Next Steps

Above: Sections of my fast-growing home pharmacy

Hindsight is a useful, if frustrating perspective: even as one appreciates its clarity, one also wishes that clarity hadn't been so elusive at the time! Six months after Nepal, the personal meanings of my time there come into clearer focus.
Alright, full disclosure: the following is mostly lifted from a Chinese medicine grad school application essay I've been writing. And I promise: no more anti-globalization rants for a while.

While in Nepal on a Fulbright fellowship from September 2008 to July 2009, I had a chance to immerse myself in the world of the ancient Southasian medicine known as Ayurveda. Once the initial giddiness of exploring hole-in-the-wall herb shops along Kathmandu’s ancient, winding cobblestone streets and meeting Ayurvedic doctors, shamans, and yogis started to wear off, I grew aware of a gaping and contentious divide in the Ayurvedic world. One on side were the traditional vaidyas, doctors trained in the the oral tradition from one generation to the next. They had no formal degrees, just the accrued experience of their fathers and grandfathers before them and books of Sanskrit verse containing a wealth of information on medical theory and herbal formulations. On the other were the institutionally-trained Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medical Science doctors. Though their curriculum included the Charaka Samhita and other ancient texts of Ayurveda, their clinical practice was heavily influenced by Western medicine. I saw Ayurvedic students learning to use stethoscopes and prescribe antibiotics, and when they took a patient’s pulse it was simply to count bpm, rather than assess the traditional qualities of the pulse.
While this hybrid practice may be an exciting step towards integrative medicine, I could never shake the feeling that Ayurveda was selling its soul for more social prestige and a higher profile. As a result, I ended up spending as much time as I could with the dying breed of traditional vaidya, hearing their stories and absorbing what wisdom I could. Towards the end of my stay in Nepal I met Keshab Kavi Baidya, a generational practitioner of Rasa Shastra, Ayurvedic alchemy. Here, finally, was an embodiment of the living tradition who actually wanted to pass along his art. With none of his children interested in carrying on his lineage, I realized that he looked to me as his heir-apprentice. When I visited him he would quiz me on the uses of different herbs, and I once heard him telling another old man in Newari “this is an American student, he knows everything about herbs.” I was flattered and humbled beyond belief. On my last visit to Keshab-ji before leaving Nepal, the normally youthful-seeming man looked his seventy-plus years of age. His eyes betrayed a weary acceptance of the fact that his lineage would die with him. I was almost overcome by the sadness of the situation. Keshab-ji had put together a kit of medicines at my request: purified Shilajit mineral pitch, incinerated black mica, oyster shell ash--some of the fruits of decades of his labor. He parted with them knowing at least that I would make some use of them. I learned a few months later that Keshab-ji died shortly after I left Nepal.

This experience left me with the sense that it is for me to carry a part of this and other endangered medical traditions’ fire to a world in need of the light and warmth. In the words of the I Ching, I am to “nourish with ancient wisdom” through “subtle penetration,” as water slowly permeates rock and nourishes the roots of the tree of life. To that end, I am now applying to classical Chinese medicine programs, as that seems to me the best fit for me in the US context. I hope to start school again in Fall '10 or '11. You can be certain of hearing plenty more about Chinese medicine, including what the difference between "traditional" and "classical" chinese medicine is, as Illwind and I continue to evolve.

In the meantime, I want to offer what knowledge and experience I have gained in the way of healing and self-knowledge to anyone out there who feels inspired to connect. I am offering free wellness consultations, via phone and email, from an Ayurvedic and more broadly herbal perspective. My toolkit includes nutritional advice and cooking skills, Eastern and Western herbal formulas, and general lifestyle management gleaned mainly from Ayurveda. A consultation includes an assessment of your constitution and any areas of imbalance (excess or deficiency of elemental energies, Ayurveda's three doshas) as well as a treatment strategy based primarily on diet and herbs. I am also open to answering any questions readers may have about health, herbs, or Ayurveda either in private via email or, by your consent and my interest, using this blog as a forum. In our absurdly speedy world, I'm at your service almost instantaneous: jedwardian@gmail.com

I should add here the disclaimer that I do not claim medical expertise and my services are not intended as a substitute for medical care. I do not claim to diagnose or treat any medical condition. Services offered here are rather offered as a complement to competent medical care and as means towards greater self-knowledge and connection with the natural world.

Coming Soon: Delights of Devon Avenue

At right: new digs: shores of Lake Michigan

Welcome to 2010! This is it, definitely: the future.

