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Sunday, November 2, 2014

Reconnecting with Thanks

This item (15510) is available at chinaberry.com.  I get nothing if you decide to purchase it.  



Thanksgiving is barreling toward us. I say "barreling" because it feels nothing like the holiday of my childhood. Then it was a gateway to the season of celebration that was December. It was anticipated and planned for of course, but there was no stress about what would be served or how dinner would be done. Or in my house, it seemed that there was also no question about who would be there and how the experience would unfold.

The food was traditional and anticipated because it was seasonal. It was the first time that we would enjoy the persimmon pudding that would be present through year end, then disappear again until next year's crop of persimmons. It was also about that time that we would be the beneficiaries of the once-a-year case of Coke and Bubble Up that would be given to my father by some vendor his business used. It was consumed sparingly but such a treat! And of course there would be turkey, dressing, potatoes, beans and homemade wine.

Besides my parents and me, I recall the traditional guests as my brother and his wife and two children, my maternal grandparents and perhaps my Uncle John and Aunt Juanita. It's a bit fuzzy about who moved in and out the picture over the years. The table would only accommodate eight. But the core was always there - my parents and me - even as others grew up and moved away, had other commitments or died.

My mother did the meal from beginning to end. I don't recall anyone bringing dishes although they might have. She worked very, very hard and long hours getting things ready in advance and cooking the entire day of Thanksgiving dinner. As she got older it must have tired her out more and more because somewhere along the line I think she must have stopped. Perhaps when the people were no longer there to congregate, perhaps when she just decided it was too much. Perhaps when she decided it was time for the next generation to step up and take on the tradition. Whatever it was, it was long ago because she died in 1988 and had stopped having Thanksgiving at least five years before that. So the strong memories I have and feel so connected to are from more than 30 years ago.

There was a great deal to be thankful for back then. But I don't think we spent much time thinking about it. Maybe it means so much to me now because no one who was there then is here any longer. No one but me. Maybe its meaningful because what I took for granted as permanent is no more.

Today my Thanksgivings are a different kind of celebration. In their way, they honor friends, good food, others' traditions. These Thanksgivings and their traditions are no less worthy than mine. Yet, I still long for mine. 


NOTE: The picture above is a simple way to introduce mindful thankfulness into Thanksgiving, or actually any meal. IT is a simple wooden bowl hewn from American hardwood. It holds carved wood acorns and maple leaves.  Using it is simple. According to the catalogue, just pass the bowl around the Thanksgiving table so each person can take on of the pieces. As everyone holds their piece, they can express their gratitude silently or out loud. When everyone is finished, pass the bowl around again to collect the pieces. The full blow now a meaningful symbol of the thanks offered by the entire group can be placed on the table as a reminder.


Sunday, September 28, 2014

The Important but Not Urgent



I did it again. I forgot what is really important. Doing and pursuing things that are urgent but not important has led me down paths that, when I look back, I think "why did I do that?" Or worse, "what a waste of time" or "I didn't even enjoy it." I've done this over and over. And every time I think I've learned my lesson, at some future point I find that the learning didn't stick. It's happened again.

Last fall I was so "busy" I forgot to plant my fall crop of garlic. And this year my gardening took a back seat to other things. I'm not sure exactly what took its place, but something did. No doubt something that screamed "urgent!" And so when I got my last tomato CSA yesterday, it struck me that another summer (of which there are only a limited number left) was gone and I'd not enjoyed my garden as I had in past years. I didn't give much to it and it didn't give much to me. Fair and tremendously unsatisfying.

