I Have Jags

I just learned this word while reading a magazine article about a local foodie. A jag is apparently an obsession, or as dictionary.com put it, "a period of unrestrained indulgence in an activity; spree; binge." This seems to describe me quite well - much to the chagrin of many of my loved ones. I get on jags, I collect them, I circulate my jags and give them time to breathe. Like shoes. If I stick with a jag too long, it loses some kind of magic for me, but coming upon a fresh jag (or better, coming back to a pleasurable old jag) keeps things lively.

So, my local-food jag isn't necessarily gone, it's just getting freshened. I'm proud of the local-foods movement for taking the prize as Oxford American Dictionary's Word of the Year. I'm still keeping an eye on where my food comes from, and I'm pleasantly surprised to find that most of the food I buy is already local - as long as I shop at the co-op, the farmer's market, and my CSA, it's quite easy actually. Trips to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's or (eek!) Safeway throw the whole local-food thing out of whack - it's nearly impossible to find things made locally and, even when I do, I know that it can't truly count as local because even if the food was made by my next-door neighbor, it's still traveled an average of 1500 miles to a distribution center in Austin or Monrovia or Salt Lake City before coming back to my neighborhood.

But back to my point about jags. Because folks, Mama's got a brand new jag. And it's an old one, one you might remember me blogging about this past spring. But I believe I have finally found my knitting legs, so to speak, after many attempts. I credit Debbie Stoller and her awesome book, Stitch'n Bitch, for me finally understanding how to tangle yarn artistically. And I thank Lisa and Martha for inspiring me.

Reconnecting with knitting has reconnected me with the deep feminine urge to create useful things, and to do it beautifully. And to do it for others. I can't stop thinking of things I'd like to make for people close to me - right now I have no plans to keep any current projects for myself, and this is a really pleasurable departure from my usual narcissism. Thus, I have decided to make as many Christmas gifts as I can this year, given my schedule (in rehearsals for maybe the best play ever and preparing to go tropical for the holidays with Descartes) and how quickly my fingers can work. There will be sewing, baking, slicing, dicing, and yes, knitting. None of it can be displayed here until after gifts have been given out (who wants to spoil the surprise?) but believe you me, my camera will be busy documenting the fun. Isn't it lovely when a gift can bring pleasure to the gifter and the gifted?

What's your latest jag?

Read This Book

Today I finished my latest library book on the way home from a family wedding. Real Food by Nina Planck has gotten me even more excited - I didn't know that was possible - about eating, preparing, and learning about traditional food. The writing is easy and down-to-earth, but the content is absolutely chock-full of information on the health - mental, physical and otherwise - of eating the foods our grandparents ate.

While reading, I looked back at the last three or four weeks, when I have become a bit more restrictive and rigid about my eating habits again. Feeling unhappy about my size and weight, I've tried familiar tricks - going dairy-free and gluten-free - to see if those omissions would help. But I've been down those roads before, and they lead to obsessiveness and isolation for me. Also, they prevent me from really enjoying food for the taste, the texture, the presentation, the moment. Of course, these things don't happen for everyone I'm sure, but for me, absolutely. I don't have serious health issues (that I'm aware of) with either dairy or gluten, although those foods have given me trouble in the past. But I have to wonder if my troubles have been the result of industrialized dairy (pasteurized & homogenized) and gluten (prepared without soaking, sprouting, or fermentation). I don't know the answer, but I don't want to go back to eating in a way that separates me from others and requires me to think about my food all the time instead of tasting and enjoying it!

So I had a grand time today, shopping at Ikeda's Fruit Stand for fresh blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries as well as local, vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh corn. At the co-op I bought fresh raw milk as well as raw gouda and mozzarella di bufalo, and a bottle of commercial kombucha with which to (hopefully) start my own culture. At the local butcher I found beautiful wild salmon and took another stab at 50 cents' worth of fresh liverwurst from a highly regarded sausage maker in San Francisco. Tonight we'll have grilled cedar-plank salmon, corn on the cob, and a beautiful insalata caprese with said tomatoes, mozzarella, and local organic young basil leaves, sprinkled with sea salt, crushed black pepper, and drizzled with Sacramento's very own Bariani olive oil - "stone-crushed, cold-pressed, decanted and unfiltered California extra-virgin olive oil". I wish I knew where our camera was so I could show you how colorful and ripe and delicious this salad looks! We'll enjoy our food with some local red wine, and for dessert Descartes has stuck into the coals a little hobo pack of fresh apricots and blackberries with blackberry jam. Can't wait to dig in!

