Chicken Tagine and Orange Blossom Rice Pudding

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We relied on a “Try The World” box to take us to Morocco on a cold Indiana night. In texture, the meal was perfect to fight cold weather soft, creamy, stewed and warm spiced. In flavors, however, the meal invited early September to the plate, the few weeks between summer and fall, to the plate, the zucchini and the carrots were equally tender, the sweet onions and raisins complimented the heat of harissa. It was an unusual treat to have a hearty, flavorful yet light as cous-cous meal.

The orange blossom rice pudding was perfect in sweetness and texture. Around the table, we had mixed reviews about the floral quality of the dessert. The dessert may have needed to match the complexity of the tagine tastes. It felt a bit one-note after such a symphony of sweet and spicy.

I learned to use arborio rice for pudding, to marinate the chicken in harissa and spices before setting into the tagine on a bed of chopped onions and to overlay a mix of matchstick-sized vegetables.

Would make this again. Any season.

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Food Poem- The Poet’s Occasional Alternative by Grace Paley

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As a hungryphilosopher I relate to this poem deeply. Creative work of any kind is both so difficult and so enjoyable. Sometimes I just want to be received. For me, cooking has been that easy creative connection with others. This poem by Grace Paley describes the urgent need for “responsive eatership” deliciously. Enjoy!

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead      it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft      a poem would have had some
distance to go      days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it      many friends
will say      why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership      I do not
want to wait a week      a year      a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

“The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley from Begin Again. © Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.

From the Writers Almanac http://writersalmanac.org/

Food Poem – Strong Coffee by Anne Higgins

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A poem for all my fellow morning coffee addicts out there:

Strong coffee
smells like a current
of warm southerly air
in the climate of dawn.
Strong coffee
gets stronger
when poured back
through the grounds.
Opaque,
thick, hot, bitter
for waking up,
the caffeine
pumps through your center,
stains your mouth with morning,
with going to work,
surprises you
with your own
breath.

“Strong Coffee” by Anne Higgins from At the Year’s Elbow. © Mellen Poetry Press, 2000.

From the Writer’s Almanac http://writersalmanac.org/

Wobblyogi Wednesday – Book Club!

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Dear Fellow Yogis Near and Far,

I invite you to join the book club hosted by Community Yoga in West Lafayette (and Lafayette) Indiana. I’ll be offering bi-weekly notes and discussion prompts starting January 4th leading up to an April 1st workshop at the studio complete with an asana practice inspired by the reading, as well as a book discussion. Read along, join the open online discussion, the protected group discussion (email for a password at communityyogalafayette@gmail.com) and attend the workshop. Do it all or in part as your schedule allows.

Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life is our first book. I  was inspired by the Patanjali 101 online course I just completed with Judith Lasater. I enjoyed her commitment to cultivating yoga principles both on and off the mat. As a mom, I related to a lot of her stories and struggles. The book is organized in short thematic chapters that are easy to read. I found it a gentle introduction to yoga philosophy that avoids pedantic technical theorizing and perfect for starting conversations.

The main question she prompts me to ask myself is:

If the road to holiness passes through the world of action, what is your road? 

I hope you join the conversation and help me with directions.

Wishing you goodness and ease,

The Wobblyogi

p.s. Look up https://communityyogalafayette.com/book-club/for more information and to sign up for the protected discussion group and/or the workshop.

Recipe Test: Baked Banana Chocolate Wontons

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Many thanks to the Wishful Chef and her recipe for Baked Banana Chocolate Wontons. Big hit with my 14-year-old. We are inspired to try other fillings. Crunchy, guilt-free snack. How rare!

  1. Place a slice of banana and a few chocolate chips on a wonton wrapper piece. Fold over. Seal with water.

  2. Place on baking tray in single layer. Spray with cooking oil of your choice.

  3. Bake about 10 minutes until crispy in a 400-degree oven.

I sprinkled mine with powdered sugar. You can leave plain, drizzle honey, chocolate syrup.. although that that point it won’t be very “healthy.”

Go to the Wishful Chef website for this recipe and more at http://wishfulchef.com/baked-banana-chocolate-wontons/

Enjoy!