The new year has brought a rather abrupt change for your faithful blogger: I moved to Chicago exactly a week ago. It’s incredible how quickly it’s come to feel like home. Not that I love this city, though it does have character. But there is a sense of rightness, of inevitability, to this latest coordinate shift. I’m not quite sure what it is I’m to do here, but I’m here to do it.
I suspect, as confirmed by a recent session with the I Ching, that this time is about building inner resources, of biding my time and working behind the scenes. Of laying foundations. Of being inconspicuous, flexible, and patient. Not exactly a recipe for excitement, I admit. But thus spake the oracle, the venerable Book of Changes: “Hide your light. Voluntarily do what is beneath you.”
And so yesterday I found myself--Swarthmore alumnus, Fulbright scholar, blah blah blah--at Kennedy-King Community College, registering for a class. It just happens to be within 2.5 miles of my new address and has the advantage over the other nearby places of being 1/10th the price. I may not learn a great deal of organic chemistry, but as the only white face on campus, I may learn a lot else. My first lesson came early on, during registration, and put crudely runs something like this: black folks don’t expect good service. Registration was set up in such a way that hundreds of new students had to wait while one at a time squeezed through an advising bottleneck. The striking thing was not so much the inefficiency of the system as that no one seemed the least bit surprised or annoyed. A second lesson was harder to digest, and it had to do with my own discomfort in the situation. After 10 months in Nepal I’m not unused to being the only white person in a room, so it wasn’t that. It’s that I’ve been socially conditioned with some success to see black skin and baggy pants and think ‘alert, alert.’ After a few minutes I mastered myself and was able to recognize that this was a potentially valuable cross-cultural experience. More on that as the semester unfolds, if my under-enrolled chemistry course isn’t cancelled.

Living on the edge of the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, I find myself on a very different sort of campus frequently, and the differences couldn’t be more striking. ‘No Hats or Headgear of Any Kind’ signs to discourage gang behavior at Kennedy-King; Hogwarts-style banquet halls with stained glass windows at U of C. (Oh, life of contradictions.) It was in this gothic study hall that I sat myself down this morning with a stack of periodicals in order to gauge which might welcome writing submissions from the likes of me. Instead, I quickly got caught up in an incisive essay by Curtis White in the midwest journal Tin House called “A Good Without Light.” (The piece is available in its entirety http://www.tinhouse.com/mag/issue41/current_nonfiction_white.htm) It was one of those moments where I went “I could have/should have written that!” The last time I had such a feeling was when I read Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. But this time as that one, the writer goes farther and deeper than I’d have been able to in pursuing his devastating and essential thesis.

White starts by calling our attention to the fact that the term ‘sustainability’ has been adopted by the corporate world, and he for one is not fooled. Much as we might like to believe in the possibility of happily “greening” the status quo, the radical change that is in fact necessary is also incompatible with the workings of our culture and economic system. The new marketers of sustainability (who are, lest we forget, last decade’s marketers of the Hummer) and the vast forces that stand behind them are fundamentally unwilling and unable to challenge the most basic assumption of all: that what it means to be “free” and “prosperous” and “developed” is to consume, consume, consume.
The corporate movement for sustainability will never be geared towards creating a society that is sustainable in the true sense of being able to replicate itself indefinitely without, say, exhausting any of the resources it depends on. Rather, this is one more chance to sell us something: to sell us the preposterous assurance that not only can our way of life continue, but that is must, and that it will save the world in doing so.
White delves into the roots of our collective psychology, and comes up with a nasty little pearl of insight.
He identifies the “Barbarian Heart” of our culture. The barbaric in us assumes implicitly that might makes right. Ours is cult of violence; specifically, of “artful violence.” Thence comes our continuing worship of athletes, marines, the president himself: all are victors over some field of competition, warrior figures in some sense. “For the barbarian, so long as someone suggests to him that he can continue to be violent and willful but mitigate the self-destructive consequences if he’s shrewd about it, well, he’s more than willing to listen and believe. And that is what the logic of sustainability does” (Tin House No. 41, 81).
So much for our moral context, which White reduces to “violence masquerading as virtue.” What about our great hope, that technical expertise--science, engineering, enlightened economic or public policy--will save us? But science is incapable of delivering us a shiny technological answer to global warming, just as modern medicine can’t find a magic-bullet cure for the cancer that is one of the quintessential (by)products of modernity. White again: “What I want to suggest, not to put too fine a point on it, is that the act of trusting these experts--whether economists or scientists--to provide us with a sustainable future of ever-growing capitalist enterprise is not to place faith in the subtle capacities of the engineer but to indulge in the primitive longing of the barbarian in his moment of despair” (80-1). And finally, and most devastatingly:

“We are a culture dominated by a rationality that is the equivalent of thoughtlessness. We are dominated by a form of logical intelligibility (science) that insists that what is not intelligible to it is not intelligible at all. Strangely, what is most dramatically unintelligible to science is itself. Especially hidden to it is the degree to which its own habit of logical orderliness prepares the way for the progress of the Barbaric, just as Rome’s system of roads proved a great convenience not only to its own legions but to the barbaric armies that for once didn’t need to “swarm” but could proceed in an orderly and direct fashion to their bloody destination: the final sacking of Rome” (83).

I could go on. White, for his part, ends his piece with a reminder of what lies at the other end of our gallon of gas or sirloin steak: hand-grenades into an Iraqi home; underpaid workers standing in a pool of blood. The fact is, it’s easy and sometimes even fun to critique modern corporate culture. But what’s at stake here is nothing less than our way of life. Mine and yours and Curtis White’s. Whether it is beloved to us or not, it’s all that most of us know. Despite my sojourns abroad and interest in alternative lifestyles, I am an American. I drive a car and use lots of energy. It’s lifestyles like mine that have to change, but we seem powerless to effect this change on an individual level as much as on a political one. Of course, sustainability as a concept is much more profound than the current marketing buzz-word realizes: sustainability means that which can’t continue indefinitely will die eventually. The question is, can we bring it to a timely and transformative end, or must we watch in horror as our culture only grows fatter and fatter, finally expiring of a massive heart attack only after it’s eaten up all the food, breathed up all the good air and destroyed the last patch of habitable ground.

