach into the hundreds of thousands.

Adding 3° C will see a return to Pliocene norms when the Trans-Antarctic Mountains were covered with beech trees. Pine trees will return to regions hundreds of miles north of today's Artic tree line, and global sea levels will rise 25 meters. Other harbingers include a persistent super El Nino, desiccation of the Amazon and Australia, hyper-hurricanes, an ice-free arctic, dry Indus and Colorado rivers, and the inundation of New York City. Growing food in this habitat will prove increasingly problematic since rice, wheat, and maize yields decline by 10% for every 1° C temperature increase over 30° C. Over 40° C yields are reduced to zero. Starvation will replace obesity as an epidemic.

An additional 4° C will see the end of the Nile and Egyptian civilization. Alexandria will be flooded as Antarctic ice melts raise global sea levels by 50 meters (164.1 feet). If both major Antarctic ice sheets destabilize, sea levels could rise by a meter or so every 20 years--far outside humanity's adaptive capacity. Global warming of this magnitude would eventually denude the entire planet of ice for the first time in nearly 40 million years.

With 5° C of global warming, an inhospitable planet awaits us. Rain forests may have burned up. Rapidly rising sea levels, after inundating coastal cities, may begin to penetrate far inland into continental interiors. Human civilization will be confined to small areas limited by of drought and flood. At the highest latitudes, Siberian, Canadian, and Alaskan rivers will experience dramatically increased flows due to torrential rain. East Asian monsoons will dump nearly a third more water in the Yangtze and nearly 20% more in the Yellow River. The United Kingdom will experience severe winter flooding as reset Atlantic weather patterns lash Britain, Scotland and Ireland.

At 6° C, Lynas describes our situation as descending into the Sixth Circle of Hell, an earthly inferno. Terrifyingly, our planet could reprise conditions last experienced during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Disruption on this scale could unleash massive amounts of methane hydrates, resulting in runaway global warming and the planet might began to emulate Venus. This would be a pace of warming far too rapid for meaningful adaptation by natural ecosystems. Mass extinction will rule the day as the earth recreates itself.

* * *

Are we ready to make some changes? We are already in the pipeline for a devastating future. To climb out, we need to realign radically both our personal lives and our global and national politics. Although Lynas certainly does not prescribe any insta-fixes, he proposes that living simply, in community and intensely locally, is our best course. As he writes at the end, "An outdated view still prevails that a low-carbon lifestyle requires immense personal suffering and sacrifice. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth. All the evidence shows that people who do not drive, do not fly on planes, do shop locally, do grow their own food, and do get to know other members of their community have a much higher quality of life than their compatriots who remain addicted to high-fossil-fuel-consuming lifestyles." He continues, "It seems to me that this low-carbon society would be one that remembers that our planet is a unique gift." While he makes it clear that he is not talking about any utopia, the choice is clear: "Unless we do constrain carbon, life will very largely not go on at all."

Green Resolutions 2010

2010-01-07T06:30:00.009-05:00

For our New Year's Resolution this year, my family has decided to spend the year considering how to move towards "The Hanukkah Standard"--an idea I talked about recently in a post over at the Green Phone Booth. Hanukkah is a time when Jews commemorate the "miracle of the oil" when one day's worth of sacred olive oil in the eternal lamp stayed lit for eight days as the early Jews rededicated their temple after its desecration.

We have come to a time where we again must use much less than we assume we need. The idea of the Hanukkah Standard, a plan created by Arthur Waskow and the folks at Green Menorah Covenant, is to make what normally lasts for one day carry us through eight--that is, only use 1/8th of the energy resources used by the average American.

Although the three of us here at Chez Raven have attempted for several years to green our lives and reduce our impact on our planet and community, this year I am committed to stepping up our efforts. Guided by the Riot 4 Austerity, over the course of the year we'll look at the changes we need to make in order to reach our ultimate target.

The goal for the year is not to reach the Hanukkah Standard immediately but to begin the journey and learn how to get there. We know that some changes will be much easier than others.

Join me this year as my family imagines a new future, struggles against the forces of darkness, celebrates our successes, and displays our lights in this window for all to see.

Handmade Holidays, pt 1

2010-01-06T10:20:00.001-05:00

For several years, my family has made a point to give predominantly handmade gifts to our families. I usually give mostly handknits and supplement with a few home-canned jams and pickles.

This year I made my brother a hat (one of the hardest things I've ever knit, including the elaborate lace shawls and cabled sweaters). Here it is modeled by my husband:

My father, an academic who usually gets shorted on the knits with just a hat or scarf, received this lap blanket to keep in his study:

And both my mother and mother-in-law received knitted beaded necklaces. Mom got a topaz-colored necklace which I though might look good with the colors she tends to wear:

My MIL's necklace, packaged here in a little sewn felt glasses case, was black with shiny highlights from the beads:

* * *

All of the recipients were wonderful in their responses. I love to give knitted gifts to people who act like they genuinely appreciate them!

At times I have given to other folks who have either looked disappointed that they were being given something homemade, or "complimented" me by saying the knitting "almost looks storebought!" (One of my least favorite comments ever was when someone told me that the sweater I was knitting for David looked like it could be from Land's End.)

How did your own handmade gifts go over?

Tomorrow I'll post pics of the little surprise gifts I knit for my partner David and our son. I'll also show you what the two of them created this season to give!

Proselytizing

2010-01-05T09:15:00.003-05:00

For many years, David and I have talked about the politics of food with his parents. Before this year, those conversations have gone nowhere. Usually, they just humor us as we buy whole wheat bread and organic milk when we visit them. They nod mindlessly as we drone on about sustainable local, seasonal, or organic “real” food. Those kids! Once the discussion erupted into the closest thing to an argument I have had with them in all the time I have loved their son.

Both of David's parents grew up in post-WWII New York City immigrant communities. Although food was an incredibly important part of Jewish culture and even Jewish religion, the people in their community had relatively little direct connection with the actual growing of the food they ate. Both my MIL and FIL were instilled with beliefs in Americanization, in progress, and in a post-rural economy. They are loyal and trusting people who believe deeply in justice—but I think they have trouble believing that anything that looks to the future could possibly be wrong, that anything that is a convenience or a small luxury could possibly be bad for them or the world.

I first met Jay when he was in the ICU after a heart attack. (Interestingly, the day I was supposed to meet David’s parents was two months earlier--the day I was admitted for my brain surgery.) He is a diabetic who has lost much of his sight and had other complications from the disease as well. Sue--the recipient of some of my finest knitting (like this silk lace shawl, and this beaded one, and this lightly multicolored one) because of her petite size--carefully watches her weight and her family member’s weights. Recently, she has some recurring heart issues--and had a somewhat high blood sugar reading at her last appointment as well. Eating a healthy diet is something extremely important to her—although she approaches healthy eating with a shopping cart full of iceberg lettuce, margarine, low-fat American cheese, artificial sweeteners, and diet sodas. Her sweet tooth doesn’t always make it easy to avoid the highly processed goodies she can find in the local grocery stores here in south Florida (like chocolate babka and rugelach, or that fat-free/sugar-free chocolate that tastes like Styrofoam to me).

When the movie Food, Inc. came out this year, we wondered if this might be the perfect way to bring up these issues again. But after much thought and discussion, we decided not to mention it this year. Yes, we’d buy our own milk and the like, but this time we wouldn’t say a word about their choices. They've suffered through that discussion quite enough. At some point, we recognized that our connection with them had to lead us to at least try to respect their food decisions.

But then Sue surprised us by describing a show she had watched on Ellen Degeneris. What she could remember is that it was a young man with a new baby who talked about how industry is doing bad things to food and that we need to use our dollars to support what we believed in. She was excited to pass this information on to us. After searching on Ellen's site, I think the interview she saw might have been with Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals. You can watch the clip over at Ellen's site.

I was thrilled--and immediately started thinking that perhaps this was the right time to do a little proselytizing after all!

We started telling them about Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma, his next book In Defense of Food, and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. As we were talking, Jay picked up the phone and dialed the number of the service that provides audio books for the blind to him at his request. He ordered all three. If after listening to these he is still itching for more, I think I'll recommend Fast Food Nation to him. It was the book that really pushed us into this issue when it first came out.

Jay commented to Sue that it would be hard for them to listen to the books together because of the way the technology works. So we also bought paper copies of In Defense of Food and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle for Sue to read in print. When she finishes those two, if she wants more I might give her the new young reader's adaptation of The Omnivore's Dilemma which my son has enjoyed. I’ve also heard about the guidebook that accompanies the Food Inc. (Anyone know if any good? I think I'll have to go check it out.)

After seeing their interest, we started to reconsider showing Food Inc. It is currently available for instant watch on Netflix, so we pulled it up on their large-screen computer and gathered our chairs around.

After watching the film, we sat at the kitchen table and talked a bit. Sue was very moved by the film and interested in making changes, but she was at a loss as to how to go about it. “Are there still any farms around here?” she asked—a good question since gated retirement communities (including their own) are replacing farms everywhere you look.

Immediately I popped on Local Harvest and found the address of the farmer’s market nearby, a farm stand, and even a CSA. I don’t think they are quite ready for a CSA since they are not yet serious fresh vegetable eaters and Jay is pretty picky about what vegetables he’ll even taste. (Serving broccoli and asparagus to him will illicit cries of “Are you trying to poison me?!”) Nevertheless, I do think finding places where they could make their own choices might work.

The south Florida growing season is during the winter, so the markets are open and full of abundance right now:

As a DC gal, I'm blown away by their "homegrown" labels on things like mangos, avocados, and bananas!

For New York transplants, these pickles are a welcome sight.

