here is how german i am becoming

I went to the farmer's market this afternoon and bought organic blutwurst which i just ate on bread with horseradish and dill. Yes, blutwurst, or blood sausage. really. and it is good. really. Germans eat blood sausage out of a jar (basically sausage without a casing preserved in a jar instead) on bread and also sausages of it cut up into eggs. I found a recipe in Nigel's book for blood sausage and apples that i am looking forward to trying. Although that is English all over, I think it will translate well. Just so you don't worry too much, in a Korean market I also bought sushi rice, a new korean vegetable knife (the smaller version of the big chinese cleaver), korean laver that is salted and oiled and tastes so good with fresh sushi rice wrapped up in it (tomorrow's lunch), lemongrass, galangal, and cilantro. Next, I went to the spice house and bought allspice and cloves because I want to try making berebere tomorrow, which is the Ethiopian spice mixture used for making Wat: Tomorrow's dinner. Then I bought fresh japanese sweet turnips, dill, and blood sausage in a jar at the market.

Tonight's dinner, however, is all German:

-Schwarzwurzel Suppe (salsify soup) with lemon and creme fraiche (there are so many dairy products in a German grocery store- way beyond the american choice of sour cream and whipping cream)
-Brot und Butter mit schinken und blutwurst und Kaese (bread with thinly sliced cured pork, blood sausage, cheese)
-Dill und Ruebenblaetter(dill and turnip leaves to go on the bread)
-Gurke Salat (cucumber salad)
-Senf und Meerrettich (mustard and horseradish)

und Bier.
and if we still have room the rest of the lemon cake.
Guten Appetit

towards a garden

I am caring for the hof, or courtyard, at our apartment. I think of it more as a flock or a gathering of apartments as it was once a town based farming family's house that has been since first owned by three different families and turned into three houses (barns and outbuildings becoming bedrooms and kitchens, for example) and now into 5 apartments. The whole thing still has the feel of belonging all together but we live independently within it. In any event, I care for the courtyard. Which means, maybe most importantly to the germans, that all weeds are kept out of the cracks between stones and paving and and and. There is a small patch of struggling uneven growing grass that the poodle pees on every day when the american husband lets out the dog. (we are so lazy and think that lawns are for dogs to poo on, right?) the spanish wife always takes the dog on a lead out of the gate and into the street to do his business. So, apart from the grass, there are a few garden beds around the courtyard of cobblestone with a horse chestnut tree growing in the middle. The second task, only slightly less important, is to rake leaves and clean up after the tree. Third is my favorite, of course,  the care of the little garden beds and the sad patch of grass. I worked for two hours today out in the courtyard sweeping and raking and caring for and pruning a rosebush. I don't know so much about roses, except that they like parsley planted near them and they don't like wet feet, they grow off of old wood and they need to be pruned (more on that in a later post).

Our landlady says I can also work in her garden on the other side of the house. If I do, i might be able to actually plant vegetables and flowers and things in the ground. But I am not getting to carried away with that. Of course, I'm already making lists of the things I want in containers this year: Tomatoes, Zucchini, lettuce, kale, wax beans and pinto beans, strawberries, maybe eggplant, and in the window boxes: mint, basil, dill, chives, cialntro, thyme, parsley, oregano, sage and flowers- marigolds, snap dragons, nasturtium, black eyed susans. Most of our seeds we brought with us from the states which i am sure breaks all kinds of legal, ethical, and ecological rules, but there you are, i wanted to bring my garden from santa fe with me through the seeds from the plants we had grown.

Today I transplanted house plants, planted dill and cilantro in pots, and I have chicken stock cooking on the stove for a sort of chicken Thai-ish soup with sweet potatoes, broccoli, and the usual coconut milk/lemon grass etc. Yesterday I made a lemon cake from my new Nigel Slater book "The Kitchen Diaries" in which he writes almost every day for a year what he has eaten, bought at the farmer's market, or cooked in his kitchen. This lemon cake is from his diary entry of March 19. The flavor is incredible and delicious, but it is altogether too dense and moist for me. Even wetter than zucchini bread, I just don't really think of it as cake, almost a pudding, but not quite. I might try tinkering with it some more to see if I can get it drier and crumbier. It has almonds, brown sugar, lemons, and a syrup of lemons and brown sugar poured over the top after baking to which I added french thyme syrup. Maybe next time I'll skip the lemon brown sugar syrup and just brush a bit of thyme syrup over top after baking, or mix it in before hand. Also, I don't think it needs so much butter, when I took it out of the oven the butter was bubbling so much I think the cake had poached in it! Granted I am converting from ounces to grams, which is always tricky, but I think less butter would help. If I get something I am happy with I'll include the recipe. Anyway, here is a picture:

And the day before that I made Lasagne. THe trick with a good lasagne is to have way way too much sauce. The opposite of the cake, actually. So much sauce that you think the whole thing will swim in the dish. After it bakes it is perfect. And by the way, leftovers are a great way to make a lasagne fast. I had bolognese left over and lentil I had cooked with garlic and bay leaves and juniper berries. I found buffalo mozzarella and mortadella at an italian stand in a farmer's market here on saturday. So I made Lentil ground beef buffalo mozzarella lasagne with bechamel and tomato sauce. We ate it in bed, watching Moonstruck (my favorite all time movie) no vegetable anywhere in sight. Total carbohydrate indulgence. We each had two huge helpings and then started eating it right out of the pan. It was good that we were already in bed and didn't have to do anything afterwards. And there was still enough the next day for me to have lunch.

