blessing

Here is a great blessing: a desert landscape in raucous, radiant bloom. Cactus needles glowing in the new day sun like a halo around succulent limbs.

And another: leaning, wholly held, into the wind.

And: being in the one heart, the love that encompasses, the love that is everything -- the sky, the great boulders silently witnessing, the smell of the moist and many-hued soil beneath the juniper tree. Crow, snake, and spider. Humans enfolding one another in tenderness and sacred song.



In the Jewish tradition, every time we bless any thing or any action, we start with the same six words: baruch atah adonai, elohainu melech ha'olam -- blessed are you God, ruler of the universe. Then the blessing goes on to become more specific about a particular holy occurence. Sunrise, bodily health, a morsel of food. There is something so powerful in blessing practice, in the sanctification of what could otherwise be overlooked as mundane, routine, or even burdensome.

I read a quote from Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck today. This man, considered to be the founder of quantum theory, said after a lifetime of intellectual exploration that "there is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind."

Call it Mind, call it Spirit, call it Adonai or Jesus or Allah or Buddah or the Universe. To bless something is to peer into that infinite and unimaginable force which animates all of life. To bless is to pull back the curtain and say yes, I see you, divinity. I know you, I recognize you. To bless is to give God a sly wink -- here we are on this jewel of a planet, so often lost in our machinations and struggles, and yet we can still take time to witness and to sanctify the red wine of the sabbath, or the smooth green skin of the apple, or the steaming pink flesh of the salmon. Because it is all me, and I am all of it, and my heart, unbounded, is as vast as the universe.




And so we 45 or so city slickers, we who spent 9 hours in the car on Friday and another 9 on Sunday to travel into the unknown quiet, we found our way together into the one great heart as we travelled this landscape of blessing.

Our time together was most auspicious, as it was the coincidence of two holidays: Passover, when the Jews celebrate exodus from Egypt, and Shabbat, which, although it comes each week, is considered the holiest of holidays in the tradition because it is a time of deep renewal and connection. In some ways, the sabbath is at the center of the tradition; each week it brings an opportunity to restore the peace within ourselves and in our families and communities that allows us to know we are flowing in a divine river.

Stop for a moment, and listen: can you hear it? We are a part of an ineffable love. A harmony so complete that it returns to silence.



So we said prayers on Saturday, Shabbat morning. We said the traditional prayers, and we also turned out to the landscape and received the blessing of the rocks and plants that flowed towards us. We said the shechecheyanu, the prayer that is said any time something new arises; we give thanks to God for bringing us to this holy moment. This holy moment, one pearl on an endless strand.

On Saturday evening, we created together a seder, the traditional Passover ceremony, which retells the story of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and into the promised land. Each group of four or five people brought forth one of the elements of the seder in unexpected and moving ways; using earth elements and simple rituals, the seder came alive for me as a story of the human journey towards freedom in a way that it has never been before.

And of course, we blessed our food. As you can imagine, it was simple fare -- plenty of matzah (despite the bizarre Bay Area matzah shortage), plenty of hard-boiled eggs, fruit, nut butters, cabbage, bell peppers, quinoa. Hearty, hardy food that offered up bursting flavor and robust nourishment despite the desert heat. And there were some surprises, too; charoset made of dates and blueberries, goat cheese and roasted red peppers, spinach salad. Each meal was prepared communally, and, though simple, each was was suffused with a sense of unrestrained abundance. Miles away from restaurants and refrigeration, the colors and flavors of the food vibrated in our bodies like the deep, sweet tones of a bell.



For three days we filled a small, blooming piece of land -- only two hours by car from Las Vegas -- with our song and yearning and laughter. With our roots plunging into the earth and our arms reaching out to gather in the beloveds, new and old. The canyon wren sang out its slow trill, perhaps even joyful at our rejoicing.

And now we are gone from there, with the blessings of that place inside of us, becoming a part of the structure of our being, just like the food we ate and the intention with which we ate it formed our being. The place, I assure you, has returned to quiet without so many two-legged creatures and their stuff, their bustlings and fumblings. And yet the holy songs still resonate on the land. With our witnessing, with our most intimate love we blessed and sanctified the place, and so it is a part of us and we are a part of it, connected inextricably inside the great, hilarious yes that is what moves everything.

The book of Deuteronomy instructs us: v'achlat, v'shabbat, v'brachat. You shall eat, you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless God.

Or even just: nourishment, awareness, love.



Simple.

i get by with a little help from my friends

Tonight, I ate a piece of baked chicken breast stuffed with ricotta, olives and tomatoes. "Mmmm," you say! (I can hear you, you know.) "Delicious! What's the recipe?" you might be inquiring. Dear reader, I wish I could tell you, but you'll have to ask Trader Joe himself if you'd really like to know the answer to that question.

It's a busy week this week.

That is why today, April 22, 2008 (which is, incidentally, Earth Day) my refrigerator looks like this:


I'm not proud.

But let me explain. As I've shared here before, it is becoming abundantly clear to me that the joys of procuring, cooking and eating wholesome, high quality and preferably local foods are largely unparalleled -- and in fact, such pleasures are like an epicenter, from which radiate seismic waves of joy into many other areas of life. When I allow myself to slow down, know my food, taste it, I begin to inhabit all the moments of my life in an awestruck kind of new way. Living this way, time is less of a jealous lover; time, instead, graciously unfurls its velvety petals for me and I can bathe in the abundance of the simplest of sensory experiences.

However, florid prose or no florid prose, it's also true that I'm a busy woman, living a life that is packed-to-the-gills full these days. By day I'm an environmental attorney, and right now my practice has never been more exciting or more demanding -- all because of a little moth. By evening, weekend, and lunch-hour, I work with an incredible women's environmental network, a labor of passion and joy for its all-volunteer staff. I also exercise as often as I can, attempt to sleep enough, and document my adventures on this site on something of a regular basis.

Then there's spending time with my beloved community, the chosen family with whom I'm lucky enough to share this incredible adventure that is life in the Bay Area. This weekend a bunch of us are making a pilgrimage to the desert together to celebrate the end of Passover (details, I assure you, shall follow).