One of the challenges I took from Real Food was to have at least two different fruits and/or vegetables at each meal. Hence the tomato salad and grilled corn tonight. I'm going to try this challenge for myself over the next few weeks, and see how it goes. Nina Planck wrote that she sometimes prepares as many as four different vegetable dishes at one meal! Even though it's not very summery, my mouth has been watering today for June's Colcannon again...I might have to just go for it even though it is more of a spring dish. Maybe for breakfast???

The Apron

Oh dear, rehearsals have started for the show I'm directing, and you can see how easily I begin to neglect my other avenues of creative expression! Three weeks away from the blog...hopefully I'll be able to keep up a little better from now on.

The apron seems to be making a comeback - to me it's a symbol of reclaimed femininity, domesticity as a source of yin-empowerment. My mother's generation had to set their femininity aside in order to be heard, acknowledged, and respected in the world of men. They had to fracture themselves somewhat - all grey flannel and pressed poplin at work, cotton and denim on the weekends to tend hastily to domestic tasks. I do not remember my mother in a dress, ever. She was working 60-hour weeks and traveling almost all the time - there was little time for "fussy" stylings. While I am grateful for the hard-won battles of the women's-libbers, I also feel it is my generation's dharma to come back into balance, honoring and integrating the yang-masculine and the yin-feminine energies within us. Oddly enough, I find this integration most visible in current fashion trends - lacy tops, flirty blouses and even dainty short dresses atop rough-and-tumble jeans and sexy heels. But inside as well, something is being reclaimed by us that, I hope, will not so easily be put down again.

I found my first adult apron at Anthropologie (a store that I love for its absolutely feminine take on even the most mundane clothing) a few months ago, and I wear it whenever I can. I plan to make a few aprons this year, to give to the women in my life. I hope they find their aprons imbued with the same soft power I have - the power to get done what needs to get done, without setting aside a little flounce and lace here and there.

What makes you feel your feminine power?

My Antiques Collection

At some point in my youth my mother decided I would collect music boxes. Actually, I don't remember if she chose that completely on her own or if I indicated at some point that I wanted to and she ran with it. When I was young, it seemed that everyone in my family collected something - it was seen as a part of your personality, and an easy tip for gift-giving. So throughout my childhood and teen years I received music boxes of all sorts, eventually honing in on those that played show tunes to match my love of musical theatre. There's one that plays "The Impossible Dream" and another that tings out "Hello, Dolly!" By the time I left home to strut my stuff on the Great White Way, I'd outgrown my collection so they drifted into the back of my mind, into a box in my parents' garage. Recently I came across them and wondered what I should do with them. Even though I don't want to keep a collection of music boxes, they've become somewhat sentimental to me.

I've never really understood the collector's mindset - what compels someone to collect hundreds of tiny Hummel figurines, or porcelain dolls with spookily vacant faces, or antique cookie jars? I don't have any judgment about it - actually I think it's kind of neat, but I've never felt the pull to have one of my own. I often wondered if there was anything I would someday grow to love enough to start a collection.

Last week a friend of mine taught me how to knit. We met at this yarn shop and spent some time perusing the miles and miles of gorgeous yarns from all corners of the world, spun into dizzyingly beautiful skeins and stacked in racks that rose above our heads. Although there were thousands of choices, I knew as soon as I felt the soft nubby chenille yarn in shades of plum, lavender and charcoal that it was to be my first project. Giddy and proud, I bought my first skein and set of needles, and we went back to her studio for the lesson. She was patient and encouraging - a great foil for my perfectionist and judge; they could barely get a word in edgewise with her positive coaxing! I learned the stitch, very slowly and clumsily at first but then with growing ease and comfort. We chatted about all sorts of things until it was time to go.

