Beans

From Mary Oliver's Why I Wake Early.

They're not like peaches or squash.
Plumpness isn't for them. They like
being lean, as if for the narrow
path. The beans themselves sit qui-
etly inside their green pods. In-
stinctively one picks with care,
never tearing down the fine vine,
never not noticing their crisp bod-
ies, or feeling their willingness for
the pot, the fire.

I have thought sometimes that
something - I can't name it -
watches as I walk the rows, accept-
ing the gift of their lives to assist
mine.

I know what you think: this is fool-
ishness. They're only vegetables.
Even the blossoms with which they
begin are small and pale, hardly sig-
nificant. Our hands, or minds, our
feet hold more intelligence. With this
I have no quarrel.

But, what about virtue?

From Ursula Le Guin's "Mazes"

Having moved to Portland recently I have found that one of my favorite authors, Ursula K. Le Guin, lives here. So I am re-reading everything I ever read of hers, as well as other authors who write from the perspective of the Pacific Northwest. Haven't posted in a while, yes, I know. In quite serious transition and I haven't yet made it fully here. Yet I would like to share this bit from Le Guin's short story about animal testing, Mazes, about a rat being used to run tests by a human who it cannot seem to make connection with, despite the rat's highly sophisticated language. 

This is a remarkably apt metaphor for people today confronted with sprayed and processed and de-natured food...

"The alien's cruelty is refined, yet irrational. If it intended all along to starve me, why not simply withhold food? But instead of that it gave me plenty of food, mountains of food, all the greenbud leaves I could possibly want. Only they were not fresh. They had been picked; they were dead; the element that makes them digestible to us was gone, and one might as well eat gravel. Yet there they were, with all the scent and shape of greenbud, irresistible to my craving appetite. Not at first, of course. I told myself, I am not a child, to eat picked leaves! But the belly gets the better of the mind. After a while it seemed better to be chewing something, anything, that might still the pain and craving in the gut. So I ate, and ate, and starved. It is a relief, to be so weak I cannot eat."

The Ethos of Mitigation

Check Rachel Laudan's article from "The Gastronomical Reader" at Utne Reader.
"We need a culinary ethos that comes to terms with industrialized food."
"In Praise of Fast Food."

Page 2 in particular explains quite well why we tend to be loaded with ancestral beliefs that organic food is unclean, hard to get, and not as good as processed food, and might even hurt us. Oh - I don't agree with these beliefs, it's just that it has taken centuries to be able to have the luxury to mythologize and idealize all-natural agriculture. Now we just have to make it the "norm," not the exception.


Hey! And while you're at it, check out the shamanic workshop Jon Bredal and I are leading beginning in September:
The Delicious Life.

Eating the Light

From Barbara Marciniak's Family of Light:

  

"Energy exists around you, and if you would let it in, it would cleanse and revitalize your body no matter how toxic the world may be. Applying this concept is a huge test to pass and a gigantic Grand Canyon of an idea to bridge. No matter how toxic the world is, will you detoxify it by creating the most valuable substance in existence: a love that you can generate for free if only you would get on with the task?

We remind you of these concepts because you must be healthy journeyers…Your ancestors had a greater understanding of the body than you currently do. For one thing, they knew that everything growing around them – the green plants, vegetables, and fruits – affected them. They saw the plants as more than simply food to offset hunger or to fill an empty belly.

Everything you grow has a vibration. Some of the vibrations are compatible and some are not; however, you select your food based on how good it tastes and not on its vibration. All plants and animals are vibratory beings, just as you are."

Marciniak has been writing books (channelled by the Pliaidians, the Seven Sisters in the night sky) to blow the mind now for more than 20 years, and this one, although it is a decade old, is no exception. I can especially now hear it's words, as the time has become riper. She simply nails it about the "vibrations" or LOVE of food.