Between all of these things, as well as regularly-scheduled Glamour-on-the-couch or Netflix-in-bed sessions, and even the occasional date, sometimes I just up and run out of time.

Okay, yes, time is an illusion and all of that. There is only the eternal now. Indeed. Well, kids, I'm no bodhisattva; I've got shit to do. And in my time of need, when 6:00 rolls around and I get that funny feeling, you know, the one you get when you realize it's probably going to be nori strips and peanuts for dinner, God bless it, there's only one thing to do: stop at Trader Joe's.

So I did, and so that's why there's such a quantity of #2 plastic and cellophane in my fridge.

(Did you notice, though, the bottle of milk in the back? Yeah, that's raw whole milk. I'm now a member of the very clandestine East Bay Raw Milk Co-op; once a week we take our pre-ordered bottles from a cooler tucked discreetly by the side of someone's house. Have you ever tasted raw milk? Someday I'll write an entry about it. It's astounding. It's like arriving at a dairy oasis after years of wandering the endless windswept dunes of rBGH. But I digress.)

Like I said, I'm not proud. But I'll tell you, the chicken was delicious. And so although he's no environmentalist, and certainly not a locavore, I feel secure knowing I can always count on old Trader Joe in times like these.

first tries

All along, I’ve made good soup.

I think the first time I actually, legitimately cooked a meal for people unrelated to me by blood was in college, when I lived in a co-op. Each term, every one of the 55 of us who lived together (our co-op was called the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, after the eponymous Mollie Katzen cookbook) was responsible for designing and executing dinner for the house.

At the tender age of 19 or 20, I had only ever lived at home, or had eaten iceberg lettuce and chewy lasagna from the buffet in the dorm. Now, faced with the monumental task of creating a menu and bringing it into fruition with the help of three other kids in corduroy pants and funny haircuts, I went with the safest of flavors, the flavor most likely to succeed: sweet. I think we had a grated carrot salad with raisins and a creamy dressing, couscous, and squash soup. The meal turned out to be very tasty, uniformly soft, and almost entirely orange. The soup, if I recall, was especially flavorful. I was pleased. My housemates were pleased. No one contracted scurvy that week.

Buoyed by my early, beta-carotene-infused success, I continued over the years to try my hand at soups and stews, experimenting with beans, noodles, and other root vegetables. During that irritating week when I ate only raw food, I blended up a delicious cold avocado gazpacho, which I returned to again and again in order to avoid eating any more kale.

All winter this past year, the sunburst zucchinis, parsley bunches and celery stalks that were just about to cross that limp, squishy threshold towards the great compost heap in the sky would instead get diced up and tossed into the crockpot, gaining a new lease on life as a hearty stew. (Oh, how I love my crockpot! Rest assured, dear reader, the crockpot gets its own entry one of these days.) I impressed myself on more than one occasion with a very quick vegetarian split-pea soup recipe. And I have continued to perfect my squash soup. Even though it is a lengthy and labor-intensive process, the steaming bowls of creamy orange liquid never fail to delight my taste buds and those of my tablemates.

With all of this accumulated soup confidence, I felt ready to step into the uncharted landscape of matzoh ball soup.

I am home with my parents this weekend for Passover, and my mom and I spent much of the day in the kitchen. After a morning trip to the farmer’s market for last-minute supplies (and a few samples of sheep’s milk cheddar), we returned home to prepare what turned out to be quite a feast.

My mom, though she wouldn’t say it herself, is quite the chef. While her upbringing in France was not without its trials, the French and their gastronomic fixations surely bestowed upon my mother a sensitive and sophisticated palate. Without ever really having been taught, she has an innate knack for concocting flavorful, hearty, healthy fare. Her simple red-leaf lettuce salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette disappears quickly from our old green plastic salad bowl. Her wine-poached white fish is light and sumptuous. I can think of no food more comforting than the rice-peas-chicken-cheese concoction she used to stir up on rainy evenings.

And today, for the first time ever in her storied life, my dear mother made a brisket.

Let me clarify that. She did not just “make a brisket.” Do you know that old fable about Michelangelo, wherein someone asks him how he constructed the masterpiece of David from a formless chunk of marble, and ol’ Mike says “I just cut away everything that was not David”? Well, with the assistance of a decent recipe, a few organic prunes and baby carrots, my mom worked a similar magic on that long, flat hunk of cow meat that she began with. Her brisket melted in our mouths; it was tender; it burst with flavor. Truly, a work of art.

While mom was effecting miracles in the oven, I was over at the stove, tinkering with my humble veggie broth and dropping sticky, doughy balls made of egg and matzoh meal into boiling water. This, too, was a first-time effort. As it turns out, it was very simple – I whipped up the aforementioned dough balls and dropped them in to simmer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I used carrots, onions, a cube of bouillon, roasted garlic, salt and pepper to make a very tasty broth. Just before the meal started I added the matzoh balls to the broth.

Dear reader, I kid you not: it was an unqualified success. All three of us happily slurped it up. The matzoh balls were light and fluffy, not too dense; the broth was savory yet not overpowering. How can I say this? It tasted authentic. My soup record remains untarnished.

I also made charoset, the delicious chopped-fruit mixture that’s the integral ingredient in the Hillel sandwich. It’s a mélange of very small pieces of red apple and green pears, plus walnuts, currants, raisins, cinnamon, honey, and a splash of wine. A small dish of it rested resplendently on our seder plate, next to the piece of ginger root that was standing in for the shank bone, and across from the tiny quail egg that we used because we’d run out of chicken eggs. (Somehow, it works. And our seder table was beautiful.)

But that’s not so much news. Charoset is easy, it’s fabulous, I’ve done it before. In fact it has been my signature dish at Passover seders past.

But today I feel like I took the whole enterprise to a new level. I’m in the big leagues now, y’all. With matzoh ball soup under my belt, I’ve truly entered a new phase of training to become a good Jewish grandmother.

Who knows? Maybe next year, my mom will even teach me how to make a brisket.

somehow, indeed

I've had that funny card on my fridge for almost three years, since a man in suspenders and a loincloth walked up to me in Center Camp at Burning Man -- I think it was right before a dust storm, or right after one -- and handed it to me.

