November means Wind

In Germany, November seems to have a similar flavor as march in the states- in like a lion, out like a lamb- except reversed. And it was a rather wet lamb in the beginning as it rained the first handful of days. Ok, I am stopping the metaphor now. Suffice it to say that it is windy. And the days are getting so short. I always forget how far north we are, somewhere latitudinaly north of Toronto, Canada. So it is dusk now, at 4:45pm, mid-way through November. The good news is we can light candles and listen to the blues and drink Chai and get in the bath and wear hand made sweaters and scarves. And make christmas cookies, because I am the sort of person that continues the traditions of eating and celebrating at christmas without any of the actual religious part. I don't really have any qualms with that, as Christmas was a big cover up and absorption of many indigenous and pre-Christian traditions- trees, candles and stars, santa claus (more on him in another post), passing through the darkest nights to the return (birth) of the sun (son), singing, drinking hot alcoholic drinks, baking cookies and feasting together, dancing and releasing the old year, presents (offerings); these are all traditions that belong to the time of year, rather than the particular religious festival of Christmas. SO, I can happily abandon myself to the pleasures of eating and drinking and celebrating with no guilt or remorse. phew, glad I got that cleared up.

Here are the cookies we are going to make:
Peanut butter with Hershey's kisses
Biscochitos (anise flavored New Mexico cookies)
Toffee bars (recipe from  my mother's friend from High School)
Spritz (German butter cookies that you squeeze out of a icing flute)
Chocolate Spritz
Mocha bean cookies
Bethmann's (almond/marzipan cookies)

Before Christmas, however, comes my birthday and before that comes Thanksgiving.
We'll have Thanksgiving on the weekend with our friend whose father was a GI, which makes him half American by culture and full American by passport. I am going to make pumpkin chestnut soup. And pumpkin Pie and apple pie. He'll make the Turkey and who knows what else. I'll make Gravy.

Then for my birthday We'll have a marzipan sour cherry torte, for which I promise to include the recipe here if it turns out to be as delicious as it sounds.

I have been making lots of soups lately. Other than that I have been too busy to make anything. But I made three soups this week that are worth mentioning


Pumpkin Sambar
Whenever I cook Indian food I have to get everything prepared and then it goes really really fast- almost faster than I can keep up with.

1 cup red lentils, cooked
2 cups (at least, maybe 3 is better) winter squash, steamed
1 onion, finely chopped
1-2 green chiles, chopped
1" ginger, finely chopped
1/2 cup grated coconut
1 T mustard seeds
2 tomatoes, chopped
1T tamarind paste (add to ~3T hot water and work the tamarind until a slurry forms, remove any pith)
sambar powder (make the effort to find it)
curry leaves (make the effort to find them)
salt
fresh cilantro

In a pot, pour 2T oil and heat until sizzling (but not smoking) add mustard seeds and fry for 30 seconds. Add the onion, chiles, curry leaves, and coconut and fry until golden brown (not long). Stirring continuously, add tomato, tamarind slurry, 2-3 t, sambar powder and salt. Lastly, add pumpkin, dal and water to form the consistency of a thick soup. Simmer until hot (about 15 minutes) garnish with  cilantro, eat with rice and hot mango pickle.

Kale Soup
In water add the following:
1 onion
cubed winter squash
cubed beets
bay leaves
rosemary
pinch of anise or nutmeg, optional

Simmer until tender. Chop lots of kale and add to the soup along with salt, fresh ground black pepper,  and butter. When the kale is finished, add cream to taste (don't be shy).


Greek Vegetable Soup
1 clove garlic
1 leek
12 mushrooms (white button or brown crimini)
bunch of spinach
3 carrots
1 dried red chile
bay leaves, rosemary, sage, mint
Feta cheese

Make a broth with the spinach stalks, leek outer leaves and thick green leaves (i always use the tender ones), carrot peels, bay leaves, rosemary stalks. Simmer for one hour.

Sautee leeks in lots of good olive oil till translucent, add sliced mushrooms, chopped carrots garlic and salt, red chile, chopped rosemary and sage, two cups of broth and cover. Coarsely chop spinach, crumble or cube feta, chop mint. When carrots are tender, add the remaining items, correct salt and turn flame way low. Leave the lid only half on, otherwise the spinach will go gray. When the spinach is wilted, the soup is ready. Oh, I added croutons.

Croutons
Day old bread cut into cubes
lots of olive oil
salt, fresh ground pepper, paprika
toss all together with hands
toast in the oven on 350, turning with a spatula every 5 minutes or so. keep watch and take them out when they get to the point you like.

