Good Luck Food Potluck

On New Year's Day i attended a neighborhood potluck. The theme was Good Luck food, a legacy from a Southerner who died a few years ago. The hostess cooked up the black-eyed peas. I brought boiled cabbage from my German heritage. Long noodles (meaning long life) were on the table, as well as a kale salad. Greens represent life and living things. Pork, which was once reserved for the Chinese elite, symbolizes wealth and prosperity. A lentil salad because lentils look like coins.

Luck seems like a roll of the dice, a turn of the wheel of fortune. I'm placing my bets on karma--acting as skillfully, wholesomely, and compassionately as i can right now, because this moment conditions the next moment. Compassion begets compassion. Kindness builds the habit of kindness.

These beautiful qualities are our true wealth any day of the year.

Late Harvest

photo from www.quickcrop.ie

We are leaving for vacation tomorrow, which means giving all the vegetables in the refrigerator away. Finding a home for the red peppers was easy. I sun-dried one rack of Sungold cherry tomatoes. I decided to keep my 6 red cabbage, ranging in size from small to smallest.

In order not to have any leftovers, i cooked up the smallest cabbage tonight with some homegrown onions and the only remaining apple. Delicious.

When it comes to the end of our own season, we will be harvesting the mind we've been training all these years. The untrained mind may be unpredictable. The trained mind, the mind accustomed to mindfulness, has a much better chance of viewing the ending of the season of the life more calmly.

The seasons change.

The Departing Garden

27 degrees this morning. This hard frost is the death knell for geraniums and chard. Petunias and parsley limp along. Broccoli, kale, and cabbage still live.

Halloween is the hallowed evening before All Saints Day (November 1), before the day of the dead, El dia de los muertos.

While Mexico celebrates with the departed spirits of dear ones and family members, i mourn the loss of my departing garden.

The Fall Garden

The fall garden is the unsung season of gardening. So many edibles are still growing out there--kale, collards, mustards, lettuces, cabbage, and parsley. It's time to harvest some leeks and jerusalem artichokes. Apples are still hanging on my apple trees; let's make applesauce.

Every afternoon, i can walk outdoors and harvest enough for dinner. It may not be bountiful exactly, but isn't that a relief! There's just enough.

When we come to the downsizing phase of life, enough turns out to be plenty. The cornucopia garden is bountiful, indeed.

Tat Soi Soon

Tat Soi

I planted seeds today, and i think i'm ready to study Chinese.
Tat soi, pok choy, Chinese cabbage, and a stirfry mix of greens. My goal this year is to eat Brassica every day--broccoli, cabbage, kale, and these Chinese vegetables.

These greens like it cool. The ice cubes in the soil thawed yesterday. The tat soi should be ready to eat by the end of the month.

When we learn to meditate, it doesn't take long for us to harvest our first insight--whatever that might be. We might begin with little insights about our daily life--mundane insights. This is the "good idea" sort of insight. Just by relaxing our minds, creativity can surface. We get a new angle on the people and problems in our life.

For some of us, this is enough. It's sort of like using your new computer to play only computer games. Your mind is very powerful and capable of seeing deeply into the nature of the world.

But we start where we are. Harvesting little insights about our life. And soon, i'll be harvesting tat soi.

The Clean 15

If you want to save money and buy non-organic fruits and vegetables, then these are the ones that are safest:

• Avocados
• Sweet corn
• Pineapples
• Cabbage
• Sweet peas (frozen)
• Onions
• Asparagus
• Mangoes
• Papayas
• Kiwi
• Eggplant
• Grapefruit
• Cantaloupe (domestic)
• Cauliflower
• Sweet potatoes

Some of these make sense, because they have heavy rinds, like avocados, pineapples, and cantaloupe. For the rest, you'll have to delve into the research of the Environmental Working Group.

As a localvore wannabe, i've been saying No to produce from the tropics. The cabbage and onions at my food coop are local and organic, so that's what i buy.

Oh, those tropical fruits look so delicious.

A line from the chant on loving-kindness says

contented and easily satisfied,

...and frugal in their ways.

This is one way we can practice loving-kindness toward all beings--by being contented with what we have, feeling "contented and easily satisfied," even with second best. Like when we choose cabbage instead of lettuce leaves in a plastic container.