(You may never have been to Burning Man; perhaps you've never heard of it. Suffice it to say, "somehow it works" is a good motto for a gathering of 40,000 revelers, all of whom are intent on a week of bachannal, in a dustblown ancient lakebed in the Nevada desert. Somehow, most likely in heavy reliance on duct tape, we got our shade structure to stay upright and functional the whole time. Somehow, event producers manage to set a 40-foot effigy to blazes without anyone getting hurt. Somehow, our neighbors served up a cold, crunchy spinach and cranberry salad five days into the event. I'm not sure how, but somehow. But I digress.)

The leftovers from yesterday evening's heavenly sundried tomato-pumpkin seed mixture made it into my scrambled eggs this morning, and I started out full of buoyancy. But I sat next to a group of young men on the bus whose sole and enthusiastic topic of conversation was guns -- what sizes and styles were preferable, who had guns for sale and for how much, how many each of the boys planned to have. I stepped off the bus with an ache in the pit of my stomach. There must be other ways for boys to become warriors, in our time.

And the air at work was heavy, too; though my boss is on vacation, he spent much of the day in a telephonic screaming match with the legal secretaries as they struggled to file a series of documents. I was shielded to some degree from the conflict, but it penetrated my experience nonetheless. I was only too happy to get out of there this evening.

On my way home I stopped at the meat market, Ver Brugges. I am fortunate to live right around the corner from a wonderful stretch of College Avenue that is home to a meat market, a wine shop, a florist, an independent pharmacy, a family-owned grocer, a bakery, a tea house, and the Wood Tavern, just a year old and utterly outstanding. All in the same block! (I think there's also a bridal shop, but I haven't stopped in there yet.)

Walking into Ver Brugges, I feel like I've entered something of an alternate universe. There are about ten men who work there, all with grease-stained aprons, many with subtle overtones of Jersey in their voices. They sell all kinds of meat and fish, plus cheese, pickles from a glass barrel in regal repose on the metal counter, and mesquite wood chips. When I asked the man who sold me my swordfish (wild, Hawaiian) why the wild Alaskan salmon was so inexpensive -- let us not forget that salmon season has been cancelled, dear reader -- he shrugged and said, "'cause it doesn't taste very good." Can't argue with that.

He also told me that the only way he'd prepare that salmon would be to cure it with sugar. I perked up my ears. I eat low-sugar, but that's beside the point; he'd just revealed to me a bit of insider information! Aha, I thought to myself: this man works in a meat shop, he'll probably have some good advice about how to prepare meat! This, friends, is somewhat of a revelation. The people from whom I buy my food can do more than pass said food over a laser scanner and hand it to me in bags? These people can give me tips? These people might, in fact, be considered experts, since they are literally up to their elbows in the stuff all day?

It boggles the mind.

So, anyway, I left the shop with a little spring in my step (and a little parmigiano-reggiano in the bag with my fish; watch me branch out!) and headed home. But not before I picked a couple of rosemary sprigs from the bush on the corner, and not before I left a little note for my three-houses-down neighbors, the ones with the lemon tree that is absolutely drooping with lemons. This tree is glutted with lemons. Lemons abounding, lemons multiplying, lemons to the left and the right. If this tree were a cow, and the lemons were its milk, it would be baying in displeasure. So I left them a note: "I would willingly receive any lemons you can't use!" It appears that they haven't been using any of their lemons whatsoever, so I might be about to hit the jackpot. I'll keep you posted.

And once at home, it was time for a snack before I hit the trail -- so I slathered a few thick tomato slices with my homemade hummus, topping them off with slivers of parmigiano and a pinch of salt. YUM! Yum, dear reader. While this snack did confirm my hypothesis that one should really not bother buying tomatoes 'til they are in season, because why eat a tomato that's not green and yellow, and called a "green zebra," it was still delicious, and filled me up to head out onto my favorite after-work trail up in Strawberry Canyon.



The birds up in the hills said "tureeee!" and "tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk" and "carrooor," and the sunset was a resplendent golden rose color through the redwoods, and the small pains of the day faded.

I returned home to put the marinating swordfish in the broiler, and dropped five miniature artichokes in the steamer. Thinking creatively I decided to try to make a tahini dipping sauce for the artichoke. I'm embarassed to even tell you about this, but we both know I'm in a learning process, so I shall disclose that I mixed tahini, olive oil, water, lemon, and canola mayonnaise together in a skillet. Well-intentioned, yes; edible, not so much.

But somehow it worked; I elicited my own groans of joy from dipping the soft, earthy artichoke hearts in the left-over olive oil/ fennel seed/ orange-rosemary vinaigrette from the prior evening's salad.

And, much to my dismay, because I'd hoped I was going to be able to report to you that I BROILED SOMETHING for the first time ever, it appears that the broiler doesn't work. Or maybe I didn't give it the proper secret hand signal, or something. (Seriously, gentle readers -- am I supposed to do something to start the broiler other than turn the oven knob to "broil"?)

Either way, no space-aged infrared rays penetrated my poor swordfish down there in the little drawer, so I had to admit defeat and move it up to the the oven. Well, somehow it worked, because about 12 minutes later, I thoroughly enjoyed a fine, light, garlic-citrus-rosemary-flavored swordfish feast.

Look at how well it all works. I am nourished, I am alive, my heart is open. And somehow -- just like this, each day a cacophony of glass-breaking near misses and a symphony of heavenly synchronicities, and I in its midst, fumbling and dancing -- I am learning.

the simplest of pleasures

It is not often that a yoga teacher will start class with a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Usually, after an opening "om" or two, the lithe and glowing woman at the front of the room will share a kernel of wisdom from the likes of Sri Nisargadatta, or someone of his ilk. The Buddha, even. But tonight, she began by describing a Nathaniel Hawthorne story called "The Birthmark." I myself have never read this story, but apparently it's the tale of a brilliant scientist with a beautiful wife. The wife was physically perfect in every way. . . except for the big, round, red birthmark on her left cheek. This anomalous marking drove the scientist crazy, so he worked and he worked until he devised a special potion that would remove it. He applied the potion, the birthmark fell away, and shortly thereafter his wife died.