Oh, and I have been making and drinking lots of chai. When I get a good ratio of ingredients, I'll post the recipe. And here, because I love them so much, are the sheep we saw on a drive in the Odenwald.

on not posting

I have had the stomach flu and have lately only been making things that are too disgusting to share with anyone other than the toilet bowl. enough said? But I am now well and heading into a new week.

On friday we studied Plusqueamperfect (sp?) and Praeteritum (i spelled it right) and i wasn't there so now i get to play catch up with yet another version of the same verbs I barely know in an unrecognizable form. The Praeteritum form is used when telling a story about something that is past and definitely finished. Like in a story book. Like what most of us do in our minds all day even thought it is finished.

I however, was too weak to do anything but sleep for two whole days and then I had to trick myself to stay in bed for another whole day by reading the first three books of Harry Potter in a row.

Now I am back to cooking, if not quite up to eating everything I was before. However, I have noticed in the last weeks that when I am too busy to make things with my hands- cooking, spinning, painting, whatever, then I usually end up cranky, irritable, easily hooked, tired, and miserable. Making things with my hands keeps me balanced and literally in touch with the world around me rather than caught up in the many thoughts in Praeteritum swimming around my head. That is, I don't believe them as much and I don't, as a wonderful visiting teacher at the Zen Center once said, I don't go looking for big juicy hooks to bite. So there.

Today, to make up for all of this, I made green chile stew (I have dried green chiles from New Mexico) finally took the dried mint and tarragon off of their stems and stored them in clean jars, organized all of my loose teas and labelled them, wrote this blog post, and I plan on spinning later on after I finish my homework on...Praeteritum.

Hmmm, how did it get to be the end of October already? Or anyway after the middle. I am in my third week of school, German level 5. We have a had such a flurry of activity in the last month that I have jetlag. Now, finally, we are two days in to a normal schedule. I even have time to change the sheets on the bed and nic is going to vacuum later! This morning we stayed in bed until 11am, after waking up at 8:30. delicious.

Last week was an amazingly full one, we found and were bought for our wedding present by Mama and Papa, A CAR! She is sooooo pretty.  She is a Opel Corsa, three years old, 19.000 kilometers, cd player, working heat and a/c, standard transmission, two doors, sweet little sexy thing. Star silver is her color, so we're calling her stella. Isn't she pretty?

                          
Then I got my working papers and my permission to stay for three years (after which i can apply for permanent residence). Oh and german health care. I also am maybe getting a job cooking at  a cafe on Sundays, once I get up the nerve to actually call the woman and speak to her in German. Which I am terribly shy and nervous about of course, it being my first job in a new country and the first one I have had ti find for myself in, oh, 8 or 9 years.

So, I will be more available to be writing again and posting rather more than as of late. The weather is getting cooler and cooler and is actually cold at night. It is fall, the sky is gray and rainy today. It may snow. And yet there is a life being born here for us to live. I am so curious to see what will happen next and how long it will take me to feel comfortable speaking German and feeling like I am a whole person here...it is getting better- married, car, possible job, starting massage again in january, going to school....but there is still a feeling of being mostly two dimensional in the world. Making things with my hands always helps that and being busy like I have been doesn't give me the time to slow down and make things...i have to call my spinning teacher and practice the treadle on my spinning wheel, "until I can do it in my sleep", she says.

masseurin

Which is the title I am hoping to have some time by the beginning of the new year. Hand made bodywork! I studied massage at the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts, which I highly recommend, in 1999-2000, graduating with a 1200 hour Massage Therapy degree. They'll be sending along a new copy of my transcript and now I just have to figure out what to do with it so it is recognizable over here (aside from translating it). The Health Bureau will have ideas, of course, when I call them this morning. I am just hoping that they will not be expensive ideas.

My plan, as of now, is that next week I will get my working papers and permission to stay (because we are married!). Then, get things organized to work as a "masseurin" starting by the beginning of next year. Meanwhile, learn anatomy in GERMAN, and practice on people so I can remember what I am doing with massage. Continue my Ortho-Bionomy practice sessions and get certified by the Society in the States. Open a  practice as a Massage Therapist and Ortho-Bionomist while I take courses in Plant Medicine (starting next spring?), which I have wanted to do since I was a child picking flowers for potions in my mother's garden. Enter a 16 month study program (next march?) for the Healing Practitioner training (I have to learn how to give injections, apparently.) Sit for the exam in October 2012 (interesting) and be certified as a Heilprakitkerin here in Germany utilizing Ortho Bionomy, Massage Therapy, Energy Medicine, and Plant Medicine, and whatever else I pick up along the way.