* * *

David knows it won’t be easy for his parents to break habits they have had for decades. And we’ll be miles away from them as they navigate this new terrain, unable to offer regular shopping support. We tried to think of a few first steps to help them out.

1. Buy organic milk when you go to the grocery store.

2. Commit to going to the farmer’s market or a farmstand at least every two weeks. Plan to spend at least $20 of your food budget on foods you can buy from a local grower.

Do y’all have any other suggestions for those just getting started on this path?

The Nature of Togetherness

2010-01-01T11:18:00.004-05:00

As we near the end of our holiday travels, I think about my favorite parts of our long vacation. We first visited my family in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (where my parents grew up). We then drove down to visit David’s family in Florida.

In both places, we got to visit our parents, our brothers, and our cousins and retell stories of years past. Our 10yo son had a wonderful time seeing his uncles and grandparents. He is the only grandchild on both sides, and that seems relatively likely to remain true.

All three of us enjoyed eating foods traditional to our families and the places we grew up. For me, that was roasted oysters, soft-shelled crab, and boiled shrimp my uncle caught himself. For David, it is bagels and chocolate babka , as well as the salmon croquettes my MIL always makes. (David’s family is not made up of observant Jews, but even so, the treif feast we eat on the coast of SC always feels like a funny precursor to our visit to the southeastern part of Florida--the New York of the South.)

Two very special parts of our vacation were spending time walking at Myrtle Beach after a big storm and finding incredible shells, and walking on our favorite wildlife boardwalk in south Florida and watching birds and alligators and turtles.

After a few days in south Florida, I was struck that while waiting in line at the restaurant or milling around at the pool, the interactions between people were short and typically rude. Most people even resist making eye contact with strangers. While South Carolina has a long tradition of “southern hospitality” and friendliness to strangers, Myrtle Beach has become so large, so cosmopolitan, and so transient that many characteristics of southern culture are beginning to disappear there.

As soon as we were out in the fresh air surrounded by wildlife, everyone seemed to relax and open up to each other. On the beach, people smile at you and exchange pleasantries, even if they walk past you without acknowledgment at other times.

And at the wildlife walk, conversations start when someone spots a beautiful or unusual bird...

…especially nesting birds...

and the amazing anhingas drying their wings.

Folks continue to interact in a slow and relaxed way as they slowly circle the boardwalk together, pausing to snap photographs or look through binoculars. Sometimes someone spots a teacher bird with her students:

Or turtles lounging in the sun on the remnants of a tree…

…or even their brothers and sisters confidently hanging out with a little alligator:

Or perhaps a bird in the process of catching and preparing his dinner, a long and shining snake:

Everyone gathers in very quiet amazement, whispering intimately at times to complete strangers to keep things peaceful and to welcome the animals. Even the sounds of beeping cameras sometimes seem like an interruption to the quiet communion between humans and other animals, and between humans and other humans.

People point out iguanas--and the vivid green parrots who have found their way to the park.

Folks on their way out will tell excited children on their way in where to find the big alligator.

And a crowd of laughing (but also terrified) children calls a small crowd to visit the smaller alligator who had crawled on land right to the edge of the wooden fence.

Brave fathers bent with their cameras close enough to pet her:

And more cautious fathers bend nearby with binoculars:

Later in the evening we discovered that David’s cousins had been at the park about half an hour after we saw this alligator. By then she had backed away from the fence. Our cousins saw three incredibly tiny babies at the waterline with her! We had been so transfixed (and frightened!) by how close she was that we did not realize what treasure she was protecting.

The boardwalk is always full of new sights—every day and every hour. Today will be our last walk there before we have to pack our bags and begin our long drive home in our overly-full little red car. I’m looking forward to sleeping on my own hard mattress, to eating our usual diet, to imagining our new year together at home. Nevertheless, this has been a warm and wonderful communion with family and the world.

Self Portrait

Eating in the Snow: Dark Days Update

2009-12-20T20:42:00.002-05:00

Here at Chez Raven, located inside the beltway of Washington DC, we were blessed with almost twenty inches of snow this weekend!

My family spent much of the weekend sitting on the couch watching the snow, enjoying fires in the fireplace, listening to books on tape, knitting, and drinking warm beverages.

* * *

We started the morning with migas (made with local eggs, cheese, onions, and salsa as well as home-grown parsley picked just before the snow--but non-local beans) and mimosas (made fresh with non-local clementines and champagne):

* * *

I spent most of the day knitting holiday presents in the warmth of our house while David and our son shoveled the driveway, made snow forts, and went sledding.

* * *

Our brisket dinner cooked all day in the crockpot. I added to the pot a few onions, some turnips, mushrooms, carrots, shredded cabbage, and dehydrated greens. Before serving, I shredded the meat and added it back to the liquid. We served the stew next to mashed potatoes. Everything was local except the tomato paste I added to the sauce. We enjoyed some local red wine along with our meal.

* * *

Dessert during the snow was homemade eggnog with local milk, egg yolks from local organically raised free-range chickens (important if you're consuming raw eggs), and maple syrup from the farmer's market. The adults spiked with non-local bourbon.

* * *

This time, we decided not to have our meals at the bistro table on our deck. The lump on the left lower than the table is my chair!

Making the Oil Last

2009-12-17T11:29:00.002-05:00

image source: Jewish Review

Chanukah/Hanukkah is a beautiful holiday celebrating the universal hope for the return of the light as we approach the winter solstice.

It is also a time when Jews celebrate both the victory of the weak against the mighty, as well as the "miracle of the oil" when one day's worth of sacred olive oil in the eternal lamp stayed lit for eight days as the early Jews rededicated their temple after its desecration. This event was perhaps the world's first oil shock, and resource conservation is obviously the moral of the story. (Well, perhaps everyone doesn't read it that way.)

We are facing questions of oil again now. Again we ask ourselves: "How long will it last?" Peak Oil activists deal with this issue. And climate activists ask us to try to use less oil in order to save the planet. We have to recognize that this time, we should not expect a sequel to the Hanukkah miracle.

Thinking about the holiday from these perspectives can shake our ideas about long-celebrated traditions. Jews all over the world celebrate by eating foods cooked in oil, especially latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts). As Culiblog says, "Now I don’t know why it took me so long to question the logic of this, but why do we celebrate this miracle of oil conservation by massively increasing oil consumption? Shouldn’t we be eating the opposite of oily foods? Shouldn’t Chanukkah be an oil fast, a holiday of raw and steamed vegetables and bike riding?"

my post is continued here

My Journey to Green, part 2

2009-12-16T16:34:00.001-05:00

For my entire life, I have enjoyed gardening--especially growing herbs and vegetables. I'm sure I got the desire to grow my own food from Granny, and from my mother who carried on the tradition for many years. Growing up, I had cherry tomatoes growing outside my playhouse. In college, I kept a pot of mint on my windowsill for making tea. In grad school, a variety of herbs on a fire escape. And as soon as we bought a house, David and I began to plant vegetables in our back yard. There have been years when we've grown a lot and others when we've let the weeds get the better of the beds. I did not plant in order to be self-sufficient or for environmental reasons. I did it because it was a pleasure. As our son grew up, he got excited about what we were doing and enjoyed puttering around in the sunshine as we dug, planted, and weeded.

Every summer we spent days away from our garden at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. And in 2005 when our son had just turned 6yo, one of the themes was American Food Culture. I was excited to learn more about the variety of food traditions and tastes from all the cultures that make up this diverse country.

What I really did not expect is how world-expanding this summer festival would be for me. Rather than only celebrating the abundance of cooking creativity around the country, the festival focused on SOLE food--that is, sustainable, organic, local, and ethical food.

Slow Food was there, articulating the connection between the pleasure of community and the politics of our food practices. I loved their message and it resonated with not only my hedonist side but my old-fashioned plain side. They also talked about the need to celebrate and protect our native foods to keep them from being eradicated. This was an entirely new message for me.

I also learned much more about how organic farming methods not only were good for our bodies but good for both the workers on organic farms and the land itself. I learned how "corporate organic" was an inferior choice to sustainably-raised organic (even when it is not certified organic). And, due to lectures about naturally-raised meat and animals' role on a family farm, I even started to question some of my beliefs about vegetarianism and began to think about eating certain kinds of meat again. (This is a question that continues to rattle around in my head and one where my practice changes over time.)

Perhaps even more important to my increasing radicalization was the presence of Berkeley's Edible Schoolyard. They planted a garden on the national mall complete with an outdoor pizza oven to demonstrate and a shady gazebo-like structure to welcome visitors to sit together. My son and I went everyday for two weeks, listening to folks talk about everything from the how-to's of gardening to the goals of the schoolyard project. The organizers got to know my young son so well that they pulled him on to the front and handed him a microphone so he could explain the purposes of mulching to newbie gardeners.

The Edible Schoolyard combines lessons in organic growing, healthy food preparation, community celebration of that abundance, and even a chance to practice a new language. (The school where the Schoolyard is located is middle school which includes a high number of students new to the US.)

At the end of the festival, the head of the Edible Schoolyard told my son that if he was ever in California, he should stop by for a tour. As luck would have it, we happened to be going to a conference in San Francisco just two months later! So we had the great fortune to visit the real schoolyard with its little chicken tractor and beautiful plants--and also the cooking-and-eating facility and the seed saving room. My son held chickens in his lap, collected and saved amaranth seeds, and help fold tablecloths in the dining room.

I came home from the summer festival understanding that food--in both its growing and its cooking as well as its distribution--is a way of combining the fight against hunger, the fight against corporate power and globalism, the fight for workers' rights, the fight for better health, and the fight for the planet.