Then I looked at some tomatoes, a few peppers, a bit of fruit and flowers sitting on my counter and was content again. The garden's bounty may not have cheered me during the growing season, but all that beauty sitting on my counter reminded me of that planting and tending my food is one of the most important things in my life. It's nothing to be missed.Actually, nothing that satisfying could be more urgent.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

So it has come to this

Source: A great webcomic site xkcd.com


I'm often at a loss for words. Not so much because of what is said to me (although that happens often enough), but because of what rattles through my brain. Such as:
  • Do people understand the many variables that go into food cost?  
  • What group benefits most from food companies' work - consumers, stockholders or employees? 
  • Are the discoveries and learning that led to the ability to manipulate genes automatically bad?
  • What would happen if food companies were required to follow the first principle of bioethics?"
  • Why do people who profess to support Slow Food principles become agitated when, dining in the Midwest, for example, their favorite French wine isn't on the menu? 
This is just an example of my tangled net of thoughts. Answers to questions like these seem to involve all kinds of qualifications and there are all those interconnections - consumers may be stockholders; stopping the import of French wine could impact jobs here and in France; manipulating genes is used in healthcare as well as food production; population is growing and there are threats to water, food and air as a result.

So, stumbling on a brief phrase like "So it has come to this" seems to accurately capture what is all too often my internal sigh, shoulder slump and head shake at the situation. Then its back to work. 

Monday, August 18, 2014

When Technology Doesn't Remember

My father, from a time before he knew I'd be around to look for him.

The last hour or so was spent looking for my father. More precisely, looking for his obituary online. I wanted to confirm his birthday and birth dates are always in obituaries. (Admittedly my not knowing this with certainty is another whole story.) His birthday was important because I was about to start something on the day I thought was his birthday, and being a bit of a magical thinker, it seemed to be an omen. Annny-wayyyy….

Without paying for the information, I couldn’t find it. Anywhere. After trying multiple search terms, by looking first for obits and then search by name, and everything I could think of, I was stumped. So I looked for my mother’s obituary. It was nowhere to be found either. Why? My father was referenced in his brother’s obituary. My mother was referenced in my half-brother’s obituary. So by association they were shown to exist. But suddenly, there was no evidence (at least none easily accessible and free) to directly document their lives.

In the past, such things would have been tracked in a bible in my family. My grandmother kept one up to date with such records as well as marriages, births and similar life events. I’m pretty sure my mother did the same. At least she did for a while. That slower time and the very act of writing down, carefully because this was a book that was going to be handed on to the next family record keeper, etched events and dates into memory. Now the pace of life and the very rush of all things - important and unimportant, big and small, memory-worthy and better forgotten - all jumble together. And it becomes easy to forget because there is always a record you can look at. Except when there isn’t. Or you can’t find it.

Time to stop relying so much on technology to do what it just feels right that my brain should be able to do. Remember and document important events in my life. Somehow that gene didn't get passed on. I hope it's not too late.




Saturday, August 2, 2014

Summer Saturday Mornings

Selfishly I don't want anyone to know where this road is. I want to keep it all to myself on Saturday mornings.



This summer I split a CSA with a neighbor and chose to pick it up from the farm rather than from an in-town location where it could have been dropped. Yes, the price was less because I did the pick up. But that's not why I wanted to do it.

Where I grew up it wasn't really country despite the fact that there was a dairy farm next door and cornfields across the back fence. But it was a place that was open and green and a bit wild and country-like. And for good or ill, it is in me, drawing me to like places. Where I pick up my CSA is such a place.

It is a real farm, farmed by a young couple with two children, lots of energy and even more passion and dreams. They are the future, holding my past in the palms of their hands.  They value many of the same things I was taught to value - hard work, honesty, simplicity and family. And they live out of the way, about 30 minutes from the little town where I now live.

To get there requires a drive in the country and if navigated properly, it can feel like the true middle of nowhere. Wide open spaces, lots of green, no houses and my personal favorite, dirt roads. Not dirt lanes to houses, but dirt roads that must be taken slowly to avoid or stay in the ruts that the rain and wheels create. Dirt roads that spew up dust behind the car when its dry, obliterating everything that has been passed. Dirt roads that take away that last bit of stress that had started oozing away the minute I left "civilization."

