New Year's lucky healthy food

Can't believe it's been three months since I blogged, considering I hoped to blog every day. Yeah, rite. Not even going to make a New Year's resolution about this. Meanwhile, friends have been asking for recipes for a few vegan dishes I made for various holiday dinners: African Groundnut Stew, a traditional West-African recipe I got at a vegan-cooking class at the Mustard Seed a couple of years ago, which I made for a Christmas dinner and for New Year's Eve. The second recipe is an Asian wilted cabbage -- look, ma, no bacon drippings -- salad I made up for New Year's Day to replace lucky cabbage cooked in animal fat. The last is yummy, robust, luscious black-eyed peas I made for New Year's in place of traditional Southern-style Hoppin' John, normally also heavy with ham hocks. I gotta tell you, nobody around the table today missed the meat. Yum, yum, eat 'em up, y'all, and Happy New Year!!!!!! 

African Groundnut Stew

Serves 4-6

1 small head cauliflower, cut into large florets (3 cups)

4 tablespoons olive oil

salt

1 small onion (1 cup), diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon minced, peeled ginger

1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes

1/2 pound (1 cup) turnip, peeled and large chunks

2 medium carrots, large chunk (1 cup)

1 celery stalk, cut in 2.5-inch pieces

2 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded, chopped into chunks

2 tablespoons shoyu or tamari or soy sauce.Best is shoyu or tamari

2 cups water

1 small sweet potato, peeled and cut large chunks (1 1/4 cups)

1 pound acorn or other delicate squash, halved, seeded, peeled and cut into large chunks (4 cups)

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter mixed with 1/2 cup warm water

2 tablespoons ginger juice (can make your own by grating a few large chunks of ginger, then squeeze the juice out of the grated ginger, using your hands)

2-3 green onions, sliced (1/4 cup)

1/4 cup cilantro, plus more for garnish

pinch cayenne

1/2 cup chopped, roasted, unsalted peanuts, for garnish

Arugula for garnish.

Toss cauliflower in bowl with 2 tablespoons of oil, sprinkles with salt. Spread on baking sheet and roast in oven for 30 mins. Can stir halfway through, or ok if not. Heat 2 T oil in large pot. Add onions and cook med-low for five mins. Add garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes and cook another 5 mins. Add turnips, carrots, celery, tomatoes and shoyu and cook uncovered over med heat, stirring occas., for five mins until tomatoes are reduced and thickened. Add water. Cover pot. Bring to boil on high. Lower heat, simmer, partially covered, 10 mins. Add potato, squash and 1 tsp. salt and cook another 15 mins until vegs tender. Stir in roasted cauliflower and peanut butter mixture and cook for just a few minutes, stirring occas to keep stew from sticking to bottom of pot. Add ginger juice, green onion, 1/4 cup cilantro, adjust salt, add a bit of cayenne. If stew is too thick, add water. Serve with peanuts and cilantro and arugula. Serve over brown rice or couscous. Divine.

DL’s Wilted Asian Cabbage Salad

1/2 large head of cabbage, sliced and chopped

1 carrot, sliced

1/2 red pepper sliced and chopped

1/2 cup peanuts or cashews

1/4 cup veggie broth

3 cups water
1/2 - 1 teaspoon raw organic cane sugar

2 T toasted sesame oil

2 T red wine vinegar

salt

cracked pepper

Boil water with veggie broth. While water is boiling, chop cabbage. Pour boiling water over cabbage. Let sit 10 mins. While cabbage is wilting, chop carrots and pepper. Drain cabbage. Run cold water over to cool cabbage a bit. Mix all vegs together. Drizzle on oil. Ditto vinegar, then salt, cracked pepper, sugar, and nuts. Stir. Chill. Voila.