Being "frugal" in our ways is absolutely counter-cultural. We are not frugal in order to be stingy; we are frugal so that there is enough to go around. Enough for everyone.

We want to practice loving-kindness to all beings.

Heavy Snow This Morning

Heavy snow is coming this morning. It's the last chance to clean up the garden and put away the paraphernalia that's lying around because very soon it will all be covered with a big thick white blanket.

I want to harvest another gallon of parsley, the last shreds of chard, a few pathetic cabbages, and some more kale. I wonder how much of that will actually get done?

Last week, a friend lamented that her friend who had done tons of research in his (and her) field of interest had died. Before she got over to his apartment, his heirs had thrown out all his papers in black trash bags.

What is it that we really want to do, but don't quite get around to? We are distracted by daily life. We are in denial that the snows of winter are coming.

This cleaning up of loose ends is one of the reasons i publish an annual book of my writings. I used to think that the administrator of my estate could hire someone to go through my writing, but now i see how unrealistic that idea was. All my writings, all my notebooks, will be thrown out in black trash bags, and my computer, and all its files, will be scrapped. That's the reason to publish now. Because i will perish one of these days. Maybe today.

This year's manuscript is almost ready to go to the book designer. So she'll have something to do when she's snowed in today.



Here's a list of some of my previous books:
Every Good Thing
Impermanent Immortality
At the Mercy of the Elements
That Rascal Mind

Same Old Thing, Made New

I've just cooked up the last of the beets from the garden into a delicious borscht. This week, i will finish off the carrots (that the chipmunks didn't eat). I have a few more potatoes, a few more onions, lots of garlic, and enough butternut squash for the winter.

Localvoring is actually hard work. The other morning, at meditation at my neighbor Connie's, i watched her chop fresh CSA vegetables into a miso soup. I'd like cabbage and collards for a change. I'm tired of carrots and beets. I'm almost tired of pesto too, but not yet.

Yeah, sometimes we get tired of our meditation practice. Same thing, day after day.

This is when we need to bring energy and interest to our practice.

I particularly like this quality in one of my teachers, Shinzen Young. Even when i go to monthly retreats with him, and he's teaching the same thing year after year, he always has a new angle on it. A new way to look at the same thing he's been saying for years.

Thich Nhat Hanh, who has authored more than 100 books, also always has a fresh way to teach meditation. He's in his late 80s, so he's been nourishing his students with the same thing now for decades.

Okay. Time to get back to those carrots. Do you have a new recipe for me?

Photo from pbs.org

Local Salad

Company's coming, and i know they have a salad with every dinner. But when i peruse the vegetable section at the food co-op, i see that all the lettuces come from California. The cabbage, however, comes from 10 miles away. In my spotty attempt to be a localvore, i buy the cabbage and leave the petroleum-driven lettuce alone.

Fortunately, my 12-year-old granddaughter is game for the challenge of cabbage salad. She chops and dices, and makes her own salad dressing. Yes, there's a yellow pepper from Holland in the mix. What can i say?

The voluntary simplicity of localvoring can feel like insufficiency or it can feel like a challenge to our curiosity and creativity.

"I don't have enough" vs. "I wonder how we can make this work."

The cabbage salad is beautiful and tasty.

Puny Cabbage

I harvest my last cabbage from the garden. It's a puny cabbage, but i'm grateful that the voles left a couple of cabbages for me. (Remember last May, the voles demolished my 36 broccoli seedlings.)

On her 50th birthday, my friend Mary Beth said to me, "Is this it? Is this all there is?"

Sometimes, our life's harvest looks rather puny. Children grow up and have their problems; we separate or are separated from loved ones; we feel daunted by the prospect of 4,000 more days of work until retirement with only 160 vacation days to break the monotony. Is this it?

This moment is it. I'm grateful for my pathetic cabbage, which i boil into soup to warm me on a chilly evening.

Photo from ifood.tv

Caught Red-Handed in the Red Cabbage

While i'm in the vegetable garden, i see a dark shadow dart near my new red cabbage plants. I freeze. A vole peeks out from under a nearby foxglove's skirt of velvety leaves, dashes through the fence, and grabs the lowest leaf off the red cabbage. It drags the palm-sized leaf through the fence back to its hiding place. I hope that's enough for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

A nearby cabbage has 7 leaves. The plant that the vole is de-limbing has 3 leaves remaining.