I stopped hesitating: at that moment, I knew I was an environmentalist.

(continued from yesterday)

My Journey to Green

2009-12-15T11:30:00.004-05:00

I grew up during the 1970s. My parents, who had been activists in the Civil Rights Movement, were in those years teachers at a liberal-progressive college in the small-town rural South. Watergate and the first Earth Day and the early oil shocks are foundational memories for me.

Even more important to my world view, however, was my grandmother. She was not a lefty--not political at all, really--but she cared deeply about the place where she lived. Granny had lived through the Great Depression. She had also been widowed twice by the time she was 40yo. The two experiences combined to make her a very independent and resourceful woman.

Granny worked full time at the same department store for almost fifty years. She went fishing and crabbing and clamming to feed us with the bounty of what surrounded us. She had an enormous farm-garden in her backyard. She had a compost pile and rain barrels set up around her house. She brought home every plastic bag from her job and folded them carefully for reuse. She knitted ferociously.

Granny's sister raised animals (from chickens to rabbits to peacocks) in her yard (and snakes and huge spiders in her house), collected wild mushrooms and foraging greens, and crocheted ferociously. The two of them were quite a pair.

So I grew up with liberal commitments to social justice, taught to me by my parents. And I grew up with the influence of my grandmother's commitment to a life led simply and plainly using resources to their fullest. But I never considered myself an environmentalist.

When I finished college, I moved into an apartment and began cooking for myself. I had been a more-or-less vegetarian in college, simply because the meat was so poorly prepared in the cafeteria. But reading Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet totally changed my thought process about choosing food. She showed me that my daily choices were fundamentally linked to social justice--and even to Granny-style self-reliance. Buying into industrial meat production seemed like using more than my fair share and simply wasting so much of the earth's abundance.

I still did not think of myself as an environmentalist. I was in fact put off by the message of such environmental tracts as E - The Environmental Magazine with what I saw as its emphasis on a more pop-culture, consumer-driven image of life than I wanted to live. I'm not sure this is a fair representation of the magazine then, much less now, but it was my reaction. I put my efforts into the anti-war movement (responding to Gulf 1) and to the feminist and GLBT movements instead. And I studied history as I slowly worked through graduate school.

When in 2001 I started spending all my time with David, I began to hear more about environmentalism from him. I was still resistant, honestly. I've always cared a lot more about humanity that about the planet, if I'm going to be honest--and so doing things right for society seemed more relevant to me. Cleaning up a stream in order to allow native peoples to fish there safely was one thing--but making things pristine, apparently so middle class hikers could enjoy nature, did not. The idea of preventing indigenous people from continuing to live in the rain forests of the Amazon--all in an effort to protect the environment--seemed wrong to me.

Of course, now I see how social justice and environmentalism go absolutely hand in hand. I'm sure people back then understood that as well, but I did not. On the other hand, what I did know is that David was deeply involved in both movements. The other thing I knew is that my instincts towards plainness and towards social justice often meant the two of us were heading towards the same place of personal action.

David and I fell in love. We eventually decided to have a child. But I was reluctant to make that step until we had really confirmed that our dreams for the future were reconcilable. Before we even started dating, David had told me he wanted four children. I, meanwhile, had decided at the age of seven that I would have only one. (And as any of you who know me realize, I am incredibly stubborn once I have made a decision.)

In an effort to convince David that 'onlies' are perfectly happy and normal people, I started reading up on raising only children. One of the first books I ran across was Bill McKibben's Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families. This book changed my life in the way few books have.

First, it tapped into the issues of deep importance to David and convinced him that our future was definitely going in the same direction childwise. Within just a few months, we were staring at two little pink lines and dancing around the room.

Secondly, it transformed how I saw environmentalism. It was scholarly (something I have a weakness for), non-materialistic, and full of emotional honesty. McKibben introduced me to a world of green thinking that was rooted in both social justice and deep kindness.

Knowing that Bill McKibben has been such a powerful moral voice within the environmental movement since the year I graduated from college (from the same college from which he graduated!) makes it seem remarkable to me that I stumbled across his work through the back door of parenting choices.

Parenting choices led me further down the environmental path. I made the choice to have a homebirth with a midwife because it was a self-reliant low-resource option. We used cloth diapers because they felt luxurious compared to a plastic bottom, but also because they are lasting and use fewer resources. (In fact, our son's old diapers are still being used by others, a full decade later.) The luxury and ease of cloth diapers led me to start using cloth menstrual pads, and then to start using cloth bathroom wipes. We breastfed because it was the natural thing to do, because it was healthier for mother and baby, because it was both cheaper and easier than formula feeding, and because it seemed like the responsible use of the resources we have. We coslept--which avoided the crib. We carried our baby in a cotton sling rather than a complex large stroller. The idea of simple plainness motivated many of my choices--but by this point I was recognizing that being plain and being green often went hand in hand.

There was one more step that totally pushed me over and made me into a card-carrying environmentalist. I'll share that story tomorrow.

* * *

Thanks to Erin for raising such a fabulous issue for this month's APLS carnival. What a lovely time of year to play over our pasts and see what led us to where we are today.

Local Thanksgiving: Dark Days Challenge

2009-11-29T23:59:00.003-05:00

We had a wonderfully quiet, almost 100% local Thanksgiving this year--following on the heels of a combination of travel to various conferences by both the adults in the family, work crises that took a lot of time and emotion, and lots of random busyness and its attending crankiness. It was lovely to take a day off just to cook, play games, and eat.

We have a tradition of splitting our Thanksgiving feast into two meals. This plan works well for both cooks and eaters.

For lunch, we made a thick apple-butternut squash soup enriched with local onion, cream, and hot pepper as well as some non-local spices such as ginger and cumin.

David fried up some fritters made with wild rice and frozen corn. The rice, while not local, is sold by the sustainable White Earth Land Recovery Project, an American Indian organization dedicated "to preserving and restoring traditional practices of sound land stewardship, language fluency, community development, and strengthening our spiritual and cultural heritage."

It seemed especially fitting to recognize the importance on native harvests--like wild rice but also corn and winter squash--as well as American Indian cooking traditions. The recipe for the fritters can be found in the beautiful new book, Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions.

* * *

At suppertime, we had our main meal of local turkey, pickled lemon cukes, pickled garlicky green beans...

...roasted Brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes-and-turnips, and cherry jam (instead of cranberries--which we could not find locally). The dressing was made from cornbread (the gorgeous Indian corn we grew in our backyard!), assorted winter greens from our backyard garden, CSA carrots, sage and rosemary from our herb plot, local eggs, lots of local mushrooms--plus local oysters! We ran into them at the very last moment--and it was absolutely kismet. Oyster stuffing may become a tradition in our family.

The meal was served with a local white wine. When David first handed it to me, I misread the variety and honestly thought it said it was Vinegar. Luckily, it was a delicious, perfect-with-turkey Viognier.

To end the feast, David made a not-pumpkin pie using the recipe on the back of canned pumpkin. He made a few exceptions: first, he used pureed butternut squash and carnival squash which he baked himself. Second, he replaced the canned evaporated milk with a mix of milk and cream from our Amish dairy supplier.

The pie was fabulous--a little yellower than pumpkin pie but sweet, light, and delicate. We served it warm with whipped cream.

We enjoyed the rest of the evening in front of a fire in the fireplace, sipping our wine and reconnecting.

Buy Nothing (tm) Day

2009-11-27T09:52:00.002-05:00

Celebrating Buy Nothing Day?

Be sure you check out this brilliant advertisement from Amazero. (And be sure to pronounce that adVERTizment while you read.)

Check out the customer comments at the bottom, such as this one: "I bought my daughter NothingTM for Xmas--and now suddenly I'm the world's best mum! If you're a parent, take my advice and make sure you put NothingTM in your kids' stocking this Christmas."

Even the "people who liked this also liked..." section is hilarious.

(And thanks to Fake Plastic Fish for steering me to this site!)

Don't Peek, if you expect to get a present from me...

2009-11-24T15:12:00.001-05:00

Green Bean over at Green Phone Booth is way ahead of me when it comes to getting her holiday handknits ready to present. Check out her adorable presents and the excellent rhyme she's concocted to keep us entertained and inspired.

Me? Everything is still in the works. Nothing is finished. And that is where you can join me--in holiday crafting, in medias res, and in a complete panic.

First up is a present for my mother-in-law, a delicate woman who loves sparkly things and is one of the most appreciative recipients of handknits I know. For the last three years, I've knitted her incredibly detailed shawls with silk and beads. This year, I figured she needed something different. When I saw the pattern for the Scallop-Edge Beaded Necklace in 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders,I knew it would be perfect for her.

What I did not expect it that it would only take a few hours to make! I immediately whipped up one for my own mother:

Of course, neither of these necklaces have clasps sewn on yet...

My mother has gotten some fairly labor-intensive knitting presents for the past three years but both my father and brother have gotten the shorter end of the stick. They've gotten simple scarves and the like. This year I'm determined to use the time I've got on making up a little bit of the difference.

For Dad, I've made a Hemlock Ring Blanket from designer Jared Flood at Brooklyn Tweed. While the knitting is finished, it is very much unfinished. I can't imagine that this lumpy blob will turn into the lovely blanket of the pattern--but I am always amazed by the magic of wet-blocking wool. I'll keep you posted.