And the teacher, whose class I had never taken before, wove that theme of perfection throughout the hour and a half that we spent together. As she directed us to bring our right feet forward into lunges, and windmill our arms up into warrior pose, she spoke of the yogic wisdom that we are all already perfect, exactly as we are. That this form, this life, is not a mistake.

She reminded us that of all of the myriad, untold forms that Life could have assumed here in this grand drama of existence, of all of the gorgeous ways that previously-unassociated molecules could have assembled themselves into functioning organisms, Life chose to manifest itself as each one of us. So each of us is a piece of Life's perfection.

I chuckled to myself. Good evening, universe. Yes, I got it. Mm-hmm. Thanks.

I sat in the back of the bus today, on the way home from work. I was listening to my mp3 player, but even over the music I could hear the muffled din of my mind. What was it saying? Oh, I couldn't tell you precisely, but I know that it was just a variation on a theme I know so well, that so many of us know so well here in these modern times: there's something wrong with you. You didn't work hard enough today, you don't look good enough, you should've done this, you shouldn't have done that. On, and on, and on.

But I remembered what the incredible Buddhist teacher Cheri Huber said, when I heard her speak last night at a church in Berkeley -- if you can be there, actually be there, to meet your conditioned mind, you can choose to be present instead of falling victim to a story about your limitations.

So, there on the bus, hours before any surprising literary references were made, I relaxed. I decided to practice unconditional self-love, radical acceptance, by saying to myself, "I am perfect." Just as I am, just as I appear and feel and be, I am a perfect creation on this earth.

The thought made me smile. My heart softened; the stern, judgmental voices quieted down. I felt a spreading warmth in my limbs. And then I looked outside at the people walking down the street and beamed at them, because they were perfect too. And I noticed that if I angled my body a certain way, as I sat tucked there in the very back row of the bus, that I could feel the 6 o'clock sunlight on my face through the bus' big back window. So I closed my eyes and let the setting sun warm my cheeks. It felt so good.

And soon enough, I was home.

In the bluish evening light suffusing my kitchen, I blended up some sundried tomatoes that I had soaked all day on a whim (might that make them re-constituted tomatoes?), dark green pumpkin seeds, and olive oil. I layered this delicious spread onto a thin cracker with some goat feta. (Note to self: as much fun as it is to have one kind of cheese in the house, it's surely more fun to have more cheese.) It tasted nutty and pungent. It tasted red. Its boldness, its fortitude surprised me. And all I had to do to experience this unlikely blessing was to mix three ingredients together in the cuisinart.



Food is a miracle! Food is eager to please, to offer up an undulating and ever-expanding spectrum of sensory experience. When approached with care and received with consciousness, food -- like the slow sweep of a lover's fingertips across the collarbone, like the foaming rush of sea tide around bare ankles, like sunlight caressing a cheek through the scratchy bus window -- does not hew to any abstract standards of perfection.

The pleasure of food is its unexpectedness, its newness, its flavors like light through a prism; mutable, slowly turning. To impose arbitrary standards of "perfection" -- upon one's food, one's world or one's self -- is to close a door on life's opulence, spread out like a banquet here in this moment.

I think we haven't learned that too well yet, here in America. I mean, I know I certainly missed the memo. So we make discoveries for ourselves, make mistakes, and teach each other. We light the way for the companions around us. The brighter your heart is glowing, the easier it is for me to see the path -- so please, friends, for my sake as well as yours, go on and glow.

Namaste.

I don't know.

My friend Dara is a master chef. She is one of those individuals for whom food and cuisine are second nature, one who must have been marked before birth by some benevolent goddess wielding a long wooden spoon and wearing a stained apron.

Watching Dara move around her kitchen is like watching a dancer occupy space -- fluid and effortless. I've sighed with pleasure at her curry and coconut chutney, proclaimed my love for her onion torte, and invoked the deity after a bite of her chocolate cake.



Last night we went together to our friend's birthday party, a celebration both of her birth and of the new life growing inside her. Dara and I sat on the couch together, savoring cake and the sweetness of community, talking about food, and about my recent, tottering first footsteps on this path which she's been walking her whole life.

Having read my blog for a few moments before we left her house to come to the party, she'd noticed that I had previously distinguished between the "stalk kind" of red onions and the "round kind." Dara gently disabused me of my ignorance, explaining the miraculous life cycle of the simple onion.

Apparently, said onion gets bigger and rounder over the course of seasons! Those stalks of onions we see now, as well as the thin stalks of garlic that look like green onions, those are actually onions and garlic at the height of freshness, in season! And the round onions available year-round in the store? Those are actually preserved from a few seasons ago! Dara asked, "have you ever noticed how, when you squeeze a round onion, it's not hard? It has a bit of give?" Yes, I replied, incredulous.

She informed me that that's because those onions are months old. When stored well, they are perfectly proper to eat, but the bald truth about those round, plump, ubiquitous onions upon which I have relied so heavily throughout my humble cooking life, is that they are old.

Well, as you can imagine, this changes everything. This new revelation means, of course, that the role of onions in one's culinary stylings is meant to change over the course of a year. When onions are the way they are now, light and crisp, juicy and sharp, they can add a flavor to cooking that is, for lack of a better word, springy. However, when onions have swollen to their spherical maturity, they bring a mellower, sweeter, dare I say autumnal quality to one's dishes.

And I simply had no idea.

There is so much I don't know, dear reader. I don't know how to combine herbs for flavors that pop and saturate one's senses, instead of simply tasting jumbled and overpowering. I don't know what makes a good marinade. I don't know how long things should boil, or simmer, or roast such that they pass into that slim window of perfection, just a few moments shy of limp or burned. I don't know how to store herbs in my fridge so that they don't shrivel so quickly. I certainly don't know the lexicon of food, the way that adjectives and qualifiers nestled next to simple words like "salt," "oil," and "mustard" can suggest a profuse variation of tastes. Apparently, I barely know what an onion is!

