eggbeater

giving & receiving. or where I shop.

I am trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying how much I don't like Christmas time. I'm not sure I have ever and so, really, not much has changed except that now, as an adult, I have the capacity to think broader thoughts about "why."

Did you know that if you send a letter to Santa Claus, North Pole it goes to the grand post office in NYC? And that you, or any other person, can go there and read the letters? And that you can pick any amount of them to respond to? Without donning a stifling red and white polyester suit, role-playing or gender-bending, you can become Santa.

I did this one year. But my inner Santa became unbearably depressed instead. Almost all of the letters I read were from families who needed food, clothing and shelter more than they needed the latest Nintendo. Many letters pleaded for diapers and pencils for school. Or a warm coat. Or formula for babies.

No one has ever said that I'm not generous. I give. But I give year-round, without pressure from my economically over indulgent country or some day that Jesus had absolutely nothing to do with. I'm Jewish. But in the end nothing matters. Christmas and it's many layered pressures; its screaming capitalist nature, its false sense of wealth and abundance, its flashing lights and environmental plundering, has a crushing weight visually, audibly, viscerally, and emotionally to us all, regardless of religion.

When I buy a gift I like to support businesses, artisans, co-operatives, farmers, who do what they do well and with some semblance of "good intentions." I like to think of my gift benefitting all three parties.

Here's where I shop:

These organic plant based hydrosols wake up all the tiny pores on my face in the morning or after a disco nap. I buy them at The Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market on Saturday. I appreciate that the owners intentionally chose to put them in glass.

I have never seen an ugly anything from Lotta Jansdotter. A Swedish designer, we in San Francisco are graced to have her and her delicious little studio on Post street. I've been keeping up with her designs for years. At the last birthday party I went to gifts from her created a roomful of oohs and ahhs.

For the person who loves the quirky & the nifty I appreciate buyolympia.com. I think every city or artist's enclave needs one! A massive variety of gifts can be found here from artists who call Olympia, Washington their home and community. Birthplace of the gorgeous Riot Grrl movement, many a great female punk rock band and fashion sensibilities with power, charm, grace and humour, Olympia Washington has long made a mark with DIY art and culture. If you live in the Bay Area you also have the option of our local art scene's Needles & Pens and the vegan store, Otsu.

For visually stunning roaming I check out this site for furniture, sharp opinionated design wit and brightly colored organization object ideas.

And when money is no object, anything ipod related from Apple can create smile mayhem. If you know someone well enough to share a bed with them, Garnet Hill sheets never fails to delight the senses of the skin and eyes.

Food you say, where's the food? Well, visual food is a kind of food...

But some of my faves would be chocolates from Recchiuti, (he also has a luxurious chocolate cookbook out!), the best jam and marmalade is always June Taylor, I just ordered divine Arbequina olive from California Olive Ranch {I keep it in the refrigerator}, I'm pretty intrigued by Loveskool's new mail-order brownies, I wouldn't say no to someone signing me up for the Charles Chocolates chocolate club, and I would be proud to send Marshall Farms Star Thistle honey to anyone.

Someone you know love to bake? Sur La Table's gadgets and necessities always please. Anson Mills cold stone grinds to order the best, most flavourful organic heirloom grains and corn ever, Valrhona produces cocoa like sexy beckoning silk sheets, and there's all sorts of new sharp shiny knives to please the person who feeds you.

I don't believe in holiday cards but I do have a stationary fetish. I have a thing for anything letterpress, hand silk-screened or just plain small press. I love love love that now everyone has a website and I can find one card I like in NY or Portland and then come home and order plenty.

What I'm taking pen to these days: Ferdinand, B Design, Snow & Graham, and Austin Press.

So you see, there's plenty of happy Whos in Whoville with this green Grinch at its helm.

brrrr

What is your favorite season?

Anyone whose known me for about five minutes knows mine isn't winter.

And yet.

There's a quiet comfort in eating toast and tea, enfolding oneself in soft comforting scarves, knitting wools tweed and hand spun, wearing slippers in the afternoon, stirring soup, listening to Elizabeth Cotten, baking late into the deep indigo night, tying bows and giving little surprises, spending more time than you'll admit reading, and looking hard at a landscape rendered monochrome.