To sum up: out there in the world at large, things are Not Good. Whether by the standards of justice or of life expectancy, things may never have been good--that’s the good news, I guess. But now our Not Goodness is multiplying exponentially in scale. There are a lot more of us Not Being Good. Or--and this is what’s so frustrating about being a relatively conscientious and informed participant in the modern affluent world--even if we try to be good, we know that it doesn’t much matter. We can assuage our bruised consciences by buying recycled paper towels, growing our own potatoes, turning off the water while we soap up in the shower, giving some money to charities that buy goats for struggling subsistence farmers in Africa; we can do what we believe to be the good work all day long, and not only does it not matter on global warming’s all-consuming scale (or that of genocide, war, etc. etc.), but, despite our best reasonable efforts, the chances are we’re each doing just as much to promote 450 ppm of atmospheric carbon and oil-driven blood frenzy as to forestall it. In this sense, in order to be ethical citizens of the modern world, we would have to drop out of society. I’ve flirted with this idea, but even the commune-esque off-grid sites I’ve lived on don’t go nearly far enough to set a sustainable standard. Not to mention that dropping out remains a prerogative of the privileged classes. (And let it be said: in a meaningful sense, privilege is the perspective of this blog: culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, education--short of being a Rockefeller, I’m about as privileged as they come.)

It’s amazing, every three or four months I go through a re-awakening to the story I’ve just been relating. It’s partially that it’s too heavy to keep in the forefront of one’s mind all the time: we are talking about the essential fucked-upedness of our time and place in history, after all (or, if you prefer, of the entire history of the world). Gradually the outrage, anger, confusion, despair fade in the face of mundane concerns and the necessity of not being a huge downer all the time. But remembering, re-realizing the facts of the world we live in, serves as a jolt out of the featherbed of complacency and helps reset my orientation in the world. May this vitriolic rant do the same for you.

Happy new year.

Image at right: learning to perform a Newari style blessing on my last day in Kathmandu in July.

I’ve spent enough time overseas at this point that I often find myself watching events here in my motherland with the conscious distance of a foreigner. So while Hindu pujas may have lost their exotic veneer, ostensibly familiar ceremonies strike me conversely as peculiar: the intricate social dance we enact with polite acquaintances, for one, or rituals of restaurant decorum. Certainly the episcopal Christmas eucharist I found myself at today (thanks to my girlfriend, a divinity student) struck me as about as strange as any of the festivals I was privy to in Southasia: eating the body and blood of Christ actually seems much stranger than eating actual meat that has been first been sacrificed and offered to a god.

Part of me is most at home when I am out of place, for in not atypical modern fashion there is no one place I truly belong to: I’ve never quite felt like a New Yorker, though I drive like one when I’m in Manhattan, jaywalk like one anywhere, and I’ll fiercely defend my old neighborhood pizza joint, Sal and Carmine’s, as the best slice on earth. Meanwhile, living in Caledonia county, VT this fall, lovely as it’s been, has held constant reminders that I’m an unusual breed in those parts as well, if not a flat-out flatlander in most eyes. In Nepal, at least, I’m obviously “from away,” a bideshi, which status begets a certain amount of tolerance towards me when I fail to act in expected ways. Perversely, for someone like me it becomes easy to feel at home in a place where one is an acknowledged outsider. Perhaps this is why I felt so at home last night, Christmas Eve, at the home of a high school friend and his first-generation Polish immigrant parents: an American most at home elsewhere, at the home of foreigners who had made America their home, and for whom (I surmise) Christmas serves both to connect with traditions from the old country and to reground themselves in the new one.

The venue was the Moore residence (the name is an Ellis island substitute for an original I can best approximate as Zbienievski), a neat house on a quiet street in Riverdale. Gathered there were Kate and John Moore and their son David, Kate’s twinkly-eyed grandmother who speaks not a word of English, Kate’s sister Margaret and her two sons, the pregnant wife of the older son, and a two couples of family friends. I arrived with my girlfriend Thandiwe and my mother; my father, who lives in a dementia care facility in Manhattan, was with us at the Moores’ two Christmases ago, just days before we “placed” him in his first institutional home.

Christmas eve dinner has been a mainstay of the Moore family for years, presumably ever since John Moore arrived in this country from Poland via an Austrian refugee camp with his wife, a few hundred dollars, and two or three words of English. And though no word is spoken during dinner about the provenance of the dishes shortly to be described, the meal smacks overwhelmingly, deliciously of tradition. I mean, would any single person acting independently come up with the idea of serving five different cold fish dishes as part of an appetizer course? The reasons for this single-minded extravagance lie in Catholic observance and long family practice accommodating it and now, in this generation, standing in for traditional religiosity: somewhere along the line, the operative question was “what is the most enormous feast we can have without eating any meat?”


