appetites

HI
I MISS BLOGGING HERE
MY FOOD BLOG IS TASTEEUCHARIST.BLOGSPOT.COM BUT I ALSO WANTED TO PRINT IT HERE

In every discipline that guides people toward food as medicine, the weather and how it makes us feel is the way we intuit what we should be eating to supplement our experiences.

At first when you're learning how to do that, you look at long lists advised by Chinese medicine or Ayurveda or macrobiotics, but once you see the seasonal relationships, you can wing it and eat how you feel.

When I'm chilly, I want pumpkin, butter, warm spices and ginger and chiles, garlic and onions, long-cooked stews, wilted and sauteed greens, roast vegetables, steaming soups.

Oakland has been wildly rotating between climates lately, which I think is pretty usual though the degree is drought-like and a little mystifying. For most of this month, we have had sparkling sunny nearly hot days, which upset my seasonal rhythym. I found myself craving watermelons and having ice cream cones in a T-shirt on a January Monday while the sun set in peals of pinks.

The rain finally came a few days ago to our relief, and now the kabocha squashes on my countertop are being put to use. Daikon radishes, turnips, beets, leeks, celery root, potatoes and all the hardy greens are perfect and delicious.

I grew up eating Dairy Queen in blasted-heat SUVs in Michigan winters, so I guess I'm used to climate bi-polarness, but these Oakland days are crazy! The sunshine days are blazed-out full solar breast dialation, and then these rainy days are painted with the grimy Portland-like dreary long strokes of rock shades. I'm indoors this afternoon, drinking black tea, sensing the homey hearths of my neighbors who I can feel cuddling into their own nests.

Cuddling and cooking: it's the way to cope with this recession. I'm really already feeling it. I work usually in catering, and people aren't really feeling like partying right now. Suddenly, I have found myself with only two days of work this month, and scrambling for other work in the company of many, many people. That makes you really not only want to cuddle, but it makes realness, affection and love spiritual stabilizers.

As an artist and strident anti-materialist, I have been entirely broke more than a few times over the years, and here I am again, scraping by for the meantime. I know I'm not alone and I've never felt embarrassed about this. Over the years I have anticipated the topsies and the turvies and tried to garden and dumpster dive to ensure my food security. My current landlord does not permit a garden, and I am long-evicted from my old vacant-lot garden, but I am still very very lucky to have an essential community resource. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, four women manage a mostly local, organic produce stand at two elementary schools in my neighborhood.

The women speak Spanish, Mandarin and Vietnamese and peddle unusual greens grown by Mien farmers in the area. They don't have beautiful watermelon dikons, or celery root, or parsnips, or spiky emerald brasing mixes, but they always have seasonal, inexpensive fresh food. This time of year we have pears, grapefruits, lemons, oranges, tangerines, sugar cane, onions, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, potatoes, winter squashes, organic eggs, raisins, walnuts, almonds and tons of greens.

I can buy almost more food than I can carry for $30. I strap the goods to me and start to walk home, though usually I am interrupted by a small talk with the elderly Filipino man at the corner, who has watery blue eyes and a life story whose first chapter exceeds 20 minutes. In those 20 minutes, I am like a laborer, holding all those groceries and sweating. Then the Chinese crossing guard with the rouged cheeks and large smile escorts me across the street and I hobble home with my bags overfilled with leaves.

When you're broke, fruits and vegetables seem really expensive and quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches are more economical, but it's essential to find inexpensive providers of produce. Forget organic if you're broke, unless you have a subsidized hookup like I do. Variety and bounty are more important. There's good quality plants that aren't organic, and some research helps to know which foods are essential to buy organic (like potatoes and peanuts).

Fruits and vegetables' essences teach us how to prevail in tough times; they are tough, they thrive in days of drizzle and dreariness. Beautiful, colorful vegetable meals enhance pride in ourselves and the brilliant hues of the gift of life, and the lushness of earth. When out of work, I have so much time on my hands and when you're low on money, there's a lot you might have to give up, but eating is still essential. Why not spend a lot of time on cooking? Foraging for lemons in the neighborhood and preserving them, making breads, soaking and cooking beans, preparing desserts, making steel-cut oats for breakfast instead of the usual rolled oats, making things extra special to compensate for how demoralizing it might be to let tough times feel like your fault.

