THIS IS AN INDEX HA HA HA

Bread and Butter Radishes

Having had my first real radish just this Friday, I felt it was necessary to spend some one on one time with the vegetable, without any distracting flavors. I was a little apprehensive, in the same way you would be if you had met Someone in line at the grocery store and decided to go out to dinner together. Sure, he’s charming now, but can he sustain hours-long conversation? Or will his wit just rub off like peach fuzz, leaving a tough leathery skin? I had similar concerns for the radish. I liked what I’d tasted so far, but then again, there’s very few things that would taste bad straight out of the field in the middle of a long hot day of farming.  Kind of like how anybody could be charming compared to vapid magazine covers and bored check out clerks in a grocery line. Would my radishes be able to sustain their beguiling quality away from the farm? More importantly, would Mr. Quotidian like them?

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The Ravishing Radish Challenge

On Friday, City Roots harvested over 80 pounds of beauty in the form of these Easter Egg Radishes. We grew them alongside the carrots as a companion crop. Fast growing radishes help the slow growing carrots by keeping the soil from crusting over before they germinate and shading out most weeds with their leaves. They also help mark rows as carrot tops can be hard to see.

As other volunteers brought in crate after crate of radishes for me to arrange, I began to feel like I was working in a candy shop. Such vibrant lollipop-like colors are usually confined to the air conditioned candy aisle at the supermarket, not a hot field. For awhile, I felt more like an artist than a farmer, lining the pearly white with the lipstick red and hanging the amethyst purple next to the blushed pink. A lady at the farmer’s market said the next day that they are pretty enough to put in a bowl as a centerpiece, forget about eating them. But I have to disagree. Something so beautiful deserves to eaten, not roll around in bowl till they’re old and wrinkly.

All of my previous experience with radishes has been of the bagged salad variety. So, spurred on by the current beauty and abundance, I rubbed the dirt off of one and took my first bite of a real radish. True to their siren song of colors, my radish began as cool and enticingly crunchy as a cucumber. But then, once I’d committed and swallowed, it threatened to drown my adventure seeking taste buds in a fiery wasabi-like spiciness. I was hooked.

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Arugula and Red Onion Soup

One of the snags people often get caught in when eating a local diet is the ebb and flow of specific foods. First, most foods are not in season year round. They come and go like the tide. They might be obtainable, but you have to travel far to get them. Second, when they are available, they are available in the same way that a tidal wave is available.

Lettuce is one of those foods.  Somewhere along the line, it acquired the status of poster child for healthy eating. People on diets opt for the salad bar instead of fried chicken. Health nuts get bragging rights based on how many salads they eat. Prewashed, mixed, and bagged lettuce is a staple of busy moms trying to feed their family more vegetables. And then there’s me. I think I eat fairly healthfully. And yet, for most of the year, salads (at least those made from lettuce) are conspicuously absent from my table. In the south, where I live, the lettuce season is very short- from about March to mid April, and then again in September. Lettuces thrive in cooler spring and fall temperatures. The intense heat that other sun bathing vegetables like tomatoes adore, exhausts lettuces. But in the spring, before the days get too hot, lettuce comes rolling in from the garden and crashes in waves over farmer’s market stands. It is vibrant green (or red, or purple), succulent, tender, and without a trace of bitterness.

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Tips for a Successful “Leftovers” Soup

Leftovers are the problem child of the kitchen. They throw tantrums and fall all over the floor when forced to share space in the fridge. They stubbornly refuse to go away and seem to bring out the worst in other family members forced to coexist with them. Clearly, something needs to be done about them.

While simply reheating that leftover enchilada or half serving of peas is certainly an option, I prefer to disguise my leftovers as soup. Depending on your perspective, this is either a creative and frugal way to reuse ingredients or a shady practice that comes dangerously close to being dishonest. I am loyal to the first camp, but must admit that some of my leftover soups have made me feel mildly criminal, as they tasted like I just dumped all my disparate leftovers into a pot of broth and called it soup.

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Liquid Gold

Since writing about why I cook, I’ve been thinking about the all the transformations inherent in cooking. In that post, I compare cooking to alchemy, the process of perfecting a base metal (lead) until it turns into a valuable commodity (gold). Making stock might be the best example of kitchen alchemy at work. It takes probably the basest of all ingredients- an old chicken carcass and vegetable scraps- and transforms them into liquid gold for your kitchen. Consommé, a type of clear stock, actually has the same root as “consummate”- both mean to bring something to perfection. Regardless of the metaphorical significance such a process may have, stock is a basic, if endangered, kitchen skill.

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Found

Things I found while digging my garden:

• Two rusted caps- perhaps from an old car?
• A rusted tin lid
• A rusted canning jar lid
• 2 marbles- one blue, one yellow and red
• A green leggo
• Various worn glass shards, mostly clear but one blue
• A sliver of porcelain
• A blade of some kind
• A bottle cap
• A germinating pecan
• A wire fence buried six inches below the surface
• A new appreciation for the words “deep rooted”

For a rainy day

I originally wrote this for a Creative Writing class.*  The weather today and a recent conversation with my sister made it seem appropriate to post it here.