Saving money is great, but the real value of picking up my CSA is the opportunity to be in a place where I feel so much at home.


Friday, July 11, 2014

Well said...



I had this caligraphied from a Celestial Seasonings box as I recall. It made sense 20+ years ago and it makes more sense now...




Saturday, June 28, 2014

Feeding a Memory








I spent this morning the way I imagine my grandmother and my mother spent their days.
They cooked.
Every day.
From scratch.

But today I really tried to think about my grandmother - a woman I barely remember who lived with us for a few years until her death - and how her days were spent, caring for a house, and cooking for a husband and seven children. I was thinking about a particular time in her life, the summer of 1937. The first summer after my grandfather had died, but while several of her children were still at home. 

I started by going to my deck garden (she would have gone to her garden behind the house on 10th Street in the southwest Indiana town) and gathering a few things for today - kale, greens, chives, tarragon - then watering in advance of a hot day. Her garden was likely fenced against animal intruders. Mine is relatively untouched even in an area where heron are seen at the pond a few yards away, deer wander across nearby streets and packs of coyotes have been spotted in my little Michigan town.

After putting away my harvest (I'm am confident my grandmother had an icebox since my grandfather had been stationmaster for the Pennsylvania Railroad and could afford modern conveniences), I decided to bake. Logically she would have baked early in the day, before the house heated up. Baking was hot work without air conditioning, mixers, food processors and likely with poorly insulated ovens. Late in the day a kitchen might be hotter than it was outside, depending on where it was located in the house and if there were trees shading it. But cooking needed to be done because the other option was eating at a restaurant. More importantly, I think, in that time and in my mother's as well, cooking was expected.

I used a recipe on a worn 3x5 inch recipe card written in my mother's handwriting, making "Apple Sauce Cake De Luxe" clearly noted as "Mrs. Bartholome's". Although my mother was "Mrs. Bartholome" too, there was no mistaking that this was my grandmother's recipe.

The cake called for unsweetened applesauce which she would have very likely made previously. My mother made applesauce from Transparent apples, one of many varieties in our backyard. Fortunately I've found a source for those same apples and pulled a jar of last year's applesauce from the pantry. 

The recipe didn't mention icing so I left the cake un-iced. I wanted the first taste to spur a memory of my grandmother or at least of having had this handed down recipe cake as a child. After it cooled, I cut a square and prepared to be transported. Nothing. The cake was good, really good. A neighbor on whose porch I'd left some while it cooled wrote an email to rave about it. I would make it again and enjoy it. But I can't use it to call up the memory I wanted. Yet, I still feel connected and that I know something about my Grandmother because of making that cake. I'd had the recipe forever but never made it. Now I have the memory of making it in honor of her and of my mother who preserved it.

In addition to applesauce, it has cocoa, nutmeg, cinnamon and more spices. I didn't follow the recipe exactly since they don't make Spry anymore, but I think my grandmother would have liked mine as much as I liked the experience of making it.

Here is the recipe just as it was handed down:

1/2 c. Spry
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. allspice
2 Tbsp. cocoa
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs unbeaten
1 1/2 tsp. soda
2 c. sifted flour
3/4 c. dates, chopped
3/4 c. raisins, chopped
1 1/2 c unsweetened applesauce
3/4 c. nuts, chopped

Blend Spry, spices and cocoa. Add sugar gradually and cream well. Add eggs singley, beating after each. Add soda to flour and sift three times. Sprinkle 2 Tbsp. flour over fruits. Add remaining flour to creamed mixture alternately with applesauce, mixing after each addition until smooth. Add nuts and floured fruits to batter and blend. Bake in 10x10" greased pan. 55-60 minutes at 350 degrees.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

In season


Thanks to Wikipedia for the image. A description of rhubarb is in the link below.


It's finally getting around to being the kind of weather than reminds me that I live in a very productive growing area. The question is, will the weather continue to support the kinds of things that are planted around here and have made their homes here for generations? Or will the changing climate cause radical shifts in what can be sustainably grown here? I don't know....worry about yes, but actually know, no.

