AS MOTHER SAYS
Tag: Food
REGARDING THE EXISTENCE OF SPIRITUAL REALITY
A materialistic outlook misses so much. As does an emphasis on concrete reality or causality.
How would you explain love, for starters? Much less admit passion? Why does music move us the way it does? And pain, be assured, is more than a neuro-chemical calculation. Why does social injustice to others spur our own anger? How could those who own all the creaturely comforts ever feel lonely?
The materialistic reaction to these, I suspect, prompts what we call addiction. Though it’s not always to alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, food, or even sex.
For liberation, a spiritual dimension will open. Or else.
HEDGES AND SHRUBS ABOVE, WHO KNOWS WHAT DOWN UNDER
If you garden, unless you have a pickup truck or access to one, you’ll have to decide what to do with the limbs and branches you trim. Bagging them for the dump’s a pain. One thing you don’t see in the colorful gardening books, of course, just may be essential. I’m speaking of the brush pile. Especially if you can’t get a burn permit due to neighborhood density.
The wood breaks down over time, however slowly, but the pile does provide refuge for small critters as well as kindling for our wood-fired stove through winter.
It’s all part of working our plot, with an emphasis on composting and natural balance.
In an urban setting like ours, rejuvenating the soil itself can be a revelation. Items keep coming to the surface from somewhere underground – stones, glass, costume jewelry, bits of metal or plastic objects. Nothing prepared me for the spaceman, though – the one holding a pair of pliers. No, he topped the toy horse and the Neanderthal with a club, for certain.
~*~
For more on the book and others, click here.
ADJUSTING FOR INFLATION, OF COURSE
The cover of a small paperback kicking around our house these days keeps catching my attention: How I Feed My Family on $16 a Week.
I know it’s an old book. When I was head cook in the ashram, back in the early ’70s, I faced similar constraints and ours was a vegetarian diet. This one has a subtitle that amuses me – (And Have Meat, Fish or Poultry on the Table Every Night). From a vegetarian point of view, it’s all flesh – that is, all three are meat with no distinction.
That aside, I looked for the original price of the book, $1.75, and the copyright, 1975. Prices have gone up in the intervening years. In this case, those groceries would cost $70.52 today if the general inflation calculator holds. Some food items, like seafood or lamb ribs, have shot up much more. Others, though, like boneless chicken breasts, have gone down in relative terms. Still, as the food economist in our household points out, you couldn’t do these recipes on that adjusted budget these days – it would be mostly beans and no meat. The bottom line’s less than a food-stamps allotment.
And I thought I was doing well on $40 a week for just me – 30 years ago, when I gave myself a sabbatical. Hate to think what that would cost now!
HOW MANY VARIETIES OF TOMATOES ARE YOU STARTING?
Each variety can be remarkably unique. If you’re a gardener, you’re planning a range, not just for taste, either, but to ripen as far across the season as you can. And then? It’s a lot like sampling good wine, one after another.
JUST WAITING TO SHOW OFF
As the snow melts away, you look. Intensely. At the openings. Find snowdrops already blossoming. And then all the rest that’s been active.
~*~
For more on the book and others, click here.
WHERE DO YOU ORDER YOUR SEEDS?
Yes, we know all about the catalogs and the pondering that happens each January, along with the flurry of ordering. If you’re a gardener, you’ve wrapped all that up and have the seed packets in hand.
So where are your favorite sources? And why?
And if you need inspiration or simply want company or comfort, consider the experiences in these poems:
For more on my poetry collection and others, click here.
GATHER ‘ROUND, FAMILY AND FRIENDS
This set of poems celebrates ways food draws us together as family and friends.
We do more at the table, of course, than simply eat.
Sometimes we read. Or roll out dough, when the counter’s full. Or wrap presents.
It’s the heart of the room that’s the heart of the home.
Shall we gather?
~*~
For your own copy, click here.
TURNING THE PAGE FOR ANOTHER ANNUAL RITUAL
Now that the Christmas season’s over, we’re getting out the seed catalogs. Gardeners know what this means. Traditionally, they start coming in the mail about now, although some seed companies have tried to jump the gun, just like the Christmas decorations and music that now proliferate around Halloween rather than Thanksgiving. No, don’t rush us. This is to be taken thoughtfully, leisurely. Now, in the depth of winter — especially when it’s bitterly cold and snowy in places like the one where we live — our imaginations fly off to springtime and high summer. We evaluate the new varieties we ordered last year to decide whether we’ll get more (if we used up all of last year’s packet) or we’ll try something different.
Some of the catalogs are simply gorgeous. Others, including our favorite, are black-and-white and photo-free. The descriptions are fun to read and have led us to delightful harvests.
One thing I know: we’ll be ordering a certain chard we tried last year. The one that doesn’t taste like beets. No, it’s much more like spinach and so much more reliable where we live. Just don’t ask me to reveal its name. We want to make sure the supplier doesn’t run out. It’s something that happens, you know. As I recall, last year it was a kind of early pea. And before that?
It’s all part of the ritual, I suppose. Along with the intricate maps of our garden my wife draws to determine just how to fit it all in.
PUNCHBOWL AND ORANGES
Who says it has to be Wassail?
Jnana's Red Barn 