My opinion is that autumn braces us, clears our sight like wasabi, the leaves alight and sing a last hurrah, rain comes to take the last of the hangers-on so that in spring a faint mist of nascent greens can whisper in and summer's heat softens, propelling humans into bodies of water, relaxing even the most hurried.

Thank you for keeping up with the meanderings of eggbeater. Even in the season of family obligations and hibernation.      shuna fish lydon

Clementine Sorbet

A few days ago I wrote about Clementines and one of you lovelies sent me over to chocolate & zucchini where she had written about them too. One of her commenters asked for a recipe and I thought I'd share what I excitedly wrote to her.

Use this basic "recipe" for all citrus sorbets. I steer you wrong not. Have fun with the simple syrups you use to sweeten the juice. Try making a verbena syrup to complete lemon sorbet or a rosemary sweetener for grapefruit. Thyme makes a beautiful complement too. Many people put vodka or other alcohols in citrus sorbets as they help lower freezing temperatures, but I prefer the pure ecstatic taste of acidity and the oily perfume of its soul as its background flavour.

Once in a little banter with Elizabeth Falkner at Citizen Cake about why I don't put water in my citrus sorbets, (I feel this diminishes flavour), she said tiredly, decidedly, "Shuna. You are a purist."

It's just that I eat a Mineola Tangelo for its own personal personality. And I peel a Navel to reach the tiny family of huddling segments at the base. I like slivers of lime segments in my summer melon gazpacho and Meyer Lemon juice on my beets.

My lemon curd is more lemony than yolky, I like it straight up, yup.

enjoy!

CLEMENTINE SORBET

Juice enough Clementines to get just under the amount that your ic maker needs to make one batch.

With a microplane, zest skins to get at least one tablespoon Clementine zest.

Make about a cup of simple syrup in a non-reactive pot using this ratio: 1 1/2 parts sugar to 1 part water. Put zest into this little pot and slowly bring to boil. Boil @ 5 minutes and shut off heat. Let infuse/cool down for about an hour.

Pass the infused simple syrup through a fine meshed strainer and sweeten Clementine juice with this syrup. Sweeten it slowly, tasting as you go so as not to disguise the pleasant tartness of the juice. When it is sweet enough for you a tiny pinch of sea salt is a nice touch, but not necessary.

Churn per instructions on your ic machine. It is best to eat citrus sorbets soon after they are churned. They tend to freeze rock-solid.

{If you find that this is true, "temper" your sorbet in your refrigerator for about 20 minutes or as long as it takes to come to desired temperature.}

In the hour of diamond light

brilliance reigns

truth is seasons like clockwork

stopping for   no   one    nothing

wearing dresses and large black shoes

no  socks    no  underwear

drink moonlight

frolic

`

in the hour of diamond light

death not finite

ask her to bed

tell lies

bleed truth with leeches

and the stretching table

deep lakes

swim the perimeter

blinded by love

and a touch that silences me

`

in the hour of diamond light

i run with the dogs through cherry trees abloom

a flurry of petals in our trail

disturb honey bees

pick apricots in august quince in october

love protects, does not kill

finds me running toward traveling lightening

cackling

hiding behind the corners

sweep and vacuum leavenings

open chair   open door

just once i want to show up at someones house and be elijah

set the table

baker's dozen

`

in the hour of diamond light

thoughts alight, combust

silos of them

landscape of big skies

grass so long its ends are split

but it lays like rubber dominoes

when the wind touches down

trousers  shirtless

a voice denounces shrill

celebrates with wheat wine

tumbleweed shots

wears bowties handsomely

`

in the hour of diamond light

whispering is enough

shouting could be prayer, reverance

say outloud your love, your thanks

because sometimes they leave

with no trace. evaporate into the sky

i miss you

the land is without trees

there are no shadows

dusk two dimensional

dusk the last hurrah

`

in the hour of diamond light

rain falls hard

and i go

i leave with me from the bar

i say, "i make sweet things"

we pray standing

god humbles us

a pie is cooling on a yellow curtained windowsill

and,

this is the truth:

a  hungry  bear  comes  along  and  eats  it.

`

In the hour of diamond light

brilliance reigns

truth keeps walking

                                                 Shuna Lydon.