For now, I'm going to focus on the positives. The first being, the rhubarb is in! And this year rather than make it into a typical crumble dessert or a spread for toast - both of which I grew up with - I decided to try something different. I wanted to taste pickled rhubarb and after looking through several cookbooks, decided to go to the local guru who pickles anything that will stand still long enough - Joe Lindsay of David's Deli.

Without hesitation he shared a recipe that was immediately at his fingertips. And I came home and made a small batch of the best tasting stuff I've had in a long time. Quick and easy. No processing since they are refrigerator pickles. I bow before the master, but if I do say so myself, mine are pretty darn good.

Here's what I did with Joe's recipe that he calls Rhubarb Mother Pickle.

1 lb rhubarb
1 cup vinegar
1 cup water, tea, etc.
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup dried fruit
1 tablespoon main spice
1 teaspoon secondary spice

Cut cleaned rhubarb into desired size pieces. Place in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and let stand at least an hour. The longer the salt is left on, the more water will be removed. (I stirred the rhubarb a couple of times to get the salt to cover all the pieces.)

Drain and rinse the rhubarb and place into jars that can be tightly sealed. Leave a little space between the top of the rhubarb and the lid. Set aside unlidded.

In a small pan, boil together all remaining ingredients. When boiling, carefully add to the jars of rhubarb, covering the rhubarb. Put lids on and set aside to cool. Store in refrigerator.

Most refrigerator pickles will keep about a month.

In my version:
The vinegar was apple cider vinegar infused with tarragon; the main spice was a Royal Curry Powder; and the secondary spice was allspice. The options are endless, but the rhubarb isn't. Give some a try and see what you think. Enjoy the season while you can.




Sunday, March 23, 2014

Talking with a mouth full...




Sorry Mr./Ms Hardin. Have had this for years and don't know where I found it or would credit you and the publication.

It's at least impolite to talk with your mouth full. It can also be unappetizing to others, messy and a general display of being quite less than polished. Not to mention that the point of your comment is often lost or dismissed. Online, people can do the equivalent by posting in an uncivil, opinionated, closed-minded, dismissive, attacking way. And sadly, this type of interchange occurred in a conversation intended to explore, and hopefully think creatively about,  important issues around our food system.

Having registered for an online course about our food system and health, taught by nationally recognized university faculty I was looking forward to lots of information, tough questions, diverse perspectives and meaty conversation. In week three of a six-week course, the faculty was required to post:

SPECIAL NOTE: there are some issues with civility on the forums and we want to remind students to follow these rules, which are posted on the syllabus:
--Respect the viewpoints of others, including your peers, the faculty and guest speakers. As a wise kindergarten teacher once said, “Don’t yuck someone else’s yum”. Food is very personal and we ask that you respect and appreciate cultural, religious and personal differences. We look forward to learning about your experiences with food, your communities and your interactions with the food system.
--Respect these rules. Students who do not respect the forum rules will be asked to un-enroll from the course.


Sigh.

We don't have the luxury of letting food system problems - shortages, limited access, nutritional quality, choice, concentration of producers, methods of production and more - go unquestioned and potentially successfully addressed. Questioning is a step toward understanding and without understanding, solutions can be short-lived at best and answer the wrong question at the worst.

Being sure that our experience and knowledge is right is dangerous but easy. It's what has been true for us. But there are many truths to experiences and knowledge is always progressing. And with the progression of knowledge comes the inevitable change - letting loose of what we "knew" to embrace and work with what we have "learned."

Skepticism is appropriate so that learning is fact-based and free of shaping by vested interests. The progression of knowledge is a messy and potentially fraught process by its nature. Making it worse by metaphorically talking with a full mouth makes it even more difficult.



Sunday, March 16, 2014

Missing Spring

Looking out to my deck
Its been totally white outside for so long. Inches and inches of snow after snow. It's been gray and cold and windy. A really long, brutal winter.