That night I sat knitting, and thinking about the "hobbies" that feel most important to me now - gardening, cooking, baking, sewing, knitting, slowing down - and I thought to myself, maybe this is my collection. I'm collecting antique skills, special tasks passed down from woman to woman for centuries. They speak the ancient feminine, the womanly arts that have kept families clothed, fed, and nurtured for so long.

These skills have been dying over the last century, since industry and convenience became more desirable than true craft and patience. I've grown up in a generation that largely doesn't know how clothing gets made, or food or the beautiful decorations that fill Target and Ikea. I forget that once upon a time people crafted their own, and grew up knowing how to do it because they had to. We don't have to anymore, but perhaps we should. The pendulum is swinging back to center. What were once cast aside as limiting and demeaning women's work in the feminist era are being reclaimed as links to our long feminine ancestry. As I stitch or knead or mend or tend, I am enlivening ancient knowledge.

Sourdough Starter Pt. 2

How could something look so right and smell so wrong??? Well folks, sadly my first experiment with making my own starter has gone rotten. Not sour, as I'd hoped, but quite beyond it. Yesterday I opened up the bowl to feed it and got confirmation from Descartes that things were not as they should be - he pinched his nose and left the house as quickly as he could, tossing over his shoulder the words I already knew - "That stuff ain't right!"

I spent a good three hours on the internet last night trying to figure out if my starter is indeed a goner. Not only did I find that there are about a million ways to make starter, but also that there are many differing opinions about what starter should smell like. "Soury-beery" was my favorite. Alas, "it should smell sour, not bad" came up too often for me to pretend my starter was okay.

So I'm throwing it out this morning and, on the advice of many in the blogosphere, I'm going to get myself an established starter. If anyone can help me out in this arena, please let me know! Otherwise, I think I'm going to buy one of the old American starters (some have been continuously fed and distributed since the 1800's!) and fill my house with a smell that will not drive Descartes into the yard.

Sourdough Starter

In case you want to try your own, here's the recipe for sourdough starter and bread. It's Sally Fallon's recipe from "Nourishing Traditions" - I so highly recommend that cookbook!

You need: rye flour (8 cups), cold filtered water (about 8 cups), cheesecloth, and two gallon-sized bowls. This recipe makes 3 quarts of starter.

Mix 2 cups rye flour and 2 cups cold filtered water in a gallon-sized bowl. Cover with cheesecloth tightly secured with a rubber band. I put a tea towel over mine, and taped it down...hope the fabric is loose enough to let the bacteria and yeast in! Place the bowl in a warm place in your kitchen or, if you live in an unpolluted area, you can try it outside although I think you want to keep it kind of warm so winter might not be the best time to do that. I'm keeping mine on top of the stove.

Every day for a week, move the starter to the other clean bowl and add 1 cup rye flour and about 1 cup cold filtered water (enough to make it soupy). Cover it up again and let it sit. By about day 3 you'll have a bubbly, frothy soup. This is a good thing.

By the end of the week you'll have 3 quarts of starter - 2 quarts for baking bread, and 1 quart to make another batch of starter (add a cuppa flour and a cuppa water each day for a week to get another 3 quarts). If you don't want to use it right away, refrigerate it.

When you are ready to bake bread, use 2 quarts of starter and mix with 2 1/2 Tbsp coarse sea salt and about 1 1/2 cups cold filtered water. Mix it up, then add flour to the tune of about 13 cups. Sally Fallon says spelt flour is best, but I bet any flour you like will be fine. She also says the dough will be sort of soft and easy to work.

After the dough is mixed and kneaded for about 15 minutes, set it in loaf pans (3 big or 6 small) or shape them on a baking sheet, cut the top, cover and let rise for 4-12 hours (depends on the temperature in your kitchen). Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. Voila!

(I'm kind of new on the blogosphere - please let me know if putting someone else's recipe up is a no-no!)