crazysalad

The House of Belonging

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING

by David Whyte

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought

it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,

it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.

And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,

this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.

This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next

and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,

the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.

 

Arty Choke

Pappus (from Greek, pappos, meaning grandfather or old man): the down or ring of fine feathery hairs surrounding the seed on a thistle or dandelion.

The First Artichoke

by Diane Lockward

Though everyone said no one could grow
artichokes in New Jersey, my father
planted the seeds and they grew one magnificent
artichoke, late-season, long after the squash,
tomatoes, and zucchini.

It was the derelict in my father's garden,
little Buddha of a vegetable, pinecone gone awry.
It was as strange as a bony-plated armadillo.

My mother prepared the artichoke as if preparing
a miracle. She snipped the bronzy winter-kissed tips
mashed breadcrumbs, oregano, parmesan, garlic,
and lemon, stuffed the mush between the leaves,
baked, then placed the artichoke on the table.
This, she said, was food we could eat with our fingers.

When I hesitated, my father spoke of beautiful Cynara,
who'd loved her mother more than she'd loved Zeus.
In anger, the god transformed her
into an artichoke. And in 1949 Marilyn Monroe
had been crowned California's first Artichoke Queen.

I peeled off a leaf like my father did,
dipped it in melted butter, and with my teeth
scraped and sucked the nut-flavored slimy stuff.
We piled up the inedible parts, skeletons
of leaves and purple prickles.

Piece by piece, the artichoke came apart,
the way we would in 1959, the year the flowerbuds
of the artichokes in my father's garden bloomed
without him, their blossoms seven inches wide
and violet-blue as bruises.

But first we had that miracle on our table.
We peeled and peeled, a vegetable striptease,
and worked our way deeper and deeper,
down to the small filet of delectable heart.

October Sunrise

Bulthaup Chef Series

Last week marked the inaugural dinner of the bulthaup San Diego Chef Series, a monthly dinner party held in the bulthaupSD downtown showroom.  

 

The series is the brainchild of bulthaupSD owner Aleka Kim and local chefs Pete Balistreri and Rian Brandenburg, of Tender Greens.   The small, intimate dinner party setting (only 24 guests) allows guests to mingle while watching Balistreri and Brandenburg cook in the nearby open kitchen. 

The meal is prepared with locally-grown, seasonal ingredients and is served, family-style, at three tables set up in the showroom.  Last week's Oktoberfest dinner included local (Poway) beer maker, Lightning Brewery, pouring samples of their hand-crafted, European style beers and a menu that featured sausages, braised pork belly and duck confit.  

Next month's "Celebrating Harvest" dinner will be held Thursday, November 19, at 7 pm.  The menu will include seared sea scallops with brown butter, hand-made fettuccine with rabbit bolognese, slow-cooked short ribs, roasted vegetables, and apple crumb pie. 

A third of the proceeds from each $60 ticket go toward sponsoring the 2010 Cultivating Food Justice Conference in San Diego.  Seating is limited, so be sure to call and reserve your spot today. 

Cafe Influx

Influx (from medieval Latin, influxus, and Latin, influere) - a flowing in (in-fluence), a continuous coming, esp. of individuals in large numbers. 

Influx Cafe, a local cafe in Golden Hill in San Diego (Broadway at 20th) which has a lot of customers continuously coming in to get delicious homemade pastries and cupcakes. 

I like to sit in the seat by the window and watch the cyclist cruise down the hill, under the freeway overpass, and into downtown San Diego.

When the sun gets to be too bright and blinding, the staff will kindly come and lower the shades. 

 

Banned Books Week 2009

September 26-October 3, 2009 is Banned Books Week.  Celebrate your freedom to read by picking a book that makes you cringe, cry, squirm, angry, sad, uncomfortable, happy.  Challenge yourself.  Challenge your beliefs.  Think.  Be thankful you still can.  Breathe.  Love.  Read. 

