January | 2013 | mulberryshoots

January 12, 2013

“Wild Flavors” . . .

This book by Didi Emmons about her transformation as a cook after visiting Eva Sommaripa’s farm in Dartmouth, MA. has consumed me since I opened it in the mail this afternoon. It is a tale of farming, food foraging and eating naturally from picked greens and herbs, wild mushrooms and bartering for other foodstuffs. It reminds me somewhat of Helen and Scott Nearing’s back-to-the-land movement but on (foodie) steroids. Its inspiration makes me want to eat way more simply and to rely upon myself and to waste not, want not except what I make with my own hands. A good idea for oldsters and younger-sters alike.

Here is an excerpt from the book entitled: “Breakfast Ideas from Eva’s Head Farmer” to give you a taste of this wonderful book:

“Peter Levasseur, Eva’s head farmer, is thirty-three years old and packed with lean, hard muscle, like the deer and coyote that roam the area. He lives in Eva’s nearby cottage with his two dogs, Dukka and Mazi.

Peter has a talent for cooking and as he does in farming, he pays attention to details in the kitchen. His food is some of the most delicious and imaginative I’ve eaten. i asked Peter about breakfast–the only meal I’ve ever seen him consume, since he eats lunch on the run and dinner around midnight. He told me:

‘First I make French press coffee, locally roasted. I grind it with the partially shelled caco nibs that were given to Eva by a local chocolate company. I pour the hot coffee into a mug with a vanilla bean slit in half. Then I stir in raw honey.

My breakfast changes with the seasons. I make or buy sprouted bread. I slather on raw honey, then raw almond butter; then I drizzle on unfiltered flaxseed oil or coconut oil. I then sprinkle on Himalayan sea salt and freshly grated nutmeg. Also, for a beverage, I like to juice chickweed with ginger and apples.

I asked him whether his breakfast was seasonal.

I have a huge mortar and pestle. Come July I pound basil with garlic, oilve oil and goat cheese. I eat this layered with tomatoes on sprouted English muffins.

Another favorite is mixing raw oats and local berries (wineberries, raspberries, or blueberries) with yogurt and honey.

Other times I crush garlic in olive oil and spread this on an English muffin as a base coat, then I layer on hummus, tomatoes, and fresh herbs (they grow 3 feet away.)

I make oat shakes. I soak rolled oats overnight in cold water, the odd cashews or almonds, and fruit and blend it all up in a blender or Vitamix.

Also, a favorite snack of late may sound odd: chopped ripe tomatoes, chopped onion. Heritage brand cereal (which is like frosted flakes without sugar), garlic, basil, olive oil and lemon juice. I love it!'”

That’s just a single page from this volume. Emmons, the author, runs restaurants and a non-profit bakery in Boston for those transitioning from homelessness. She writes that she can lose her tummy roll just by eating at Eva’s farm for a week. I’m thinking it’s a refreshing change to start the new year. The fridge is near empty and we’ve been eating out of the pantry since the huge holiday feasts we partook of for days at Christmas and for my birthday holiday. I’m thinking that now might be a good time to make a list for what to buy at the health food market tomorrow.

peach smoothie in the making

Postscript: Since writing this post, I have discovered a perfect breakfast for me: Shiloh 7-grain sprouted bread, toasted; spread with Barney brand crunchy almond butter (no oil film to stir up, just tasty crunchy almonds,) drizzled with Billy Bee Canadian honey. I ate one slice and had to make a second, it was so good. For lunch, looking forward to trying toasted whole grain sprouted bagels with poppy seeds, layered with Boursin herb and garlic cheese spread, thin slices of tomato and red onion on top. Yum!

January 11, 2013

‘shabby chinese’ . . .

I laughed out loud today when reading an email message from a knitting friend of mine. I had just sent her photos of the free-form sweater vest that I knitted from lopi lite yarn called ‘black sheep.’

She wrote that her daughter had characterized her as being either a “princess” with lots of flowers and sparkle, or the other extreme of “refugee-immigrant” with stark neutral colors and a kind of shabby look.

I really identify with the “refugee-immigrant” look because (I guess I am one–the immigrant part, not the refugee part) and find myself dressing often in drab colors: my favorite color is taupe, believe it or not–a hard color to find when it’s just right. Anyhow, my brown vest is kind of along those lines and I especially like the way the armhole edging is raw seed stitch and that it curves in slightly. I am planning to knit more of these but am thinking of cropping the sweater slightly and knitting it in different gauges of yarn.