For my brother, who I do hope has taken the instructions above and has not continued reading, I'm making perhaps the most complicated thing I've ever made--although I certainly did not realize that when I started it! I won't give away what it is, just in case (unless you are on Ravelry). But it involves two lines of provisional cast-ons, colorwork ribbing combined with cabling without a needle, picking up stitches in the round, grafting, and a bazillion kinds of increases and decreases. Here's what it looked like this morning, after at least three aborted attempts following utter failures:

I have a little thing finished (except for sewing in the ends) for my partner David. Can I actually keep it a surprise until the holidays? (I assume he did not heed the instructions in the title since he never gets anything handknit by me now that he can do his own beautiful knitting.)

But much is still left to knit. On top of my brother's present, my 10 yo son has requested I make him the balaclava-like Black Prince Hood for Hanukkah. I have something in mind to knit for an additional little present for my mother (one of these?).

Wish me luck!

I'm looking forward to seeing all the handmade gifts folks come up with for the season!

Eating Local during the Dark Days of Winter

2009-11-22T18:00:00.001-05:00

This year's celebration of the eating local during the Dark Days begins this week. While finding local produce seems easy during the abundant harvests of late summer and early fall, the pickings start getting slim once the temperatures drop and the amount of light lessons. The annual challenge put forth by the (not so) Urban Hennery helps motivate eaters to keep up the work and realize that what sometimes seems hidden is in fact its own kind of abundance.

Eighteen months ago, we started a tradition of Eco-Shabbat, or Sabbath for the Earth--a continuation of Earth Hour. We were originally inspired by Melinda at One Green Generation to have an evening off the grid. We've enjoyed the candlelight dinners every fall, winter, and spring--but during the summer, we usually loose our way when the sun provides the light to allow us to continue full speed ahead. Darkness doesn't point toward a slowing down until it is almost time for bed.

But now that the "Dark Days" are back, we've started again. Our No Impact Project helped us adopt the practice again more regularly this season. The official project guide gives a variety of helpful suggestions for ways to mark one day a week as an eco-sabbath.

For our recent Eco-Shabbat, we pulled the only successful spaghetti squash out of our garden and baked it up. We served it with a sauce made of red peppers (from our amazing CSA), which we dehydrated last summer. Dried peppers simmered in water--just as simple and plain as that, and yet it was astoundingly delicious.

For a side, we cooked up some mixed greens with an onion and some garlic from our CSA and from the farmer's market in town.

We also served a home-canned jar of "Not-So-Sweet Bread and Butter Pickles." The recipe can be found in the excellent canning guide The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market.

For our dessert beverage, the adults at the table sipped our sickeningly sweet but oddly charming homemade Rhubarb Liqueur. This little taste of preserved summer was a lovely ending to the evening.

DIY : Green and Thrify Shopping Bag Tutorial

2009-11-18T17:06:00.005-05:00

For a while now I've been fascinated with Transition Towns and especially the concept of "reskilling"--and I've been hard at work to learn new things to make our family and community more independent of oil. I've also tried to be active in the environmentalist movement, greening my daily life as we work towards both small individual changes and larger political efforts which can respond to the climate crisis and to environmental degradation.

Of course, many of the things I've tried to learn in the last few years have to do with food and fiber. Everything from fermenting sauerkraut to spinning alpaca, from learning how to can to learning how to weave have been on my agenda.

Today's new skill: basic sewing, using a sewing machine.

While I was completely intimated for months by the machine sitting in a corner of our finished basement, when my 10yo son and I pulled it out and pored over the instructions, it suddenly seemed quite straightforward.

Following the diagrams in the manual, we threaded the bobbin and the top needle. And honestly, although it only took us seconds, THAT was the most complicated thing we did.

Last time we went to the local thrift store, everything was on sale for 50% off the usual thrift store prices. In addition to a queen-sized quilt for our bed, assorted dress-up goodies for Halloween costumes (including a pair of very cool women's boots for our son's musketeer get-up), and a metal file box perfect for storing seeds, we picked up a handful of tank tops in a variety of sizes.

When we picked up the shirts, we were thinking about the t-shirt bag my son made at the Green Festival in DC last year. It is just a gray t-shirt with the arms cut off by a 9yo, sewn together on the bottom by the adult coordinator. He then drew a picture of a cornucopia on the front to decorate it:

Every time we use the bag at our local co-op, the grocery store, or at the farmer's market, someone comments on how clever it is. Many people have told us over the year that we should sell them. (Well...that would require actually making them.)

Since last year when my son made the bag, I've seen the idea online everywhere from No Impact Man to Martha Stewart. But I kept staring at the sewing machine in fear. Could I do it by hand, I wondered? Would the seams be strong enough?

Finally, the pile of tank tops hanging on the chair in the dining room pushed me to haul out the machine, steel myself for the task, and finally try it out.

And you know what? It was FUN--and incredibly fast and easy, and totally addictive. Within the hour, my son and I had made a huge collection of bags.

All we did was turn the t-shirts inside out, then line up the side seams of the tank top. We were very casual and simply used the thread we had on hand rather than trying to match the shirts. We sewed once across the bottom of each tank top with a straight stitch and once across with a zigzag. (I'm sure that sewing twice across with straight stitch would work perfectly, but we wanted to play around with different stitches.) We sewed the lines immediately above the line where the shirt's hem ends. For brand new sewers, this works very well because the seam lump lines up with the side of the sewing foot to keep you going forward in a very straight line. Remember to start and end your lines by stitching backwards just a few stitches in order to anchor the ends. After the sewing is done, clip the end threads and turn the bags right side out.

We chose to use tank tops to avoid having to deal with the top at all--but if you have t-shirts in hand, simply trim the sleeves and scoop the neck enough that you have something to hold onto. No need to sew anything or hem anything. Check out the links of instructions above if you have any additional questions.

Some of the shirts we used were women's petites. Some were men's extra-larges.

Some of the shirt we sewed inside out to get a smooth bottom (like the pink bag), and a few we left right side out before sewing (like the blue one):

We also played around with a few fancier tops, just for fun.

One is a more delicate stretchy tank which I used to carry my knitting today:

I love the lacy camisole! I decided to hem it from the outside in order to let the lacy trim at the bottom remain a design element. (My naughty brain imagines filling it with two huge and juicy cantaloupes.)

Some of these bags will become "wrapping paper" (or rather, gift bags) for presents this holiday season. After they do their duty as present holder, recipients can use them again and again as they do their shopping.

These bags are a fabulous way to learn to sew--fast and laid-back enough that if you make a few mistakes, it really won't matter. And at the end of your sewing practice time, you're left with reusable bags great for shopping or gifting.

Here Comes the Sun

2009-11-16T15:19:00.002-05:00

After days and days of clouds and rain, the sun has emerged and our neighborhood seems to have escaped from the encroaching fingers of winter for a few more days.

We've been celebrating these moments of sun by cooking meals with with our solar oven:

Yesterday we managed to squeeze two meals out of the brief hours we had.

First, a lunch of pita pizza--small pitas left over from a hummos fiesta the other night, some leftover spaghetti sauce, a topping of mozzerella and parmesan cheeses, and a liberal sprinkle of dried oregano. A very easy lunch that basically just needed to heat up.

For dinner, we cooked some pre-soaked dried limas in the solar oven and served them with spicy sauerkraut we made last year. A very plain but wonderful meal, meeting the need for non-fussy preparation while "Papa" is away at a conference for almost a week.

Of course, the problem with solar cooking dinner during this season is that it is basically dark by 4pm and therefore the meal has to be finished cooking by then. Although we held things for a little while, we had finished our leisurely meal by 6pm and really could not imagine anything but reading in bed and going to sleep early.

Today we reheated some chicken for lunch. My son was eager to bake something sweet in the Sun Oven--cookies or pumpkin bread or something--but the clouds began to roll in a little in the afternoon.

Tomorrow, the two of us are headed to a talk about making school lunches healthier. My homeschooler laughs as he points out that at HIS school, lunch is almost always fairly healthy for the student, the teacher, and the planet. Do you think the public school system might be interested in investing in a few Villager Sun Ovens?

The Dinner Diaries

2009-11-13T07:15:00.000-05:00

I recently read Betsy Block's wonderfully entertaining book The Dinner Diaries:Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World. Although I was initially drawn to the book because I had heard that it was a funny food memoir, I found it to be a much more useful book than I had imagined. Yes--it is charming and warm--but it also engages food politics on many levels and will make readers think more seriously about the ramifications of our decisions about eating.

Block writes the book as a memoir of her own personal quest to improve her family's diet. She lets us know her struggles and her families, and she allows us to celebrate with her. This narrative style allows the author to pass along a great deal of information without it ever seeming the least bit moralizing or preachy.

Block introduces her readers to all sorts of food issues. Should we cut down and/or elminate meat? Should we remove dairy from our diets? What should we do about sugar? How can we handle our own uncertainties about the answers in the face of social/community resistance to change?

My favorite section is her discussion of fish. While eating more fish is initially on her list of things to do to improve her family's diet, she then learns more about the mercury content of most fish as well as other pollution issues. She then discusses overfishing and endangered varietes. Block winds up with an effort to find sustainably-raised local fish. It is a tying together of many of the concerns raised throughout the book.

The book is not without its problems.

Block tells an absolutely wonderful story about Gandhi--one I had never heard before. When a mother brought her young sugar-obsessed son to the master in order to have Gadhi himself correct his eating habbits. Gandhi told the family to come back again in three weeks. When they did, he told the boy simply not to eat sugar. When the frustrated mother asked why he couldn't have just told her son those same words three weeks before, Gandhi responded: "Because three weeks ago, I was still eating sugar."

I love this story with its message that we need to live up to all we expect our children to be. But what Block says after this story is that while it is important that we be role models, her chosen way is to eat candy (fair-trade chocolate) with her husband after the children are in bed. Her reasoning? "We're the parents here" and "some things in life should be adult only." In other words, she chooses to be a good role model to her children's faces but not a good role model after dark. As she says, "We'd rather lie than argue." I'm not sure Gandhi would approve.