The shape of the soul

One of the greatest sins is the unlived life...

...The shape of each soul is different. There is a secret destiny for each person. When you endeavor to repeat what others have done or force yourself into a preset mould, you betray your individuality. We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. When we rediscover our childlike nature, we enter into a world of gentle possibility. Consequently we will find ourselves more frequently at the place of ease delight and celebration. The false burdens fall away. We come into rhythm with ourselves. Our clay shape gradually learns to walk beautifully on this magnificent earth.

A blessing of solitude
May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone
that your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique
that you have a special destiny here
that behind the facade of your life there is something
beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride and expectation
with which (God) sees you in every moment.

From Anam Cara by John O'Donahue

First post of the year

And it is already the 13th. um, the 17th.

We have painted the apartment and have gotten enough furniture in to have it really feel like home now. I seem to have fallen off the blogging wagon lately- it seems I have been once again running through my life with my arms flung out in front of me ready to embrace whatever is showing up next. And though I am busy and full and my learning curve is way steep, I am not stressed. Our sweet little apartment is really amazingly good feeling. And my cancer moon self wants nothing more than to stay put. Or go out and buy things for it and then stay put. I love the fact that I can walk a minute to work and that i work only half days so that even though  starting in February I'll work 6 days a week, three weeks of the month (the other week i have three days off in a row), I'll have the afternoons or mornings to putter, knit, spin, cook, container garden, etc.

All of the small things become so important, each detail powerful- cleaning crumbs left on the bread board, using the oven for the first time, sitting and knitting and looking out at the chestnut tree and the sky changing behind it as the sun sets, cooking supper for nic, learning solitude again, finding my own rhythms of the most ordinary things- like doing dishes or washing the bathroom sink (the first never at night after cooking dinner, the second always at night before bed). I find myself nourished by these simple things: the opportunity to care for my surroundings and give them my time and energy and have them shining with beauty in return. Ordinary every day beauty, like a cupboard with cups and bowls and plates in it. (The close up picture of the cupboard would not upload correctly, so you get to see a bit more of the apartment and a me in it.)

I learn that handmade is a choice of not wasting and of what we bring into the house- for example not having things we don't use at least once a week- so that each thing itself is brought into our hands often enough that we have a relationship with it. That nothing sits in our house unused, unexplored, unrelated to. That everything has a place and a function is a way of settling the heart and mind. There is a living metaphor between our physical house and our soul. John O'Donahue says in his book, Anam Cara, that the body exists in the soul, rather than the other way around. Relationship is created through touching a thing, using it well, caring for it, and returning it to its place, its home, if you will. Perhaps everything we have or use is not yet or not only handmade, but we can make it our own through our interaction with it.

We have no refrigerator yet, and i find that i am learning to have in the house only what we can eat within a day or two or at most a week, say in the case of cheese or onions. We do have the foyer space just inside the front door to the house which is unheated that allows us to keep a few things, say milk and vegetables for a few days at most. Working at a small organic food store allows me to bring home what I need on any given day so that things are fresh, especially as vegetables are delivered every day to the store. It makes such a difference to not be able to put something in the refrigerator and forget about it, or have 5 different kinds of jam open, because it will spoil or mould. There is a certain circle of responsibility that comes from not having a way of keeping food over time. I have to know what I want to cook and plan for it in order to have the food, but that just means I get to look in my beautiful cookbooks, or dream up something earlier that day. And I learn what things I need in my pantry to keep stocked- potatoes, onions, cans of tomatoes, dry beans, pasta, grains, etc. but not so many things, not so much that I don't even know what is there.

I think knowing the contents of my home- its corners and drawers and cupboards is also a way of settling in, settling the mind and heart and of making a place a home, rather than a place I park my stuff. To know each and every thing and being in a relationship of care with, for, and of it. To create a place where things can be made by hand, can be dreamed up through the space that is kept available and empty.

I come from a long line of hoarders. Flat surfaces are meant to hold stacks of things, or piles, tables are meant to not only have things on top of them that must be moved in order to use the table, but also on the chairs and under the tables. Closets, cupboards, and drawers are for holding, for the most part, the stuff we have but don't know what to do with. The stuff that is used lies around on the surfaces because there is no room left in the areas of storage. Always having things- for the future, because i plan to do something with it later, because i might need it, because having to buy one later will cost money and i can have it now for free, because it is beautiful, because it has a story connected to it, because I don't know what else to do with it- so many reasons for keeping things I don't need around.

And none of it can come with us when we leave this body. That is the perspective I would like to keep. Not to be morbid, but to be honest. To actually have a living relationship with the things I have now and not wait for later. And to let things go when their usefulness has run its course, gracefully, as I hope I will this body some day. Until then, with much gratitude, I make a home and a life here on the corner of hen street and pea street, a place from which I can run, full of wonder, into the world with my arms stretched wide open in front of me.

"If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings" John O'Donahue