First, though, I’m waiting for some yarn to arrive from WEBS in a ‘peat’ color to knit a replica of a brown sweater for M. that I wore all the time when my kids were growing up. It is an iconic sweater memory for all of us. I’ve knitted a variation before in a heavier alpaca yarn along with a deconstructed meandering cable.

All these knitting projects crowd in on me as I read weaving books about how to set up a warp. Honestly, it seems really tedious to me so maybe saori weaving will continue to be a fantasy in my mind’s eye, a romantic notion that I would be sitting erect with flowing long hair at a beautiful wooden floor loom, weaving my way into the sunset. Instead, the reality may be closer to my shabby chinese aesthetic, sitting on the worn butterscotch leather couch that I found on Craigslist, knitting taupe and warm brown sweaters in staghorn cable and seed stitch, growing my hair out and wearing it parted similar to when I was in my thirties, cooking macrobiotic asian dishes with brown rice and watching DVD dramas like “Homeland” at night with G.

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January 10, 2013

happy days are here again . . .

G. and me when we first met

You know sometimes when life seems to stop along the pathway and you can see how beautiful it is where you have been travelling? That is the effect that watching my birthday DVD has had on me. My dear niece, Lizzy, wrote to me and said that she found herself smiling so much at the images that her cheeks hurt, but that “it was a good kind of pain.”

Of course a birthday celebration movie doesn’t contain all the sad and bad parts of one’s life in it. Who wants to watch images of all the things that hurt or were disappointing despite your best efforts? Who wants to rake through all the times you fell on your sword in the name of doing the right thing, or maybe doing the wrong thing because you didn’t know any better?

Someone I didn’t know very well said today that the movie seemed “idyllic” as though nobody’s life could or should look that good. It was a slightly cynical, somewhat sardonic way to describe it and it took me aback a little. I thought about it afterwards and decided that the many images of nature, food, flowers, the ocean, Christmas are at the center of my consciousness and what my life is really about, not merely decorations or extras: they are intrinsic and intentional to these moments that have made up my days for me and my family.

Someone else long ago had commented, also a little sardonically, that my home was like a “still life” and that there were many of them all around. While I might contend instead is that it’s a kind of messy still life as I pick up and move things around, trying to find a place for everything. What this illustrates to me also, is that I want to live the idyl every day that I have left. I’d also like to look a little trimmer as I have in earlier photos, keep growing my hair long and stay healthy.

That doesn’t mean that the areas of my life that have been disappointing are swept under the rug. They aren’t and God knows I have belabored most of them to death, second guessing myself, wondering if I could or should have done something different that would have resulted in a more positive outcome. I have sometimes reached out against my better judgment and thought of ways to gain closure for unresolved loose ends. I am satisfied that I have indeed beaten it to death, one way or another. And that those hurts are behind me, even better, they’re just not in the frame of my life anymore.

I hope that’s okay with the people who want me to know that my life is not an idyl but I’m afraid they might be disappointed that my life does happen to look a lot like the DVD. . . pretty much, I’d like to say.

Postscript: I was reading about a woman in South Hadley who was dying of pancreatic cancer and after a number of unsuccessful marriages, found “the one.” Her advice: “Don’t yell at each other unless the house is burning down!” She lived for six years after her first diagnosis and offered herself up to nursing students to visit and ask any questions they might have liked. Here’s a link to that article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/us/fatally-ill-and-making-herself-the-lesson.html?hp

January 7, 2013

lives of our own . . .

For awhile now, I’ve had a sister blog started called “A Life of My Own.” It’s obviously a take-off on Virginia Woolf’s book called “A Room of My Own.” Earlier, Emily Dickinson, in the 19th century wrote the poem, “I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too?” Now, we women living in the 21st century have had opportunities to make rooms for ourselves and to live a life of our own. Some of us might still be in the process of looking for one.

As I have said in the expanded version of “About” on that website, a very wise woman told us decades ago at one of our Smith College Wednesday assemblies that “life is long.” What she meant was that because women of our generation (graduating in the 1960’s) would still be spending lots of time raising families, taking care of others, working and helping elderly parents, we might be putting our own ambitions or interests aside for awhile. The idea of sequential fulfillment was introduced during that little talk, and each year that I have before me brings home how profoundly true that observation has been for me.

Youth is wasted on the young, they say. But not necessarily, I say in return. We all go through times when we think we know everything, even now! But what occurs in our lives is unpredictable, the good and the bad. Whether we end up with the love of our life is also unclear for a long time for some of us. In any case, I’m lucky to be able to say I am married to mine.