There are a few other places where I disagree with Block. For example, I do not believe that our vitamins should be coming from either pills or foods "fortified" with added chemicals. Real food grown in real soil seems like a better answer for our health as well as for our planet.

I was also a bit irked by the often-contrived efforts to make nutritional advice seem to be riddled with contradiction and conflict. She paints the nutritionists and the locavores are actively working at cross purposes. As she writes early on, the two groups are in opposite corners of a boxing ring and what the first group says are fighting words. For example, the locavores are "telling us to eat locally and in season,, which obviously rules out most of what the nutritionists advised"--which is to eat less meat and more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. The Ethical Eaters are in another corner altogether. While this portrayal of people at odds makes for a great story, it just doesn't work like that very often. Yes, sometimes you have to choose between a sprayed apple from down the road and an organic one from China. But that doesn't mean the basic ideas are not in harmony.

Despite these reservations, The Dinner Diaries is both an entertaining and informative read. Check it out!

Where You Have Been

2009-11-11T07:30:00.028-05:00

My father's most significant bookwas published twenty-five years ago. To celebrate, the publishers released a new edition and the professional organization of which he has been active for many years held a special session during its annual conference to honor his contribution.

This particular annual conference has been important to my father for almost fifty years. He has even served as the organization's president. And as he says, Dad has even given his two children to the profession. Both my brother and I are in the same field of academic study. This conference is always a family reunion for us.

Unfortunately, Dad has been quite sick for the last two annual conferences. In the fall of 2006, we wondered if he would be able to attend at all, ever again. After a diagnosis of cancer followed by a complication-ridden treatment period, this year Dad was able to return this year in full and healthy glory.

He participated in several sessions honoring living presidents of the organization and remembering influential historians who died this year. This kind of personal relationship-based story-sharing is definitely one of my father's strongest suits. But he also was active in the academic scholarship side of the conference--something he really has not been able to participate in the same way in recent years. It clearly brought him great joy, but I think it meant even more to his friends.

The meeting was a homecoming--and a goodbye--all wrapped into one.

During the session about his book, Dad laughed and said that one always hopes that any acknowledgment of lifetime achievement is premature.

He also said that after listening to other academics laud the book he wrote and praise the impact his scholarship has had on the field for the past three decades, he felt a bit like Tom Sawyer attending his own funeral.

Dad ended his comments saying he wanted to be able to say, like Tom Sawyer, "I ain't dead yet; I was only off being a pirate!"

And just as Tom's Aunt did, we all laughed and cried and hugged him, hoping to hold on to him for a long time coming.

Ma and Pa

2009-11-10T09:02:00.002-05:00

On October 30st, 1993, David and I had already been friends for a couple of years and very very close friends for several months. We studied together (he learning anatomy while I read about hegemony) and cooked together, walked to school together and stayed up late together. But we were not dating.

We figured it out the next morning--October 31st.

On Halloween, we attended a party together in costume. I (always a witch) held hands in front of my friends with Paddington Bear. No one said anything. I gloated to some friends that we were now together--and the answer I heard from everyone was a sarcastic, "We've known that for months!"

Ever since, David and I have celebrated our dating anniversary on Halloween. We always love handing out goodies in costume while drinking champagne by candlelight.

This year David and I decided this year to dress as Ma and Pa Ingalls.

In our neverending quest to hand out non-candy, non-plastic goodies, we passed out large jingle bells to trick-or-treaters this year. I filled my apron pockets full so I would be prepared for every knock on the door.

* * *

After the evening revelries ended and our son went up to bed, David and I celebrated together for a few more minutes, dancing in the dining room to Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel."

So rock me momma like a wagon wheel,
Rock me momma any way you feel
Hey... momma rock me
Rock me momma like the wind and the rain,
Rock me momma like a south bound train
Hey... momma rock me

The jingle bells in my apron pockets and our squeaky floor boards combined to punctuate the music.

* * *

Here's the slightly racy video from OCMS, which always instantly transports me back to my childhood in rural North Carolina. (I was always shooed away from booths like this which came to the traveling fair.) Thanks to Sharon for sharing it with me and her other readers.

Thirsty

2009-11-01T09:20:00.002-05:00

coming together

2009-10-27T12:50:00.002-04:00

My family headed to downtown DC for the 350ppm rally and march on Saturday. We hung out and listened to some traditional DC-style go-go music as well as a few inspiring speeches, including one by Takoma Park hero Mike Tidwell.

At 3:00, rally participants began to line up for the march to the park across from the White House.

And at that moment the skies opened, absolutely completely.

David brought an umbrella and I brought my rain jacket, but our 10yo son had decided not to carry rain gear. After twenty minutes of marching through the pelting rain and splashing through puddles, we were all soaked. Eventually, we peeled off from the crowd and went to a cafe for hot chocolate.

* * *

The three of us took the Metro back to Takoma Park in time for the annual Boy Scouts pancake supper. Although I am not a huge fan of the Boy Scouts (since I'm an atheist and a strong supporter of gay rights), this dinner is a show of community support.

Because of our No Impact experiment this week, we toyed with taking reusable plates with us to the dinner. I finally decided that this minor bit of personal earth-saving might seem like a major bit of holier-than-thou face-slapping. Who was I to be holier when we bagged on the march just because of a little rain?

We confidently decided this would be a time to just use what we were given and be appreciative of togetherness.

Imagine my thrill when I walked in the church gym and saw all the reusable plates, cups, and silverware--along with both organic cream and raw cane sugar to go with the coffee!

And who else was lined up for pancakes? Many other rally participants--including Mike Tidwell, enjoying fellowship and pancakes--dry and warm.

350!

2009-10-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

We're off to the big march in downtown DC today, braving the rain. Where are you going to mark 350ppm?

Check out 350.org's list of actions if you don't have something already planned.

Local Harvest: Foraging for Acorns

2009-10-20T07:58:00.001-04:00

Inspired by Euell Gibbons Stalking The Wild Asparagus, we recently harvested acorns to make delicious acorn pancakes.

See the full post here.

Going No Impact

2009-10-19T09:12:00.005-04:00

My 10yo son and I are participating in the No Impact Project this week. Although for many years my family has been involved with the environmental movement (as well as committed to lessening our own ecological footprints), the No Impact Project gives us an opportunity to talk about these issues more, learn to take more extensive steps, and make connections with other participants. I certainly felt that way during Crunchy Chicken's Low Impact Week.

Isn't this mass experiment just hype, a stunt? Isn't it in some ways counterproductive since it leads the "consumer" (formerly known as the citizen) to feel responsible for climate change rather than the government and large corporations acknowledging their profound role and responsibility in this problem?

Perhaps so. I will end this week by talking more about the problems of personal versus political action.

But for now, I am taking Bill McKibben's words to heart: "The first step, clearly, is to take personal responsibility--to cut your own impact." He goes on to explain why personal action is not enough. As he writes, "If we want to have as little impact as possible on the planet, we must have as much impact as possible on its politics. At this point we're not going to solve this one lightbulb at a time--we're going to solve it one planet at a time if we're going to solve it at all." He recommends No Impact Week as not only a way to "minimize your personal [impact]" but to form a community of people actively making not only changes in their lives but changes in the culture that will then allow our politicians and other leaders to step up to the plate, that is, to "maximize your political impact." Personal change turns us into actors. When we see ourselves as effective people, we can have much more powerful voices for political change.

In addition to doing right by the planet, going "No Impact" is truly the way to do right by ourselves. By pushing ourselves to live up to what we say we believe, we're asking ourselves to face up to ourselves. Instead of letting ourselves get by with easy rhetoric, we are allowing ourselves to grow, to bloom into more responsible and effective people--on this issue but also on all other issues. It is a way of celebrating the potential of humanity--and the potential of ourselves.

(Check out the reference to this essay on the Huffington Post!)

A Time for Action

2009-10-15T10:08:00.004-04:00

During the second week in December, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark at the United Nations Climate Change Conference with the goal of putting together a new global climate treaty, replacing 1997's Kyoto Protocol. It is essential for industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, for major developing countries like China and India to limit the growth of their emissions, and for poorer countries to get financial help adapting to the impacts of climate change which many already feel.

In the run-up to Copenhagen, many individuals and groups have helped set the stage for citizen action.

* * *

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual call for bloggers to discuss one issue of crucial concern to the world. This year's topic is Climate Change. Bloggers across the world, regardless of the normal topics of their blogs, are writing about the crisis facing our environment.

* * *

Coming up on October 24 is the '350' Day of Action.

As 350.org explains, "350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere." Although for most of human history levels have hovered around 275ppm, we are now at 390ppm–-and this number is rising by about 2 parts per million every year. As NASA's Jim Hansen has pointed out, above 350 we will no longer have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."

As long as we stay above the 350ppm border, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt.

The brilliant Bill McKibben puts it this way: "It's not as if we have a choice. The most useful thing about having a number is that it forces us to grow up, to realize that the negotiations that will happen later this fall in Copenhagen aren't really about what we want to do, or what the Chinese want to do, or what Exxon Mobil wants to do. They're about what physics and chemistry want to do: the physical world has set its bottom line at 350, and it's not likely to budge."

To help our world leaders understand how essential it is to come up with a climate plan that includes cuts significant enough to reach that 350ppm boundary, 350.org has organized a Day of Action. Groups all over the world will participate, representing their support for this target. As the organization says, "We're calling on people around the world to organize an action on October 24 incorporating the number 350 at an iconic place in their community, and then upload a photo of their event to 350.org website. We'll collect these images from around the world and, with your help, deliver them to the media and world leaders. Together, we can show our world and it's decision-makers just how big, beautiful, and unified the climate movement really is." Check out some of the creative ways people have gotten together before on this issue.