The evening begins with a breaking of bread: wine glasses wielded, everyone mills around the kitchen breaking bread with everyone else and wishing them a merry christmas in a series of quick face-to-face encounters. This simple practice has the effect not only of introducing or reacquainting everyone but also of building a feeling of fellowship: we’re all here together, doing the same thing, with the same sorts of wishes and hopes. Then it’s to the table, where we sit at assigned places marked with slips scrawled in Polish-inflected phonetics: to my left sat Yvonne, once she deciphered the slip marked “Ywon” on her plate. The Maestro, John, has already set the cold appetizers out along the length of the table he and his son had expanded with a new leaf just for the evening: two kinds of pickled herring (one in cream sauce), cod with a tomato and onion “Greek sauce,” a fresh tuna salad with roasted red peppers, a canned tuna salad wrapped in lettuce leaves, a salad of diced vegetables, peas, apples and pickles dressed in mayonnaise, a wild rice pilaf, and bread and butter. By any normal standards, this is already a meal in itself, and a generous one. But the guests know what’s coming, and each seems to have a strategy in mind for how to cope with the onslaught of delicacies--some have primed their metabolic pumps with cannabis brownies, and at least one guest is taking a power nap on the couch.

Now, gentle reader, be advised: the appetizer of would-be lofty rumblings on sense of place has been cleared, the soup of interpreting traditions has been supped, and the main dish to come smacks of a different flavor entirely. This essay is about to devolve into a sort of carnal blow-by-blow description of a meal that simply deserves to be commemorated. Let the food porn commence.

An hour after the meal has begun, half of us have migrated to the kitchen, where John is heating up pierogis he’s made with chanterelles from his woods. It’s not hard to coax everybody back to the table, the axial center of the universe on this night, where the delicate pierogis are followed at a leisurely pace by a light, pure-tasting mushroom soup made from dried boletes (porcini). Matt, the older of Margaret’s sons, mentions in his understated way how he looks forward all year to this soup, and how it always tastes the same. Dave admits that he always dreaded it--apparently he spent his formative Christmas Eves eating bread and butter. In one of the evening’s more self-conscious moves, Dave has been called upon to record some of the recipes for posterity, but it hasn’t happened this year.
More milling follows the dumplings, along with plenty of wine and a brief jam session (electric guitars and drums) by a few of us downstairs. In the kitchen, John calmly sautees breaded scrod and amasses the tower of fillets, teetering, on a platter. Into another pan goes sauerkraut with yellow split peas, and mashed potatoes are in the works. Somehow everyone finds the appetite to fill their plates once again: fish and kraut and buttery, golden mashed potatoes, along with a salad of shaved cabbage, onions, parsley and vinegar. I a point of saturation with food and wine--not overindulgence, for I have been mindful and even up to now restrained--but fullness, a brimming over of contentment and good will. I catch the bright eye of Babcha, a grandmother “out of central casting” as my mother puts it, and someone mentions with a wink that she’s really in it for the sweets. Sweets. Course number five, and it’s nearly midnight. But a really good dessert makes room for itself, and without forcing it I sampled all four confections: first thick, rich chocolate cookies that resembled burger patties and rolled cookies with apricot jam, lemon zest and walnuts--Sarah’s creations. Then John’s poppy seed roll, a handsome labor of love. Finally, along with the last drops of coffee from the tall, ornate porcelain pot, comes Babcha’s contribution: a poppy seed cake laced with what I can only assume is chocolate ganache, dotted with golden butter frosting, and soaked in spirits. It’s sheer soft, heady, sumptuous pastry heaven. I catch Babcha’s eye and make what I hope is a universal sign of dessert appreciation. I go back for seconds, finally tossing in the white flag with a single bite of cake left on my plate. We’ve been sitting (and standing, milling, drumming, napping) for nearly 6 hours.

(End of explicit content)

Today I found I hardly needed to eat anything, but to call it a fast would be ridiculous.
I don’t know quite how to wrap this up. A final nod in the direction of tradition? Ah, tradition--a word I find myself using a lot these days, and one that has taken on an almost hallowed aura in my own mind. But what separates beautiful, wise, sustaining, and nourishing traditions from rigid, unyielding, repressive and lifeless ones? Is there any clear distinction, or way to cultivate the one while shedding the carapace of the other? To be continued, perhaps.

Notes from a Cookbook to be

I'm finally doing it: throwing together my obsession with food and my increasingly arcane views on health into a sort of manifesto, masquerading as a cookbook. The project's still in its early adolescence, but I see no reason not to provide a taste of it here.

* * *

Guidelines for Cooking and Eating Well:

Base your meals around what’s fresh and in season.
Use all your senses.
Don’t be Afraid of Salt and Oil.
Use Good Ingredients and Be Generous with Them.
Be Mindful of Balance.

