Sugar on Snow

Due to COVID, there's no Winter Carnival this year. No ski jumping contest in town. But more importantly, no Sugar on Snow.

In New England, Sugar on Snow means packing a bowl with snow and pouring boiling maple syrup on top. The syrup hardens and forms taffy. Chewy and sweet.

As so often during this past year, i decided to DIY--make my own.

Boil the maple syrup to 235 degree (soft ball stage on a candy thermometer).

Pack a bowl with snow. Last night's snow was light and fluffy. This morning's snow is heavy and wet. Heavy is good.

Pour the hot syrup over the snow.

Spiritual practice is another DIY thing. No one else can do it for you. You already know the recipe.

Meditate or pray. 20" a day is a good start. Use a timer.

Read a spiritual book.

Meet with your spiritual friends at least once a week and meditate together.

The heart softens, and practicing kindness becomes easier and easier.

Flowers Spell L-O-V-E

 

For my birthday, my sweetie brought home a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Such a delight to have fresh flowers on the kitchen table.

F-L-O-W-E-R-S spell love. So does T-A-K-I-N-G  M-E  O-U-T  T-O  D-I-N-N-E-R.

Love comes in many disguises. Some are sweet and feel good, like a hug. Some disguises are hard to swallow, such as tough love. And some disguises feel so entirely ordinary that you take them for granted--the air you breathe, the chair you are sitting on, the body that makes you think you are a self or have a self.

This self thinks she's a year older. A year older than what? 

The self is born anew every second.

Native Sun Chokes

 It's time for Jerusalem artichokes, which are now marketed as "sun chokes." One friend says sun chokes are better than potatoes. Sun chokes are just a little bit sweet.

I like all the perennial vegetables (and fruits) that show up in my garden. I do hardly anything, and voila! There they are.

If i want to decolonize my diet, sun chokes are a good way to begin. They were grown by the indigenous peoples of North America. They are native to this continent. No fossil fuels were used in the transport of this vegetable. Just foot power. One foot for the spade to dig them up, and two feet to walk them from the garden to kitchen.

Delicious.

How Low Can You Go?

Temperatures are dropping into the 20s at night. Still, the sorrel limps along--almost the only old green lady remaining in the garden. 

I've only just discovered a sorrel sauce for salmon. My sweetie can't eat citrus, so i pureed the (briefly) cooked sorrel, added maple syrup and tamari. Wow! The lemon-y sweet-sour sauce is delicious.

Sorrel is sour, so a touch of maple syrup makes it tangy and tasty.

Our sour mind states--such as irritation, frustration, impatience--can be antidoted with a bit of sweetness toward ourselves. Kindness and patience cure almost every negative mind state.

Just when you feel you want to go low, remember your long-term intention to take the high road. Go high by practicing kindness. Toward yourself first of all.

Kiwis are Ripe

 

Kiwis are ripening here in the North Country and are for sale at our local farmstand. To distinguish them from their southern hemisphere cousins, they are sometimes called "kiwi berries." They are about twice the size of grapes, and they taste, well, just like a kiwi.

Kiwi season is short--mid- to late-September--so don't dally. Look for and buy kiwis soon. Now.

No dallying around that spiritual practice either. Meditate. Pray. Practice mindfulness. Practice compassion--which we need a ton of right now.

Kiwis are sweet. Let's sweeten our mind while we may.

Sweet and Sour

Hot maple syrup poured over snow
so it becomes like taffy.
Served with a dill pickle.

Did i tell you that the sugar-on-snow church dinners include a dill pickle with the maple syrup drizzled on the snow? Sweet and sour, New England style. Sweet and sour--like life.

The 8 Vicissitudes sum up sweet-and-sour perfectly.

Gain and loss,

Pleasure and pain,

Praise and blame,

Fame and disrepute

come and go like the wind.

Stand like a great tree 

in the midst of them all.

As much as we only want the sweet of life, the sour is often served up soon thereafter.

When i am praised, i don't take it seriously, because i can guess what's coming down the pike--today, next week, or next year. Blame. Ouch!

Take the sweet and sour together, and you have the whole world.