Suddenly, most of the snow is gone. And its sunny. And blindingly bright for those of us who've been "holed up" for so long. The blue skies are magnetic, drawing you out even though the warmth is deceptive. The brownish green grass and trees, hint at the Spring season, which, if like recent ones, will not be the lingering warm up of my youth, but rather a stumble directly into Summer or a throwback to Winter before a rapid heat up.

Is it wrong to want the more gentle transitions of the seasons of my youth? Is it simply a silly nostalgia for yet another thing long gone? Maybe. Maybe not.

Transitions allow time for adaptation. Whether it's apple trees adapting to increasing warmth and slowly coming into bloom rather than being yanked there because temperatures get too warm too quickly. Transitions called for wardrobes that make sense for a time, then are put away and the next season's wardrobe comes into use. And back in the time of seasonal transitions, things were kept from year to year, as long as they fit, because they were only used for a few weeks here in the Midwest, rather than being needed for extended periods.

Why is adaptation important? Seems to me that without that time, things are more pressured, more stressed. And if that happens, more subject to breaking down because they can't keep up. As true of people as it is of apple trees. People and trees need time to adjust and grow stronger. And people need time to make better decisions. We've seen the result of speeding things up. I'm a firm believer in slowing things down.




Saturday, March 8, 2014

Shreds of Evidence







There is a bag of shredded paper sitting by my front door. One of many that have been generated as documents kept for decades are finally liberated.  Documents that recorded the passing of time, important occurrences no longer clearly (if at all) remembered, and the meticulous filing of things that haven’t been referred to let alone needed in an embarrassing amount of time.

Files can remain long after the person is gone. This is part of what creates the necessity of clearing out a house after a parent or other family member dies. Personal papers give tiny glimpses of aspects of the person that the person doing the clearing out may never have known. Looking at work awards, or hand-written letters (now perhaps emails) or even bank statements can provide an insight into what had meaning, what was duty, what was appreciated.

The process of clearing out my own paper life was at first painful. As if the shredding would erase my life, make it as though it had never happened. But it did happen, whether anyone remembered or not, it did.  So why keep all this stuff that will never be missed?

The shredded files, calendars, bank statements, checks, receipts and more is going to a small business to be used as packing material. Rather than sitting in a dark closet, the evidence of my prior life will see the light of day again and serve another purpose. It feels good to know it is being used rather than trashed or even recycled. And it feels good to know I’ve done something useful in finally getting rid of it.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Mending the mittens

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The things my parents knew and tried to pass on to me are exactly the kinds of practices that appears to have been forgotten (or maybe never known) by so many in the world. My parents lived by things they knew worked because they were handed down to them (like growing a garden for healthy food) or because of first- hand experience (like living within your means and using things until they were completely, beyond-repair used up). Such things have been rediscovered, in part because of the Great Recession, but in truth they never went out of style.

I have chosen to live what I considered a pretty simple life. I don’t do lots of traveling or buy lots of “stuff.” I walk many places (although I admit I could do more.) I try to support small local businesses, cook the majority of my meals, garden, can, generate minimal landfill-destined trash and recycle. I keep the thermostat at 68 or lower in the winter and 75 or higher in the summer. (Please let the record show that I would prefer to have my windows open for fresh air when possible, but that is unfortunately an engineering impossibility where I live.) 

So about four years few years ago I felt I was doing a good thing buying mittens made from recycled sweaters. It was a better choice than buying new gloves and so I bought some for gifts too. I was wearing someone else's discards that a local artisan had breathed new life into. All good, right?

Fast forward to this winter. I decided to take one of those huge online classes through Coursera. It was from Johns Hopkins University and titled An Introduction to the U.S. Food System: Perspectives from Public Health. (I highly recommend it, but I digress…) As part of the first week’s assignments, I was directed to take an assessment of my environmental footprint. Confident that I would be a better-than-average citizen of the world, I dutifully and honestly typed in the answers requested at The Global Footprint Network “Disappointed” barely described how I felt when I learned that despite my efforts, if everyone in the world lived as I did, it would take the resources of 3.6 earths to sustain us. Clearly, I was not living as sustainably as I had thought, mittens or no mittens.