Together these add up to a formula for good eating and, through it, satisfaction and health. The first guideline may seem obvious, but the point is often lost on folks: you’ll eat better if you head to the market with an open mind and let yourself be moved by what looks, smells, feels, tastes, and sounds good. That’s where the second rule comes in, obviously. Engage with your ingredients on a visceral level. Then as you head home with a bag full of whatever called out to you, let inspiration for how to use it all come to you. Or if that’s too abstract, start planning your meals as you roam amongst the garden rows, market stalls or aisles. Just don’t let preconceived notions of what you’re going to cook dictate your choices completely. You’ll miss too many delights that way.
My third and fourth rules may come as a surprise, since I’m advocating a certain level of indulgence and claiming to offer a healthy approach at the same time. The idea is that food should be about pleasure, not guilt; depriving ourselves of what satisfies us now is only likely to lead to overindulgence in less wholesome ways later. True, we first need to discern what is truly wholesome and nourishing. And the answers here may be counter-intuitive. After all, we have been trained for a few generations now to avoid so many of the foods we naturally gravitate towards. Nutritional science has by turns steered us harshly away from fats, carbohydrates, sugar, and meat. Every two weeks, it seems, there is a sea change in what is allowed to count as healthy. And partly as a result of this indecision, we find ourselves in the midst of what Michael Pollan calls a “national eating disorder.” We are simultaneously obese and starved for nourishment; record numbers struggle with anorexia. It’s probably not a coincidence that fewer and fewer people spend time cooking, or even feel comfortable in the kitchen. For the question of what to eat is a remarkably simple one (and one that applied science has done more harm than good in trying to answer). Michael Pollan again: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
The heart of the answer is incredibly simple: eat food. Real food. The sorts of things people have been eating for millennia. We all know at some level what this means: real, crusty bread that you have to chew; vegetables that aren’t jetlagged from their red-eye flight from another hemisphere; fragrant nut and seed oils and sweet yellow butter; and, yes, meat, from animals that lived happily and healthily and were slaughtered humanely.
Lest this sound too good to be true, there is a mounting movement to support exactly this kind of traditional food and reveal the dangers of modern, industrialized diets. The work of the early 20th Century dentist Weston A Price has been championed by Sally Fallon and others to show that people living on traditional diets tend to be in excellent physical condition and don’t suffer from the degenerative diseases that plague modern Americans. “Traditional diets” means exactly what Michael Pollan does: real food. But some of the details are surprising, because it is often exactly those foods which we’ve been warned against most severely that turn out to be most supportive of good health. A prime example is fat. Fat itself has been demonized, which is absurd since fats are an essential class of macronutrients that we need to produce everything from cell membranes to sex hormones. Simply put, without fat people go crazy, wither away and eventually die. The key, however, is getting the right kind of fat, and this is where the biggest surprise comes in. Because the saturated animals fats that we all “know” are bad for you turn out to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Butter, lard, tallow--all of these are life-supporting lipids, provided they themselves come from healthy animals. In this sense the authorities are correct, for most of the butter on the market come from cows raised away from their natural pasture and in factory farms. But real, sweet, yellow butter is out there, too, and worth every penny you pay for it. This kind of butter actually concentrates the nutrients found in green grass, providing a rich source of the omega-3 fatty acids that have emerged recently as so crucial to good health. Lard from pastured pigs is similarly healthy, in proper proportion. Of course, it’s not just animal fat that’s good for us: plant oils are great too, if they’re unrefined. This is what makes extra virgin olive oil so healthy as well as so flavorful. What most people don’t realize is that tons of other seeds and nuts are equally healthy and delicious, if we can get a hold of them in cold-pressed forms. Sunflower, mustard, hazelnut, almond--every edible seed has precious oil locked within.

...But for whom? What the Weston Price/Sally Fallon school of traditional diets tends to gloss over is that not all people are the same. Some of us struggle to keep our weight down, while others can’t ever seem to put on a pound. Some are prone to acne while others have perpetually dry skin. Some people do indeed have to watch their salt intake and blood pressure, while others have to make sure they’re getting enough iron and other nutrients to keep from becoming anemic and having fainting spells.
Almost everybody has an intuitive sense of what’s right for them. Haven’t you ever bitten into a radish or a cucumber and felt unreasonably good? Or eaten a supposedly healthy meal only to find it’s given you gas, or that you’re hungry again 90 minutes later?
A one size fits all approach doesn’t work. This is where traditional ideas from both Eastern and Western traditions can help immensely... (to be continued)