Enchanted Road Food

Well, for the past several days my mom and my two boys have been on the road, driving through the great prairies of the Midwest, from Denver to Wyoming to South Dakota to Missouri to Kansas. Here we are in Kansas, and it is finally time to reflect on the many road foods we've sampled along the way. And, there have been many.

Visitors to the States are surprised and perhaps disappointed to find so many chain restaurants along the interstates. There's another Wendy's! Oh, there's Arby's again! Meh. True, you have to search a bit more to find the authentic local foods which thrill folks in their native places. But they still exist, and they exist in not-so-exotic places outside of Louisiana and Massachusetts - places whose distinctive cuisine is already well known.

I remember reading a guide book to the best road foods in the USA, and frankly, the Colorado entry was a horrifying disappointment. The book recommended Johnson's Corner, up near Fort Collins, for cinnamon rolls. I had never had one, despite being in Colorado since 1972, so we tried one a few weeks ago.

On entering the diner, we noticed a cinnamon roll the size of a hubcap under a domed cake stand. Wow. We laughed and took a picture of it in order to prove its unlikely existence. A pillow of cinnamon rollness. As big as a pillbox hat, and, unfortunately, about as contemporary in its flavor.

Although breath-taking in scope, these rolls were decidedly underwhelming in the mouth. No yeasty scent, a big butt of a roll with simple sugar frosting, nothing to swoon about. Just a large monster of a pastry.We left the excess on our plates. Not one of us was won-over.

Now, seriously, if you want a true cinnamon roll in Denver you must visit Duffeyroll, off Hampden...and there's one in Englewood, too. Awe-inspiring. Several flavors: English toffee, orange, maple. Counter staff is friendly and efficient. A cinnamon roll that can be held in the hand, and the buttery love will melt in your mouth. The kind of cinnamon roll that Granny used to make - at least mine really did.

You can't even see Duffeyroll from the road. You have to know about it, first. Someone has to put you onto them, like being given a secret password to a speakeasy. This may be the secret to the best road food: it is rarely screaming at you from the interstate. It quietly serves on to local customers, never desperate to be discovered, but friendly if you happen to find them.

 Returning to the issue of road food, let me share the highlights with you.

First, we stopped for a bit of snack and leg-stretch in Lusk, Wyoming. My son said it seemed like a place you might grow up in. We went to the local grocery store and mom and I both bought boxes of chocolate Malt o' Meal cereal, which is becoming harder to find, nation-wide. Love the stuff. Stowed it under our car seats. Plus, a cowboy gave me a flirtatious look. An all-around good experience.

Then on to Rapid City, South Dakota. Rapid City is becoming a fun town, lively, with some interesting restaurants and shops along its downtown main street. But first we got caught in the unending box store section of town, until, dazed, we wandered into a Motel 6 whose counter guy put us right: go to the Firehouse Brewing Co for some character and taste.

Go, we did, thank goodness. The atmosphere was stimulating, the decor was homey, a brewpub set into an antique firehouse. Our ponytailed waiter was very friendly, and brought us two of their beers on tap: a lighter version and a bitter. Both very refreshing and tasty. Mom ordered white chili, which she thought looked like barf when it arrived. Yikes. Needs some green. Yet it was delicious, green-chili based, with white beans. Good burgers, tasty burritos. I ordered the ceviche, which was okay but came with tough cornchips and a red salsa that I suspect was augmented with ketchup. No, no. Otherwise it was quite a good meal. The Firehouse would continue to be recommended to us during our stay, more than once.

Wall Drug, South Dakota. Donuts at Wall Drug. These legendary donuts are still the real thing. Even Wall Drug is still the real thing: you can still have your picture taken atop an enormous plaster Jackalope, for goodness' sake. But especially nice is to sit in the polished pine cafe which is lined with Western art, and try the mythic batter donuts done the old-fashioned way.

