Food for the Soul: Roasted Beets

Beetroot, by Maria Livings and Marie Rodgers of Lush Designs

Let's celebrate autumn with the vegetable that is surely the juiciest, most autumnal root—the beet!

"The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies."

    —Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins

Beets aren't the friendliest things to cook, but you can be rewarded with candy-flavored little jewels of food if you're willing to put into some slicing and roasting time. 

Slice them up (wear an apron but enjoy the way your hands turn a lovely hot pink color). Toss in a few sliced carrots and let them get a little pink, too. Sprinkle some rosemary over beets and carrots. Roast at 400 or 425 until they're tender—about 45 minutes. 

You can make salads with roasted beets (red cabbage, walnut, red apples, and red wine vinegar is a good one), but after waiting for them to roast, I'm usually to impatient to do anything but eat them! Try roasting them at the same time as you roast a chicken.

Remember to save your beet greens, too, for a light reminder of the end of summer. If you have a juicer, the beet greens make a lovely pink foam for the top of your orange-carrot juice.

Food for the Soul: Sunshine Sandwich

Sunsnap, by Jayn Foley

Why not enjoy summer's sunshine finish with a cheery golden sandwich? Boil eggs, mix with mayonnaise, minced shallots, and tarragon for a reminder of summer fields. Pile on bread, and garnish with a slice of yellow tomato, straight from the garden. Pause, and soak in the sunshine; then gobble it up while it's fresh!

Food for the Soul: Black Beans and Bananas

from Be Here Now, by Ram Dass
via Good Rhythms

Here's another dish that comes from Jacques Pepin: black beans with bananas. The beauty of the dish is the harmony in opposites: dark and light, savory and sweet, traditional and unexpected. The black beans are slightly tart with the addition of some hot sauce and vinegar, and the bananas add a sweet counterpoint, like avocados only more delicate. It may sound weird to garnish a dish with bananas, but you really should try it! 

Cook your black beans with some bacon and onions, maybe a bell pepper and some chili pepper. We used dried ancho chilis. Then, when the beans are cooked, you can add some olive oil, hot sauce, and some vinegar along with salt, to make the coming contrast with the bananas more poignant. Garnish with sliced bananas tossed in some lemon juice and pepper, and some cilantro.

Enjoy eating your opposites! And look for something green to grow from your polarities!

Food for the Soul: Spring Onions and Eggs

Plate V, by John Ridgway
 from Charles Bendire's Life Histories of North American Birds, 
With Special Reference to Their Breeding Habits and Eggs
via Classic Nature Prints

This past Saturday, our farmer's market opened up for the spring. At this time, there isn't much available for us besides greens of different sorts—lettuce, broccoli, spring onions. I think one of the best ways to celebrate early spring is to make a simple dish of sauteed spring onions and poached eggs. (It works best with spring onions that have grown bigger than the regular scallions you get at the grocery story and with orange-yolk eggs that have come from healthy chickens.)

All you do is halve the onions length-wise and sautee them until they're carmelized and tender. In the meantime, poach two eggs for each person. (We have a handy egg-poacher that my father-in-law got us after I had a slight melt down in the kitchen one breakfast . . . Word to the wise: don't try to poach eggs at altitude—they'll never set!) Go ahead and toast some bread to soak up the egg yolk when you're done with the main event.

The beauty of this dish is that the flavors are sweet and delicate, and the textures are also soft and tender, so the final combination is a celebration of all that is new this season. Eat it and give thanks for all that's new and tender and just beginning to grow in your life.

Imitating the Habit of Twilight

Untitled landscape, by Rabindranath Tagore

I've been feeling at odds with time lately. I say 'lately' not because my racing around is an entirely new feeling, but rather the same old feeling has been stronger the past few weeks, despite my best intentions to slow down. I know I'm partially making up for a few weekends of missed productivity, and I know I'm also being too concerned with getting everything done.

John O'Donohue has gave a fantastic interview with Krista Tippet of On Being, where he described stress as "a perverted relationship with time." A harmonious relationship with time, in his view, is being a subject within time and seeing the "deep heart" of time, which is possibility and transfiguration. It's such a beautiful thought, to see time as our invisible friend instead of our cruel tormentor. 

