Sabbath Rest: Listening to the Body

Our bodies have much to tell us if we would only figure out how to listen. In fact, often times God speaks to us through our bodies. Most times, my body is the first to know if we are overcommitted, stressed, uneasy or joyful, and when we need to attend to something that is causing us pain or disease.

Paying attention to what we are experiencing in our body can open up windows of insight that might not otherwise be opened...A flow of energy into us, or its draining away from us, can be felt in our body if we are in touch with it. Remember God's assurances that the ability to choose life and follow God was not to be found in some faraway place. 'No, the word [of God] is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe' (Deuteronomy 30:14)...

I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I begin to consider very carefully how much of myself God wants me to give to that. On the other hand, if I feel particularly energized by a certain person or activity, I can pay attention to how God may be leading me to incorporate more of that into my life. Paying attention to what gives our body and our spirit a sense of life or drains life from us can help us stay connected with God's guiding presence.

When I first read those words by Ruth Haley Barton in her book, Sacred Rhythms, I felt a deep resonance, as I try to sort through the over-arching plans for next spring's gardening endeavors. Like the body, the soil of the garden can be drained, and the fruit of the crop you grow will tell you when that soil needs a rest. My little plot seems to be telling me it is in need of a rest. At the same time, the drop-in center for homeless teens where I volunteer has expressed an interest in my beginning a small garden on their property this year. Is it time to 'go public' with this hobby in a larger way than just a public blog chronicle and an occasional gift of canned pickle relish to a neighbor?

For now, I still run shivering out the back door to throw a bucket of ash, a bowl of used coffee grounds, a carton of crushed egg shells across the bare soil. For now, I look at my gardening catalogs and consider my crop rotation plans. But I also stand alongside my kitty in the late dawn on a Sunday morning gazing at the spitting snow, and I wonder things. I wonder things like: do I just let it produce volunteer crops this summer? Do I only grow in containers as I force the soil to rest? Do I put my gardening attention fully to the work at the mission and grow nothing here at home, or do I intentionally grow those things that are "good" for the soil and avoid the crops that are classified as heavy feeders, uprooting them if they come up volunteer?

I think about these things, and--don't laugh--but it feels to me as if the answer, symbolically speaking, is larger than just my own little life and its gardening ventures. At the same time, it feels like I am on the brink of living--and therefore learning--something important about myself in the decision I make and the lesson I take from what this next season gives me. Like my kitty I look across the landscape of my backyard, but I also see that reflection in the glass. I know that I must first see myself super-imposed on the landscape that spreads before me. I must pay attention to my own energy toward what I see sprawling there. It reminds me, even as does Ms. Barton, to look just as deeply within as I do without.

Happy introspection!

Kitchen Pilgrimage to Charlottesville, Virginia

While last month's Kitchen Pilgrimage took us west to a suburban Texas kitchen, this month's takes us east nearly as far to a kitchen in Charlottesville, Virginia. My husband's best friend for 40 years, John has a kitchen well worth the visit. I asked him to set the stage for our imaginary visit before we read about what he's cooking. Here's what he had to say:

My kitchen is in a near century-old farmhouse in downtown Charlottesville, Va. It is a practical place with long counters designed for the experimental cook who is prone to have two to three projects underway at a time. My window looks onto a shaded lawn and small houses across the street that were farmland barely 60 years ago when horses and cars shared narrow streets. Out the backdoor is a view of Jefferson's Monticello and its gardens, where slaves worked in half-story kitchens amid the hydrangeas and other plants that are common to the mountains here in the Blue Ridge.


NORTH WOODS BEAN SOUP (pictured above)
This is a rare soup for all season, but one that is perfect for bone-chilling days. Moms love it because it is loaded with protein and iron. And it can all be done in a single large sauce pan. Here’s what you need:
Ingredients:
- Cooking spray
- 1 cup baby carrots, halved
- 1 cup chopped onion (white, preferred)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 7 ounces turkey kielbasa, halved lengthwise and cut into half-inch pieces
- 4 cups chicken broth (low-sodium recommended)
- Half teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
- Half teaspoon black pepper
- Two cans (15.8 ounces) Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed in cool water
- 1 (6 ounce) bag of fresh baby spinach leaves

1. Prep all ingredients separately.
2. Heart large saucepan coated with cooking spray, over medium-high heat. Add carrots, onion, carrots and kielbasa and then sauté for three minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to medium and cook for five minutes.
3. Add broth, Italian seasoning, black pepper and Great Northern beans. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes.
4. Place two cups of soup in a food processor or blender, process until smooth. Return the pureed to the pan. Simmer an additional five minutes. Adding the puree adds body and enhances flavor.
5. Remove soup from heat. Add spinach, stirring until it wilts.
6. Begin serving immediately. This recipe will yield five servings of 1.5 cups each.

To Be, or Not To Be...on My Recipebook Shelf

Winter: a good time to curl up beside a toasty fire and study gardening books and catalogs; but also a good time to peruse new potentials for the cookbook shelf. A word of advice though: run the books by the whole family before giving them space in your permanent recipe file. This task can be entertainingly accomplished through an in-home read-aloud thanks to your local library.

Case in point: I checked out a recipe book that looked like a perfect match for us. Not only was the word "farm" in its title, but its author was pictured on the cover, leaning on a shovel and wearing that satisfied gardener's look of endorphic joy. While this collection of recipes did explore culinary options with squash and cabbage, rhubarb and rutabagas, it also called for some rather exotic ingredients.

