I wrote a piece this morning that was fun and adventurous, and about beets. Much like the essay I also have posted on this blog, this one was about food. I hope that you, whoever you are--the reader-- do not find it boring. It was inspired by a James Tate poem called The Radish and like I said, was fun, new and different for me. Here it is. Enjoy.
September 22nd 2009 Autumnal Equinox
The beet
There is a lone beet lurking in the refrigerator. It sits in the drawer with the prettier potatoes and carrots, all of which are scrubbed clean and shiny. The beet can be scrubbed, but it can never be shiny. It does not sparkle, but absorbs light. The beet’s real show is inside its bloody center. You cut a beet in half and stand back from the splatter; it’s like a Tarentino film, gory yet wonderful. The beet oozes its essence on to the cutting board. Dramatic? It can’t help but be dramatic. Your hands, the knife, the counter, the floor all will be magenta-colored in the blood bath as you chop and dice the beet. It gets under your nails and the smell of earth fills your nose. The soup pot will become like a millpond, full of mossy, dirt smells and water teeming with flavor. Add onion and cabbage and carrot to the pot to keep the beet company, and it will bleed all over them, staining them purple and red. Don’t forget salt and pepper and the stewed tomatoes. Adding more redness to the mess. Place the lid on the pot and let it boil. Boil, boil toil and trouble the witches say in Macbeth. I bet they were stirring a pot of borscht while doling out bloody omens. Serve your borscht with sour cream to sooth the tang. Take a spoonful and taste, close your eyes and think of the garden, the innocuous-looking beet leaves blazing out of the soil. You pulled them from the ground and beheld this tuber, this awkward, dirty root vegetable. You washed and put it in the fridge and now it’s swimming about in your mouth, and down your throat. You swallow and it fills you. You slurp up the whole bowl of borscht, you can’t help it, you are like one possessed. You put the bowl down, only to have it filled again by a pushy hostess. You empty it again within you, and your skin takes on a faint lavender color. You have another bowl, and now you are blushing the hue of beet, it has imbibed you with its juices and you are stained as if with beet jaundice. You refuse another bowl, reeling. Can you cry as Lady Macbeth? Out, out damn spot? No, for it is not a spot, but yourself that is red. You have become the beet, as it has become you. You sprout leaves from you the top of your head and look for a soft place to lay, to plant yourself; waiting for the next unsuspecting, innocent cook to pull you from the ground and place you in a soup pot.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Borscht and cabbage the size of my head!
August 14th 2009
“a beet is what’s left after the cherry is finished with the carrot.” -- Tom Robbins
Recently, while visiting my aunt and uncle, Kathy and Al, in Polson I had a blast pulling things out of their garden. The last time I had seen his plot was on a chilly evening in mid-May; now it was bursting with robust vegetables. The row of cabbage was imposing and took over the garden. I was reminded of the silly cabbage patch kid dolls of my youth, seeing the hidden heads of cabbage as if swaddled in the large leaves. After seeing my excitement, he asked if I wanted one. I immediately accepted.
He pointed to the beets as well and I thought of borscht. I had recently started reading Tom Robbin’s novel Jitterbug Perfume which begins: “Beets are the most intense of vegetables.” I was inspired—beets were my future.
“Of course I’ll take some, if you can’t use them all, I say.
We went in for dinner: stuffed bell peppers from the garden, corn from the store, (they were sure to say that theirs wasn’t quite ready yet), and some mediocre salads I had brought from the Harvest Foods in Ronan. I hadn’t had time to make any from scratch. I brought carrots from my garden to add color and to ease my feelings of inadequacy and disappointment in my submitting to convenience. They were descent salads but, eh.
We then picked strawberries and raspberries after dinner. It was nice that they had remembered that I had wanted to pick their raspberries after hearing about how many they had. There were just enough from what was left after their earlier harvest to put on the chocolate cake. It was zucchini chocolate heaven on a plate, and in my mouth.
In the morning, I picked the veggies with an old, rusty knife that Al found in his garage. The cabbage, unsurprisingly, proved difficult to harvest. I remembered a knife I once used on a friend’s farm— the sharp blade was at the end of the shaft so you could cut at the thick stem straight on. It was quite effective as you could stab the cabbage stem and slice it in one motion. I sawed at this cabbage stem, rocking the large head back and forth, eventually it worked. I immediately had visions of making not only coleslaw but also sauerkraut.
Al related a story about when he was a kid and his family grew so much cabbage that they had a special wagon with a blade attached to the bottom for easy harvesting. He said they made kraut in a huge barrel and he would creep in and sneak whole pieces of the marinating leaves when his mother wasn’t looking. What a great story, vats of cabbage!
That Sunday I made borsht for some dear friends. It consisted of all garden veggies, except for the canned tomatoes I needed for the stock. My hands and the cutting board were stained a brilliant magenta color, and when I added the cabbage, the pot took on a bright red hue. Tom Robbins recounts just how “bloody” beets are, and he’s not exaggerating much. The deep purple juices stained every surface of my kitchen. The kitchen smelled of earth as I cut and boiled the beets. Their rough skin, although scrubbed clean, still retained the flavor and aroma of Al’s rich soil in Polson. I was eating the ground, and everything with it went into the stew pot.