John O'Donohue also has a beautiful blessing for "one who is exhausted." Here is the end of it:

"Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time."

Ritual for a Bad Day

Cherry Blossom, by Kirra Jamison
via Black Eiffel

Some days just throw it all at you, and all you can do is go with the flow. Here is my ritual for a bad day:

1. Listen to Joni Mitchell sing about laughing it all away.

2. Look at art that looks back at you. Looking at Kirra Jamison's art is like having a conversation with all the magic in the world.

3. Cuddle your dog after a good walk, and trade your worried human mind for calm dog mind. 

4. Eat the most colorful food you can find.

Music, art, food, love are the things that can reorient your whole day. I'd seek these types of "rituals" out even on a good day, but there's something about having a bad day that makes you cling/take refuge to those things you know to be good for you.

Lent and the Conditions for Happiness

by Jose Manuel Ferrater
via Sebastian

We're now in the second week of Lent, for those who are counting. Growing up, I learned that Lent was a time for sacrificing something (usually, something that gave me pleasure, like chocolate) and that somehow my abstaining from a bit of food was like Jesus's temptation in the wilderness.

But since the onset of adulthood, I've found this practice of fasting to be unhelpfully negative. Wouldn't it be better to commit to a positive practice, like an increased regimen of prayer and meditation?

Enter in my latest thoughts on Thich Nhat Hanh and conditions for happiness. Over and over again, he stresses the joy that can be found in the breath, and in simply noticing all that is well with your body. His view is a rather dramatic opposition to figures such as Augustine, who are so sure that the body is the way of sin.

So this Lent, I'm practicing the joy of the body, not in some hedonistic, let's get drunk and have orgies kind of way, but in the simple way of noticing my breath and noticing my body and taking pleasure in that. Will you join me? I think it might prepare us for a fantastic rebirth on Easter.

Postmodern Hymn: Simple Life

Life moves so quickly it's frightening sometimes, and that's when you've got to pause and sing a song like this, breathe, and smile.

Slow Food Challenge

Slow Food USA is challenging everyone to participate in the $5 Slow Food Day on September 17. The idea is that delicious, healthy food can be made for the same price of a fast food meal.

We happen to eat like this most nights. In fact, one of the first meals I ever ate with my husband could qualify for the slow food challenge. One night, he served me his famous turkey chili. It was like a love potion: so hearty and so healthy. It's also easy to make, so let me see if I can describe it.

Tomatoes, by Pragya Kothari

Gather a bag of beans (white, mixed, etc. it doesn't matter, although if you use kidney beans, make sure you boil them first, because they have a toxin that won't disappear in the slow cooker), a can of tomatoes, some ground turkey meat (or not if you're going for veggie bliss), chopped bell pepper, and chopped onion. Maybe add some garlic and some good red chili powder for some extra flavor.

Dump the ingredients into a slow cooker, and add about 4 cups of stock. (You're making your own and freezing it, right? It's so easy and so good.) Let everything cook on low for at least 5 hours. The longer you wait, the better it tastes.

Serve over rice, or with corn bread. Yum! A perfect summer-to-fall transition meal that's cheap and creates enough leftovers to last a week.

Food for the Soul: Simple Spiced Okra

At this point in the summer, our farmer's market is overflowing with okra. One of my favorite ways to eat it is sauteed and dusted in curry powder. It's easy, delicious, and much healthier than the classic fried okra!

Abelmoschus esculentus, by Diana McElwain
via Green Currency

Our recipe is based on the one by Kevin Gillespie of Top Chef fame, but we're lazy. We slice the okra in half, sprinkle on our curry powder du jour (along with salt and pepper) and saute it a single oil-coated skillet until it's crispy enough for our taste. We like to eat it with salmon, seasoned with a little Old Bay, because we're fancy like that.

by Frances Janisch, via Food and Wine

Simple Pleasures: Recipe for the Fruits of the Summer

There really is an art to keeping life simple. The other night, we made a delicious dinner of corn, shrimp, basil, zucchini, green onions. That's all.

Fruit Basket, by Oana Befort

For dessert, black grapes and strawberries.

What a magical world we live in, that we can assemble such beautiful, satisfying meals.