It's interesting looking over this list of books and the reasons why they were challenged.  As a mother, I have certainly felt some of the same concerns about the books my three daughters read (or the TV programs or videogames they watch and play).  And I have withheld certain materials from my girls because I felt they were inappropriate.  To me that's good parenting.  But that ban didn't extend to my friend's or neighbors kids or the entire school district. 

Now that my kids are older and I have less control over their world, I will occasionally find them reading or looking at something online or listening to music with lyrics that surprise me.  Having been raised Catholic, my first reaction is, oh, they shouldn't be reading that!  Old habits die hard.  It's easier to control someone if they don't ask questions.   It's easier to forbid something than to examine or discuss it.  Heaven forbid you might actually change your mind.  Your belief system.

The funny thing is when I do look a little deeper into what my kids are reading, listening to, and thinking, it has generated some great discussions with them.  Brought me closer to them.  Introduced me to lots of new music and books I never would have picked up on my own. LIke Richard Siken's Crush, collection of poems about longing, love and pain.  I can't wait to read it.

American Library Association’s Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2008 (out of 513 challenges as reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom--love that name!):

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
   Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
   Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence.  Retained by the publicly funded Dufferin-Peel Catholic School District in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada in 2008 with a sticker on the inside cover telling readers "representations of the church in this novel are purely fictional and are not reflective of the real Roman Catholic Church or the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
   Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
   Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence. Banned from the Orestimba High School's English classes in Newman, California in 2008 by the superintendent after complaints that the book is profane and anti-Catholic.  Teachers claimed that the superintendent circumvented the district's policies on book challenges and set a dangerous precedent.  The book is about a boy maturing, asking questions about evil, justice, and the nature of God.  
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
   Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
   Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
    Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

In this week's New Yorker, a poem by my favorite poet-farmer-philosoper:

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

by Wendell Berry

 

   (With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

 

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;

There are so many outcomes that are worse.

But I must add I’m sorry for getting here

By a sustained explosion through the air,

Burning the world in fact to rise much higher

Than we should go. The world may end in fire

As prophesied—our world! We speak of it

As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit

Of temporary progress, digging up

An antique dark-held luster to corrupt

The present light with smokes and smudges, poison

To outlast time and shatter comprehension.

Burning the world to live in it is wrong,

As wrong as to make war to get along

And be at peace, to falsify the land

By sciences of greed, or by demand

For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify

The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.

But why not play it cool? Why not survive

By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?

Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens

By going back to school, this time in gardens

That burn no hotter than the summer day.

By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,

By goods that bind us to all living things,

Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.

The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,

Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger

Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.

A creature of the surface, like ourselves,

The garden lives by the immortal Wheel

That turns in place, year after year, to heal

It whole. Unlike our economic pyre

That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,

An anti-life of radiance and fume

That burns as power and remains as doom,

The garden delves no deeper than its roots

And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

 

The World According to Monsanto

Joyce Beers Community Center

Saturday, August 22, 6pm | FREE!

3900 Vermont St., San Diego 92103
Uptown District Shopping Center
1.5 blocks north of University Ave

The World According to Monsanto is an in-depth documentary that looks at the domination of the agricultural industry from one of the world’s most insidious and powerful companies.

This is one of the most powerful, must-see films for anyone interested in the behind the scenes world of the food industry, and how just one world-dominating corporation holds the keys and patents to much of the world's food supply.

Includes a discussion about the local food movement in San Diego and ways you can help support the return to locally grown, fresh and healthy food in our community.  

This free film is part of the San Diego Roots Food for Thought Film Series.

Sunflowers

“Did you see the sunrise this morning?”
the old woman on Dale Street
who gardens with the parrot on her shoulder
asked me as I was walking home from Grant’s Deli
with a baguette under one arm and a cup of boiling Italian roast
burning my palm.