These long hours cooking, I fantasize about a branch of the Obama WPA projects on the horizon. People who are not literally rebuilding infrastructure by engineering bridges or rebuilding roads, but reworking infrastructure by pursuing community-based preventative health institutions and working to eliminate the carbon footprint of our food. I think of communities having people like me who are supplemented by the government in order to explore ways that our neighborhoods can be less reliant on fossil fuel, more sustainable. Imagine grants for people committed to growing their own food in cities, committed to buying local as much as possible, and are subsidized by the government in order to afford local products as a way to stimulate local small business.

I fantasize so much about grants for people who live simply, who are not cut out for typical American earning and buying patterns, but whose difference should be enhanced and appreciated because our routines leave such small impacts on the treasury, but are so supportive of community.

I want to be a yoga teacher, a local food cultivator and a cooking teacher, whose role is supported through a public works project that makes sense and is an important element to our changing public health system. For now though, I'm on a list to be a substitute teacher.

I want to tell you more about eating well while broke. Many people who work lots are perpetually struggling because they don't know how to cook. Eating out is so expensive---it is amazing how a meal you could make for $2 in your home and have leftovers for lunch---would cost $12 in a restaurant. Cooking is a skill that just doesn't come naturally to everybody. Hopefully you have a roommate who will do the cooking in exchange for dish duty. I will write a blog entry one day on how and where to start, because when I think of it, it's a big job!

If you are unemployed, get food stamps if you can. Do it proudly especially if you try to spend your money as much as you can on locally-grown and produced products. Make a pantry list and spend as much as you can afford on the basics. For me, I go to Rainbow Co-op in San Francisco and buy 20 pound bags of rice, breakfast grains, dried beans, seaweeds, flours and yeast, nut butters, sweetners, vinegars and oils. Try to pay attention to how much things cost. It's crazy when you notice. Some places in my area sell brown rice for about $1 a pound, some places only carry organic and charge up to $3 a pound! That's a big difference for a simple staple grain, and in some countries, they'll riot over that kind of ripoff.

Just empty your pockets for these simple foods, and avoid the chips and cookies and all that shit because it's a big waste of money. Especially avoid drinks. I like to drink alcohol on occasion, and when I'm kinda broke, it's hard to fit that in, especially because I won't drink the swill anymore. I like the decent stuff. So I stay away from other bottled drinks: no iced teas, no kombuchas, no sodas, none of that. Try to buy all your basics so you won't need to visit the market often and get tempted by all the goodies.

Then, head to the farmers markets a few times a week to get the rest. Go at the end of the markets and make friends with the vendors, who are sometimes nice enough to sell discounted pocked turnips or deformed carrots. Farmers markets might be out of your reach, they can be so expensive, so also check out food banks and dumpsters and ethnic markets for the affordable stuff. Try to have a garden also, if you have a landlord who isn't a sourpuss! Pay attention to what's local, that's what should be the cheapest.

It's such a nice feeling to know how to cook, and to bring people together over the meal you made, which was so carefully prepared, from the source of the food to the consideration of how the food will make the person feel. The other night I had a dinner and a show on Obama's inauguration night. I made posole, which is a Mexican stew made of hominy, chiles and herbs like oregano, which perfumed my house in a witchy way while I stirred and chopped, listening to the inauguration coverage and feeling swells of relief. I felt such psychic parasites hooked on my system during the Bush administration, and for a minute I suspended my cynicism and poured imagination and possibility from my heart into my cooking task.

I made posole, black beans, brown rice, a huge salad of dark spiny greens and striped soft lettuces and maroon endives, with salsas made by my local market and onions and chiles on the side. After the show, we danced until we got hungry again and the kids stood over the pots and fed again. I took a snapshot of the moment in my mind. Life has got to be like this forever. Dancing, music, friendship, celebration, food, fellowship.

There's a contraction in ways of life now; the era of human innovation and manifestations through commodity gestures is so thankfully ending. I hope this transition will be comfortable for me, but it won't for anybody gripping on the old values. I visualize inventions in the new peasant life.