I know, friends, I know. Almost every recipe I post basically amounts to: me quoting Heidi Swanson quoting someone else.
But, you know, most of the time in the kitchen I’m not shooting for originality. I’m shooting for total deliciousness.
This bulgur pilaf with spicy harissa shrunken tomatoes, lemon-cinnamon caramelized onions, wilted spinach and minted yogurt fits the bill. Try it. You’ll see.
love,
katie
Karen, I have no idea who you are (do I?), but thank you. Let’s be friends. :)
Really though, not to get all mushed out on y’all, but it’s truly amazing to know that what I do here helps other people out. Even a little bit.
With so much gratitude to everybody who shows up here to read, reflect, and respond,
katie
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*As of this posting, I’m delighted to say I just had a lovely, laughter-filled walk around Lake Merritt with Jess Hoffman, and man is she kind and smart and cool. (But not in the too-cool-for-you kind of way. Cuz I guess that would cancel out the “kind” part.) Jess, if you’re reading, thanks again!
[Update 5:44pm: Elise, I almost forgot you! Folks, Elise is a bad-ass, hilarious lady with sick dance moves and mad Facebook commenting skills. So good to meet you at Jamal’s party, girl!]
Ryan and I both happened to be in Sacramento again for this month’s Full Moon Walk, which turned into a full moon bike ride (hence his stylin’ reflector vest, and my hard-to-detect helmet) along the short stretch of levee that isn’t privatized.
The camera even began to see in the dark, thanks to a cloudless sky and a tripod on loan from my dear sweet mama.
Next month we’ll be in the Bay for sure. I hope you’ll join us if you’re around!
Makin’ good on our new traditions. Hell yes.
‘Mornin y’all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend.
It’s cold here in Oakland. I am a hot-weather person. But it’s all good: I’m snuggled up under some blankets, and feeling especially cozy and glad because I get to share two lovely new blogspaces with you!
The first one a lot of folks are already excited about. It’s a blog for the Clear View Project, an engaged Buddhism org led by the totally rad Hozan Alan Senauke, vice-abbot at the Berkeley Zen Center. (Which, incidentally, is just a ways down from my new apartment. hey, neighbor.)
Just barely out the gate, Alan’s blog is already shining. Current events (national and international); incredible music (DAMN!); and personal/political reporting on the ongoing hearing of author, Buddhist, and death row prisoner Jarvis Masters — with whom Alan has cultivated a friendship for nearly 14 years. At Alan’s invitation on the blog, I joined supporters for part of the first day of Jarvis’ hearings in Marin. As someone who particularly appreciates blogs that bridge the online/offline divide, I’m so grateful that the CVP’s very first post was an offering for prison-support action. Dope, dope, dope. And the icing on the cake: Alan’s a superb writer. Clear View Blog: check it out, if you haven’t already.
And the second new blog, like most of the sites on my blogroll, is by a longtime friend and fellow young status-quo-questioner (who chooses to remain anonymous). The first few postings on handful of earth are personal and insightful, with the kind of sweet storytelling that, when you’re finished reading, makes you want to go on with your day a little differently; a little better. I especially love this dharma-infused reflection on a daily commute ritual with a stranger, commenting on the connection between generosity and joy.
There it is — two brand-new cybergems. Here’s to sharing freely online, while we still have the chance.
Hey friends. Sorry I missed posting yesterday: still don’t have Internet in the new place, though that’s not really a good reason since there’s free WiFi aplenty in the local coffeeshops and library. Really, it’s just been a very very full week: family visit, getting our feet on the ground in the new place (Ryan and I cooked our very first non-cereal-and-soymilk breakfast this morning, using our one pot — a huge soup beast — to boil water for tea). And blessing the apartment, Thursday, with its very first meeting: the Marxist feminist group (now weekly), preparing for a gathering the following night with two other Marxist feminist groups: one other from the Bay Area, one from New York. Pretty powerful.
Anyway, my point is I’ve been feeling pretty un-grounded (oh, did I mention I went on hormonal birth control again? motivation all plummeting; emotionality all skyrocketing), and thus blogging has suffered. Apologies! Please accept these colors (you know how I am with the colors) as a token of my love.