Wishing you a tasty weekend,

Hungryphil

On the Complexity of Mayonnaise

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Complicated things can be explained by examining their individual parts. Complex ones cannot. They are always greater than the sum of their parts. This dynamic has nothing to do with the number of parts or, say, the cost of the object. A jet engine is complicated. Mayonnaise is complex. You can easily replace a part in a jet engine and not alter its fundamental nature. It’s still a jet engine, though possibly inorperable. With mayonnaise, if you change one ingredient, you run the risk of altering the essence of its mayonnaise-ness. What matters is not the components alone but how they interact with one another. (Speaking of interactions, people tend to describe themselves as complex and their spouse as complicated).

from The Geography of Genius by Eric Weiner

Recipe and image from http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/mayonnaise-241083

Whisk together yolk, mustard, and 1/4 teaspoon salt until combined well. Add about 1/4 cup oil drop by drop, whisking constantly until mixture begins to thicken. Whisk in vinegar and lemon juice, then add remaining 1/2 cup oil in a very slow, thin stream, whisking constantly until well blended. If at any time it appears that oil is not being incorporated, stop adding oil and whisk mixture vigorously until smooth, then continue adding oil. Whisk in salt to taste and white pepper. Chill, surface covered with plastic wrap, until ready to use.

Can “Love More” be a political strategy?

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It has been 10 days since the U.S. Election. Like many,  I have been involved in exhaustive soul searching about the threat of being reduced to a name on a registry as a suspicious ethnic OTHER. I kept thinking about a Dalai Lama lecture I recently attended. He shared a story about a monk who was imprisoned by the Chinese. The conversation went something like this:

Monk: ” I was in deep danger.”

Dalai Lama: “You mean in danger of loosing your life.”

Monk: “No, I was in deep danger of loosing my compassion for the Chinese soldiers.”

The last ten days, I’ve been thinking about this exchange and the fear of loosing compassion. Here are my strategies to “Love More” during and beyond the age of President Donald Trump that include:  acceptance, resistance, understanding, action and gratitude.

  1. I paused and let the loss sink in as an essential part of democracy. At least a military coup was not a threat here.

  2. I commiserated with dear ones and discovered unexpected support and new dear ones.

  3. I oscillated between connecting and disconnecting with others, in person and on social media. I allowed myself erratic emotions of….. okay, I’ll just hate them back to ….no, but I love a lot of “them.” Who are “they” and “us” anyway?

  4. I smiled more.  Said “hello” more. As if to say…You may see me as threateningly brown but I will recognize you as a person. It is your choice to be suspicious, not mine.

  5. I started to read Fox news along with CNN, Huff Post, BBC, Le Monde, and other newspapers to remind myself that every story has multiple perspectives.

  6. I read books about “other”perspectives and cultivated my compassion.        http://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/501975656/one-way-to-bridge-the-political-divide-read-the-book-thats-not-for-you

  7. I signed up to learn more about my local government through apps like “Countable” and other websites.

  8. I continued with my weekly volunteering and looked to volunteer, donate more to food issues and women’s empowerment.

  9. I refuse to demonize and categorize others. I choose to make the people I live with “my people” regardless of income, political inclination and ethnic composition. I will be loud and visible in defending my people here and now.

  10. Most importantly, I refuse to let fear pollute the deep gratitude I feel towards all the people, my people, White-Black-Brown who have supported and continue to nourish my life. The list is too long! ….teachers who taught me and my children to read, nurses who held my hand as my children emerged into the world, the people who stock the grocery store shelves, cashiers who patiently look up the numbers for produce they never use,  the lady behind the fish counter who shares recipes, the police officer who found my orange purse after our house was robbed, the postman who brings my boxes to the door with a smile, the bank teller who patiently replace a stolen new debit card, the construction workers fixing the roads, the trash collectors who carry away the smelly ugly mess, the quiet librarians, the diner cooks who make me eggs on the weekends, all the people I don’t ever see, who support my life nevertheless……..this is why my family came to this country, for these people who make America great every-freakin-day, who work hard to make it possible for me to sit here with my cup of coffee and write to you. That person over there behind the counter, who charged me $2.34 for a cup of coffee and asked me if I wanted a mug or a to-go cup. Yes, all the people behind the counter and behind our view. I as an immigrant have failed to convey my deep gratitude for people who now feel invisible, afraid and left behind.  I will do better. Maybe just starting with holiday cookies. This is a war of love just as much as policy. I may not be able to make people feel different about me but I can try to  win “hearts and minds.” Some, I will never. Haters will hate, right? But that can’t be an excuse to do nothing. Maybe the US military can help us “nation build” at home (oh yes…also send my gratitude to veterans). Happy to be a domestic American soldier of compassion.