Yet this outright ignorance causes me no chagrin, dear reader; instead, it gives me the giggles. I like it. I am excited about it. I rub my hands together with an avid glee at my own lack of knowledge.

Why is that, you ask? Well, first of all, because it means that there is a whole encyclopedia of gastronomical information and experience that awaits me. From here, I can see a whole new horizon of learning, playing, growing. I can anticipate exalted successes and instructive mistakes (where the ratio of exaltation to instruction is perhaps best left unquantified for now).

And second of all, I feel gladness because there is much that I do know.

I know that I love the earthy flavor and astounding hue of purple potatoes.



I know that I love sweet, savory flavors like carrot soup made with rye, fennel and caraway. I know that I feel in myself a bright green energy after eating an especially tasty salad. I know that I feel nourished by warm foods, stewy foods, ratatouille foods.

I know that it's a beautiful act of honoring myself, not a forlorn deprivation, when I remove sugar from my diet. (And I also know, like I know my own name, that it's crucial to keep a bar of 85% dark chocolate in the house.)

I know that I love to crumble feta over sliced olives, diced pickles, sundried tomatoes, and chives, and then scramble it all up with free range brown-shelled eggs.

I know that my body knows what it needs. My rumbly hunger signals contains valuable information, and if I just listen, I can discern exactly how to respond. My body is capable of boundless radiance, pleasure, openness; it is capable of a profound happiness arising from flavors and words and flowers and people, and from simply being still.

This body will always tell me how to care for it. And it's my joyful journey to learn the art of doing just that.

Chickpea Potato Salad

I'm not sure what proportion of ingredients to use, so just play with it, to your liking.

cubes of cooked purple potatoes
chickpeas
sliced fennel bulb
parsley
tomato
feta

dressing:

fennel seeds
olive oil
brown rice vinegar
lemon
salt

Sweet Saturdays

Mornings at this time of year, as I mentioned earlier, are pretty enchanting. Normally, though, I'm just taking it all in as I hustle out to catch the 8:12 bus to downtown Oakland. Then, after being inside all day, I make it home in time to catch the resplendent evening light.

Witness:

Morning.

Evening.




Not bad.

Weekends are, of course, a different matter. While some of the weekend is usually reserved for work on my amazing women's environmental network project, I do my fair share of enjoying life around town or out on the trail. Sometimes it's a real practice for me to slow down and loll about after a week of going-going-going, but I know I need to do it in order to avoid crashing ('cause it ain't pretty when that happens).

I've found that the rhythm of the Jewish sabbath can beautifully support that time-out-of-time resting experience that my body and spirit so deeply need, so I try to honor Shabbat in my own way. Sometimes it's going 24 hours without the computer (I'm amazed and perhaps a bit unsettled at how challenging that is), sometimes it's a day in the woods, sometimes it's just staying in bed til noon, reading with the windows open.

One of my favorite places to spend the early part of Saturday is the Berkeley farmer's market. Oh, how I love a good farmer's market. These transformed parking lots or blocked-off streets are bastions of community, relationship and simplicity, pockets of gentleness in our buzzing, flickering, networked-yet-alienated lives. Even five or six years ago, long before I had any awareness of how or, indeed, why to cook excellent food for myself, I remember waiting in eager anticipation for Sunday to come around again so I could visit the Hollywood farmer's market.

Stretching for several blocks, it was not only a dizzying cornucopia of fresh produce and other assorted delicious foods, it was also a true melting pot. Hung-over hipsters hiding bleary eyes behind big sunglasses wait in line for coffee, while short Salvadoran women haggle over corn cobs at the booth next door. The same African-American man, every week for years and years, plays his drum and sings with the enraptured crowd of bouncing children gathered near him. Gay and lesbian couples push strollers. Celebrities try to look inconspicuous. The blind guitarist plays his mournful melodies. The big-bellied lavender salesman: "who wants lavender, talk to me, talk to me! Who wants lavender, work with me, work with me!" I can still hear his song. Truly, the best of L.A.

The best of any town, really -- no matter where you are, you know you're certain to share sweet conversation and delight your tastebuds when you visit the weekend market.




So, back to today -- I biked to Center Street in downtown Berkeley around 11:00 and spent a glorious couple of hours examining beautiful produce, listening to bluegrass at one end of the market and blues at the other, enjoying an organic buckwheat crepe filled with chicken, cheddar cheese, sundried tomatoes, and spinach, and walking around with a goofy smile on my face, happy to be surrounded by earth's abundance and peaceful people.

Because I'm cultivating a more daring sensibility for trying unusual (well, unusual for me) foods, I came back from the market today with quite an array of goodies that have heretofore never entered my kitchen.

I got some raw fennel (which was served in a salad at a potluck last weekend, with sliced kumquats no less), arugula flowers, miniature artichokes, fresh chives, goat feta, and orange-rosemary vinegar! (About the latter, I can only say WOW.)



Of course, I also got some staples: fresh eggs, plump strawberries, asparagus, leeks, onions. And after a trip to the local grocery and the local meatmarket, I have all the ingredients for some serious playtime in the kitchen this week.


Lunch was an experiment in salad. Small, crunchy hearts of butter lettuce, avocado, sliced fennel bulb, arugula flowers, dressed with olive oil, orange-rosemary vinegar, fennel tips, salt, and a squeeze of lemon. The result was sweet, bitter, tangy, tart, and light. I ate it on my porch, on the purple chair, in the dappled afternoon sunlight.

As you might imagine, I enjoyed every bite.

When food bloggers fast

"Food blogger," huh? I know, it may be a little presumptuous to call myself that, here at the outset of post #3. I'm just getting my sea legs with this thing, learning how to navigate the waters of this new and exciting project. And yet, much has already opened up, I am happy to report.

When I used to think of myself as a writer, back in late high school when I felt like I knew everything, I would walk through my life conceptualizing my experiences as stories to be told. I would meet someone, or learn some bit of history, and imagine the one-act play or the short story that could be spun from it. The landscape of life was strewn with sparkling gems of stories, just waiting for me to tell them.