DL’s Alternative to Meat-Based Hoppin’ John for New Year’s Eve

3 cups dried black eyed peas

1/2 onion

1/2 sweet red pepper

3 large clove garlic

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

salt

olive oil

veggie broth

Soak beans overnight. On New Year’s Day, get up if you can and put beans on to boil with veggie broth in several cups of water. The amount is personal preference. I’d say 8-10 cups water and 1/2 cup powdered veggie broth. As beans begin to boil, chop veggies. Put olive oil in saute pan. Throw in onion, then pepper, then garlic, then pepper flakes. Saute for a few mins. Add to beans. Cook uncovered til beans have soaked up water. Add brown rice. Really yummy. Almost gone. See: 

Bringing Up Mommy: Only a mother can do this -- on giving birth Sept 28, 1988

An excerpt from my collection of 
newspaper columns, Bringing Up Mommy,

written 23 years ago, posted now in honor of the birth day of 

Christopher Harkness Hook 23 years ago, Sept. 28, 1988.

                                                                                    ---Photo by Ginger Pinson
 

During her pregnancy, a woman reads a lot of books and talks to a lot of mothers as she searches for answers: How will I know when it's time for the baby to come? What will I feel? Will it hurt? Can I do this? She clings go mothers who had good experiences, hoping for the same.

And yet, as author and childbirth educator Fritzi Kallop says in her "Birth Book":
"As inconvenient as it is to have labor begin spontaneously, it seems fitting to have inexplicable forces controlling one of the most important events in life. Scientists may marvel as they observe the wonders of our farflung universe; it is equally miraculous to contemplate the birth of a child. Not one is ever routine."

At some point, then, the mommy hopeful realizes there aren't any answers. Her experience is hers, alone, to endure.

I began feeling the intensity of this predicament two weeks before my baby was due. Big and tired, I had decided to take maternity leave from my job as a newspaper reporter to rest up for the days and weeks ahead. I thought I might enjoy this respite, sitting at home with my feet up, daydreaming about holding my baby for the first time. This was so very much not true, as it turns out. At least at work, I could try to be like everybody else. At home, I was isolated, trapped by Oprah, Beaver and a phone that rang incessantly. "Anything yet?" callers demanded, as if this baby was theirs, not mine.

Finally, on the morning of Sept. 28, while I toddled alone about the confines of my house, I felt the telltale trickle of water. The nurse at the OB's office confirmed what I knew to be true. "Your water has broken."

I must say I was excited as I arrived at the hospital. My husband and I settled into one of those Home and Garden delivery rooms that make you think you're going to have a cocktail party instead of a baby. Time settled into a warp as we lounged toe-to-toe on a mauve sofa under dim lights. We chatted intimately as contraction after contraction passed without a grimace. Perfect. We could have been in a movie for Lamaze.

But, oh, lest a laboring woman get too comfortable, the transition stage of labor, when the cervix opens that last little bit, was only gaining steam. Some women told me they moved up to this "real work" of labor gradually. For me, transition came fast. Nothing in the pregnancy books could have prepared me for the intensity -- or the aloneness I felt.

I remember thinking I was the only one who could do this. I remember wishing I hadn't said I didn't want an epidural. I remember getting up on all fours because the baby wasn't getting enough oxygen. I remember feeling scared. I remember forceps.

I especially remember my husband dropping his head to my shoulder and whispering, "Thank God" when we were told, "You have a healthy son."

Then he was gone. Because the cord had been around his chest, they whisked my baby into the nursery before I could look into his eyes, count his toes, feed him.

I didn't get to "bond." Steve didn't get to cut the cord. I didn't feel any of those miraculous feelings.

The experience I had anticipated for months was over, my baby was gone and so was my husband, who went to stand by the nursery window. And I was left alone with the clean-up crew who mopped up my body and wheeled me into a room where I choked down half a dry turkey sandwich and made a few phone calls. My husband came in and out of the room. He said I still looked pregnant.

Time settled into a warp again until sometime after dark, when Steve poked his head inside the door and said I had a visitor.

I grimaced then, wondering who would be coming to see us now.

Steve opened the door wide. A nurse came in, pulling a tiny cart behind her.

I cried out loud as my baby was laid in my arms while his father looked on.