I am doing this so my “I” can dissolve into “US,” flawed, conflicted and confused like any family.

All this may be stupid and ineffective but this is what I’ll be doing. Bake and share cookies. At the least this election makes me rethink the “family” cookbook I’m working on for my daughters. You out there!… send me your recipes and stories, I will include them. You are now a part of my family, my story and whether you like it or not, I am yours. Let’s take better care of each other.

Thank you for reading yet one more post-election rant.

With deep gratitude,

Hungryphil

Whetstone Woodenware “Raising the Grain” – Edible Indy

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I’m so excited to share my interview just published in the winter issue of Edible Indy with John Whetstone at Whetstone Woodenware. Conversations like these restore my faith in human goodness and beauty. We have so much to learn from people who lovingly make things over and over again. Enjoy!

http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=356878&p=36

 

 

#edibleindy

#kindred

Crunchy Fried Smelt

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A spur of the moment made-up recipe that worked well. Writing and sharing the recipe so I don’t forget.

  1. 1 bag frozen Smelt (thawed out)

  2. 1 teaspoon each turmeric, chili powder, coriander and salt [you can add any spice mix of your choice, for example, Cajun would be tasty too]

  3. 1/2 cup of besan (chickpea flour) and 1 cup flour [rice flour would work too]

  4. Combine the ingredients. The fish holds so much water that adding water isn’t necessary. In fact, you may need more flour for the batter to stick to the fish.

  5. Shallow fry in vegetable oil or olive oil.

Serve hot sprinkled with lemon and salt. Dipping sauce of your choice.

Enjoy!

Widening the Gap: Toblerone and the US Election

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There are few candy bars as iconic as Toblerone. The popular nougat-and-chocolate bar, invented in Switzerland but now owned by the U.S.-based Mondelez International, became internationally famous in large part because of its distinctive triangular shape.

But that very shape is now the subject of controversy in Britain, where a recent announcement that some versions of Toblerone would feature larger spaces between the triangles is being viewed as a political scandal.

Why exactly? Well, many Brits think they know what is to blame for the sudden change: Brexit.

Excerpt for the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/08/brits-blame-strange-new-toblerone-shape-on-brexit/

Image and following excerpt  from the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/08/toblerone-gap-brexit-falling-pound-2016

It’s easy to scoff at the fact that it takes food to act as a focal point for what is happening in this country, when there is so much that has been truly awful about this year, not least a lurch to the far right that has horrified people across the political spectrum. Child poverty, hate crime, the immediate retraction of a promise of extra NHS funding – all of these things should be more alarming than a slightly smaller chocolate bar, or a pricier snack. Even if that snack is a Pot Noodle, a fish finger sandwich, or a packet of Walkers crisps.

But all of these things have become part of a slow, heavy, ominous collective sigh that has summed up the past few months. Indeed, 2016 has been defined by a creeping sense of dread that all the progress humanity has made over the past few decades – centuries, if you’re feeling particularly doomy – might be about to unravel. The anxiety over what could happen in America on Wednesday, and by extension to the rest of the world, is almost too great to contemplate.

So in many ways, it’s little surprise that it takes something seemingly trivial to cut through the incessant bleakness. Toblerone is just a bar of chocolate, like Marmite is just a divisive topping for toast, but it takes these unusual disturbances in the domestic everyday to jolt us out of what has become an enormous, abstract feeling of doom. These small differences make all of the bigger differences seem so much more real, and like they’re actually happening.

And besides, even if you don’t like Toblerone, it’s impossible to escape the irony of the fact that the latest emblem of Brexit Britain is quite literally a widening of the gap.

More articles on the topic:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/08/toblerone-changes-triangles-on-its-iconic-chocolate-bars-in-the-uk-but-denies-its-down-to-brexit.html

http://time.com/4562255/toblerone-changing-shape-chocolate-brexit

I wonder where we will “eat” the US Election results early next year?  How will the coming regime manifest in “unusual disturbances in the domestic everyday”?

I’m afraid. I need chocolate…