Jasmine

Jasmine grows wild here in the Caribbean. Small white flowers beckon me from the roadside. Ahhh. The heady, sweet fragrance of jasmine--one of my favorites.

Jasmine's named is derived from an Arabic word meaning "gift of God." What are we doing with our god-given gifts? What am i doing with my God-given gifts individually? And what are we as a society doing with the gifts that God (or Nature) has given us?

Ground Cherry Surprise

While cleaning out a flower bed, i found a surprise. Ground cherries!

Ground cherries are a husk tomato, similar to a tomatillo, but much smaller, sweet, and yellow-orange when ripe.

I planted them one year, but found that my growing season wasn't really long enough. Plus they're small and, therefore, labor-intensive to harvest. Even though that was years ago, these ground cherries keep showing up in unexpected places. I suppose they go into my compost and, from there, into various vegetable or flower beds.

We need to be careful about what mental seeds we sow in our minds and what action seeds we sow in our behavior. "Just this once" lays down the track for a habit, which becomes easier and easier to follow.

Let's sow sweet and delicious seeds of kindness and patience.

Sweet Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I came home to a pile of cherry tomatoes, and, yesterday, i finally got around to drying them. I particularly like grape tomatoes for their meatiness. They are okay in salads, though i prefer the sweetness of sungolds. But the grape tomatoes make very flavorful sun-dried tomatoes.

Some of us are sweet when young; some of us learn to be even sweeter when we are old and wrinkled and dried out.

Sweetness happens when we stop resisting the flow of Life.

Sweet Flowering Kale

The mums on the front step are going, going, about to be gone, but the flowering kale looks fantastic.

Flowering kale is holding the fort for the month of November and on to the first heavy snowfall. Kale is a vegetable that becomes sweeter when the weather gets cold.

This is our own personal challenge: Can we become sweeter as conditions around us become cool and even chilly?

When life gets tough--whether at home, in the community, or on the national scene--how do we "flower" and become sweeter? How do we become sweeter, even when faced with hatred or anger?

First, we cultivate kindness toward ourselves. Maybe we don't really tolerate a cold shoulder that well. Maybe we have to retreat to safety early on.

Second, we cultivate compassion--toward ourselves and toward others who are suffering.

Third, we cultivate equanimity as the strong winds of blame, gusts of disgust, and temper tornadoes swirl around us. Yes, our bodies may shake with fear, but we do what needs to be done.

May sweetness prevail.

Slightly Sweet

At the Farmers' Market, i bought a pound of yacón, sometimes called Peruvian ground apple. This potato-looking tuber is crisp like a jicama, but tastes ever so slightly sweet.

The mind training we cultivate in meditation is a crisp attention to the meditation object--sounds, breath, or touch (whatever interests you the most). As we relax into the object (instead of holding it tightly), we notice a slight sweetness. A tiny happiness, a little bit of joy.

Taking a crunchy bite of yacón makes me smile.

Coconut Chia Seed Pudding

Last year, i spent Thanksgiving on retreat in Maui. I loved meditating outdoors most of the day surrounded by bougainvillea, palm trees, and chirping birds.

The vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. For dessert, we had delicious coconut chia seed pudding. In memory of that delicious meal, i made the same pudding at home this year.

Here's the recipe:
1 can of coconut milk
1/3 cup chia seeds
a tablespoon or so of your favorite sweetener (i use maple syrup)

Refrigerate and it's ready in 20 minutes.

When i'm on retreat, i often eat three prunes every morning for regularity. A day's worth of sitting plus not drinking enough water means that my internal digestive tract often slows down and dries out. At a wilderness retreat in 2016, the cook served chia seeds with every meal--no prunes at all. To my surprise, i had lovely visits to the outhouse. Therefore, i'm a big fan of chia seeds, which are high in Omega-3s.

What goes in--so deliciously--comes out in an unrecognizable form. Smooth move.

Veery Flute Duet

The veery is my favorite bird here in the North Country. It looks like just another brown bird--it's a small thrush. But its song is heavenly--it sounds like a trilling flute.