So, if you would like to take a look and join in the conversation, please visit this website and send me your story ~ about your arrival at a life of your own, or your continuing journey along the way. Here’s the link: http://alifeofmyown.net/

And thanks.

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January 7, 2013

making Pho . . .

Yesterday, don’t ask me how, I happened upon a recipe for Vegan Pho. Pho, as you might know, is a classic Vietnamese beef broth, made with beef, leeks, charred ginger root and a melange of spices. When serving, the broth is clarified (defatted) rice noodles cooked and added to the broth, fresh, thin slices of prime beef, fresh mint, basil and cilantro leaves. Serve with lime wedges, bean sprouts, siraicha and hoisin sauces. Quite elaborate for a dish that is a national country specialty, right?

I’ve never tried to make it but yesterday at our local Vietnamese grocery store, I picked up a pack of beef short ribs to add to the marrow bones I found at the butcher’s across the street from the frame shop I visited (that’s another story.)

So today, since it’s a Sunday, the sun brightening the day outdoors, I Read the rest of this entry »

January 5, 2013

the saori in life . . .

I’ve been interested in saori weaving for a long time, having seen it at a shop that taught this kind of Japanese weaving in my town years ago. The irregularity of the weaving and use of color appealed to someone like me who eschews structure when I can manage it and who also likes to be intuitive and observe as life unfolds.

A Japanese woman named Misao Jo invented/created this kind of weaving when she was fifty-seven years old and wanted to weave herself an obi sash. Her husband and sons built her a loom and she learned two things: a commercial tradesman pooh-poohed it as not being “flawless;” and an Obi merchant sold hers right away. Thus was born saori weaving. Read the rest of this entry »

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January 1, 2013

a new year too! . . .

Thanks for visiting and reading my blog!

Happy New Year Everyone!

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January 1, 2013

a birthday place (cont.) . . .

This photo gallery of our Truro stay is kindly provided by C. our wonderful chronicler of family gatherings. . . thanks, Cait!

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January 1, 2013

a birthday place . . .

My birthday comes a few days after Christmas every year. Because 2012 happened to be a milestone year for me, we found a place on the ocean in Truro on the Cape and our family gathered for a few days to visit, cook meals for each other and walk on the beach right outside our door.

M. put together snowflake garlands and C. helped her place paper red cardinals hopping around tiny white lights set in mason jars along the window sills making the place festive and elegant. Each took turns cooking for the rest of us; then another pair cleaned up afterwards. It worked out great with meals of shabu shabu, chap jae, ham and pea soup, ham sandwiches, delectable cheeses, huge salads with pears, pomegranate seeds and maple syrup laced dressing.

I took breakfast duty each day, making stacks of french toast, light oatmeal bread dipped in beaten eggs laced with vanilla, fragrant in a large electric skillet, mounds of tender, scrambled eggs with chopped scallions, crisp bacon on the side. And lots of hot coffee.

G. and M. went to pick up the lobsters and cape scallops for my birthday dinner. Afterwards, we had M.’s homemade coconut cupcakes with cream cheese frosting lit with candles. On the last day, after packing and loading the cars, we sat down to one last round of eggs benedict, made with warmed ham on toasted whole grain and cheese bread topped with tender poached eggs and generous dollops of hollandaise sauce made with Meyer lemon.

Sand, wind, water, salt. Lots of it everywhere. Thoughtful gifts abounded, the most touching of all was a DVD with voiceovers and music made by my daughters and granddaughters, including the littlest one at the end (Josie at 27 months old) saying “hap-py birth-day, gram-my”. The DVD movie did not come across like a “this is your life” kind of tribute which always seems to me like a valedictory farewell (okay, now you can go and sit somewhere.) Instead, it was a light-hearted celebration with lots of humor, flowers and food, good times shared together. I noticed a favorite suede jacket that I wore in college and wondered where it went to. There were comments from my blog too and a parade of the countries readers originate from, set to the “Star Wars” opening trumpet theme.

All in all, for an introverted, reclusive worrywart person and mother, the thoughtfulness and affection shared by everyone during this birthday holiday made us feel happy and content, especially me. And Josie’s innocent joyfulness at being near the ocean said it all: “O-cean! O-cean! SO Happy!” We are lucky to have such a wonderful family. And my thanks go to each and everyone who made this birthday holiday so meaningful and full of love.

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Month: January, 2013