Frankly, my mother was doubtful. She was sure that the coffee and donuts touted from billboards two states away would be a hideous travesty of their historical glory. Not so. I chatted with the counter staff, asking a girl if they were really home made. Sure are, made at a local home, and brought there, clearly made on vintage donut-making equipment, some frosted with vanilla, some frosted with maple, but seriously: large, tasty, crispy-fried, crumbly, nutmeggy donuts, alongside 5-cent cups of coffee.

I could go on and on about Wall Drug, but please believe me about the fabulous cake donuts. I asked the girl what was it like working at such a mythic outpost of Depression-era Americana? It's great, she cheerfully said - except for the hats they make us wear, to which her work-mates grinned. (Paper, donut-selling hats.) I hear you, sister. I had to wear such a hat when I worked at Bucky's Hamburgers in Lawrence, Kansas, the sort of hat that made it hard for me to look like Madonna, circa 1984, when that was actually a goal to which one would aspire.

Next stop: my Aunt Barbara's place. Two chickens in the yard, cats too, in a corner of Eden in South Dakota. We would never eat the chickens, but their eggs made it into the meatloaf. Trick learned: put the meatloaf on top of a rack over parchment paper in the pan, then the fat all slides away. Also had creamed garden green beans canned by my Aunt herself, baked potatoes, and vanilla ice cream with macerated strawberries from her garden. Food-of-Love. Pure garden food. Delicious home-auntie cooking.

Next day we drove to Mitchell, SD to pick up some legendary pies from a Hutterite shop. Hutterites are similar to the Amish, to outsiders, except they live in South Dakota. We found the signless hole-in-the-wall, once a Taco Tico or some such, next to which was parked a rusting Bel Air, circa 1954. We peeped inside, and checked out the pies at the shop.

Raving (from a personal source) had been done about the crusts of these pies. Mom bought two. We also bought homemade peanut butter cookies and fudge. Peanut butter cookies better than anyone can bake. Creamy, double cream fudge in flavors like licorice, grape, strawberry shake, and root beer. Best. Fudge. Ever. Melt-in-the-mouth. Surprising and delightful flavors. Incredible.

Pies? Not so much. The pecan filling was indeed thrilling but the better-than-most crusts did not convince mom, for whom barely any pie crust can ever come up to the pie crusts remembered from times past. Toughish crust. Should melt in the mouth, didn't. Plus: Uncle found a pit in one of the cherries. Ouch. Don't let that happen.

Next stop: Lawrence, Kansas, whose natural food co-op had grown all up from when I went to university there. Before it was, like, an emptied-out laundromat that smelled of brewer's yeast, and had about seventeen vegetables to buy from at any one time. It was a haphazard affair, but the one place in town to get Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap. The only place to "eat healthy."

Now, my goodness, The Mercantile has been alive since 1974, but now it shiny and fresh and large and well-stocked, even better and more authentic than any Whole Foods out of California. Best foodie/green-magazine selection ever. Fresh-looking, grain-fed meat. Lovely vegetables and fruit. Fabulous selection of stock, well-balanced. I admire their persistence, and admire especially that it is a co-operative. The best example I've experienced of a home-grown, local provider, answerable to the growing interest in green and locally sourced, sustainable food.

For lunch we'd had a salad bowl from Local Burger, a healthy fast food place, in a clean and fresh and lively atmosphere. There you can have a wonderfully large bowl of tasty, all-organic greens and seeds and beets and miso/tahini delish dressing, topped by a locally-sourced, chopped grain fed-burger of cow, turkey, elk, buffalo, pig, veggie or tofu. The meat tasted so clean. Their tofu fries are amazing. You can also get smoothies and other delightful vegan, organic snacks. Plus, we met the owner and she was a lively, enthusiastic woman who looks far younger than her years (which she offered), likely due to pursuing her passion, plus a healthy diet. A nice place, cut from the earth-loving cloth of the superhero future.

Finally, a meal at my other aunt's house: delicious salmon with quinoa salad and golden beets. Wonderful, and the salad went perfectly with the fish. My aunt takes a great deal of time and attention in creating a meal, and her food always tastes lovely and fresh and well-put-together. The golden beets were like eating mellow patches of sun.