Keep in mind the joke, "what makes God laugh? Plans." I keep saying to nic lately, "I wonder what the universe has in store for us?" Because I feel totally, foolishly, happily clueless as to what the next step is in terms of anything, not even the bodywork, though there is a sketch of a plan to aim towards. Will it happen that way? Never. Will it be better than I had thought and perfectly right in its unfolding? Of course.

Meanwhile, if you live in my area, I hope to be giving massage and bodywork practice sessions starting in November, once I figure out a place to actually work out of. I am thinking here at home in one of the rooms upstairs because my parents brought over my massage table in September (thank you). I am happy to have the conversation with you that I have with lots of people. You: "what is Ortho-Bionomy, I have never heard of it before...." Me: "Most people haven't, it is a form of bodywork that engages the self healing and self corrective reflexes of the body, moving towards comfort and ease and engaging in relationship- between the client and practitioner, the client and themselves, the practitioner, client, and universal energies. Take a look at the website if you want (see link above), and actually, it is just better if I show you." So give me a call so I can show you. For a limited time only, free!

too long

Oh my gosh, it has been too too long since I have posted. Even the three or four posts I am usually working on have faded into oblivion. Life will have her way with us all and always. So, the big news is, we're married! and I am nothing but grateful. Turning to nic every little while, as my grandmother used to say, and saying, "married" then we point to our rings. i am working on some new posts, like about the cake we have been eating like crazy. And the people I am meeting who spin and dye and felt and everything with wool. And my new beautiful basket and my little corner for wool working. And the update on the last month and the view into the next one. But now i have to go do my homework for German class, so here is a picture.

Kase und Wurst

Or, cheese and sausage. Which are definitely something that German's adore. After Bread and beer, which are their first loves.

It is harvest time here, my favorite time of year. At the market yesterday there were plums, squashes, heirloom tomatoes of all shapes and sizes, orange, green and red peppers, curly chilis, mushrooms harvested from the forrests- 6 or 7 different kinds, salad greens, corn, cucmbers, etc. and of course, bread, beer, wine, honey, candles,  chicken, eggs, cheeses (cow, sheep and goat), cured meats(mostly pork), pork, cow, lamb, wild boar, wild deer, and elk meat, And to eat: fresh pressed cider (susser), half fermented cider (most), hard cider (raucher), new wine (federweissen), zwiebel kuchen, flamm kuchen, grune sosse with potatoes, wurst, fresh fish, waffles, cake, coffee, ice cream, did i mention wine and beer?

Here is a view of the market from above courtesy of the internet.

I met my friend W yesterday afternoon at market and we headed straight for the Zwiebel Kuchen, which is a bit like a pizza crust- this one is sourdough- with lots and lots of onions and sour cream and quark, and bits of shinken, which is cured pork cut into little bits, and we drank Federweissen- which is the new wine from this year's grapes and it is all cloudy white, a bit sweet and grapey tasting and delicious. W and I are a perfect match at market, we are both completely snobby about our food, and we both like the same growers. After our lunch, we went to buy bread from our usual stand- The Winter Bakery- and then over to the fabulous milcherei, or dairy, called Herbert's Muehle- please do look at the website even though it is in German because the pictures are beautiful. They have extraordinary cheese- organic (bio) raw milk (roh milch) from Cow, Sheep and Goat. They have Lacaune sheep and Zebu cows. Then we go to the Metzgerei, or butcher, Bauernhof Frank. Bauernhof means farm. They have elk salami, so I had to try some and it is, of course, delicious. And then I had to buy some. At an organic butcher I also bought something called "nuss schinken" nuss means nut and schinken is a dried smoked cured pork similar to prosciutto.

Here are the grapes, apples, cheese and meats I bought along with  melon from the biodynamic shop that Nic works at. In the middle, is a Merlin goat cheese with a white rind, like brie, only it isn't (moaning sounds are heard upon eating), sheep roquefort (oh my god), and middle aged goat gouda. Elk salami and the nuss schinken.

I should say two things here, one is that I have now been to the market enough that I am starting to know where I like to go to get my things, one place for vegetables (more on that in a bit), two for cheeses, one for dairy, one for eggs, two for cured meats. I am still learning and trying new stalls, but so far I feel good about the people I visit, because they are people. And in two or so of the stalls that I frequent they are starting to recognize me. Which means I am beginning the wonderful process of knowing my growers and farmers and they are beginning to know who I am. I think I can finally talk to one of the people at the dairy and ask for wool!