I feel generous. I'm not going to eat those lower leaves. The vole raider can have it, as long as it leaves the stem for me. How high can a vole reach anyway?

Maybe that's the strategy: Buy plants that are taller than 5-inch long voles.

The Buddha says:

With one's wealth collected justly,
won through one's own efforts,
one shares both food and drink
with beings who are in need.

I am rich in cabbage and broccoli plants. And i am sharing my food with a vole-being who needs to feed her babies.

Voles 30. Cheryl 6.

OK. The voles win. They have scored more of my 3-inch broccoli seedlings than i have. Nibbled off at the stem.

And in the game of cabbages, it's
Voles 12. Cheryl 0.
My little cabbage seedlings have completely disappeared, even the 4 red cabbage 6-inch seedlings that i bought at a farmstand.

I'm going to the Farmers' Market to buy 6-packs of broccoli, green cabbage, red cabbage, and while i'm at it, Brussels sprouts. I want those muscular 10" tall plants so that a vole will need a chainsaw to cut down a broccoli tree.

Voles are quick, dark gerbil-sized creatures that look like a shadow darting through the Swiss chard, which they have also nibbled to the nubbins.

A fellow Master Gardener has made several Vol-inators: He covers a little wooden Clementine box with bark to make it look like a burrow, but he furnishes it with mousetraps.

I just cannot do it. Every morning i take a vow to not harm creatures. I guess this includes the team of voles living around my garden. I'd rather feed the voles my entire crop of cabbage.

But i do have a strategy for our game next season :)

Photo from www.redorbit.com

More from the Winter Garden

Since it was 50 degrees yesterday afternoon, i went to my community garden plot and pulled a few turnips. I also harvested the last 3 stalks of Brussels sprouts. And i cut my only flowering cabbage as a flower arrangement. Really! Isn't it amazing that the winter garden continues to feed and delight me?

Some of my friends signed up for a share of a winter CSA (community-supported agriculture) and are receiving bi-weekly bags of fresh winter veggies. Although the pickin's are slim in the winter garden, i find i am subsisting easily on what i find out there. If i go look, there is enough for the next meal. Fresh. Really, really local. And no oil is used to transport the vegetables or the vegetable-buyer (me).

One line from the Loving-Kindness (Metta) Sutta says:
"contented and easily satisfied...."

I am content with the offering of the winter garden and very well satisfied with a turnip-onion-garlic stew and some braised Brussels sprouts.

The Civil War of Kale

Kale is a vegetable that causes my cooking to freeze in its tracks. The thought of "more kale" makes me come to a complete cooking halt. But scavenging the refrigerator soon loses its appeal. I am caught on the horns of a dilemma: fresh vegetables are growing in the garden, and i don't want to eat them.

This is one more way the mind has a civil war with itself.
"I should eat vegetables from the garden."
"I don't want to."

The mind bickers with itself every evening before dinner, and so nothing gets cooked.
"Kale is good for you."
"I don't want kale."

How long can this quarrel go on?

A reasonable head of cabbage from my community garden plot steps up to the plate. Inspiration strikes! Cabbage cashew chicken. The cooking fire is lit, and dinner arrives on the table.
Whew!

Photo courtesy of Underwood Gardens

Cole Crops for the Cold Season

The Brassicas* are the only crops remaining in my vegetable garden--a couple of cabbages, a row of turnips, 2 rows of Brussels sprouts that have failed to "sprout," 3 varieties of kale, and mustard greens. I harvested 1 head of broccoli this year; the rest failed to thrive.

These "cole" crops form the backbone of the fall garden. Kohl is the German word for cabbage; thus we have "cole slaw." The cole crops like cold weather :)

What will we have to harvest at the end of our gardening season? Some kindness, some mindfulness. And perhaps a few other qualities that failed to sprout or take root?

Meditate now while your growing season is still warm and vibrant. The change of seasons comes too soon.

Meanwhile, i'm mindfully cooking up a batch of cabbage soup today to ward off the cold.



* Brassica comes from the Celtic word bresic meaning "cabbage."