How I Lost 60 Pounds Without Even Trying: Part 4

6. I naturally experienced portion control. The smallness of portions in Europe is adorable to Americans, even though the packaged volume of food is actually similar to how things were sized in the US thirty years ago.

Why are portions so much smaller? Why so few pieces in a package? Well, merchandising is scaled to the size of local homes and cupboards. Europeans simply are not conditioned to having huge amounts of things to store in their typically quite small kitchens. Because they interact with the city every day, they can pick up whatever they need daily, and don't have to hoard it. Sure, folks keep extra drinks in their cellars. But in general, everything from bread to yogurts is sized for an average household of 2 or so. (This is an eco-problem by creating excess packaging, but that's another story.)

Let's say I bought packs of four puddings at the store for an after dinner dessert. There are only four in a pack. Each petite portion contains about seven or eight bites of high-quality pudding.

You eat the pudding, and it is gone. It is strangely satisfying to eat a small amount of something and experience it going from being there to being gone. It's over, and if you really enjoy every bite, you experience satisfaction.

There are limits to what people both need and want, and in this case European manufacturers decide what the limits are. Often, they get it just right: one doesn't need or want any more than what comes in each container. I ended up eating much less than I had in America, and generally enjoying it more. There was an end to it, and the end was in sight.

I never had to literally stretch myself to accommodate super-sized portions. I never had to "just get to the end of it." Consumption is not as strenuous in Europe.

Eat These Words

     I don’t tend to read books about food, eating and dieting. But when I have, I usually began by bracing myself. I know I will have to learn a whole new way of being, and conform to this system if I want to experience success, and re-learn which foods I should eat and which I absolutely am not allowed. There is an inevitable loss of dignity and adult self-sufficiency as I am told all that I have been doing wrong. I wonder again if I will be able to whip myself into a whirlwind frenzy of hope blended with enough self-hatred, so that I might try again a new system, revolutionize myself, and become a whole new, slender person. If I just do what I am told, then I may be able to do it.

     Nourishing Wisdom: A Mind-Body Approach to Nutrition and Well-Being by Marc David is a voice of calm and clear reason in the relatively new genre of holistic books about intuitive eating. The author provides a lucid counterpoint to nearly every bit of popular assumption and black-or-white thinking regarding eating that people tend to take for granted. He points out the inevitability of a changing diet with the passage of seasons, years, ages of life, and explains how the body goes through periods of building up and letting go. Desires and longings for food are also affected by mood, relationships, nostalgia and inner attitude. By shedding light on the variability of the human experience of eating, he clarifies how one single diet is in itself a myth, that a one-size-fits-all diet for every person is itself a trap.

     Simply acknowledging this is unique. When most popular thinking about food tries to make food choices ever more concrete, tries to make restricted food certain and immoveable, and nearly criminalize certain diet choices, one can read this book and simply take in a deep breath of fresh air. Slow down, and gather some perspective. Truly, bask in a depth of wisdom.

     Marc David goes on to gently clarify the fascism (my word) of diet programs, that accepting a diet is the same as accepting the author’s entire worldview. The possibility that the reader has their own wants, needs and personal wisdom never comes into question. To follow a diet, one gives up their own interior knowing, swallowing whole a completely foreign way of thinking.

     David states that food itself is neutral, and that moralizing about it results in both lending a restricted food a shine of irresistibility and it represses the individual’s personal process of gathering information about food; it shuts down the act of making self-propelled choices based on a human being’s inner growth and knowing.

     The author reveals also what fast eating means, hunched eating, eating without breathing. I especially appreciated his reading of “one-minute eaters” who

“…find it hard to take time to enjoy themselves, have difficulty receiving nurturance from others or listening to the promptings of their own hearts.”