So, the plums (kwetsche for nic's birthday cake), vegetables, and mushrooms (Steinpilze or Boletus) I purchased from a couple who have their own sausage, bread baked in a wood oven, pickles, jams, vegetables, wild mushrooms (maybe 7 different kinds), and then apples and plums etc. from a friend who grows fruit. The man is from the states and speaks english with a beautiful southern twang, maybe from Tennessee or Kentucky or Arkansas. His wife is German. He says that when the war was over, or when he was done with it, in '71 there were no jobs for him in the states, so he stayed here. We three speak a mixture of German and English together and they are really wonderful people. They have herbal lemonade each week that they make themselves as well. Everything is clearly hand made and on a very small scale, rather like Nic and I want to do some day. And they remind us of the folks at the Santa Fe Market, making their own things to sell and being very humble and beautiful about it. I am going to try and get a picture of their stand next week and I'll add it to the post when I do.

What a blissful day at the farmer's market. Here is a picture of Nic's birthday bouquet that W bought for her. Calendula and Oregano! Tschuess!

Life Partners

Excuse me for not writing in a week, but haven't felt the need to say anything. Now I want to write a bit about our Lebenspartnershaft, or Civil Union, because it is coming up two weeks from tomorrow and we are busy planning it and preparing. This is the completion of many ceremonies we have been blessed with over the last year, since leaving the zen center and being in the bardo of our transition here to Germany and into partnership. Friends have given us blessings on their land from many traditions- peruvian shamanism, Cherokee, Buddhist- and in many places- New Mexico, Maine, Eastern Canada, Connecticut. We have been blessed by many friends and loved ones all wishing us well and showing us their love and support. These have been so important to me, and the love and spirit from them still holds me close.

Quite an amazing thing to prepare for a thing such as this. I can't even imagine what it would be like to have a whole hetero wedding in a white dress, etc. We're not having a seating chart, for example. Although, when my sister gets married it will be one of those. She taught me, for example, that straight girls watch wedding shows on t.v. and pick out their dresses and rings before they even know who they are going to marry. I know not everyone does that, but I didn't know anyone did that. All the same, so much more nervousness and questioning than I thought would arise bubbles up in my consciousness. Somehow making it legal makes it feel more like stuck than partnered. But of course being with her is exactly what I want. I had to turn the whole concept around and see that being together actually includes everything, that it is not the ending of things or the ending of opportunities (nothing specific here, just vague fear) but actually includes everything- including separation and death. Then I can easily agree to exploring this great adventure together. I am so curious about what will happen and how my life will unfold. And mostly, I  just don't believe myself when i have a weird thought that starts with never, or always, or what if. I just drop it and move on to something else because I know it is a fabrication. 

We are getting partnered in the old Synagogue here in Grosskrotzenburg, which is to say the place that was the Synagogue before Krystal Nacht. The uncle of a friend of ours actually stole the Torah to protect it ( He was not Jewish) and the S.S. found him running out of the Synagogue and were going to kill him, so he faked an epileptic seizure. They left him alone and he brought the Torah to the Rabbi a day or so later. It is now a space for cultural activities and ceremonies. As we went to Auschwitz this year and brought the names of the people from this town that were killed, it is meaningful to us that we will be in that space. 

Yesterday, we met with the woman who will conduct the ceremony, Frau Amberg, and discussed the specifics. I made the mistake of referring to her as du, which is the informal form of you, rather than sie, which is the formal. well, speaking another language has its risks. I only hope I did not offend her too much. I'll have to figure out how to apologize before the ceremony. We will have one more ceremony before the ceremony, which is about the nature of our relationship- stepping as adults into our partnership and honoring one another's uniqueness and gifts as well as our togetherness in partnership. The morning of the ceremony, we'll go out onto the land with two people who will facilitate the ceremony of the basket with us. Then, we'll have the partnership ceremony in the afternoon at 3. My mother will sing at the beginning of the ceremony and my sister at the end. We are going to read a few poems and there will be the actual vows and exchange of rings. (Nic always says- finally we get to wear our rings!) Afterwards, we will have sekt (champagne made with grapes not from the region of France called Champagne) and little snacks and cake and coffee. Once our life settles a bit and things are more relaxed, we will have a bigger party for all of our friends and family. But for now, it will be small and intimate. 

So there you have it, a Life Partnership in Grosskrotzenburg, Hessen, Germany between two women, an American and a German. Apart from the paperwork and the internal dialogues, it has been quite easy so far. And apart from the fact that I still don't really know what I want to wear, I think everything is organized. I'll give you the update after the fact.