Tag Archive | joyful effort

Joyous Effort

Nov28
In a way, my gratitude starts with potatoes. Some of my mother’s ancestors left Ireland and came to the U.S. when the subsistence potato crop failed catastrophically in the mid-19th Century. Some had left Ireland a century earlier, perhaps just sick of potatoes, and successfully established themselves as scions of their new country in both military and business leadership.
I’m grateful for all the elements of this, and every, lunch…

I am profoundly grateful for more than enough. In this unequal world where the rich are currently getting shamefully richer and the poor and disenfranchised are about to get hit with even more egregious existential assaults, I have enough. I’ve never been dangerously hungry, never slept out in the cold except by choice. One thing I’ve learned in recent years is not to tell others what they should do, a principle of live and let live that the politicians who’ve hijacked my ancestors’ Republican Party, and on which the formerly Grand old party was based, have lost sight of. But what I desperately wish, is that those Americans, those people everywhere, who have more than enough, would quit grasping for more and more and more. For there are so many humans, so many sentient beings of all species, who currently suffer because of the insatiable greed of the wealthiest one percent. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t sustainable. And it will only get worse from escalating profiteering and shrinking scientific and rational grounding, without strong, consistent resistance to the new world order that looms with this incoming regime.

I’m grateful to live in a supportive neighborhood, with strong and helpful friends, including one who has shoveled my pathway and helped clear my driveway, and one who came to help Wren set up a new bed-couch.
I’m grateful for nourishing moisture, even though this week’s precipitation caused numerous tree limbs to come down. I haven’t been able to get out and look around much, but can tell just around the house that several junipers didn’t withstand the heavy wet snow and ice; including the sentinel by my front gate. I’m grateful my car wasn’t parked under it, though that limb already broke off a few years ago and landed just behind the car.

I’m grateful for a cozy, solid house to shelter from the elements during snow and ice that brought awesome power to the forest; grateful for good fortune, for the choices I made throughout my life, and for the inheritances from several generations of long-ago Irish farmers and German Lutheran immigrants who made it big in banking in the 18th Century. That’s right, in the 1700s, in St. Louis and in Washington, D.C. (I’m grateful for findagrave.com which helped me follow my initial question about the provenance of my great-great-great-grandfather, Gottlieb Grammer, son of a Lutheran minister in the German state of Wurtemburg.) Some of those ancestors were no doubt One Percenters at a time when the discrepancy wasn’t quite so astonishing as it is now. It definitely been a case of trickle-down economics, in which some descendants turned a fraction of a fortune into their own wealth, and some (myself included) did not. I am the end of my mother’s line of the family, though her brother’s children are now becoming grandparents. We cousins haven’t gathered on Thanksgiving as a clan since the death of our common grandmother in 1990, whom we called Grammer, which was her middle name… What a rabbit hole! All to express that I’m grateful for my mother and her ancestors, who contributed to the illusory sense of security I experience this bright winter day.

I dug this old photo out of a trunk of Auntie’s a couple of years ago but only recently got it into a frame. I knew it was of our ancestor Gottlieb, and learned in my research today that he bore at least three daughters. Was this our original Alice, grandmother of our grandmother? This ancestral matrilineal inquiry is actually quite in keeping with the novel I’m reading… I’m grateful to be fascinated by my own mind.
I’m grateful for my now-consistent nighttime arm-warmer. Once an occasional occurrence, Topaz now sleeps here every night since I returned to the bed post-surgery.

Grateful for another perfect loaf – maybe the most perfect loaf ever – of homemade bread, and for all the little potted plants thriving under the light; grateful for the good fortune to have all the ingredients from salt and flour to solar-powered electricity and an oven and a counter and running water everything else that is more than enough to enjoy being alive in this precarious time. I wish for everyone who reads this to be grateful for what you have.

I’ve read that you should let your bread rest for at least an hour, better yet several, before slicing it, to retain moisture and allow some alchemy to happen inside. But really, who could resist a loaf that perfect, so I sliced off an end and enjoyed a deconstructed cheese sandwich for lunch, with triple-cream Brie, a cold chicken drumstick, half an avocado, mayo, and of course dark chocolate M&Ms. At the sunroom table, sitting in a comfortable chair, reading The Volcano Daughters. I’m grateful for every single element of this moment, and all the causes and conditions that led to it, including but not limited to: every bit of food and how it was grown and/or processed, and the people who did that, and the people responsible all along its trajectory from farm or factory to my table; and for the table and the tree it originated as and the craftspeople who made it, and the stone of the sunroom floor and the craftsman who gathered and laid it, and the placemat from China I bought at a little store in Kilmarnock with Auntie; and the Kindle and the technology and people behind every element of that, and access through a digital library to literature from around the world, and to Gina Maria Balibrera for writing a marvelous fable for our time about greed, fascism, insanity, myth, persecution, and survival with fabulous female characters; and for the tired old leather chair given new life with sturdy cushions, one bought, one gifted, and for the giver of that gift… Indeed I have more than enough.