Using this map, you can find a group near you to join on the 24th.

* * *

Eat at Mom's

2009-10-14T09:04:00.003-04:00

First there was the 100 Mile Diet.

Then there was the 100 Foot Diet.

And now, the 100 Millimeter Diet!

pic from the Pa Dept of Health

* * *

As a long-time breastfeeding activist, I am very pleased to see the Green movement beginning to embrace the environmental importance of nursing children. After all, there is nothing more sustainable than breastfeeding. It comes with absolutely no waste in the manufacturing process and no waste in the delivery system. It is free, making it accessible for all people. It is easier by far than filling up with formula (although this may not seem to be true when you're just starting out if you don't find great support). It even leads to lower consumption of medical resources over the entire course of life.

I was thrilled to hear Joel Salatin at the DC Green Festival proclaim these environmental virtues of breastfeeding. I was also pleased to see a vendor in the Green Festival merchant hall selling t-shirts with various green choices--including breastfeeding!

Even Michael Pollen, king of the food movement has spoken about the ecological importance of breastfeeding.

Be sure to click through this fantastic slide show, Infant Feeding Affects Climate Change. Also check out 10 Reasons Breastfeeding is Green.

Faces at the Renaissance Festival

2009-10-13T07:29:00.002-04:00

Really "Tightening Their Belts"...

2009-10-09T10:59:00.001-04:00

In a New York Times article today called "Leaner Times at Harvard," it was reported that due to the critical hit to the university's endowment, the school is making serious cuts: no more bacon will be served at weekday breakfasts for undergraduates, and no more cookies provided at faculty meetings.

I know things are actually much tougher, and the newspaper even admits as much. For example, a significant number of students live in the old Radcliffe dormitories--at the Quad, where I chose to live in the late 1980s. It is a bit of a walk to the main campus. The beautiful library there where I spent most of my evenings studying has been closed. Many staff members have lost their jobs, there is a hiring freeze, and salaries have been frozen as well.

At the same time, Harvard has prioritized their cuts to ensure students have $9 million more in financial aid than they did last year. This move has allowed some students to remain enrolled who otherwise would have been unable to afford it in these difficult times.

I'm feeling awfully torn: really wanting to put Harvard's financial situation into the context of a world hit by true suffering, yes--but also really irritated that the New York Times would not only trivialize the cuts necessary but treat undergrads as if they are all smug rich kids who feel entitled to the best all the time. While I am sure there are students who fit that profile that are enrolled at Harvard, I met precious few of them while I was there.

And yet--here I am, typing into my laptop, uploading pictures from my new camera, and eating a hot breakfast. Maybe we are too educated, too privileged, and too entitled to even notice how overfed our culture is.

Are You Game?

2009-10-07T11:43:00.000-04:00

We've been having lots of fun and studying homeschool math at the same time with a wonderful game called Equate.It is a game very much like Scrabble but instead of using letters to build words, players use numbers to build equations.

Beginning several years ago, we used the Junior tiles. After using the Junior tiles for a while, players are ready for the regular tiles.

Recently we've started playing with the Advanced tileswhich include negative and positive integers, integer exponents, and more fractions.

It took me a while to get in the swing of thinking about negative exponents again...

For those looking for homeschooling mathematics fun and games, we also love ThinkFun Math Dice.

Living in Booths

2009-10-05T07:55:00.007-04:00

A repost of an entry I wrote for that marvelous blog Green Phone Booth:

Sukkot is my favorite holiday. For seven to nine days (depending on one's practice), Jews eat and sometimes sleep in a little open hut we build in our backyards. The roof must be made with natural materials such as leaves and branches, and openings must be left in the ceiling so we can see the stars and the light of the moon.

Religiously, Sukkot is a time of remembering when the Hebrew people wandered in the wilderness without a permanent home after being freed from slavery. The famous Jewish philosopher Maimonides proposed that we build sukkahs every fall so we will always be reminded of times of misfortune (of being homeless) during our times of good fortune.

Sukkot is also a celebration of the "ingathering" (ie, the harvest) after a season of hard work in the fields. A holiday with roots which predate Judaism, Sukkot is a kind of Jewish Thanksgiving when we celebrate the reaping of the fruits of the season and our ability to share it with our friends and families.

Although the spiritual meanings of Sukkot mean a lot to many Jews, others of us who reject the religious mandates still find deep symbolism in its celebration. It is hard to miss that the times of misfortune are exactly the moments when we can most appreciate our riches. We relax around the table in our sukkah with all our loved ones seated around us and celebrate how much we have to sustain us: not only our full pantries but our full hearts.

* * *

No time seems more appropriate to me to enjoy my own contemporary family's labor in the field. Our own personal "field" is a tiny urban backyard garden which only produces enough to supplement our diet. But tonight, we've made dinner exclusively from what we grew ourselves.

We recently harvested Tiger Eye beans (which we allowed to dry on the vine)...

...and Mandan Bride corn:

My 9yo son and I had a blast today removing the kernels from the corncobs...

...and cranking them through our little grain mill to make cornmeal.

We then made traditional southern-style cornbread in a cast iron skillet.

Homegrown delicato squash (so sweet!) and a mix of greens including turnip and mustard rounded out our meal.

On the side we served pickles canned from our homegrown lemon cucumbers:

The meal ended with cups of steaming tea made from spearmint, lemon verbena, and stevia, all of which we grew ourselves over the summer and dried.

There is something profound about living so simply yet so well. We built our little shelter with our own hands (and a power drill), we ourselves planted the seeds and watered the garden that fed us tonight, and we sang songs with our voices alone. All of this plain homemade evening was glorious. How fortunate we are!

* * *

It is becoming clear what the lessons of the hoe, the apron, and the sukkah are: gratitude for simple things, yes--but also the responsibility to work for tikkun olam (the healing of the world), and, perhaps most importantly, the awareness that we on this planet are all one family.

Sukkot connects us to the world: both the land which feeds us, and the friends who share that nourishment with us in our sukkahs. We sit in our fragile booths, shivering in the chilly evening breeze and hoping it won't rain--yet we rejoice in the abundance of our harvest.

Times may be hard, and they may become harder--but we have enough to celebrate; we have each other.

At the end of our evenings, we carry the china and the candles back into our warm houses and say goodnight to our friends.

But Sukkot is also the moment when we are called to think of--no, to empathize with--those people who have to live all their days exposed to the elements just as we are this week in our festival booths. This year--when so many people have been kicked out of their homes to live in their cars, crash on a friend's couch, or sleep on the streets--this lesson is more important than ever.

Regardless of our religious or cultural practices, Harvest Time is a moment when we must remember how many people--in this country and around the world--do not ever experience abundance. Instead, struggling people are going hungry every night, shivering as the winter approaches, in their own fragile cardboard booths.

Let us reach out our hands.

is this fast enough?

2009-09-30T08:00:00.019-04:00

As I mentioned at Rosh Hashanah, my family has come together to celebrate a Humanist High Holidays this year. For the last few years, we've spent the Days of Awe partly together and partly going separate ways as we traversed our own roads towards non-Zionist Jewish-inspired humanism.

This year we are ready to chart a new course: a holiday season of family connection. Of course, we know that there will always be time when we feel we are in different places on the journey, but it is a blessing to know that we are rowing together.

Many Jews who have left religious Judaism in every other way continue to refrain from work, go to the day-long synagogue services of the High Holidays, and participate in the 25-hour fast of Yom Kippur. Since both of the adults in the household have fasted for years (whether or not we believed, and whether or not we attended synagogue), we wondered how we would handle this question this year--at this time when we are trying so hard to reshape our traditions into something that feels true, feels honest, to us.

Although my family feels incredibly tied to many ritual aspects of Judaism, it is only through the study of traditional interpretation and (often) the reshaping of tradition to be in line with our own lights, that we practice anything. Some rituals remain almost exactly, with only the words changed. Some leave their echos as we transform the practice slightly, or significantly. Other rituals (such as the prohibition against shellfish, and the practice of infant circumcision) we have discarded almost completely.

I wondered, could the fast ever begin to feel authentic, real, and honest to us nonbelievers?

We tried to understand Talmudic understandings, the interpretations of Maimonides, the take of current orthodox leaders, the practice of the Reform movement, and everything else we could find. Two basic (and related) interpretations kept arising:

1. The fast is a way to make up for our sins of the past year. It is a way to take our dirty selves and purify ourselves. Some interpreters suggest that the purification process is about reconciling with God. Some stress the mild punishment of our bodies.

2. The fast, joined with other practices such as not bathing and not having sex and not brushing our teeth, emphasize separation from our corporal bodies. Yom Kippur is a time to separate from our animal selves and connect with our spiritual Godly selves. In some theorists' views, fasting shows that the nutrients we need come not from the dirty earth but from God. Others suggest that the symbolic flirtation with death which fasting represents forces us to focus on what "truly" matters.

I do not feel comfortable with the idea that our highest selves are somehow removed from our most physical, most HUMAN of selves. I turn away from religion because I believe that being human is, in fact, our highest calling.

After some soul searching, some arguing, and some personal pain, we decided that neither of us would fast this year.

But neither David nor I felt comfortable leaving all of the tradition, all of the meaning and lessons, behind.

We chose to eat the food of poverty instead. Every year as we have sat with our annual day of hunger, we've been acutely aware that others are not nourished as they ought to be. And for the vast majority of the world, even those who are not at all hungry do not consume the wide array of luxuries--and resources--that we do.