Cooking and Eating with the Seasons--why's, whuh's, when's and how's

Food is the most direct way we connect with the natural world: we ingest some of our environment a few times a day and make it into us. Eating what’s in season is the best way to stay in tune with external cycles and promote good health. It’s also the most sustainable way to eat, since locally-grown foods don’t require long-distance shipping. All this has become familiar green-movement mantra by now, but I want to contribute another perspective on why it matters what we eat when. I know it’s fall now, but I just wrote this for another purpose and the most natural starting place is in the spring, so work with me!
In the spring, our systems are as ready for a good cleaning as our closets tend to be after a long, dark, heavy winter and its typical dearth of fresh food. Nature supplies the antidote for wintry stagnation in the form of fresh, bitter greens that are among the first things to grow, often as early as late March. Dandelions, nettles, cleavers and dock leaves are some of the classic spring greens, and their lively bitterness will probably taste wonderful with minimal dressing up. Just saute or steam them briefly, adding a sprinkle of salt or some garlic. They’re great en masse on their own, or as part of soups, casseroles, pasta dishes, whatever.
Later in the spring asparagus makes its appearance, and praise the lord. This is one of the most delicious foods there is if it’s fresh and well-prepared, and it’s both highly nourishing and detoxifying. It’s perfectly suited for everybody, all the time: tridoshic, in Ayurvedic terms. One of my favorite ways to prepare it is to broil it: Snap each spear where it breaks naturally and discard the fat ends. Lightly coat the spears with oil, place on a tray, sprinkle with salt and perhaps some garlic and broil them for a few minutes. The same basic technique can be done in a large skillet. You’ll want at least half a pound per person.
Besides bitter green things, the other flavor that does us right this time of year is pungent: anything with some spice or heat to it. Another classic “spring tonic” food that falls into this category is ramps, the wild leeks that pop up in damp, rich woodlands in late spring. They help expel any lingering dampness in the system while replenishing us with their abundant vitamins and minerals. Some other classic springtime rejuvenators: sassafras, dock, nettles, and chicory.
As the weather warms up in June, the focus turns from our springtime preoccupation with ridding ourselves of wintry sludge and loading up on fresh bitter things to simply keeping cool. This of course is the season for cold food (or, at least, room temperature food), cucumbers, watermelon, and lemonade. It’s a good time to avoid heavy, greasy or fried things, too much salt and much alcohol and instead focus on all the wonderful produce that’s out there in the garden or at the farmers market. In addition to light, fresh vegetables, either cooked or in salads, seasonal fruit and berries are ideal food at this time of year. So are all the multitudes of wild edibles waiting in the fields and forests: milkweed buds, chanterelles, _____.
With the first hint of a chill in the air, it’s time to think about nourishing ourselves for the upcoming fall. Along with cold, autumn brings dryness. It’s a time of motion--think of wind and swirling leaves--and contraction. Our bodies tend to tighten up--we ourselves contract to maintain our warmth. The key to transitioning happily into fall is then to nourish, ground, and warm ourselves. Late season vegetables like cauliflowers and potatoes are appropriate, cooked now instead of in salads, and more lavishly furnished with oils and cheeses. Nuts are a great food for the fall, as we build up our bodily stores for winter, and whole grains are a must. But the kings of autumn edibles are the true root vegetables: beets, turnips, rutabaga, onions and leeks, celeriac, parsnips, sweet potatoes and carrots. They provide nourishing starches and building protein along with rich stores of vitamins, and they are all warming. They’re also infinitely versatile: roasted, stewed, sauteed, or mashed. Winter squash is almost like a root veggie in its qualities and can be treated similarly--like them it needs some butter to balance out its roughness and bring out its full nourishing nature. This is a good time to cut back on stimulants like coffee or tea, which tend to counter the slowing, building, grounding process we need to cultivate at this time.
Now is the most appropriate season for heavier, fattier meats like pork, beef and duck. There’s a fine line between nourishing ourselves generously and clogging ourselves up with too much fat, however, so keep portion sizes reasonable and cook everything well. Meat is easier to digest when stewed slowly with herbs and spices (think crock pot). The same holds true for vegetable and grain-based dishes: it’s all less burdensome on our digestive systems if we do some pre-digesting by means of cooking. This helps us reserve energy and blood circulation for other things, like keeping us free of the colds and flus that start to circulate this time of year. A great technique to keep in mind during flu season is kichari, an Indian-style one-pot meal of grains, legumes, and vegetables. The original version uses rice and split mung beans (mung dal), but local versions made with barley, beans, etc. can be equally delicious and more appropriate for Northern bodies.
Even though apples and pears ripen at this time of year, they’re more balancing for most people when cooked. As winter comes on, however, the fresh crispness of a cold-stored apple can be just what the doctor ordered (or didn’t have to).
Winter is in many ways the hardest season to think about eating locally during, at least until one remembers the variety of vegetables that keep for months in a cellar or even outside, under the snow. Besides root crops and squashes, there are hardy greens like collards and kale, and even fresh things like belgian endive to provide that missing crunch. (Belgian endive can be grown in a dark room, in a box of sand, and will keep producing its blanched young leaves for salads all winter). The summer’s garlic crop is as welcome now is it was during the fall, for improving digestion and immunity and adding some life to bland starchy foods.
Once the days start to lengthen again, the natural imperative shifts from staying warm and nourished to lightening up a bit. Before those first spring greens appear, you can start the lightening process by making sprouts out of alfalfa, fenugreek, mustard and other sprouting seeds. Adding pungent herbs and spices--most anything aromatic, from mustard and horseradish to black pepper and cinnamon and oregano and rosemary helps with digestion, which can be sluggish after months of eating heavily. Soon enough you’ll be blessed with the sight of those first spring greens again.

We're long overdue here for post, but the truth is there ain't quite as much to write about as there once was. Life is pretty quiet for your trusty, ill windy bloggerman. I suppose the day-to-day in Northern Vermont is every bit as weird and wonderful in its way as any Himalayan sojourn, but it will take fresher eyes than mine to see it. But perhaps I can interest you cosmopolitan readers in tales of Chem Lab at exotic Lyndon State College? Midadventures of doggies Mabel and Cyrus? Smitten, slightly impatient accounts of long distance romance?

What I'm more likely to hit you with in the coming weeks is pontifications on traditional medicine. I'm spending an ungodly proportion of my time studying and working with herbs, and once the lid comes off there may be no stopping the botanical ranting. I'm currently trying to envision the next stage of my (re)education--naturopathy, Chinese medicine, Western herbalism? everything I can get my hands on is more like it--so I have an ulterior motive for sparking some dialogue about these things. I've also recently finished an article for supposed, eventual publication in a Nepali journal about the forms of Ayurveda I observed in Kathmandu. Partly, I admit, it's a platform for me to rage against the dying of the light, as traditional lineages of Ayurveda dwindle and disappear (See also my May 30 post, Endangered Species of Ayurved). Anyway, it's too long to post here, but I'd happily email it in pdf format to any interested parties.