                                                 October 29/30, 2001

citrus overflowing

I think it's a fine form of trickery that the fruit most abundant in winter is citrus. They taste bright and sunny in the darkest, coldest part of the year.

Growing up in NYC meant that Clementines came 'round every winter with black diamond shaped stickers in small wooden boxes. Sitting outside of fruit stands and groceries these tiny densely coloured fruits were a smile-like surprise in a frigid and monotone city.

And now Clementines (left in photo) are grown in California and I can't stop telling people about it. Yes, yes, yes I know the Satsumas (right in photo) are here upon us like a windfall but for this East Coaster, my secret pleasure is that I can press my nose upon the skin and breathe deep the mandarin scent of another home.

new blog on the scene...

Root Cap is the name of a new blog that might intrigue you. Just days old, this fellow has filled a hungry niche. Pull out your heavy dictionary, focus your wandering mind and click on the link.

Patrick is a farmer, architect, d. o. g.  person, avid reader, poet, philosopher, riparian-habitat restorer, sky gazer and a great friend. He is my own personal ethicist and has been a bouncing board for ideas and emotions grand or tiny. I saw the oldest trees in the world with him and he taught me how to drive a tractor.

We are lucky to have Root Cap as a personal corridor into the five senses of radical farming, deep animal companionship, keen astute luxurious prose and photography shot with a newly awakened eye.

Tell me what you think, but better still, leave a few comments with him to let him know you stopped by.

cooking & intentionality

As I've said many times before, I am an old fashioned person. I take out the nice dishes, {original FireKing  green glass}, when I have company. I like to pour milk into the leetle creamer, make a strong pot of loose leaf tea, and warm up the kitchen a bit. For a long time I was the only person I knew in my age range with enough dishes to feed 10 people in one sitting. Sans heavily starched formal wear and chilled martinis, I like entertaining.

I have trouble making food for one. What's the use?

Food is for sharing. Cooking is about comfort. Inspiration comes from the gift of being able to watch the delight on someones face when they touch tongue to delicacy.

Cooking takes all of us. It's physical, spiritual, emotional. We watch, smell, learn, burn our flesh, cut until we bleed, and we keep coming back. We don't call in sick. We don't take breaks. There's no such thing as overtime. Our legs go numb. Backs give way and knees stop bending.

Cooking dish after dish hour after hour, toiling in the brutal kitchen, the professional cook can lose sight of why. Why is cooking food for others so godamned satisfying? Because with our hands we touch that which was recently alive, coax and build flavour, purring & sweating; we hold our breath and emote, furrow our brows and remember, our mouth waters and our muscles tighten.

Cooking for others is an intimate act. I don't know you but you are allowing me to put something in your mouth. It's thrilling. It's a little naughty and sometimes very very nice. You come and you sit in the chair before me and I lay out my wares and I give you a fork and a spoon.

Persephone ate those few pomegranate seeds and look what happened to her.

Food imprints memory on us. It's a powerful position we own, feeding others.

"The taste buds can only detect sweet, sour, salty and bitter - the full symphony of flavor comes from the nose."               {a tiny quote I keep on my bed-stand.}

An amnesiac can remember where they stood the last time they smelled that same wafting scent from the hot oven.

We preserve people by making the dishes they taught us. Dishes they loved, were proud of, gave us permission to start making when their hands stopped working. Sharing food with others is about tradition. About a desire to reach in and pull close. About re-remembering. Closing our eyes and taking us there.

And like an addict, we chase that first taste-high for the rest of our lives. Cake should taste like our first birthday cake. Stuffed cabbage needs to be similar to our grandmother's. We shift our memories and replace them with new ones. All ice cream is now compared to the gelato we had on our first trip to Italy. Our first New York bagel shakes our senses. Sometimes we force and train. "Fakin' Bacon tastes like the real thing. Grass fed beef is better for the planet and so it's better for me."

Cooking to feed ourselves and others is an intentional act. It's necessity, yes, but it is oftentimes more than this. We build trust over stoves. We convince and cajole. We seduce and tickle and free joy by sharing what we make.

Happy December. My wish for you this month is that you let down your hair, breathe deep the smells of your kitchen and others, and relinquish the pressure of what can, {to some of us}, feel like an oppressive holiday season. Know that sharing food with others, feeding your own soul with memories deeply sad and deliriously uplifting is gift enough.