Fast forward again to two weekends ago when a friend who I had given a pair of those mittens, chided me when I said I thought mine had completed their useful life after springing holes in both thumbs and having various other stitching unraveling. It seems she had repaired hers several times (something we used to do when I was growing up) and thought that I could get at least another year out of mine if I took the time to do the same. She was exactly right. That was a more sustainable thing to do and it hadn’t occurred to me.

It’s hard to accept that I’m part of the sustainability problem. My parents lived well on the resources of just one earth. And although it’s hard to see where any changes I could make could have a real, meaningful difference, doing nothing is not an option. I have to try. I have to mend the mittens.






Sunday, January 19, 2014

Change

From my LinkedIn feed. I didn't catch where it came from or I'd credit it. 

Yesterday's pop up poster show about sustainable agriculture and the food system (continuing today, noon to 6pm at Journeyman Distillery in Three Oaks, MI) was an interesting experience and possibly an experiment. First, there was a lot of positive feedback from guests, from the manager of the venue and from the people who took time out of their days to be "resources"and provide deeper information to people who stopped to chat and learn. Second, the conversations that took place not only exchanged information, but a type of energy flowed as well.

Like all manner of conferences, workshops, seminars, networking events, etc., although the participants may truly value the information they exchanged, the new connections they made, or the affirmation they received of their own current efforts, the most valuable thing that gets taken away is the energy. Whether invigoration and motivation of the newly interested  or re-invigoration and re-motivation of those who may have long been involved in trying to make a change, the energy is the thing.

However energy is a asset that can deplete quickly if not replenished occasionally. Of course "wins" help boost energy, but the need is greater when faced with disappointment, failure and frustration. It's easy to get focused on how big the problem is, how intransigent, how deeply rooted. So rather than let energy seep away in the face of those things, consciously choose to re-energize. Events like this show can boost your energy and ready you for continued action. Or if you are already energized, it's a place where you may inspire someone on the fence...or on the other side of it entirely. Come on down.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Lexicon of Sustainability - a story to tell

One of the images that will be on display at this weekend's Pop-Up Poster Show. Source: Lexicon of Sustainability website




This weekend, January 18-19 at Journeyman Distillery in Three Oaks, MI the second of four seasonal shows of Douglas Gayeton's amazing art will be on display. These images are part of a larger collection that combine images and words to tell the story of what sustainability in our food system means. I've been asked many time why I am putting these shows on. The answer is simple, to me anyway.

The project impressed me when I saw the images last summer in Goshen, IN. And being aware of many people who were interested in and doing sustainable agriculture or trying to address food issues, I thought these would be a way to possibly connect people of like interests as well as provide information to people who may not have considered some of these terms and the impacts and opportunities they represent. So I just did it. I made the contact to get the posters here and began to recruit others for spaces for shows and involvement during shows. My original idea morphed into seasonal shows which seems to be a good thing as they can potentially reach more people and keep the topic out there. I've been amazed and incredibly humbled by the support provided by people opening their venues, taking their time to be present as hosts (first show) and resources (this show) as well and the extraordinarily generous support of people providing graphic, PR and social media support. No one is getting paid. This is something that people believe in so they are involved. And this creates a really strong connection.

Looking ahead, there will be a Spring show and a Summer show. They too will be volunteer efforts. The question is what then? What will come out of four seasons of shows that will have occurred by the end of Summer? People can make a difference so if you come and connect with someone and have an idea, follow it. Maybe others are out there. Make connections. If you want people to work on issues, work on them yourself. Involve others. Keep trying. And as Ghandi said "Be the change you want to see."

Hope to see you this weekend!