We packed lentils and barley for lunch. Throughout the morning as we awaited our picnic, we thought about how we would be reminded of the hardships of many people in this world of ours. We would feel gratitude in ways we don't always.

I was amazed at how delicious I found the grains and legumes, and how deeply fulfilled I was by that lunch. That simple meal goes forward with me into the new year.

Recipe for a Date

2009-09-27T08:30:00.004-04:00

1. Send Son to a friend's birthday sleepover where they plan to have a cookout, sing around the campfire, and sleep in tents.

2. Cook dinner using the amazing Sephardic-inspired or Mediterranean-inspired kosher cookbook, Levana's Table. We made Chicken with Dried Plums (cough, prunes) and Almonds--an utterly delicious "special" dish that was also very easy to make. Serve with roasted Brussels sprouts.

3. Set table with beautiful thrifted quilt, which will be discussed in detail in a future post.

4. Light a candle in a hollowed out tree limb decorated by Son many years ago.

Fill a vase with the dessicated "flowers" trimmed from a pot of garlic chives.

5. Just as partner pulls into the driveway, turn on Etta James," one of the soundtracks of our seventeen-year romance.

6. Pour wine--preferably a deep luscious Zinfandel from a winery with a name like Folie a Deux--"a madness shared by two." (Doesn't that sound romantic? Unfortunately, it is actually a psychiatric syndrome in which the symptoms of psychosis are transmitted from one individual to another. I do my best.)

7. Talk leisurely, play no board games, don't remind anyone to practice their instruments,

8. Use beautiful pottery "pie-plate built for two" to make a half-sized rhubarb pie (with this excellent free recipe--which makes a full pie). For the pie crust, use the very much-loved and very earthy whole wheat pie crust in Laurel's Kitchen, my most used cookbook ever, full of healthy everyday possibilities for vegetarian meals. Save some pie for Son when he returns home.

9. Go upstairs with candles...

2009-09-25T09:50:00.002-04:00

My 10yo son began taking violin lessons from a Suzuki instructor a few days after his birthday last spring. He is relatively old to begin Suzuki studies.

Sometimes I'm taken aback by the size of some of his peers at lessons! Every time we have a group session--where all of the teacher's students come together both to play together and get to know one another--I can't help but laugh at the absolutely tiny violin cases that the smallest pupils carry.

Suzuki music lessons are predicated on significant involvement by parents. This idea of parental commitment is especially important for the very young children--some of whom are barely 3 years old. For a 10yo student, it is not quite so necessary to have mothers and fathers involved in their practice sessions. However, in a world that de-emphasizes the involvement of parents in their children's learning, the Suzuki expectation is a welcome change.

The Suzuki method also stresses a loving-parent model for the official music teachers as well. As he talks about in his book Nurtured by Love: The Classic Approach to Talent Education,the founder of the Suzuki movement stresses that both parents and teachers should strive to acknowledge the child where they are, to celebrate and accept whatever the child does--instead of having some preconceived notion about progress and timeline.

Suzuki's work is in many ways aligned with attachment parenting principles and his book makes an excellent read even for those without children in music lessons.

I'm always inspired by the combination of intensity and love shown between Suzuki parents and their children as they work together:

Thrifting

2009-09-23T07:55:00.002-04:00

Several months ago we enjoyed a weekend full of wonderful meals, much wine, knitting and weaving, games, dancing with dogs, and hikes and drives in the beautiful countryside--along with the inspiring company of our lovely hosts.

I left the weekend with a deep desire for a salt cellar--like the beautiful wooden swivel-jar (which looked kind of like this)which graced their well-dressed table.

Over the months, David and I have searched in antique stores and at woodworking studios with hopes of finding something similar. No luck.

Last week as we parked our car in front of the house we were visiting, we glanced at the yard sale taking place next door.

When I saw this lidded wooden bowl, I immediately thought of Babe: "That'll do!"

Humanist Rosh Hashanah

2009-09-22T08:00:00.015-04:00

For quite a while, I've struggled to imagine how our family would celebrate the High Holidays this year.

As I have mentioned on this blog before, I have great difficulties believing in God. I am a pure atheist at heart and by my early rearing, but Judaism has been very important to me for a long time. Many years ago I converted after working closely with a Reconstructionist rabbi who held closely to traditional practice but interpreted that faith within a liberal theology. My partner David, who grew up Reform (a tradition which emphasizes more liberal practice but more conventional faith), soon adjusted to both my requests for more orthodox ritual and more "discussion" about what we actually believed--that is, what we really didn't believe.

* * *

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a holiday when we are asked to consider what we have done right for the world this year, what we have not done right, and how we want to do better in the upcoming year. This is a holiday ripe for a humanist interpretation. Although I became uncomfortable in any synagogue's religious HiHo service, I have always felt great power in the broad call which Rosh Hashanah sounds--for reconciliation with one's loved ones, with the world community at large, and with oneself.

Yom Kippur, though, is one of those holidays that really does not make sense in that kind of metaphorical way--at least for me. The message is that after you get right with the rest of the world during Rosh Hashanah, you get right with God during Yom Kippur. Because Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are in many ways really only one holiday (or at least one season of thought), my discomfort with the second commemoration has made me uncomfortable by default with the whole damn month.

* * *

This year is the first time my whole family has decided that all of us would not attend formal services at our old synagogue--or anywhere else. We decided instead to spend the day in the world: in nature, and with each other in conversation..

We went to a nature preserve on the Delmarva peninsula--a place where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic ocean.

We took a picnic of leftovers from our evening feast in our favorite picnic ware.

It was lovely sitting on the sand, having long and quiet conversations--some related to the holiday, and some unrelated.

David and I watched our son slowly make his way into the water. Although we had dressed for a chilly day, the sun made the day quite inviting.

As the day began to come to a close, we celebrated tashlikh, a ritual where one tosses breadcrumbs into moving water, symbolically casting one's sins away. Acknowledging our misdeeds is an important part of the High Holidays, but equally important is getting past those imperfections and creating a clean slate for the creation of our better selves.

For years we have tossed our breadcrumbs into a stream running near our house. This is the first time we've gone to the ocean.

It is somewhat disconcerting to have your sins come back to you, as the waves return the crumbs to their starting place.

It is even more disconcerting to have the seagulls eat the crumbs. Does them make them ScapeGulls?

Come to the Table

2009-09-21T11:00:00.002-04:00

We had an unorthodox and delicious celebration of Rosh Hashanah on Friday evening. After our son blew the shofar, we came inside to a beautiful table to enjoy the traditional apples and honey...

...homemade challah--this time with dried cranberries and walnuts, twisted into a round instead of a braid to acknowledge the round-and-round turning of the earth...

...and an incredible dish from that sexiest of cookbooks, The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook:

This dish is Moroccan Lamb, Quince, and Baby Okra Tagine on page 224. (You don't think of okra as sexy? Well, try this dish...) Although our okra we really not babies anymore, it was still a wonderful dish. Joining the lamb shoulder and okra are melting red onions, gently-roasted garlic, ginger,paprika and cumin, fresh parsley and cilantro, a little hot pepper, and just a bit of tomato. Served with it are glistening quinces--which we substituted with comice pears since quinces are not yet in season here--slightly candied with butter, cinnamon, and a wee bit of sugar. We chose to serve it over couscous. Incredible!

This cookbook is full of recipes that make my mouth water. How about Lamb Shanks with Almond-Chocolate Picada? Tuscan Quail with Red Grape Sauce? Duck Breast with Chantarelles, Dried Apricots, and Almonds?

I think it is time to start cooking the next feast!

Make of Our Lives What We Will

2009-09-18T14:13:00.000-04:00

"This [Rosh Hashanah] provides not just an opportunity for individual renewal and reconciliation, but for families, communities and even nations to heal old divisions, seek new understandings, and come together to build a better world for our children and grandchildren.

"At the dawn of this New Year, let us rededicate ourselves to that work. Let us reject the impulse to harden ourselves to others’ suffering, and instead make a habit of empathy – of recognizing ourselves in each other and extending our compassion to those in need."

Wishing everyone a sweet new year full of peace, justice, and learning!

Getting Crafty

2009-09-16T09:27:00.002-04:00

Walking through the craft booths at the community folk music festival this weekend was inspiring, as it is every year.

Beautiful pottery is always hard to resist.

I love this salt-versus-pepper chess board:

We grew some larger gourds a few years ago and still have them in our basement, waiting to turn into birdhouses. I wonder if we could decorate them this beautifully?

It wouldn't be Takoma Park ("the Berkeley of the East") without some tie-dye:

SET!

2009-09-15T08:40:00.003-04:00

My in-laws have been visiting us for the past week. Last night we said our goodbyes and they are now on the train to their home in Florida. It was a long week--full of adventures on occasion, but also a restructuring of our days because of their physical and emotional limitations. Keeping up with an active ten-year-old boy can exhaust anybody!

Days of rain also kept us indoors more than we would like--but a stash of favorite games kept us entertained. Fundamentally, I am not much of a game person. I don't like games based primarily on luck, and I don't like those that stress competition or the importance of winning. When the two combined, I am likely to whine quite a bit.

One game I really love, though, is SET. The object of the game is to identify sets of three cards. Each card has four features: color (red, green or blue/purple), symbol (diamond, squiggle or oval), shading (solid, striped or open), and number (1, 2 or 3). A "set" consists of three cards on which each feature is either the same on all of the cards, or different on all of the cards. For example, you could have a set with 3 cards where all are red, all are squiggles, there is one of each type of shading, and there is one of each number.

What games do you play with your family? We'd love to be introduced to some new ones!