See you Monday!
Dear friends,
Happy New Year!* Sorry I wasn’t able to put up a post yesterday, but I have a good excuse: no Internet, because I was moving into a new apartment!
2011 is bringing new beginnings for me on many major levels. After over a year of living and learning with the Faithful Fools in San Francisco, I’m crossing the Bay from the City to the Town, setting up shop in a cozy apartment in North Oakland. The “shop” itself will be the final four semesters of the Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts (through Goddard College) that I started in spring of last year, with the unbelievably generous support of the Buck Foundation scholarship. And my shopmates (fellow housemates) will be Ryan (whom you know) and Mai, a friend I got to know through the Marxist-Feminist study group.
Those are the basic facts; the meanings behind them feel a little complex.
Bittersweetness at leaving the Tenderloin, just as I was beginning to form some strong relationships, build trust, and get a solid feel for the place. Excitement to be living in Oakland, which was my original destination upon arriving in the Bay Area. (The Faithful Fools thing, in the city, kind of popped up as a surprise.)
Enthusiasm and optimism for my first time living with a partner.
And a complicated mixture of gratitude and grief about this amazing opportunity to pursue my dream education, fully funded, while so many other students worldwide suffer under tremendous debt from student loans — a collective yet tremendously isolating form of suffering owing to neoliberal attacks on public, accessible, common-good resources. But that matter deserves a whole post to itself: stay tuned.
As I transition into this new phase step by step, preparing to put lovely kitchen things into these lovely kitchen drawers (above), I just want to thank you, again, for reading, for commenting, for your kind encouragement, for your critiques, for your friendship, for your inspiration, collaboration, solidarity, and love in 2010. It was a year of great growth and change on Kloncke. To know that what I’m offering here continues to be of benefit to some people means more than I can express.
Thanks friends, take care, and be well in the new *Gregorian year!
love,
katie
[From 22 February 2010]
Ryan and I have come to an understanding on the subject of gift flowers. He’s into them, insofar as he enjoys flowers in general. Me, I like them in the wild, and in other people’s gardens or homes…but I told him if he’s ever thinking of getting me flowers, he can offer a bouquet of kale, instead. Now that would set my heart aflutter.
[From 05 November 2010]
[Today, former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was sentenced to 2 years in prison, with 146 days already served, for the involuntary manslaughter of Oscar Grant. The Grant case marked the first time in California’s history that a peace officer was tried for murder.]
Whereas
We as women, transgender people, two-spirit people, queers, gender-oppressed people, and allies of the Bay Area mourn the loss of Oscar Grant;
Whereas we recognize that this young man was just one of countless victims of police violence;
Whereas we understand and experience police repression, particularly in poor, queer, and working-class communities of color;
Whereas we know that police violence both enables and enacts rape, brutalization, and degradation;
Whereas police violence compounds the dangers we face in domestic violence, sex trafficking, and homophobic and transphobic hate crimes;
Whereas police enforce the criminalization of our disabilities, addictions, and mental illnesses;
Whereas police enforce the criminalization of our skin color, sexualities, style of dress and speech, gender identities, religious practices, and nations of origin;
Whereas police violently enforce our subservience to an economy that enriches elites, while slaughtering, starving, sickening, and stealing from us as workers, child-rearers, and culture creators;
[From 13 July 2009]
Hey friends! Hope you had a fabulous weekend.
The recent exchange with Oh Please, here on the Twitter thread, reminded me of a wonderful story that I’ve been wanting to share with y’all for a long time. Paraphrased from my meditation teacher, S. N. Goenka, who heard or read it somewhere else, it’s been the single most helpful lesson I’ve learned from him so far, when it comes to dealing with everyday situations. I hope you might find it useful, too!
Here goes.
At the time of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gotama, not far from his ashram there lived an old brahmin and his family.
From 13 June 2009]
Dhamma Neru, as most of y’all know, is the meditation center in Barcelona where I was living when I arrived in Spain.
In my three months meditating there and volunteering in the kitchen and the garden, I only took out my camera twice: once in March, and once in April.
Both times, what drew my attention the most were las cositas — the little things.
Kloncke 