Throughout college and beyond, my love of writing (and also of photography) faded as I worked to make my way through the intellectual and emotional challenges of young adulthood. I've never stopped writing poetry, and I've never stopped journalling, but writing became less about a creative outlet and more about self-exploration and healing. In the past 6 or 7 years I've filled many a journal with my musings on anguish and redemption.

And there was the creative writing class I took, third quarter of my senior year in college. I remember distinctly feeling like I had been, somehow of my own volition, wandering through a dry desert for the past 3 and 2/3 years, and suddenly I was allowed to slake my thirst. As you can imagine, it felt pretty good to encourage those sluggish creative juices to start flowing again. Incidentally, that was the same quarter I started working on the organic farm at my college, which was similary epiphanic. Mustard flowers! Warm, sun-ripened peaches right from the tree! The miracle of planting, tending, and growing! It was my own little Renaissance.

Well, then I moved to NYC, and stepped onto this legal career path which I've been treading for the past seven or so years. It has certainly had its ups and downs, sometimes a source of misery and sometimes a source of empowerment, excitement, fascination, and (in fact) miracles beyond my wildest imagination, but it certainly hasn't allowed me much downtime. So writing as a sustained discipline, again, took a back seat.

Because of all that, this blog is truly a return -- coming full circle to a point on the cycle I know so well, yet one that is so full of promise and newness.

When I was in high school I had the following Pablo Neruda quotation stuck on the wall above the door to my bedroom:

"You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend . . . I bow to them . . . I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down . . . I love words so much . . . "

I felt that so deeply. Re-reading that quote returns me to the flushed, thunderous passions of my writing-focused teenage years. Writing was my haven, my power place.

Just now, in looking it up on the internet, I found that the rest of the quote reads:

"I love words so much. . . The unexpected ones . . . The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop . . . Vowels I love . . . They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew . . . I run after certain words . . . They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem . . . I catch them in midflight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives . . . And I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go . . . I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves . . . Everything exists in the word . . . "

They are so beautiful I want to fit them all into my poem. That resonates so strongly now. What a blessing.

Anywaaaaaaaaay. So, Miz Food Blogger, what about the food? Very astute question, my dear reader. The funny part is, here I am, three posts into my bloggy foray into the world of food, and today was all about not eating.

Yes, today was a pretty rough day, as I had a blood test at 4:00 p.m. that required 12 hours of fasting prior. Since I wasn't up having a delicious meal at 3:45 a.m., that meant that I woke up hungry and was hungry all day. Grumpy, light-headed, slow. Why such a rigorous blood test, you ask?

Well. This time around on planet Earth, for my special journey of learning, I have been endowed with a constellation of symptoms that together comprise a syndrome, called PCOS -- polycystic ovary syndrome. It's a largely mysterious, insulin-driven condition in which a woman's ovaries are over-active in terms of the amount of male hormones they produce. It's relatively common in the Eastern-European Jewish crowd; we of the knishes and challah and kugel. I'll spare you the gory details, but in essence, PCOS and insulin resistance -- which is the root of diabetes -- go hand in hand. Since diabetes runs in my family, it's especially incumbent upon me to manage my insulin levels. And, as you might have guessed, the best way to do that is through mindful eating.

I have learned a lot about PCOS and insulin resistance over the years, mostly by gleaning bits of information from other people, and a few key books. What's repeated throughout the literature are a few simple eating guidelines: always pair carbs with protein and/ or fiber, and always make sure that the carb to protein ratio is no greater than 2:1. That's because carbs by themselves cause an insulin spike (i.e., the sugar rush), whereas somehow proteins and fibers tend to mellow out the body's reaction to carbs. So, for example, eating a little almond butter with your apple is a good idea; spreading hummus on your crackers is a good idea; some tahini in the oatmeal is a good idea. You get the picture. When insulin is kept in balance, ovaries calm down, and body is happy.

I tell you all of this as background information. These health concerns, and their corrollary eating principles, will surely shape and spark my kitchen witchery as I become more adept at cooking and eating. And so, in turn, they will become one of the glittery strands of story that I will weave throughout this blog, as I chronicle my own personal food odyssey.

Ultimately, it all comes around again to pleasure. Good health just feels so damn good. Eating well feels so good. Eating food that is sumptuous, and that also has a literally healing effect on my body, feels terrific. It feels like I'm spreading my arms wide in the warm, scented night air and lifting my face to the moon, in gratitude for the aliveness in my heart.

And that feeling? That's the one I'm aiming for.

Rise and shine

I love springtime mornings in North Oakland.

First of all, you should know that I live in what can best be described as a treehouse. It's a light-filled, upstairs in-law unit (these types of apartments, usually little cottages that people build at the back of their property or above their garages, are wildly popular in Berkeley and Oakland) that is absolutely ensconced in greenery.

Directly outside my living room window is an immense and vibrant redwood. I love to sit and watch the squirrels and birds doing their daily rituals and frolics in the swaying branches. When I leave the door open in the evenings, the doorway becomes a picture frame for evening light catching on the bright green leaves of the trees in the neighbor's yard.

So when I wake up, and walk into my living room/ kitchen, the house is filled with morning light filtered through leaves and branches. Short of waking up in, say, a yurt, and opening the flap to greet wild nature, this is a pretty good way to start things off. Today it made me holler "hello, day!" to no-one in particular.

And the action doesn't stop there. As soon as I leave my house, I'm met with wafts of fragrance emanating from the neighbors' jasmine bushes and crawling wisteria vines, as well as other unknown species of swoony-scented flowers. There are some gardens in my neighborhood that are just riotous. Flowers of every color of the rainbow! Extravagant, droopy vegetable leaves! Blossoming vines snaking their way over trellises! Burbling fountains! You know, sometimes I miss my parents a lot, and I entertain the notion of moving back to L.A. . . . but then I walk down my street.

Not to mention, the morning bustle on College Avenue -- the many people (presumably members of that lucky breed, freelancers) savoring their coffee and newspapers and conversations at Royal Grounds' outside tables, the florist setting out her refulgent wares, the family owners of Yasai market arranging pears and apples to entice passers-by.

