Busy day today: accompanying a new friend, a Guatemalan woman with two kids, 7 and 13, to set up her CalWorks (food stamps, medical, and general assistance for people with children). Then, my friend Lea is coming through SFO with a 10-hour layover, so we’ll get to hang out in the city a bit. Won’t make it to Angel Island, so this post ain’t too topical, but I just thought I’d share some more of the photos from a couple weeks back.
Workin on a couple of longer pieces, too, so stay tuned. Happy Wednesday!
The Free Farm lives on Gough and Eddy, five blocks down from our home at Faithful Fools. It’s being built on a vacant lot where a big church burned down fifteen years ago. The first plantings happened only a few months after I arrived at the Fools, if I remember right. Welcome ministry, an anti-poverty group up on Sacramento Street, has spearheaded the community project, and borrowed our Fools van on a few occasions to haul manure and mural installations. In short, I feel a heart connection to this effort and its facilitators, who are close friends of the Fools and deeply Foolish themselves, in many respects. Reverend Megan Roher, head of Welcome, has made a number of FF street retreats. She is legendary for her ability to rake in the busking dough, singing and performing in the subway stations.
Last Wednesday, a brief visit to the Free Farm — with its beautiful volunteer growers, homed and homeless, some inebriated, all open-hearted — proved just what I needed to kick-start a wondrous afternoon.
When I was about ten, my very favorite outdoor colorscape was a kind of calm, rich, horizontal trio of soft gray, dark brown, and brilliant green. You know how we associate scent with memories? Color works the same way for me (and probably for many of you, too). One or two shades can evoke a whole time and place and mode of being. Clay red and robin’s-egg blue bring me back to a wet walk through a southern Indian suburb. Rusty orange is the color of Barcelona. And yellow is the color of my bedroom: for nearly a decade, whenever and wherever I’ve been able to paint my walls, they’ve always turned out some kind of buttercup or saffron.
Yesterday I reconnected with color thanks to some more helpful tips from Soren Gordhamer’s book Wisdom 2.0. He says that in order to take a real break from computer work, we should try to (a) reduce information intake, (b) breathe deeply, (c) go outside (important one for me to remember!), (d) move around, and (e) keep communication to a minimum (147-148). So we should not, for example, read an article or catch up on a webcomic or play a computer game or text a lover or watch a TV show, even for fun. The most effective resting happens when we relax our discursive mind altogether, and anchor ourselves in experiences beyond screens and words.
With that in mind, I decided that instead of rushing to take the bus home and return to my reading, I would take my camera and meander around the Western Addition on my way back to the Tenderloin.
I’ve made this soup, oh, a kazillion times or so. And yesterday I made it again. Will never get sick of it. Kale and cauliflower (two all-time favorite foods) plus carrots, chickpeas, sautéed onions, and a little bulgur for texture and bulk — all swimming in a full-bodied broth deepened with olive oil, spiked with habanero peppers, and brightened with a surprising secret ingredient: orange juice.
My “recipe” (more like “ritual” at this point) riffs off of Heidi Swanson’s lovely Chickpea Hotpot. I’ve adapted it to my tastes and lifestyle, which means the following.
Lifestyle: I like spicy things. A lot. One time I said as much in a food writing workshop, and the professor asked me ‘What I think that’s about.’ I don’t really have an answer. In go the habaneros.
Tastes: I prefer to use produce by the bunch or half-bunch, rather than by the cup or whatever. It’s not some sort of naturalist statement (refusing to divide a God-given head of cauliflower into civilized units), but pretty much a matter of convenience. So in the end, my soup winds up chock-full of imprecisely quantified produce, good to get me through half a week at least.
One key aspect of this soup is the broth. If the broth you use doesn’t taste good, the soup won’t taste good — so find one you fancy. Personally, I’m a die-hard fan of Rapunzel vegan bouillon cubes with herbs and salt. The only way to top it, in my mind, would be to call in my Oma to cook up her matzoball soup: simmered the old-fashioned way with a chicken in the pot, parsnip, celery, onions, carrots, all kinds of who-knows-what magic, plus…a package of Lipton’s soup mix, her tried-and-true American twist. Don’t know how it works, but it does. Now that I abstain from chicken, this comforting cauliflower-kale number is the closest I’ve come to recreating those childhood days at Oma’s house, nursing a steaming, white-and-blue, old-Jewish-lady-type bowl of pillowy matzoballs and delicious liquid gold.
Enjoy, friends! See y’all next week.
Katie’s Kale and Cauliflower Soup, a.k.a. What Oma Would Cook If She Were Vegetarian
1 yellow onion
1, 2, or 3 habanero peppers, halved (careful not to touch your eyes after you touch the seeds!)
2/3 cup uncooked bulgur
3 cubes Rapunzel bouillon + 5 cups water, OR 5 cups veggie broth
a few glugs of olive oil
1 small head cauliflower, cut into trees
1 small bunch kale (depending how big the bunch is — prob’ly half of 1 supermarket unit)
3 carrots, peeled and cut into discs
1 can or so cooked chickpeas
(or you can cook them yourself beforehand — like a coffee-mug’s-worth of dried beans)
a couple pinches of salt
1/2 cup OJ
cilantro if you’ve got some handy
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Dice the onion and throw it into a big soup pot, bottom coated with olive oil, over medium-high heat. (That’s 4 or 5 out of 7 on my dial.) Halve the habaneros and toss them in, too. Sautée until the onions are translucent and yummy-smelling.