In other news, and probably against my better judgement, I went and joined facebook. There's no place to hide any longer.

Manang to Mustang

I've finally made enough sense of the thousands of photos from my last Nepal trek to make a coherent slideshow. I took the time to add captions to each image, but unfortunately those don't appear in the little thumbnail slideshow at right. To see the thing properly, click on the title of this post to link to the corresponding photo album, and set up a slideshow there. It's worth it! (As of today--September 15th, 2009--I've just finished uploading all the photos with captions.)

Brewer's itch

Here we are--the second beverage related post in one day. It never rains but it pours, I guess.

I’ve been concocting again. It happens periodically, which is funny, because it used be an incessant state. I spent the better part of my college years in the kitchen, bottling beer and tending bubbling crocks of kraut and kombucha. Fermentation itself became an obsession (perhaps at the point when the kombucha mother colonized my central nervous system), and my habit reigned unchecked until a roommate drew the line at the vat of fermenting dumpster-dived bagels mouldering in a corner. The intended delicacy was a variation on kvass, the sour Russian breadcrust-based beverage. (Didn’t make it onto anyone’s list of three, I notice...) Among my prouder creations were a strong, Belgian Abbey style ale made from scratch with a healthy dose of dark maple syrup, a peach-ginger mead that could have passed for champagne, and a dark, half-sour ale that fueled another roommate’s mania for a month straight.
Like most of my obsessions that one eventually simmered down, though a bubble of lingering enthusiasm will rise the surface periodically and inspire me to get out the big brew pot or the mammoth mortar and pestle. The latest resurgence was spurred by a reference I came across recently to a liqueur made by suspending an orange above spirits in a closed jar. I loved the image and the promise of such a subtle infusion, and before I knew it I had filled half a dozen jars with a variety of alcoholic extracts ranging from syrupy to medicinal. My favorite so far is inspired by an Italian drain-cleaner strength digestive liquore called Cent’erbe (‘one hundred herbs’) that my father brought back from Italy once upon a time (he also once notoriously made a batch of garlic vodka, so perhaps these tendencies are genetic). The stuff was bright green and, at 80% abv, tended to peel a layer off your eyeballs. In high school we’d sneak a few ounces of it from the liquor cabinet, and mixed with in a Ninja turtles water bottle with grapefruit juice was enough to lubricate an entire teenage night on the town. The current version, which features a little of every aromatic herb I could find within a two minute walk of my house, promises to live up to its grandaddy in all but proof--100 proof vodka was the strongest base I could find. (The lady at the Price Chopper liquor department was mighty emphatic, too, when she informed me that no, they did not carry pure grain alcohol.) That one is clearly on the medicinal end of the spectrum, but even further out there is a cordial featuring traditional digestive and heart-tonic herbs: hawthorn berry, cardamom, and saffron. It’s cognac-base, and it’s going to get some honey after the infusion is complete. Should digest anything within five miles, including your stomach lining if you’re not careful.
The beauty of liquors, cordials, etc. is how easy they are to make. You can go from concept to execution in about 5 minutes--if you discount the few days, weeks or months it takes for the flavors to infuse and mellow out. The idea is the same as making an herbal tincture, only here the concentrations are much less intense. Basically, you take whatever you’re doing the flavoring with, put it in a jar, and pour some vodka, brandy, rum, or whatever over it. Taste periodically, and strain when you deem it strong enough. Sweeten if you like with simple syrup or honey. You can even add cream; the alcohol should preserve it. Other liquers currently liqueuring on my shelf include blackberry, coffee, and a bitter orange digestive. I’d offer up samples from the website, but Mac hasn’t made that technology public yet.

On a soberer note, one reason I’m confident that I’ve found my niche with herbal medicine is that it manages to integrate so many of the obsessions or hobbies I’ve nurtured over the course of my life: everything from foraging to gardening to cooking and brewing to collecting hot sauces (that was sixth grade?) fits neatly into the fold of traditional medicine. Meanwhile, doing it all for the sake of health puts a more positive spin on inclinations that could easily be put to less than wise use. In some parallel universe, perhaps, I might be running a meth lab right now.

Cent’erbe

ingredients:

-modest sprigs of eight or more fresh aromatic herbs, such as peppermint, basil, thyme, sage, rosemary, mugwort, marjoram, bee balm, hyssop, and fennel

-high-proof neutral grain alcohol. vodka is fine, but at least 100-proof is preferable. If you have access to Everclear or other really strong stuff, dilute it down to 65-80%.

Pick the herbs and put them in a clean jar that has a tight-fitting lid, such as a mason jar. Pour the spirits over them, stir or shake to get them wet, cap, and put somewhere out of direct light. Shake it up each day and start smelling/tasting it every day after the second or third day. Adjust herb amounts if necessary by adding more of things--you don’t want any one flavor to predominate. It should smell good and pungent, almost like turpentine. Strain and bottle, diluting with more alcohol and/or water if necessary. Will probably improve with age.