“And did you see the sunset last night?” I asked her.
Under a summer peach and apricot sky
my daughters and I had gone out to our front-yard garden to gather tomatoes—
bagfuls of yellow, roma, green zebra, cherry, heirloom—
and more to share with the neighbors
and handfuls of fragrant basil for our pasta dinner with fresh, no-cook sauce.

The parrot woman smiled.  “We are blessed.”

Recipe for (Almost) No-Cook Tomato Sauce

3-4 tomatoes
A handful of basil
2 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Pasta

Boil water for pasta.  Cook pasta.  (I like farfalle ("butterfly") pasta with this sauce because the wings in the pasta hold the sauce nicely. 

While pasta is cooking, chop tomatoes.  Tear or chop basil into small pieces.  Slice garlic.  Heat olive oil in a saucepan and add garlic.  Cook until soft, but not brown.  Add chopped tomatoes.  Cook for a few minutes, just long enough to reduce the water (juice) from the tomatoes a little.  Turn off heat. 

Drain pasta and add to saucepan with tomatoes.  Add chopped basil.  Stir and serve.

The Sun
by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen

anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Uncle Fred

Frederick L. Kramer, 85, of Kansas City, Missouri, passed away Friday, July 24, 2009, at the Kansas City Hospice House.

Fred was born July 23, 1924, the son of Fred and Eva (Crook) Kramer.  He was a WWII Army Veteran.  He met the love of his life, Eve R. McGehee in the Acapella Choir at KSU and they were married June 4, 1950.  He graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in Civil Engineering and was a member of the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity.  He was a huge Wildcats fan and held season tickets to the football games since 1968.  He received his Masters of Public Administration from the University of Missouri.  A member of the Parkville Presbyterian Church, he was active in the church and the Sertoma Club of Kansas City.  He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, N.J. McGaw.

Survivors include his wife, Eve; son Kris Kramer and wife Connie of Kansas City, Missouri; daughter Carol and husband Bob Rauscher of Lees Summit, Missouri; daughter Nancy and husband Greg Bovee of Overland Park, Kansas; brother Marvin Kramer of Topeka, Kansas; grandchildren Carey, Jane, Brian, Eric, Erin, and Kalvin; great-grandchildren Abbie, Katie, and Kellyn.

Memorial contributions may be made in Fred’s memory to NorthCare Hospice for the future Hospice House at North Kansas City Memorial Hospital. 

Growing Places 2009

Radishing Beauties

Radishes, Raphanus sativus (from Latin, radix, meaning root)
Member of the Mustard Family (Brassicaceae)

These are my first crop--the very first thing I harvested from my new garden.  I made a simple radish salad: sliced the radishes, tore up the greens, tossed them with a little salt, lemon, and olive oil.  Delicious!

Cultivating Food Justice

CULTIVATING FOOD JUSTICE
a FREE conference for everyone!

San Diego City College
Friday, May 1st 530-830pm
Opening Reception and Keynote Speakers
Saturday, May 2nd 8am-5pm

A full day of hands-on workshops and discussions to empower local communities to build sustainable and affordable food systems that maximize self-reliance and social justice.

Food Justice means:  everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally-appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity.

To learn more and register:  www.sdfoodnotlawns.com
organized by an an all volunteer collaborative

Lost in the Forest

I'm carrying this around in my pocket today.

Lost in the Forest

by Amy Gerstler

I’d given up hope. Hadn’t eaten in three

days. Resigned to being wolf meat ...

when, unbelievably, I found myself in

a clearing. Two goats with bells

round their necks stared at me:

their pupils like coin slots

in piggy banks. I could have gotten

the truth out of those two,

if goats spoke. I saw leeks

and radishes planted in rows;

wash billowing on a clothesline ...

and the innocuous-looking cottage

in the woods with its lapping tongue

of a welcome mat slurped me in.

In the kitchen, a woman so old her sex

is barely discernible pours a glass

of fraudulent milk. I’m so hungry

my hand shakes. But what is this liquid?