Meanwhile, measure out your water and bouillon cubes (or broth, if that’s what you’re going with), and start chopping your produce. When the onions are translucent (about 5-10 minutes), add the bulgur to the pot, stir, and add broth/bouillon + water. Leave it alone for a while and finish chopping your cauliflower, carrots, and kale.
After 15 minutes or so, add the cauliflower; a couple minutes later, throw in the carrots. Save the kale for last so it stays nice and green. Remove the hot peppers before the pot gets so crowded you can’t find them anymore.
When the cauliflower is just about tender, toss in the chickpeas (already cooked, so they just need to get nice and warmed through) and add orange juice. Taste the broth and adjust as necessary: more salt, olive oil, and/or orange juice. Turn off the burner and then add the chopped kale, stirring it in so that the heat just barely cooks it through and you still get that nice crunch and structure.
Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with chopped cilantro, if you’re into that.
Anushka's techno-meditation: trying to stay mindful while using our favorite devices.
It’s been a looooong work day, friends, and there’s no time to get into the articles I was hoping to cover today (1, 2), but I want to offer a little teaser for a post that’s been brewing in my head for quite a while, and which began to peck its way out of its shell this Saturday, during a daylong workshop at the East Bay Meditation Center.
The beautifully conducted workshop, led by Anushka Fernandopulle, focused on Dharma & Technology: how we can apply the insights of the historical Buddha to our relationships with gadgets in our modern lives. I could go on about how dope the retreat was, including the fact that it, like all programming at EBMC, is offered on a dana (donation) basis. And how the participants all had fascinating and diverse experiences, concerns, and celebrations with their techno-tools. And how almost all of the participants were female-presenting women, which certainly surprised me. And how it helped me change my relationship with Facebook. All of that is so.
But one of the most exciting results, for me, was the final formation of this idea of mine for a project called Stat Dragons. The project is about dharma, blogging, craving, contentment, art, and yes, dragons. It involves talented illustrator friends of mine. And its first installment will premiere this week on Kloncke.
Many thanks to Anushka and all the fabulous workshop participants and volunteers. It was a wonderful environment in which to incubate my dragon egg.
Kind of like #followfriday, only more of a plain old celebration of the folks touching one Black girl’s heart this week.
Above, Miss Maxine, who slowly but surely welcomed me into her life after a rough start on Sunday. She’s almost as much of a delight as her owners, Chris and Donna.
Adrienne Maree Brown is just tremendous. Everybody should read her. You should read her. Like, starting now.
Aaron Tanaka is also tremendous. His blog is pretty much brand-new, but already one of my all-time favorites. Eclectic, on-point, funny, educational. Solid.
If you ever get the chance, spend some quality time with Carmen Barsody. Trust me on this one.
Last but not least, word has it that Advance the Struggle is about to publish a piece analyzing March 4th. Get excited!
Last week, Jill from Feministe pointed out two “additive excitement” tumblr sites (this-thing-i-like + this-other-thing-i-like = photo-of-extra-fabulous-thing-i-really-like):
Naturally, I enlisted Ryan in a quest to combine the two additives, resulting in a cute bearded boy eating a cupcake with a cat.
(Like so. Guess I’m not the first person to think of this.)
And so this morning, we embarked on our mission in the Mission.
Annnnd no luck yet on either front. Cupcakes proved elusive and kitten season is just beginning. A surprising number of shelters were closed on Mondays and the one we went to had a whole application process before you could even hold de kittehs, by which time we had to go save our borrowed car from a parking ticket.
But the morning was lovely, and the quest continues…
Friends, this is Buster Brown, the beagle (mix). He belongs to my dear friend Lori who, in addition to being brilliant and hilarious, is also one of the best schoolteachers I’ve ever had. (Sophomore English at C. K. McClatchy High.)
Now that Lori and I live in the same city again, we get to do fun things like team up in caring for Mister Buster. Who is a special little guy, and needs a Lot of caring.
When Lori adopted him a few months ago, she quickly realized that the boy’s endured some serious trauma, gets spooked pretty easy, and may occasionally lash out in fear. The first time I met him, things seemed to be going just swell, feeding him treats and cuddling on the couch, until I got too close and he suddenly bit me on the lip. (I know, tough to imagine a sweet-looking mug like that biting you in the face.)
And so, in the same vein as Heather the cat, though far friendlier to humans, Buster is one of those animal companions whose affection is not guaranteed. (To anyone but Lori, that is.) We continue loving him anyway, though, because who says love is a perfect give-and-take? Buster may have his challenging quirks, like anxiety around changes in atmospheric pressure, but he also has many precious ones, like the morningtime phenomenon Lori has dubbed “squishy ears.”
As poor Tamagotchi performance long ago established, I’m not a naturally maternal person in the least, and it ain’t easy for me to look after a creature — especially one without language. (No reasoning with BB when he’s feeling too skittish to take a walk; sometimes all you can do is pick him up and kinda scoot him forward toward the stairs. This clashes somewhat with my sensibilities around consent.)
But I will say this: relations with Buster calm down to the extent that I can calm down. When I stop worrying about whether he’s scared, or upset, or Not Being A Model Dog, and just accept the vicissitudes of his moods, doing what I can to offer him a good environment, then we get along just fine. I can relax and enjoy the afternoon walks; he can relax and, you know, do the puppy thing.
And as you can see, he’s reeallly good at doing the puppy thing.
Feels like I’m starting to fit in around here. Happy anniversary to the Faithful Fools! Twelve years ago today, they signed the papers to buy the grand old building at 234 Hyde that would become Fools’ Court. Bought it with only five hundred dollars between ’em. It’s the fool’s way. Trust the moment, and don’t take yourself too damn seriously.
Kloncke 