The sky soothes into quiet and Light commences a waltz with Shadow around the sála.  The bamboo chimes begin to move, at first a slow seductive twirl like a dancer’s hips but quickening till the chimes spin way out like a whirling dervish’s skirts.  In the beginning, the rain is all humility and meekness. It’s coming is heralded by small, not gaudy, changes – the patterns running down the window, the spattered mud leaping a few inches up the wall, the banana leaves casually bouncing like a woman’s foot when she crosses her legs.  And the sound!…echoing differently off each wall, as if trying to find the right pitch.  It’s accompanied by the wonderful cool breeze that blows through the windows, making the curtains drum their fingers in rhythm.  Everyone in the room seems to perceive its advent at exactly the same moment, and they hover around the window to watch the nativity progress.

The birth of the rain smells like dust.  I count each tiny bead of water as it falls to the ground with a hollow plop.  But then the plops increase to higher sounds, like marbles dropped in a sink.  The air now smells clean, all the dust being purified from it.  I can’t do anything but lie back on my bed and listen to the sound of the whole jungle surrounding me, drowning in soft pattering drips.  The angel chorus of birds still sing…bursting out in occasional solos, their sopranos balanced by the deep bass of thunder.  All of this to the beat of a million drops, each one hitting its own note and boggling my mind that I am hearing every one of them.

Soon, its still small voice beckons to me between the drops. I rise from my bed and follow it. I hug the wall and slither past my mother.  Then it’s all splashing in puddles and squeezing mud between my toes and getting gloriously, gloriously wet.  The rain trickles down into my eyes and plasters my hair to my head.  The moisture hangs heavy on my eyelashes and transforms the ordinary world into  trickling visions.  The weight of it forces my eyes closed and the vision slides down my cheeks like tears. I look behind me at my footprints in the mud.  I watch as the rain fills them and the shapes are distorted into puddles.  I again think of each individual drop it takes to fill the puddle. As each new drop lands, the puddle itself reaches up, as if begging for more.

I gaze across the valley and watch the approaching wall of grayness, knowing I have only a few moments before I am discovered and my mother calls me inside.  So I race the oncoming bulwark to my favorite tree.  Slipping and sliding all the way, I scramble up the slippery bark, onto my favorite branch, barely beating the barrage of wetness.  It hits me in the face like sopping sheets.  I reach out to stop them, only to discover they slip through my fingers like ghosts and smack me anyway.  The rain swaddles me in its self, making me breathe in its rhythm.  I cannot see past the shroud it has hung on the outermost branches, burying reality.  It is easy to wonder if all the rest was merely a dream.

Just as I get accustomed to this revelation, my house begins to materialize…cloudy at first, as if turned impressionist, but becoming clearer and sharper.  A sense of relieved disappointment fills my chest as the rain welled up in my footprints.  I must go back. The way back is longer and more laborious.  I am forced to pick my feet up high with each step out of the mud, like an ancient Hebrew slave making bricks.  The clothesline guards the border to reality and I watch the rain drops tiptoe to the middle of the line and hesitate until the next one pushes too hard and it slips off into the unknown.  At the back door my mother is already wielding the hose, trying to look condescending, but not quite able to banish the smile from her eyes.  Deep down I recognize her own longing.  I see her mouth form the words “filthy” and “clean up” but can’t hear it above the rain on the tin roof.  With a shake of her head, she commences the ceremonial cleansing which I must endure if I wish to enter the house -first my face, then my arms and legs, and finally my bare feet.  I surrender to her ministrations until the mud swirls down the drain.  Then I shloosh free.  My feet smack against the cool cement floor and I find I must walk carefully or risk slipping.

Once inside, I prefer not to shower, liking the natural feel on my skin.  I return to the cloud of people at the window and join the eager curiosity of witnessing the front yard fill up like a bathtub and guessing which step that afternoon’s rain will climb to….

That is the rain in the Philippines.  Everything else is just drizzle.

*While this is my writing, the original inspiration came from another missionary kid many years ago.  He published it on a MK message board.  If anyone knows who it was, I would love to give him credit.

Why I Cook

Michael Rulman, a journalist chef, recently listed the reasons he cooks on his blog. He then asked the question that launched a thousand comments- why do you cook? The responses, though many, seemed to play variations on two themes- health and enjoyment. People cook because it is easier to have control over both ingredient selection and proper preparation. They also cook because they’d rather unwind in front of the stove than the TV; it’s enjoyable.

I think this is an important question to for everyone to answer, even if your answer is the same as everyone else’s. In the middle of your third stack of dishes, with five more stacks to go, it helps to remember why you do this thing called cooking.

I cook because . . .

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Lemony Shrimp Soup

I felt like Snow White while making this soup. While I hummed about the kitchen, ingredients seemed to wing out of the fridge and into the soup as if little adorable doe eyed woodland creatures were helping them along. Before I knew it, I had a beautiful soup that seemed to have created itself.

I love those days.

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Stalking Wonder- Germinating

Somewhere in the middle of a normal day, amidst dirty dishes and laundry on the line, this happened. I don’t know when. Since planting these seeds almost three weeks ago, I’ve checked them compulsively. Nothing ever happened. Like a character in a parable, my faith wavered. And then, in the middle of wiping off the table, I happened to glance at the terra cotta pot supposedly cradling my seeds… and there it was. Someone less familiar with the terrain of that pot would not have noticed it.  All bent double, the bend barely visible above the dirt. But to me, who had studied this pot for days for any sign to bolster my flat faith, the effervescent green was as arresting as a soda can exploding in my hand.

I watched throughout the day as the fetal sprout slowly stretched and straightened. I also began to notice others bending through the surface. There are four now altogether. Such abundance to someone who despaired of having any seedlings just hours ago. Continue Reading…