“Drink up, sweetheart,” she says,

and as I wipe the white mustache

off with the back of my hand:

“Atta girl.” Have I stumbled

into the clutches of St. Somebody?

Who can tell. “You’ll find I prevail here

in my own little kingdom,” she says as

she leads me upstairs—her bony grip

on my arm a proclamation of ownership,

as though I've always been hers.

Praise Song for the Day

photo by Karen Ballard

Poem composed for President Barack Hussein Obama
on the occasion of his Inauguration
as 44th President of the United States of America
January 20, 2009

Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Into the Marrow

Osso Buco
by Billy Collins

I love the sound of the bone against the plate

and the fortress-like look of it

lying before me in a moat of risotto,

the meat soft as the leg of an angel

who has lived a purely airborne existence.

And best of all, the secret marrow,

the invaded privacy of the animal

prized out with a knife and wallowed down

with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,

a citizen tilted back on his chair,

a creature with a full stomach–

something you don’t hear much about in poetry,

that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.

You know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,

small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment

has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,

and I can only close my eyes and listen

to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance

and the sound of my wife’s laughter

on the telephone in the next room,

the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,

who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.

She who talks to her faraway friend

while I linger here at the table

with a hot, companionable cup of tea,

feeling like one of the friendly natives,

a reliable guide, maybe even the chief’s favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside

on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent

carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;

and elsewhere people of all nations stare

at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,

the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,

the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.

Only now it plays on the blue plates,

the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed

and the other will follow.

Then we will slip below the surface of the night

into miles of water, drifting down and down

to the dark, soundless bottom

until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,

below the shale and layered rock,

beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,

into the broken bones of the earth itself,

into the marrow of the only place we know.

from “The Art of Drowning” by Billy Collins
(University of Pittsburgh Press)

Thanks to Daron for introducing me to this poem, and to Matt, who was inspired to learn to cook Osso Buco because of it.  Poetry and cooking--now there's a happy marriage. 

Here are some links to recipes for Ossobuco.  There seem to be 2 versions: those made with just meat, flour, butter, and wine, like Mark Bittman's recent recipe in the New York Times; and those also made with carrots, celery, and tomatoes, like this version by Giada de Laurentiis.  Ossobuco alla Milanese is traditionally topped with gremolata (a chopped garlic, parlsey, and lemon zest garnish). 

And here are two Italian recipes, one simple version and one with vegetables.  Like many Italian recipes, the latter has no quantities, just a list of ingredients and how to prepare it.  Just put in enough meat for the number of people you are serving, it says.  Così.

Finally, no discussion of veal would be complete without mentioning the horrific conditions that crated, "milk-fed" (actually formula-feed) calves are raised under. (The white color of the meat is due to anemia, a lack of iron in the animal's diet.)  Marian Burros chronicles how consumer outrage and boycotts over inhumane treatment of these animals have led to changes in the industry. Thankfully, it is now possible to buy humanely-raised veal.  Not only are the calves allowed to move, but the rosy-colored meat from animals raised on grass actually tastes better, too. 

As always, knowing where your food comes from is key.  It starts with you.  The more you know, the more you can do.  Ask your butcher or grocer where their meat comes from and how it was raised. 

Some sources for pastured veal: Eatwild, Grass Run Farm, Local Harvest, American Pasturage, and Bobolink Dairy, run by my favorite, passionate cheesemaker/breadmaker, Jonathan White.  His website says it all: cowsoutside.com.

Rainy lights

I Did It!

This month, I did something I have been wanting to do my whole life.

I wrote a book. 

A novel.

In one month.

I wrote a novel in one month!

I just finished less than an hour ago and now I am sitting here unable to leave my desk, not really believing it's true. 

But here it is right in front of me.  The Dream Thieves.  It's a ghost story (or a "gross story," as one person misheard).  It's a story about a war and the clash of cultures and generations.  It's a story about mothers and daughters and the memories that haunt us and redeem us.  And food, of course!  How food defines us, nourishes us, and holds us together.