My friends laugh at me for getting so excited about produce, but they just don’t get it. Gary Paul Nabhan writes in his book, Coming Home to Eat, “we were blessed by the food and not the other way around.” This line struck me as perfect. I feel blessed by food, especially vegetables and fruit from a garden. I cannot bless the food that comes from the earth, for I had so little to do with its success. I am blessed by the nutrients, beauty and especially the flavor of food.
Al and Kathy laugh at my enthusiasm for the berries they grow, black, raspberry and strawberry—but why not? Berries like that are precious. I rarely can pick enough to bring back in the house for pie because I can’t help but stuff them in my mouth immediately. I’m constantly amazed that food can grow from seeds. From puny (in Al’s words) cabbage plants, can grow enormous, edible cabbage possibilities.
Being in his garden reminded me of my childhood feelings of immeasurable possibility. The simplicity of caring for something the best you can and trusting that God will take care of the rest was refreshing and sustaining.
I see vegetables as tangible miracles that I not only get to hold and breath in, but also eat. And that’s my kind of miracle.
Al said grace for us that night in Polson and I reveled Robbins over the borscht on my porch with friends. We blessed the food, and were in return blessed through it. Amen to that.
“a beet is what’s left after the cherry is finished with the carrot.” -- Tom Robbins
Recently, while visiting my aunt and uncle, Kathy and Al, in Polson I had a blast pulling things out of their garden. The last time I had seen his plot was on a chilly evening in mid-May; now it was bursting with robust vegetables. The row of cabbage was imposing and took over the garden. I was reminded of the silly cabbage patch kid dolls of my youth, seeing the hidden heads of cabbage as if swaddled in the large leaves. After seeing my excitement, he asked if I wanted one. I immediately accepted.
He pointed to the beets as well and I thought of borscht. I had recently started reading Tom Robbin’s novel Jitterbug Perfume which begins: “Beets are the most intense of vegetables.” I was inspired—beets were my future.
“Of course I’ll take some, if you can’t use them all, I say.
We went in for dinner: stuffed bell peppers from the garden, corn from the store, (they were sure to say that theirs wasn’t quite ready yet), and some mediocre salads I had brought from the Harvest Foods in Ronan. I hadn’t had time to make any from scratch. I brought carrots from my garden to add color and to ease my feelings of inadequacy and disappointment in my submitting to convenience. They were descent salads but, eh.
We then picked strawberries and raspberries after dinner. It was nice that they had remembered that I had wanted to pick their raspberries after hearing about how many they had. There were just enough from what was left after their earlier harvest to put on the chocolate cake. It was zucchini chocolate heaven on a plate, and in my mouth.
In the morning, I picked the veggies with an old, rusty knife that Al found in his garage. The cabbage, unsurprisingly, proved difficult to harvest. I remembered a knife I once used on a friend’s farm— the sharp blade was at the end of the shaft so you could cut at the thick stem straight on. It was quite effective as you could stab the cabbage stem and slice it in one motion. I sawed at this cabbage stem, rocking the large head back and forth, eventually it worked. I immediately had visions of making not only coleslaw but also sauerkraut.
Al related a story about when he was a kid and his family grew so much cabbage that they had a special wagon with a blade attached to the bottom for easy harvesting. He said they made kraut in a huge barrel and he would creep in and sneak whole pieces of the marinating leaves when his mother wasn’t looking. What a great story, vats of cabbage!
That Sunday I made borsht for some dear friends. It consisted of all garden veggies, except for the canned tomatoes I needed for the stock. My hands and the cutting board were stained a brilliant magenta color, and when I added the cabbage, the pot took on a bright red hue. Tom Robbins recounts just how “bloody” beets are, and he’s not exaggerating much. The deep purple juices stained every surface of my kitchen. The kitchen smelled of earth as I cut and boiled the beets. Their rough skin, although scrubbed clean, still retained the flavor and aroma of Al’s rich soil in Polson. I was eating the ground, and everything with it went into the stew pot.
My friends laugh at me for getting so excited about produce, but they just don’t get it. Gary Paul Nabhan writes in his book, Coming Home to Eat, “we were blessed by the food and not the other way around.” This line struck me as perfect. I feel blessed by food, especially vegetables and fruit from a garden. I cannot bless the food that comes from the earth, for I had so little to do with its success. I am blessed by the nutrients, beauty and especially the flavor of food.
Al and Kathy laugh at my enthusiasm for the berries they grow, black, raspberry and strawberry—but why not? Berries like that are precious. I rarely can pick enough to bring back in the house for pie because I can’t help but stuff them in my mouth immediately. I’m constantly amazed that food can grow from seeds. From puny (in Al’s words) cabbage plants, can grow enormous, edible cabbage possibilities.
Being in his garden reminded me of my childhood feelings of immeasurable possibility. The simplicity of caring for something the best you can and trusting that God will take care of the rest was refreshing and sustaining.
I see vegetables as tangible miracles that I not only get to hold and breath in, but also eat. And that’s my kind of miracle.
Al said grace for us that night in Polson and I reveled Robbins over the borscht on my porch with friends. We blessed the food, and were in return blessed through it. Amen to that.
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