The Magic of Making Food with Others

In the kitchen, it’s a sacred ritual for me to make food happen. For many years I have either made the meals or created the weekly menu for dinner. It became an individual almost meditative practice, feeling the heat from the burners or oven for the main meal, or the cool touch of washed vegetables as they are transformed into a salad. Water is poured and silverware is laid out. Dinner is served.

And I was okay with cooking alone and being in charge of the kitchen, until I realized how wonderful it is to share the process with another person. Since then I have craved cooking and eating with people. It is a way of connecting with others toward the same goal, that is, the making of a delicious meal. You prep the ingredients you are individually using, dancing around each other in the kitchen like it was rehearsed. The aromas of your share entwine with theirs, and when you bring it all together…

You feel so proud of what you put on the plate and feel even more connected with them than before.

I used to be Diva Chef incarnate once upon a time. People would sit on the couch watching me jump from counter to counter, keeping me company and even assisting in cutting up ingredients or stirring (when I'd let them). Perhaps it was a trust thing, more likely a control thing; but when you let the need of control go, you look outside the box to discover how wonderful a dish can be with collaborative effort.

I wholeheartedly and happily blame CK for wanting to cook with people more often. When he and JS came down to visit HL and I, he taught me how to make paneer from scratch, causing me to fall more in love with Indian food and recipes with multiple components in general. He reminded me of how food brings people together and how fun it is to make something with another person. HL is always fermenting something, and in a frilly apron taught me how she makes her sour beets. And then there was Mama Dazz, who helped make this recipe possible.

Whenever we’ve had a long week or Sunday turns out being a particularly lazy “chill out” day, we tend to look to put something on the dinner table that is neither on our typical menu roster (chili, huevos rancheros, baked chicken) nor prepared in the usual way (pressure cooker, on the stovetop, oven-baked). I had in mind to create a barbeque sauce from scratch, and Mama Dazz was craving ribs. Like clockwork she prepped the ribs with spices and placed them in the oven and I focused on the sauce and made the side dishes. When we sat down together for a Hallmark mother-daughter moment, we savored our efforts and bonded over dinner while I took the photos.

Barbeque sauce is hard to find that fits my dietary lifestyle, but is super easy to make from scratch. Perfect on meat and vegetable alike, it will suit any outdoor potluck you plan on going to.

Mesquite Barbeque Sauce

160 g Tomato paste
60 ml Unrefined apple cider vinegar
30 g Honey (or maple syrup for the herbivore crowd)
30 ml Olive oil
90 ml Filtered water
1/2 tsp. Sea salt
1/2 tsp. Mesquite powder
1/2 tsp. Cacao powder (regular cocoa powder is fine)
1/8 tsp. Chipotle powder
1/8 tsp. Spanish style smoked paprika
1/8 tsp. Garlic powder

In a small mixing bowl (able to contain at least 2 cups or 500 ml of liquid), start with the tomato paste and slowly integrate the ingredients one at a time in rapid stirring motions.
When it is thoroughly combined, use it for whatever recipe calling for barbeque sauce or put it in a closed container (preferably a glass jar) in the refrigerator until needed.
Use within 3 – 5 days of making.

Makes roughly 1 1/2 U.S. cups of sauce.

November Reflections: Grain-Free and almost Stress-Free

I had so many blog posts I wanted to do, explicitly focused on my birthday, my talk with Cheryl, my grain-free week, and a few recipes as well. But life had different plans for me, and for the first time I am totally okay with it.

Ostkaka: my birthday "cake"

My birthday week was quiet. So quiet, in fact, that it went by in a blur of rain, school, and work. Both my Anthropology teachers canceled their classes on my birthday (divine intervention, perhaps) to attend conferences in Montreal and New Orleans, so I spent my day doing absolutely nothing. And as I mentioned before, I’ve been trying out the grain-free, one fruit a day (not including the lemon water I use for drinking down FiveLac), and no additional sweeteners, I didn’t have a cake specially made for the occasion. I did, however, have a piece of ostkaka I made on the 14th to celebrate Sweden’s “Day of Ostkaka,” a food holiday established in 2004. Oddly enough, it was the same “cake” I had in Sweden for my birthday last year.

I miss those times. I really, really do. My last semester of school had left me a stressed, anti-social mess, with a sore throat and a dry cough that finally went away after two (plus) weeks. I would have loved to go out on my birthday with the people I’ve been neglecting, but I was just so tired that all I wanted to do is sleep. I thought it was the whole grain-free thing, but really I was underestimating just how compromised my immune system was with the getting glutened-flu double whammy hullabaloo.

For a while I was still getting headaches, though the FiveLac keeps me from being hungry an hour after eating a full meal. I can wait until after six to eat dinner instead of having to eat right at five. My digestion is doing awesomely, and I think my hormone imbalance is leveling itself. I thought I had to increase my Armour Thyroid to 90-30-90 due to the emergence of previous symptoms (i.e., lower body temperature, cold hands and feet, yellowish palms and fingertips), but after acknowledging the headaches being stress related (and also for thinking too much) they’ve miraculously gone away.