Some people have compared writing a novel to giving birth.  Having given birth to three beautiful, healthy babies, the loves of my life, I can tell you, it's not even close.  Or maybe it's just that I know from experience, that conception and giving birth is the easy part.  The hard part is raising them and then sending your babies out into the world. 

That comes next.

But for now I am happy to just sit here stunned by my accomplishment, the fulfillment of a long overdue promise to myself. 

I'm am so, so grateful to my real-life daughters for believing in me and supporting my dream. 

To Tyler, who inspired me and is writing her third novel!
To Kelsey and Siena, who helped with dinners and the dishes and fed the cats so their mother could go out to her office and bang her head against the keyboard day after day:  I love you more than all the words in the whole "entier" universe!

And tomorrow I will answer all the email and pay all the bills and return all the phone calls and buy some groceries.  I promise.

Love,
your Mom, the writer

"Those who discourage your dreams likely have abandoned their own."

Sweet Dreams...

Happy Halloween!

Looking forward to going trick-or-treating with my daughter in our new North Park neighborhood.  I hear Halloween is quite a big deal around here.  One estimate put the number of trick-or-treaters at 400!  

Our house is covered with spiderwebs and pumpkin luminarias light the way to our door.  We had a couple of jack-o'-lanterns on the front porch until the 90 degree Santa Ana weather this week turned them into rotting, fly-infested corpses.  And if I really wanted to scare the neighbors I could have put a McCain/Palin sign in the yard!<g>  (This is definitely Obama territory around here.)  

While out walking on 30th Street my kids and I spotted these fabulous jack-o'-lanterns in the window of Vagabond Restaurant.  (Look carefully and you can see owner Jerome Gombert reflected in the lower right-hand corner.)

Happy Halloween! 

May all your fears be exorcised and the coming year be a sweet one.

Sweet Relief

It’s another Santa Ana week in San Diego.

On these days when the temperature hits 90 degrees (in October!) and the humidity hovers around 10%, all I want to do is eat something cold. Right now I’m craving one of the ice-cold, homemade popsicles made by Lisa Altmann of Viva Pops.

I met Lisa and her partner, Jack, on their first day at the Saturday morning Little Italy Farmers’ Market.  Lisa makes all of the popsicles herself, using only organic fruit that she buys from local vendors.  Right now, in late (California) summer, she is getting her nectarines, peaches and plums from Lone Oak Ranch, which also has a stand at the Little Italy (and La Jolla) market.

Of course, I love the fact that she uses local, organic ingredients, but what I really love are all the different flavors she offers. Like Mexican paletas, Viva Pops come in a variety of flavors and textures, both creamy (made with milk) and icy, flavored with tart fruits and spices (chile, mint, ginger). 

The mango-chile and nectarine-basil were two of my favorites.  My daughter went straight for the chocolate-banana, her favorite flavor combination.  At $3 a pop, they are not cheap.  But for coffee drinkers used to paying that much for a cup of chain-store coffee, I don’t see how you can complain.  The intense flavor and freshness of these pops sure beats those artificially flavored, sugary ice cubes you get at the grocery store.  And Lisa says her flavors will change with the season.  Naturally.

Red Flag Fire Alert

On these hot Santa Ana days, when the temperature in San Diego rises and the humidity falls below 10%, the National Weather Service issues a red flag warning.  This warning means that critical fire weather conditions are occurring: a combination of strong winds, low humidity, and warm temperatures which could create an “explosive fire growth potential.”

It’s been nearly a year since the Witch Creek Fire and other fires burned over half a million acres in southern California, destroyed over 2000 residences, caused a billion dollars in damages and led half a million people to evacuate their homes.

Once again, we are watching the hills and watching the news.

for every drop of water
for every day
every season

give thanks

to the firefighters who risk their lives
to the farmers whose livelihood depends on our support