     As I tend to eat very quickly, particularly shocking for me was his characterization of eaters who swallow things whole, that they “want their hungers in life satisfied but are unwilling to take the necessary steps.” Ouch.
As a teacher of mine says: “How you do one thing is how you do all things.”

How we eat is how we approach the world.

     Just when I was wondering how exactly I could attempt to align myself with healthier eating without simultaneously giving sweet, addictive foods that extra sparkle of eat-me-ness, David uses one chapter to explain a five step exercise for slowing down and being present during a meal. It is immanently doable. It takes only presence, it takes listening. It takes receiving the food.

     This is a good book with profound integrity, and I am glad I read it. When I thought there wasn’t anything left that anyone could teach me about my own addictive eating behavior, David’s truth-telling exposed my blind spots. His is an especially common-sense work regarding the inner experience of eating.

My Superhero is Chocolate

Something has happened to chocolate. Or rather there has been a polar shift in the chocolate world, and everything has gone nitro, amped-up, blissed-out...chocolate-wise. Chocolate and cocoa in its raw form have become the new wonder foods, even though we’ve already loved them forever. It’s as if a hologram from the future has been superimposed over the chocolate we all know and love, and revealed a radical, new superhero chocolate, and its secret power is LOVE.

It has become the topic of museum exhibitions in Chicago. This hotel club blog lists chocolate museums around the world, the chocolate wrappers online museum links to a wide range of chocolate museums, while Christine visits two European chocolate museums that couldn’t be more different. It’s the same with chocolate. No two types are the same, and the flavors have an incredible range of varieties.

What’s happened is, people found out why cacao beans are a super food. First there was the Naked Chocolate book by Shazzie and David Wolfe that got everything going.
Shazzie is one of my favorite raw food’s people. She knows it’s all about the love, not just the food, and says so. Here, she shows how to make a rich, loaded-with-superfood, raw food, chocolate-based fudge-like dessert: “Go Go Goju.”



And one listen to Daniel Sklaar of New York's Fine and Raw as he makes a raw cacao confection, and you’ll begin to understand how cocoa-superfood desserts are such a rich amalgam of world cultures: his accent blends something Germanic, with New Zealand and New York City.



Mark “Chocolate” Canizaro has one of the best chocolate sites going. Here is his pretty long list of the “best” chocolate bars — check here to see how chocolate can be assessed with a wine-like connoisseurship. Canizaro correctly identifies Green & Black’s as being transcendental.

Canizaro was given the option by his parents to choose his middle name, and he chose Chocolate. Really! He runs chocolate-tasting tours in Seattle, explains why fair trade is so important, and how to distinguish organic chocolate, and puts paid to the myth that chocolate contains caffeine.

Sacred chocolate’s site is luscious and dreamy, I can’t stop looking at it, and they have collated a good fount of scientific information, including the mental, physical and spiritual effects of cocoa. You can even get custom or private label sacred chocolate from them. Their Sacred Fire truffle layers pepper, vanilla and cinnamon with five different chilis.

“Sacred Chocolate® is hand made with much love, gratitude, and high “phi-bration" in a small custom-designed, certified organic, vegan, kosher, halal, carbon-balanced factory in San Rafael, California.”

Finally, of all the new raw/organic/untoasted/pure chocolate companies now sprung up within the last five years, I was drawn to Lulu’s. It seems the perfect archetype for why so many nature-loving eco-entrepreneurs have gone into the chocolate business. Because cocoa carries an energy signature of otherworldly enchantment.

Lulu asks:

“What is a spagyric? A very old form of alchemy producing an amazingly potent plant medicine by working with all three essential levels of the plant: physical, energetic, and subtle. Spagyrics are also created by following planetary cycles, bringing you a purified and energized expression of Nature's green healing intelligence.”

This is what drives Lulu’s to put maca root, orchid flower, rose essence and California cedar, cardamom and tulsi into their jarred chocolate products, and offer pure cacao essence to use as a perfume. Also along superhero lines, Lulu’s is creating the dream with others in an intentional community in Hawaii.