"Support local farmers using these recipes? Maybe when we live in Northern Italy."

This type of initial spousal feedback is invaluable as you determine a cookbook's appropriateness for your book shelf.

Some of those exotic ingredients (to the Midwestern backyard gardener, that is) I could explain to my family. Quinoa, for example, is a grain. I knew this in theory from gardening books I've studied. I even tried to grow it one year, bu couldn't find anyone local selling seeds.

Then there were those things I didn't recognize at all, like gramolata. When I mentioned that one to the family, I got this for feedback: "You mean that stuff's real? I thought it was just made-up on that farmlife video game you play."

I read further down the recipe. "Oh...why that's just minced parsley, garlic and lemon zest. That's not so unusual. But what's this osso bucco you're supposed to sprinkle it on?" I lamented my ignorance. (Now, thanks to Wikipedia, I know that this would indeed represent a typical farmhouse dish should I ever live in 19th century Milan.)

Recipe-testing Hubby reassured me my ignorance was not so unique. "I dare you to go ask the lady at the grocery store about it, you know the one with the gray bouffant hairdo? Ask her to point you toward what you need for osso bucco because you have some gramolata you want to sprinkle on it. I bet she won't have a clue either!" So supportive! But I still wonder if my own ignorance is not common to society. Maybe if we ate more veal, or served dinner to more diplomats and statesmen...

SO, do ignorance and inaccessibility spell the death knell for this cookbook at my house? Probably, but a few of the recipes will make it into the personal file of singular recipes, and some give a distinctive tweak to recipes already stored in my memory file. The book as a whole, however, would be impractical for a family such as mine. In fact, the whole flirtation with these recipes helped me hone a list of points to remember when considering a potential relationship with a new cookbook:

1. I don't grind fresh nutmeg.

2. The liberal use of parentheticals is a plus as in: polenta (coarse corn meal.)

3. A recipe has to be really good for me to take the time and trouble to do something like pit 1 1/2 pounds of ripe cherries or scour the city for fresh figs.

4. I've never braised a squid in my life, and particularly not according to any particular recipe ethnicity. (Just what exactly makes it Spanish-styled, anyway?)

5. If I go to the trouble of digging the ice cream maker out of storage, I'm probably going to succumb to making rich, home-churned ice cream rather than restraining it to a concoction of red grapefruit sorbet.

6. Some recipes are exotic enough I might be able to get away with them once, but that would surely be the end of it...take for instance, something that calls for candied kumquats. Hubby's response to my query on this recipe's potential: "I don't know. I've never had kumquats, so I don't know why I hate them yet."

7. If I'm going to knead dough for 10 minutes, I'm making bread. Period. I'm not risking all that wrist-inflaming labor on a sweet potato ravioli that could very well wind up as, at best, the dog's evening meal.

8. Hubby's reaction to my offer to cook asparagus flan: horrified eyes above a tongue hanging out while the sound "Blaah-aah-aah" rises from deep in his throat.

9. When I read the words "non-reactive container" my first thoughts run toward nuclear radiation threats.

10. Sometimes the pictures don't help. Take, for instance, the one of artichokes stuffed with the carefully crafted, home-made breadcrumbs of day-old French bread. "Looks like you dropped it in wet sand, tried to brush it off, and when that didn't work you stuck a slice of lemon on top and just served it anyway."

11. I'll most likely skip saving a recipe if typing its name requires multiple symbols not available on a standard word processing program.

12. Speaking of recipe names, if a guest should ask what I'm serving, I'd like to be able to get the answer out in one breath, and preferably not have to restate it "in English."

13. When I asked Hubby whether I should try making us the homemade mayonnaise, he gave me a speculative, "would I die for this" look before giving me a determined, "No."

14. Everything I know about rampion I learned as a child reading the story of Rapunzel. I have no idea how to get it for a recipe. Would regular radishes work? (See comment #2.)

15. If the final product looks like a Quonset hut, my intention had better be to create a playground for imaginative play with little green army men rather than haute cuisine, because the little green army men are what I'm going to find on my table soon after serving it.

16. And finally...Almond flour?

Don't take my jesting as too poor a review. I'm certain this book is absolutely right when it self-proclaims its "elegant, and simply marvelous" offerings. But in the astute words of recipe-assessing Hubby:

"If I've learned one thing from this experience, it is this: I have a pedestrian palate." And winter is the best time to run such an inventory.

Happy evaluating!

Sabbath Rest: a Mini-Jubliee

One of the gifts of winter, and the New Year's placement there: that it is a season for receiving rather than a season for causing, which makes it an easy time to visit the "gallery" of nature while receiving the following words given to God's people many centuries ago:


For the land you are about to enter and occupy is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, where you planted your seed and dug out irrigation ditches with your foot as in a vegetable garden. It is a land of hills and valleys with plenty of rain-a land that the Lord your God cares for. He watches over it day after day throughout the year! Duet. 11:10-12

Take a day, take a season, to see again that despite all your efforts putting your hands to the soil even with great success, nevertheless, this world holds a beauty that requires no effort from you and is not of your making! Let it be a part of your rest and a source of peace.

And this [shall be] a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat [this] year such as groweth of itself; and the second year that which springeth of the same: and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof. Isaiah 37:30

This concept of recognizing our limited participation in the cycle of life was built into the ancient Hebrew lifestyle, but we must be more intentional about it in our work-worship culture. This is one of the greatest dignities of winter to the spiritual gardener. May you walk in the fullest of its blessings!

Happy Sabbath.