2009-09-14T09:13:00.001-04:00

We had a lovely evening Saturday at our CSA's celebration dinner and silent auction. Red Wiggler is an incredible place--where gorgeous organic vegetables are grown by growers with developemental disabilities. Check out their website for more details on their mission.

My family donated a tiny jar of our dandelion jelly--which sold for $23! I also donated a lace shawl I knit with hemp yarn. It was lovely getting to meet the woman who bought it. She is a knitter herself!

There were so many wonderful items up for bid. Someone had donated a very cute Baby Surprise sweater with adorable buttons in the shape of farm animals. There were handmade aprons, babysitting services, an incredible restored dollhouse, bottles of honey made on-site, a green cleaning basket, handmade jewelry, and quilts for raffle.

A gorgeous pottery vase called my name. A Halloween-costume development consult called my son's name. My mother-in-law bid on an antique doll, which she was very pleased to win. Although we bid on many things, we left with some handrolled beeswax candles and a coupon for a weekend in Berkeley Springs, a nearby town with hot springs. I'm dreaming of a healing escape sometime in the late winter....

Rainy Day

2009-09-11T07:52:00.002-04:00

I woke up this morning to steady rain, very cool temperatures, and trees bending lightly in the wind. Our 10yo son is still in bed, trying to sleep off the dregs of a cold. The house is so quiet and calm this morning, unlike the running-around-with-our-heads-cut-off that we were all doing yesterday.

Here I am, ready to make whole-wheat muffins and sweet black tea, pull out my
knitting, and spend an hour or so sitting in our barely-lighted living room remembering that morning a few years ago where the sun was shining brightly, the air was crisp, and the world changed.

Life, Up Close

2009-09-10T08:00:00.008-04:00

* * *

Anybody know what this one is exactly?

Fermenting Revolution

2009-09-09T07:25:00.002-04:00

This weekend, some of our neighbors put on a backyard show. Rather than being a circus or a community play, it was a fermentation festival--complete with tastings and demonstrations.

The "fermaments" were incredible--crisp and flavorful (unlike the mushy fermented vegetables that came out of my first attempt at making sauerkraut).

Not everyone realizes that homebrewing is the same basic process--but thank goodness it is, because that fact let us have beer with our sauerkraut:

There were other beverages, including pomegranate kefir, coconut water kefir, kombucha, and even a demonstration of making sake:

This is definitely on our to-try list, along with making mead.

My favorite demonstration was of speed-slicing cabbage using a kraut board and a protective kitchen glove (filled with metal meshing to prevent cuts):

and then smooshing that cabbage for ten minutes to make sauerkraut:

The lovely, sharp taste of the crunchy vegetables--along with the fabulous company-- made this an inspiring afternoon.

birthdays and fairies

2009-09-08T09:05:00.001-04:00

When we found these long, sparkly gold lame gloves at an antique/thrift store in North Carolina, we immediately thought of our young fairy-obsessed friend Z., about to turn eight years old.

Our 10yo son wrote an incredibly sweet birthday story for her, We then figured out how to print it out as a little booklet and bind it with a simple 3-hole tie bind. (If anyone is interested, we might be able to put together a tutorial.)

The birthday girl enjoyed her presents very much, but perhaps not as much as my son did putting them together!

Playing Together

2009-09-06T09:58:00.000-04:00

We have been spending a lot of this holiday weekend outside, with old friends and new. We've been to parties, meetings, festivals, and celebrations.

In one backyard, the hosts set up a children's tent, complete with vegetable print supplies. I was especially taken with the beautiful markings made by rolling corn cobs:

Our son was fascinated watching the eldest daughter of the house trying out her stilts...

...so he tried it himself!

The Joy of Anagrams

2009-09-05T08:00:00.027-04:00

Carol, aka Or Miracle, turned me on to an online anagram generator.

Mine is JOY! HA! HEN 'N' RAN. This certainly says something about my life. (Obviously, I could be happy if only I could keep chickens. But they are always so eager to run away, as am I.)

And yikes: my 10yo son is ENJOY SMEARY BEER.

My husband's anagram, interestingly, is VARY MISDEED. No comment.

Try it out yourself, and please let me know your results!

Inspired Lunch

2009-09-04T08:03:00.002-04:00

It was just about time for a little bite to eat when I ran across Erin's elegant meal over at her blog New at the Market. Her lunch, as she hints, brought an echo of travels, of luxury, and of simplicity all wrapped together.

Although our refrigerator is still quite bare following our time out of town, I still managed to put together a variation of her composed plate:

There are steamed yellow beans with a spoonful of olive tapenade on them, a still-warm boiled egg sprinkled with pepper, green zebra tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, and steamed new potatoes tossed with lemon verbena and butter.

The tapenade was store-bought, the cherry tomatoes and lemon verbena are home-grown, the eggs and butter from a local Amish farm, and the beans and potatoes from our CSA.

Just looking at the plate made me feel calm and sophisticated. Thanks, Erin!

Violin

2009-09-03T09:23:00.003-04:00

My young violin player is reunited with his instrument!

We packed his fiddle very carefully into the trunk of our car as we started our drive to the mountain cabin for vacation. When we arrived, we found this:

Apparently, keeping a violin in the trunk of a hot car can dissolve the glue and make the neck crack. It can even do damage much worse. From now on, we'll always keep the violin in the passenger compartment.

When we returned home, we took the violin in to be fixed. $150 later, we have joy and music in the house again!

General Amusement

2009-09-02T08:06:00.003-04:00

I was all set to be disturbed by Buster Keaton's 1929 silent film, The General. It is available on Netflix as an instant watch selection. Keaton plays Johnie Gray, a southern train engineer who helps the Confederate cause against the Union in the Civil War.

Being a 21st century liberal, pacifist, southern historian, I was worried that a film from the twenties might glorify the Confederacy, make explicitly racist portrayals (since the film was made at a time of Jim Crow), and make appalling violence seem trite and funny.

I was utterly relieved that the film totally sidestepped almost all of these issues. It is a film about love, about a train chase, and predominately about one of the most amazing comedians I have seen. Buster Keaton's physical comedy is spectacular, but I am most impressed by his combination of facial expression and perfect timing.

My favorite thing about watching the movie was seeing my 10yo son's unrestrained full-hearted belly laughs. Perhaps his ability to enjoy a silent movie is because he was not raised with a lot of electronic media bells and whistles--but I think not. Buster Keaton is accessible to children--perhaps because of his small stature and his persona of utter innocence--in a way few comedians today are.

I recommend Keaton's The Camara Man and The Spite Marriage. Both are available on the first disc of Buster Keaton Collection, available on Netflix (but not as instant watch).

Fowl Friends

2009-09-01T07:30:00.002-04:00

One of my vacation pleasures was interacting with the Canadian geese and the ducks also spending time at our lake in the mountains.

The birds were amazingly tame...

letting us get very close...

and even walking towards us to get sniffs of our hands--just like puppies.

Home Again, Home Again

2009-08-31T10:00:00.002-04:00

Our peaceful vacation came to an end. We pulled our ancient little red Civic hatchback out of its parking spot, loaded it to the gills with bathing suits and knitting and books and pottery, and headed home.

I came back with these intensely itchy little souvenirs all over my arms and legs. It made it very hard to sleep last night.

* * *

Today we return to our normal life. The public schools open their doors today and Son (who is homeschooled) is planning to wrap up a few projects he's been working on over the summer. Although we wont officially celebrate the start of 5th grade until the day after Labor Day, it feels like Autumn has arrived. All is settling in and my calendar is filling up with classes and lessons, plays and concerts to attend, and playdates. Even the weather cooperated with the school calendar this year--rare for the Middle Atlantic. The temperature has plummeted to a high in the low 70s with low humidity.

Roadside stand offerings:

2009-08-30T15:00:00.004-04:00

Fresh tomatoes, iced glass bottles of Coca-cola in a washtub, spicy pork rinds, and packets of chewing tobacco.

.

Liquid Satan

2009-08-30T07:03:00.002-04:00

The Fruits of Rainy Afternoons

2009-08-29T07:28:00.004-04:00

Every vacation is bound to have a rainy day.

We spent some of ours reading on the front porch, or knitting as we watched the drops of rain fall into the lake.

Eventually we headed into town to visit the antique stores and a few pottery studios along the way. We came out with new table linens:

This quilt top was made by the owner's husband's great-grandmother shortly before she died in the 1960s. It makes a beautiful tablecloth--although I admit I worried constantly that we might spill something on it.

We also bought a "totem" candle holder made down the road from our cabin. It is influenced by the Carolina face jugs of traditional pottery. I love it.

* * *

Of course, we came prepared for rain with a few of our favorite boardgames, as well.

One of the games we played was The Settlers of Catan. It is certainly one of my favorites, although I always seem to lose to my metropolis-building husband. And appropriately enough, I always seem to wind up with handfuls of sheep!

Big Day, part 3

2009-08-28T19:16:00.007-04:00

After was drank our champagne and ate a wonderful dinner (of store-bought trout), we played Bananagrams, one of our favorite games. It is sort of a variation on Scrabble.

When I downloaded my pictures this morning, I found this message, written out in Bananagram tiles by our 10yo son:

Big Day, part 2

2009-08-28T15:00:00.001-04:00

The day we spent on the path and in the water was our fourteenth wedding anniversary. We had a lovely time, smooching along the path while our son took photographs of us.

Yes--I cut my hair short last week, and yes--that is definitely the beginning of a sunburn...

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How fortuitous that our simple cabin is stocked with champagne glasses--including these two, for Bride and Groom!

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It was so nice of the local yarn store in Brevard to have a special sale for us!