Tag Archive | enough

Zoom Cooking with Amy

Dec2

I spent the day cooking. I’m grateful for the strength and energy to cook all day. I cooked down black beans with roasted tomatoes and onions left from the garden, and some oregano from the sunroom. Then rolled up a bean and cheese burrito with sour cream and fermented hot sauce for lunch. For dinner, Amy and I made Bello’s cheesy potato bread, and loaded sweet potatoes.

While the sweet potatoes were baking, we chopped red cabbage, drained garbanzo beans, tossed in some spices, then roasted that mix too. Toward the end of cooking we mixed in some chopped pecans. I forgot the dried cranberries! They were sitting on the counter but I glanced right past them. A tahini dressing with balsamic, Dijon mustard, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, and garlic powder topped the plate. Pretty easy. So delicious. A successful Instagram recipe. And lots of leftovers!

But the day began and ended with bread. This sourdough is so simple, so delicious! Mix a shaggy dough first thing in the morning, let it rise an hour, fold it four times, let it rise eight-ten hours, then four-fold it again and shape into loaves. Another hour and a half rise under a flour-dusted tea towel, and into the oven at 450℉. I’m grateful for all the delicious food I concocted today, for the kitchen, tools, fuel, and time to do so; and for Amy and our time together. I’m grateful for the contentment that settles over me more completely as time goes by: for the dawning recognition that I am enough, just the way I am. It’s taken a long, long time to get here. Some people are just born with it, but for others of us it takes a lifetime of letting go to finally arrive at peace with who we are.

Fruits of My Labors

Sep5

I’m grateful for the lettuce-leaf basil, and for Amy’s suggestion to use it on a BLT… with, gratefully, a fresh garden tomato.

I’m grateful today for how the efforts I’ve made have paid off. I don’t have a lot of the things that people value, but I value all the things I have: I have enough. I have more than enough. I’m grateful that the choices I’ve made over the past forty years or more have led me to this life, this community, these friends, this place with its home and garden. I’m most immediately grateful today for the food rolling in from the garden. I’m grateful every day for the food that finds its way to my plate from all the places it originates; I’m grateful to have any food, especially grateful to have enough food, all the food I could want, in a world of want.

I’m grateful for tomatillos, parsley, cilantro, garlic from the garden, and for this great recipe for layered enchiladas. I’ve made it a few times, but one has to be rich in tomatillos, which this summer I am! Also I used mostly parsley because there is a dearth of cilantro in the garden this year. Funny how that goes, one year you have more of something than you can use and the next year it just doesn’t take.

I’m rich in cucumbers, too, and made another batch of pickles this afternoon. I’ve got a couple of jars of lacto-fermented dill pickles in the fridge already, a couple of vinegar-dill jars preserved, and today processed three pints of bread&butter pickles, and a scant pint of fermented dill slices. We’ll know more later if that last one will keep on the shelf, but it’s worth a try. I’m grateful that after a few years, I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable pickling and preserving; it no longer has to be a huge deal that takes a whole day’s focus. I’m grateful for the fruits of my labors in the garden and in the kitchen.

And naturally, I’m grateful for another day with this wonderful dog, who had energy to walk to the canyon this evening. Panting all the way, but happy and eager, and mostly without stumbles. What a teacher he is for me! Patience, acceptance, impermanence… above all, pure love.

Autumn in August

Aug11

Honeybee sipping raindrops, I think, from a hanging basket; that, or the fading flower is dripping nectar.

Honeybee sipping raindrops, I think, from a hanging basket; that, or the fading flower is dripping nectar.

I, too, am always after the new. It gives me a thrill to capture an angle on a bee that I haven’t caught before, to see a new species of fly or wasp on a flower. I, too, am always after the new: I simply choose my new to be tamer, less risky, than many people do. Not for me a new black diamond ski slope or a slackrope across a canyon, not for me an undersea dive for treasure. Just, for me, a new bee.

Not only are there more than a dozen bumblebee species that live around here, turns out there are some flies that are extraordinary bee mimics. Who knows which this is? I guess if I do ever go back to school it will have to be in entomology.

Not only are there more than a dozen bumblebee species that live around here, turns out there are some flies that are extraordinary bee mimics. Who knows which this is? I guess if I do ever go back to school it will have to be in entomology.

Another bumblebee, I think Bombus huntii.

Another bumblebee, I think Bombus huntii.

What I once thought were shiny black bees, before I looked at them through my magic lens, turn out to be probably a species of Tachinid fly, perhaps Voria ruralis.

What I once thought were shiny black bees, before I looked at them through my magic lens, turn out to be probably a species of Tachinid fly, perhaps Voria ruralis.

Autumn came on August first. It’s not been summer since. Monsoonal flow brought rains and cooler nights. Summer seems to have evaporated. The yard has become a jungle, ten foot tall sunflowers I’ve had to limb up to allow light to the vegetables. Grasshoppers demolish potato plants. I’ve hardly had to water in the past week. Rocky mountain beeplant, or beeweed as the ranger calls it, looked scrawny, unpromising earlier, is now thick and blooming, claiming the attention of the bees and hummingbirds.

And finally another honeybee, who can't keep her tongue in her mouth while flying.

And finally another honeybee, who can’t keep her tongue in her mouth while flying.

You just never know what a day will bring, what joys and delights, what trials and fears. My friend has returned to the hospital with complications following West Nile virus. My aunt has had a second surgery for a fracture following her partial hip replacement. Both of them the dearest, kindest people one could know; neither deserving such suffering. I am doing what little I can do from here for both; and, I am doing my best to enjoy this gorgeous day. My “basic flaw” may be my tendency to believe I am never doing enough.