But wait. Let me back up. Before I take you out of my wee sanctuary, dear reader, I have to tell you about breakfast. (This being my proclaimed attempt at writing a food blog, perhaps you were wondering where the food went.) I love springtime mornings in North Oakland, but rain or sun, the height of blooming spring or the depths of gloomy winter ("depths" being a relative term, of course), I love to eat breakfast.

There are some people in this world who don't like breakfast. These poor souls say things like, "I'm just not hungry in the morning," or "I can't face food before 10 a.m." Perhaps most perplexing: "I forgot to eat." (You forgot to eat? Do you have to write post-its to remind yourself to breathe and sleep, too? So strange, so unfathomable. But I digress.) I am not one of these people! I wake up in the morning excited to get going with my first meal of the day. One of the reasons I loved living with my dear friend M was that she, too, was a ravenous breakfast-eater. She told me that as a child, her mother would say, "I love to watch you eat breakfast, because you're like a hungry animal at the table." That's the way I feel, too. It's morning! I'm alive! Bring on the fuel! Yes.

For most of my life it's been cereal and milk, cereal and milk, cereal and milk. Of course there was the occasional detour to eggs and waffles, or a scoot down the vacation hotel buffet (canned cherries in syrup? no thanks). And of course, cereal choices slowly evolved over time as I learned about things like flax and buckwheat, and as boxes of milk were replaced with boxes of soy, almond, and -- lately -- hemp milk. And I did go through a phase of eating quinoa, coconut oil, stevia, and almonds every morning. But the song has largely remained the same: I pour some stuff out of one box, then pour some more stuff out of another box, and go for it. A quick scrub of the bowl, and I'm out the door.

Then, about two winters ago, I took myself to Mexico for an ill-fated yoga retreat preceded by a very sweet adventure, complete with a trip to the Monarch butterfly sanctuary in the state of Michoacan (walking through thrumming clouds of orange butterflies: a distinct highlight of my life). One morning in the tiny town of Tepoztlan, prior to hiking up to the very tall top of a mountain to visit a very lackluster temple, I sat by an open window at a table covered with a green tablecloth, in an upstairs cafe, and ordered a typical Mexican breakfast. Black beans, warm corn tortillas, huevos revueltos (that's "scrambled," not "revolting"), queso fresco, salsa de tomate, and a couple of lime wedges. Maybe there was a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, too.

And I said mmmmm-MMMM! I had forgotten how fabulous this particular breakfast arrangement was. (When I was growing up, my folks and I travelled extensively in Mexico, the three of us cramped into a rental car, my dad careening us over crumbling mountain roads. That's another story, but thanks to those adventures I grew to love Mexican food.) So light, yet so substantial. So simple, yet so flavorful! My love of the Mexican breakfast was re-ignited, and every now and again upon returning Stateside, I would make it for myself.

For the last year or so, though, it's been back to the old staple in the a.m. It's true, I have ventured into the world of hot cereal -- oatmeal, or cream of rice or buckwheat, plus a few almonds and raisins and cinnamon. Requires a little more clean-up, but it's delicious, and best of all it sticks to the gut till lunchtime. Merrily I rolled along, morning after morning, stirring up some steaming, grainy mush or another. Nothing challenged my hot-cereal paradigm, and I was content.

Until. Until! Yes, again breakfast is evolving. A couple of weekends ago, my dear friend R and I spent two nights in an absolutely adorable cabin in Big Sur, for my birthday. This place has a clawfoot bathtub on the porch, so you can sit in a blissfully hot bubble bath as you look out over the misty woods. Incredible. We went on glorious hikes, rested by the fake fireplace (flip the switch, and boom! Cavemen could never have imagined it) and cooked. Well, really, she cooked, while I watched.

R is a natural in the kitchen. In fact, just in being her friend and watching her eat I've learned a lot about enjoying one's food. This woman relishes her meals. She somehow resembles a squirrel, in that she takes her food in her hands as she eats it; she uses her little fingers and then gives her fingertips a satisfied slurp. She's a true gourmand, and her delight provokes mine.

Anyway, back at the cabin, she whipped up an amazing chicken curry for dinner one night, and both mornings for breakfast she made this amazing egg-soy-vegetable scramble. It was very quick, but involved sauteeing vegetables, pouring the sauteed vegetables into a bowl, mixing them with eggs and soy sausage, and then pouring the whole mixture back into the pan to scramble it up. And I was moved to say mmmmm-MMMMM! Delicious. Much to my delight, as well, this concoction stuck to the gut til lunchtime! Even after our hikes! I was inspired.

So since then I've bought a couple of half-dozen cartons of eggs, and I've been experimenting. Eggs and small, sweet peppers and olives! Eggs, onions, and chicken sausage! And today, I rocked this fabulous combination: sauteed red spring onion, parsley, eggs and a generous dollop of Muhamarra roasted red pepper and walnut spread (which is delicious), scrambled up and then piled on top of a warm, organic corn tortilla with melted raw goat cheddar.

Pure genius, if I may say so.


And so tasty.

And that's the ever-unfolding story of breakfast. What do you like to eat in the morning?

And so it begins.

Hi, my name is Caitlin, and I love blogs.

I have about 15 or 20 that I read on a regular basis -- some are light, some are profound; some are political, some personal. I love these blogs because I love the connective power of writing. Writing, I believe, is among the most intimate of human activities. When we write we can speak our truest voice -- in putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, we translate the secret and inimitable symbols of our being into shared language, so that others can glimpse our unique inner terrain. Writing is a way for us to show others what this teeming profusion of life on earth looks like from where we stand.

(Poets know, too, that writing fans the flames of love and revolution.)

And so I read the words of others to understand more about this world, about what it is to be alive and embodied and thinking and feeling and learning. I read to gain knowledge, to be inspired, to be challenged, to see farther. It delights me, to read someone else's words and think, "wow, I've never looked at ____________ like that before!" Fill in the blank with anything, really: life, relationships, music, politics, education, travel, food.