Grain-Free "Granola" Bowl

As far as drastically changing my diet for the long term, Cheryl recommends I get tested for Candida until I officially go down the ACD or SCD route. For now I like being grain-free, white carb-free, and eating one fruit serving a day (most days). I’m noticing that I’m not as hungry, I’m fuller longer, and for the first time this Sunday I was actually hungry.

Interesting, isn’t it? Instead of eating when I was hungry I was eating because I was programmed to eat at a specific time. There is a difference to a hungry stomach and a stomach experiencing discomfort. For as long as I’ve been blogging, I ate to feed the headaches and I ate after eating to feed the “hunger” pains. After this weekend, filled with a family meditation seminar, the headaches went away and I slept. I mean, I actually slept in a way I thought was lost to me. Before the meditation I thought I had been too grounded to let go of all the stress. I am feeling more in my body than I have for two years. My hands are finally warm, and school (and graduation) isn’t so scary anymore.

With two weeks of school left after Thanksgiving weekend, I am definitely looking into doing Kundalini yoga again. Being grounded is at the heart of being healthy. And if I’m going to change the world and nourish the people in it, I have to live by example and nourish myself. Since I've returned to running and working with the munchkins at the community center, I need to be eating more than I have been if I don't want any more zombie nightmares. It's day four of warm hands, so I must be doing something right.

Celebrating Summer with Good Intentions Chili

I’ve been wanting to blog since Wednesday, when it was my first official day of summer. It seemed, however, the Universe had other plans. I spent Wednesday moving out of campus housing (which I thought I had until Thursday, but then the RAs came and said I was to have moved out four hours ago), thanks to a friend who’s working for the Burt-man, driving one of the company’s delivery vans. By Thursday, I had made a great meal, but was too tired to do anything but take a photo or two. On Friday, we were expecting a great family friend to stay with us for the weekend, so I had to haul all of my unpacked college life into my bedroom and clean as thoroughly as eight hours would allow.

Naturally, I had to cook something fantastic simultaneously, but the consequence of crashing was not how I envisioned my first days back home would be like.

For the majority of the past few days, I’ve been in the reality between the waking and dreaming worlds. My head ached, my stomach and digestive system were topsy-turvy and tender, and I found myself lying on my stomach just so I could sleep through the discomfort. I was sneezing, lethargic, and all I wanted to do was curl up with the cats and read a Neil Gaiman classic or cook. When I cook, I feel more than useful; I feel needed, a respected member of the household, contributing to those who come under our roof in search of comfort and love.

Cooking, as I’ve discussed, is more than science, but a combination of magic and art and time that can have a repeated outcome if done properly. Cooking is just as therapeutic to the one in the kitchen as it is to those eating the meal. The emotions and mindset you have while preparing a meal is just as important as the individual ingredients going into it. A meal made with good intentions, with love and happy thoughts, tastes significantly better than a meal made with someone who puts their bad day into their food.

Trust me, you can taste the difference.

The reason why I love soups and stews, specifically the chili I’ve known since I was a toddler, is because you can turn it into a meal filled with so much love that whomever eats it will feel a sense of belonging and ease. For each bay leaf or garlic clove or individual spices I use, I like to think of something that I feel the household wants and needs. As I drop ingredients into the pot, depending on the day I imagine with all my being whatever comes to mind: prosperity, a happy home, inspiration, and countless others. By the end of it, not only will the meal taste amazing, but also I feel so much better than I had when I started. 

Good Intentions Chili

16 oz Ground turkey (or whatever ground meat you have on hand around that weight)
1 tbsp. Olive oil
1 Red onion, coarsely chopped
15 oz (1 can) Black beans, drained
15 oz (1 can) Pinto beans, drained
28 oz (1 large can or two regular cans) Diced tomatoes
8 oz Filtered water
2 oz Cabernet Sauvignon (or any other dry red wine)
1 Red bell pepper, finely diced
1 Green bell pepper, finely diced
2 Medium carrots, peeled and sliced into small pieces

For the Spice combination:
1 tsp. Chipotle powder
1 tsp. Cumin powder
1 tsp. Paprika
A pinch of Saffron
1/4 tsp. Pepper
1/2 tsp. Sea salt
1/4 tsp. Sweet basil

Pour the olive oil (or whichever oil you prefer) into a large pot over medium-high heat.
Place in the ground meat and, with a wooden spoon, stir and break apart the meat until completely cooked and separated.
Add the spices to the meat until thoroughly mixed, and then add the remaining ingredients.
Cover the pot and let sit over medium heat for at least an hour (I like the smokiness of cooking it for a period of 3 – 5 hours).
Garnish each bowl with your choice of sour cream, cheese, diced onion, avocado, or all of the above.

Serves 4 – 6 people.