There had been nothing in the books to prepare me for the feelings I had then, either.

I was not alone anymore.

~

Sometimes you gotta cry

My history with sadness is spotty.
~

Perhaps this, like every other human ill, can be blamed on my mother.
~

My undeserving mother suffered long and awful bouts of depression that she could not adequately address, except with inappropriate antidotes, including me. A happy me could pull her out of a sad her. I had the capacity, thus, to cure my mother. When I was a child, as long as I was happy, everything was good.
~

As an adult, I worried that sadness equaled clinical depression, a condition, which when lived into, would leave me never to stand erect again. If I ever let sadness in, I would be nothing but sad.

~
I didn't think I deserved to be sad. Oh, I could do collective grief. 9-11, for example, was easy. As long as everybody else was crying, I could cry, too. Even then, found myself thinking: What right did I have to cry, when others, like the family members of the victims, deserved to cry more?
~

And then there came real personal tragedy and grief: Grief over things, ironically, like the accident with fire that befell my mother, and ultimately killed her. Grief over hurricanes and personal illness and loss.
~
Grief like this, with a capital G, is different than sadness. Grief, I found, does not let you be. Grief, if you don't let it act the way it needs to act, will grab you by the neck and throw you in the ditch. Grief, untended, does become all there is, albeit manifest in odd ways, like drinking too many margaritas and falling in the ditch.

~
There came moments when I realized nobody else's sadness was more valid than mine. And so, I began. I allowed myself  to cry. And as I did, as I lived into this other emotion that also accompanies the human condition, I began to realize, ironically, that just the opposite happens/ed from that I used to believe: Allowing all my emotions room to breathe, released energy blockages and provided room for real joy. Wholeness -- realizing and accepting all that is inside my human souls -- not 24-7 happiness, is what brings this joy.

 ~
Sadness does not, in fact, last forever, I now know. Sadness, I dare say, at times can be a friend, into whose arms my tattered psyche falls. Ah, release. And when I come out of those arms, I am new. I am wiser. I am deeper. I am more connected to the truth of all that I am and all that I want to be.

~
Don't forget to cry, I tell my friend, Jan, who just lost her husband. And I won't either. Ok, Jan?
Blessings upon all of us who grieve this day, 9-11-11, and always.

Hot hands

It's about 10 p.m., I'm sitting with Benjie, helping him with a complicated science paper.

And my left hand starts burning. I mean really burning all over.

I know I haven't burned my hand on anything, and so I’m thinking I’m having a heart attack or a stroke. Left hand, left arm, up the jaw and straight to the heart, except doesn't it usually go the other way. Maybe I'm just tired

It had been a tiring day. I had gone with Steve to a complicated doc appointment that morning, then to my own unrelated doc appointment that morning. I had gone to Krieger’s and bought all kinds of organic goodies, including this batch of gorgeous, yummy – aren’t they cute – red peppers. I had gotten all the groceries in the house and put them away, which don't you know means cleaning the nasty refrigerator. I had further cleaned for two hours, cooked for two more, cut up and bagged all those red peppers. I had worked out, then come back home and cooked some more. In between, I picked out a color of siding for the house, did some writing and some photo editing and helped B with homework.

So yeah, I’ll just go to bed and it’ll be all better, I thought.

Nope. Got worse. It was burning like it was on fire and now it was moving up my elbow. Steve rubbed my hand and talked me down from heart attack fears. But still, it hurt.

And so I got out of bed and Googled. I know: Google is usually worse than what ails you. Not in this case.
I Googled "left hand burning sensation." Not a word about heart attacks. That was a relief. Still? What is this?

Peppers.

Post after post: “My left hand is still burning hours after I cut up a bunch of jalapeños...” “My left hand is burning after cutting up a bunch of red peppers, but not my right hand because the right hand was holding the knife..."



My new Google hand-burning community even provided a tip (Latex gloves) for next my next pepper-cutting experience and an antidote for now: Soak the hand in milk.