Ah, food. The food blogs! If you've not yet toured the universe of online diaries dedicated to all things culinary, let me assure you it is an infinite one. There are blogs about food and cooking in general, about specific types of cuisine, about the use of particular ingredients, and about health-related dietary restrictions. A member of the latter category is one of my most favorite blogs, although the word "restriction" isn't exactly what comes to mind upon reading this woman's tales of abundant joy, love and flavor.

No, Shauna Ahern's Gluten-Free Girl is a paean to the overflowing deliciousness of existence. She discovered that she has celiac disease in 2005, and since that discovery her life has undergone an utter transformation -- as soon as she removed gluten from her diet, she gained a level of health and vitality previously unbeknownst to her. Since that pivotal moment, she has gone on to write a book (which I am about to read), connect with the love of her life, and continue to help and inspire thousands of people to find their own equilibrium through food.

I love reading Shauna, because Shauna loves. She adores the taste of food, and describes her culinary adventures with mouth-watering specificity. With her words, she brings each bite to life, conjuring up so vividly the mosaic of sensate delights which makes up her days. She also adores her husband Danny, "The Chef" -- the openness of their hearts, the freedom with which they utterly relish one another, the clarity of their twin souls together, is breathtaking. She adores her community, her craft, her world, her life, and that love is woven through every essay she composes and is evident in every photograph she takes. Shauna, to put it in a nutshell, says YES, and her blog has inspired me greatly.

Through Shauna's blog I've started reading other food blogs (I've even reconnected with a friend-of-a-friend from college, Orangette, who's become a renowned food blogger and a soon-to-be published author!). It's a fascinating and multi-hued world, and I feel like I'm on an odyssey of discovery. A whole world of people out there, whose days and nights are dedicated to the enjoyment of food, of life, of each other, and the recording and sharing of that enjoyment!

And so I come to the purpose, the reason for being, of this nascent blog.

For me, food has been a source of some angst throughout most of my life. My lineage is hardy, of the meat-and-potatoes ilk: Russian-Jewish, Polish, Irish . . . none of whom are particularly known for their willowy figures. So while I am a strong, healthy woman, there has always been the sense that I have some pounds to lose, especially growing up in image-conscious Los Angeles. I also have congenital health issues, the management of which would be much simpler without the physical complications of excess weight.

Suffice it to say, food often feels like the enemy. Something to be restricted and carefully apportioned; something that ought to be low in fat, low in cholesterol, low in sugar, low in carbohydrates. The "right" food ought to make one thin, and the "wrong" food can catalyze catastrophe. Food is, in a word, problematic.

As you can imagine, since I am human, I am wont to crash through the meticulous parameters I create for myself around food. I indulge in all of the most oft-denied victuals when that righteous path becomes impossible. A day's worth of eating can trace a wild oscillation between buttoned-up control and utter disregard for any semblance of guidelines.

And enjoyment? Forget about enjoyment. Food is either bitter medicine, choked down for my own good, or fleeting, forbidden pleasure crammed in hastily and without mindful sensory experience. I sneak behind my own back.

Yet there have always been moments of savoring, of sensory delight, of true satisfaction. I was fortunate enough to travel to South Africa with my parents in 2001, and we visited an organic farm where lunch was composed from the produce grown on the premises. I remember sitting in the grass with my father, astounded at the flavors so vivid they were almost like colors in my mouth.

In 2003 I lived on a small organic farm in Arizona, and joyfully began each day by climbing the grapefruit tree to retrieve my breakfast. I remember sitting on a sun-warmed, handcrafted wooden bench with my fellow farmers, savoring the tart sweetness of each grapefruit wedge covered in soft pith.

Throughout law school, friends and I sampled the best that the East Bay's thriving restaurant scene has to offer: warm, fluffy naan dipped in spicy curry at Breads of India; spongy, savory fingerfuls of teff injera and chickpeas at Cafe Colucci; the high artistry of seasonal fare at Chez Panisse; the rustic, dramatic flavors of Wood Tavern; and of course the utterly vitalizing raw creations at Cafe Gratitude. Not to mention the loving handiwork of those self-same friends, two of whom run a highly successful organic catering company and soon-to-be restaurant, and one of whom is a personal chef and cooking teacher. Many a time I've tasted with amazement the hearty, aromatic stews that my skilled friends prepare, seemingly from thin air, on camping trips into the wilderness.

I've been on a journey for the past five or six years, one of literally coming to my senses. Emerging from the safe confines of my mind to explore the world of feeling, of movement, of play. It hasn't always been easy; in fact, it's been astoundingly challenging throughout, but it is no less than the journey of a lifetime: arriving home in my body. There is so very much abundance in my life: so much love, so much possibility, so much richness. After years of pained resistance, I am waking to see and savor the life that is my own.

And I've realized, more and more, that learning how to enjoy delicious, healthy food is utterly central to this beautiful, surprising voyage of mine. Coming to know the hunger and satiation signals of my body, and responding to those signals with love and attention by providing myself with wonderful and nutritious food, are very important keys that unlock the door of presence.

Not to mention, as I am discovering, that food is fun! Food words are exotic, particular, sonorous. Buying food from farmer's markets is an exercise in imagination and visual stimulation -- oooh, look at this! I wonder what I could do with that? And playing with flavors, discovering which combinations of ingredients and seasonings fall flat, and which ones light fireworks of joy in my mouth, is like learning a new and endlessly engaging art form.

So I've been paying attention to my food, more and more -- letting my mind play with possibilities, branching out, and spending much more time in the kitchen. And the beautiful food blogs that I've discovered have awakened in me the long-dormant twin loves of writing and photography, which used to be so much a part of the fabric of my life but which have given way in recent years to the constraints of time.

And so I find myself here, beginning a new blog. It is a food blog, of sorts, but just as food is a gateway into pleasure, mindfulness, and healing, this blog is also a blog about my journey into the present moment. The road home to here and now is a lush and living road; while it's possible to fall in a pothole, I also find the ground rising up to meet my feet, the wind at my back, the sun warming my face and the moon illuminating my way through the dark. I invite you to join me on this journey, to share some of my experiences as I learn about coming alive in my life, to say yes to your own life as I am practicing saying yes to mine.

In the meantime, thank you for reading my inaugural post. I hope you'll be back for seconds.