Fuoco Dell' Etna

This is an approximation of a souvenir liquor I brought back from the slopes of the active volacni Mount Etna, in Sicily. In seven or eight years my family never managed to get through the tiny novelty-sized bottle, so I used it to tincture up some bloodroot, an herb with a similarly firey character.

ingredients:

vodka or high-proof alcohol
atomic fireballs or other red, cinnamon-flavored candy

Soak/dissolve fireballs in the booze. put on a high shelf and forget about it.


(apologies for the lack of photos here--I just don't have any good shots of people drinking awful firewater floating around. I'll make up for it soon, however. )

Nectars of the Gods

^What's he thirsty for?

I’ve been spreading the word about the cow with the soda-fountain udder, and everyone wants a piece of the action. I’ve managed to pop the question to a few dozen folks over the last few weeks, and preliminary results are interesting. But before examining the hottest trends, a little philosophizing is in order.

The quandary, as I see it, is this: one wants at the very least something caffeinated, something alcoholic, something refreshing, and something hot. It’s also nice to have something nourishing. I don’t meant to go any further than this with the psychologizing, but it probably says a lot about someone which of these they opt for, or which they try and combine. for example, I made my alcoholic drink and my refreshing drink one and the same: Chang is a milky rice beer that they make in Nepal. The Newari style, or my favorite example of it (which comes from a hole-in-the-wall in Naradevi) is slightly tart and slightly sweet with a bit of spritz to it. It’s great by itself as a snack or a refreshment and goes well with all sorts of food. As for my other choices, milk is nature’s perfect drink, and can be served up hot or cold. After much deliberation (and a recent bout of over-caffeination) I replaced green tea with tulsi, which is a kind of basil native to India. Really good tulsi tea is divine and could even be iced, if this temperature-fiddling isn’t against my own rules. Sure, there would be times when I craved an IPA, a glass of red wine, or some juice. But I could drink good chang almost anytime, and for fruit juice i’d just eat the fruit. The mouth: nature’s juicer.
My runners up: green tea, salty lassi, Samuel Smith’s oatmeal stout, a good dry red wine (like Salice Salentino). If we’re going to get outlandish, I mean more than we already have, I’d throw in a dessert wine like Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. But that was the point: you have to choose three. Never again shall I taste yr sweet nectar...

So much for my logic. The masses have spoken (yes, those screaming hordes at my doorstep), and the most popular responses are: coffee in various forms (15), beer (10), red wine (8), whiskey (5), grapefruit juice (3). Only one person for orange juice, but lots of people had some kind of juice (total 10). 14 out of 33, almost half, included milk or another dairy product, even if only in their coffee or tea. No one mentioned hot chocolate--but I didn’t conduct this survey in the winter. No one said breast milk, but I didn’t ask any infants.
One-time only answers include: chocolate soy milk, pepsi in a glass bottle, gin and tonic, gatorade, ginger ale, Nepali millet beer, rooibos tea, and mango lassi.

Interestingly, no one took the luxury approach and named, say, vintage champagne or really fancy wine. Goes to show good taste don’t have to be expensive. Neither does bad taste, weird taste, or complete lack of taste. (One respondent, Chris Edley III, did pick a single malt scotch, but later changed it to a cheap bourbon for reasons best known to himself.)

It was predictably common for someone to rattle off three of their favorite drinks after a moment’s consideration, only to realize with a start that they’d forgotten coffee.


Now for the awards:

Most Batshit Insane goes out to The Boat, who chose raw goat’s milk, kombucha and everclear. Boat also tried to name raw honey, until I told him he could have honey even without naming it as one of his three.

Most whiskey-loving goes to Ezra who picked bourbon and scotch for two out of his allotted three.

Most beer-loving goes to Ben M who named IPA and “a good stout” and was stumped to come up with a third.

Most weirdly counterbalanced to Toby Louis David, orator extraordinaire, who chose coconut water, yerba mate, and rye whiskey. Toby’s got his bases covered.

Most desert island-friendly goes to Angela, what with her pineapple juice, coconut milk, and lemonade. You can spot a californian a mile away.

Most eclectic goes to Orion, with Anchor porter, sugarcane juice, and Pu Erh tea.

Most concocted goes to Alden, who included “amla-rhododendron-lemon juice sweetened with agave nectar” as one of his selections, g_d love him.

Most sarcastic goes to J-will, who without missing a beat responded “any three -tinis.” My special contempt goes out to you, J-will, as you will have to suffer for the rest of your days as I make you every kind of -tini you never dreamed of: mochatini, smokatini, gropatini, blokatini... the list goes on.

Congratulations to the winners, especially since neither they nor I knew this was a contest. Any of them are hereby invited to buttonhole me for a free drink any time.

I would be interested to hear what people would choose if we put a localvore-type constraint on this, limiting the choices to beverages produced within one’s local area (bioregion, say, or 100-mile radius, whichever is smaller). Every single ingredient need not be local, but the production should be. If you’re mixing it up yourself, all of the ingredients should be readily available. Here in Northeastern Vermont, my candidates are apple cider, switchel (that’s “water seasoned to taste” with cider vinegar and maple syrup or honey), cow’s milk, and the Double Bag ale or a local IPA. There’s a vodka distillery nearby, but that’s the one kind of booze I never could abide. Go figger. Offbeat choices would include rhubarb wine, mead, pickle juice (Tev? anyone?), a pickletini, fresh maple sap or even straight maple syrup.