It didn't really help. Nor did the Vaseline, which I slathered on my hands and then wore socks on my hands all night. What helped was knowing I wasn't having a heart attach -- that and a good night's sleep. An added bonus: My hands, still slightly burning, are really soft today.

And you? What will you do for Mother's Day?

Yesterday was Everything Mother.

Child 1 graduated from college.

I threw a party for him.



















Child 2 went to prom activities at the high school. After the party,
I went to the prom and shot pictures
of the Homecoming Court and friends
for the local newspaper.














About midnight, having been up and mobile for about 17 hours
without sitting down, except when I sat and cried at college
graduation, I climbed into bed with my laptop and pictures
to edit, but not before seeing Child 3 return home, his having
been gone to a three-day choir competition in a neighboring state.

This morning: I think there are about 10 teenagers with Child 2 in the
basement, preparing to go home to their mothers.
Child 1 is helping one of his professors move this morning.

But after that, they're all here, like my own Mother's Day court, ready to do my beck and call. Still not sure what we'll do today. Don't really care, just so long as we're together. Maybe a walk in the beautiful spring sunshine. Maybe after that, nothing.The best part of my children being with me on

Mother's Day is that I know they are resting.
They -- we all -- go so hard and so fast. It comforts me when they are still.

And you? What about you? Who will be with you today, and what will you do? Strawberries and cream in bed? Homemade cards? Or just lots of hugs and good wishes? I hope if you don't see all your children today, you at least hear from them, and that they are kind and thoughtful and remembering that this is your day...Don't forget to call your own mother, if she is here on Earth with you. No matter your differences or past grievances. Today is a new day. Today is Mother's Day...

Every day is Mother's Day

"

My husband's father used to tease him when he would ask how come there's no Children's Day. "Every day is Children's Day,"  he'd say.

I wonder what he would say if he knew that I believe every day is Mother's Day.

~

This is not just because I have three wondrous children who lay out life's rich pageant for me every day.

~  

It is because of what and who motherhood has made me. It is because of the lessons in selflessness, tolerance, patience and boundless love that motherhood has taught me. It is because, in learning to interact with the people I cherish most in the world, I have become a better person in every area of my life, every day of my life. Through them and with them, on the pottery wheel of motherhood, my misshapen soul  has been molded into an expression of life I might otherwise not have known.

Happy Mother's Day to me. And Happy Children's Day to Chris, Emily and Benjie. 

It is, after all, their day, too. ~

All I want for Mother's Day

One more day in NOLA town
and then I hit the ground running:

Wednesday is radio with Regina Brett Wed, 7-8 p.m..

(I am honored to be on this show, talking about the status of motherhood with Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist, Regina Brett http://www.reginabrett.com/; historian and author Regina Jo Plant http://www.amazon.com/Mom-Transformation-Motherhood-Modern-America/dp/0226670201; also motherhood blogger, Tesa Nicolant http://www.2wired2tired.com/. Please tune into WKSU 89.7 http://www.wksu.org/listen/on your dial. Thank you for asking me on your show, Regina!)
 

Thursday and Friday, I will prepare for Saturday, for my firstborn child's graduation, for a party with his friends and the adult friends, neighbors and teachers who have supported him for 22 years. This is a big day. This is my child, of whom I am proud.
I adore this person with all my heart.

Then, well, then it's a day for me, as Sunday is Mother's Day.

I make no bones about the value of this day for me: If my children are the sun and I am their moon, then we must indeed hold in reverence at least one day celebrating that relationship.

My children know by now what I want on this day -- which is not to be taken to lunch and showered with gifts.         
  
                                                                                                            ~~~

They do give me flowers. My husband always finds something for the garden to give to me.

But it is the homemade cards that I cherish and adore, that my children still make for me, even though they are now 22, 18, 14.

It is their sentiment I crave.

And their time.


I no longer have to ask.

Sometimes we garden. One year we painted lawn furniture.

 Doesn't really matter though.

On Mother's Day, we are, all of us, together.

All day long.

~~~