Wren surveys the damage from the snow: half the tree will need to be cut down. Will it make sense to keep the remainder which is clearly losing strength, or is it time to remove the entire tree? What a change it will be either way.

I’m grateful that at just over ten weeks post hip replacement I have the strength and energy to shovel snow, that I’m able to bring joyous effort to the task, and able to reflect with equally joyous effort on all that I have to be grateful for. I’m grateful to people out there in the wide world – you – who find my musings worth reading. And I’m grateful for a surprising inquiry from a fellow sangha member this morning, to wit: We all focus this time of year on what we are grateful for or whom we are grateful to; let us consider in addition, who or what might be grateful to or for us? And so I’ll spend the rest of this Thanksgiving evening basking in the reflection of the dogs, cats, friends, students, my mother, my auntie, even trees, and anyone else I can think of who might be or once have been grateful for or to me, just as I am.

This Week in Food

Mar31

It’s been a busy week in the kitchen. I’m grateful I don’t need to hear or speak while I’m cooking. The poor ears are still not back to normal a week after the pistol mishap, but I remain optimistic. Meanwhile, it’s all I can do to keep up with the dishes generated by the food frenzy. Last week I baked a Cookies n’ Cream cake for a small birthday dinner, and saved some to finish off at Boyz Lunch.

Before their cake, though the Boyz got a spicy potato and green pea curry over Basmati rice, recipe thanks to Honey Badger. That lasted me days longer in various iterations, including cold with mayo (an impromptu Indo-potato salad), and a couple more meals supplemented with curry-roasted cauliflower.

Another exciting gustatory treat that provided several meals was sheetpan Bibimbap. I’ve never had Bibimbap before but it looked easy and fun–and it was both! The kale came out like chips, the Lions’ Mane mushrooms were succulent and crispy outside, sweet potatoes tender, and red onions perfect. The instructions were very particular (like some people I know) about not mixing things together on the pan or in the bowl: “divide the vegetables evenly… placing them in four neat piles over each portion of rice.” Topped with a fried egg, the whole pile is drizzled with sesame oil and a dollop of gochujang.

Then the directions enthusiastically recommend mixing everything together before diving in!

The last best savory indulgence was “the gnocchi that keeps on giving.” I made a large batch of sweet potato gnocchi weeks ago and froze it in batches. I sautéed sliced Lions’ Manes with Penzey’s chicken and fish seasoning (Lions’ Manes are apparently a good substitute for crab so it seemed like a good match) and set them aside, then threw in more butter and oil along with the slightly thawed gnocchi and some fresh rosemary. After the gnocchi browned and crisped I tossed the mushrooms back in, then served it up for lunch. So simple, so delicious!

I don’t use mixes often, but am trying to master homemade baked doughnuts, and the pan came on sale with three flavors of mixes. It’s taken numerous tries, but I finally succeeded with some high altitude adjustments to the mix, and a special baking spray from King Arthur. This was the first batch of chocolate. They’re getting almost good enough to serve guests!

Perhaps the piéce de resistance from the kitchen this week was focaccia. I learned some things about the sourdough and the resting state with the last batch, and was ready to dress up this one. It definitely wants fed sourdough, not discard, to get the requisite puffy rise; and plastic wrap works better to keep the dough soft overnight. I also refrigerated this batch as directed, since the mudroom is no longer cold enough. All evening and well past bedtime I dreamed about how I would decorate in the morning.

I knew I wanted our mountain silhouette and a rising sun, and used grapefruit zest for the outline and red onion for the sun. I made a big one for the birthday girl next door, and a small one for me–I mean, to practice on. Then I made cattails with perennial onions (already sprouting in the garden) and kalamata olive slices. Rosemary represents the conifers on the ridges and a dusting of flaky sea salt just like the snow up there now, with bonsai sage leaves for the sagebrush on the slopes. Closer in, a broccoli tree with red pepper fruits, Thai basil flowers, parsley and various herbs and spices completed the tableaux.

I delivered the large one along with a cream cheese spread made with leftover bits of herbs, and sat down to enjoy the same for lunch. It tasted even better than it looked! All that, and I still managed to get some work done today, and a couple of things going for the garden. Stay tuned next for “This Week in the Garden.”