Some summers i can hear the veery on my neighbor's land. This year, 2 veerys have taken up residence very near my house, one on each side of my lawn. Oh, my. A flute duet every early morning and every late evening, right here. Actually, since a single veery sounds like a duet all by itself, two veerys sound like a flute quartet.

Hearing the Dharma is another kind of sweet sound. It has so much common sense and so much uncommon sense at the same time. What a duet!

This coming Sunday I'm giving a talk on verse 5 of The Dhammapada.

Hatred never ceases through hatred,

But by love alone is healed.

Another way to say this is "Hatred begets hatred. Kindness begets kindness."
Still another way to say it is " Throwing a hot potato at someone invites them to throw a hot potato back at you." Now, why would you do that? Yet we all do it frequently.

I listen to the lovely sound of the veery singing 2 notes at the same time in the woods.

Sweet Parsnips

While cleaning up the vegetable garden this afternoon, i found parsnips! Oh, right. I planted those last April. I immediately dug them up. They were small and hairy with roots, but i was going to be home alone for dinner, so i could eat as i pleased.

Fried in butter and salted. Oh, my. Melt in your mouth. And they were all mine.

It's wonderful to harvest a beautiful mind state--perhaps one we planted quite a while ago and have sort of forgotten about. I've been working on basic friendliness. Simply acting like a friend toward people i know as well as people i don't know. As an introvert, feeling at ease with people is not my strong suit.

Yet, yesterday i managed to act friendly and conversational toward people i barely know. Sweet!

Pomelo

I first met a pomelo in Thailand a few years ago. It looks like a really big grapefruit, but the fruit is sweet and not at all sour or bitter. The pomelo skin is quite thick. In Thailand, they are sold already peeled and sectioned.

Pomelos are now available at my local food coop for $1.99 a pound, and each pomelo weighs almost 2 pounds. They are expensive, but they are worth it.

I actually aspire to be like a pomelo. Maybe i could take it as my totem fruit? Thick-skinned, in the sense of not taking criticism or insult personally, yet sweet and mild at heart.

Walla Walla Onions

I had a fantastic onion harvest in August.  My Walla Walla (Vidalia) onions were as big as softballs. No kidding!  But those big onion-ring type onions have a short shelf life. So I'm cooking up as many onion recipes as I can. Onion soup. Onion quiche with bacon bits. What's your favorite recipe that uses a lot of onions?

These big onions are surprisingly mild and sweet. We think of onions as causing us some distress, bringing tears to our eyes. But not these. People in Walla Walla eat these onions like apples. Crunch!

 Several things on our Buddhist path may initially make us put up our right hand like a stop sign. "No thanks. I don't want any of that."

For instance, the 5th precept of not taking intoxicants. Oh a little glass of wine never hurt anybody. Or the third perfection of renunciation. No thanks. I want more not less. Or the third characteristic of existence: Not-self. Of course i have a self! Or the 5 daily reflections on aging, illness, and death, followed by impermanence and karma. Really, do we have to talk about those? What a bore.

Yet when we bite into any one of these teachings, we find our life becomes sweeter.

So send me your onion recipes Sweetie.

Sweet and Sour

Yesterday, i sweetened acid soil with lime. Today it's time to "sour" the soil around the acid-loving plants such as rhododendrons, hydrangeas, dogwoods, blueberries, and camellias.

You might think, that living in New England, my soil is already acid enough due to a carpet of pine needles and acid rain. After all, acid soil is formed from granite and shale (and coal). But the granite is across the river in New Hampshire, the Granite State. Three miles west, here in Vermont, i live atop schist and a band of brown limestone. Lime-stone, as in the lime that sweetens acid soil. So my soil actually has a neutral pH.

Thus, i add acid, in the form of sulfur, to the soil around the acid-loving plants. I especially pay attention to the rhododendron at the corner of the house because the cement foundation leaches lime into the soil.

Lilacs love lime, but some plants require a more acid soil. In order to bloom where we are planted, we need the right balance of sweet and sour.

Acid Soil or Acid Tongue

Now that the garden chores are slowing to a crawl, it's time to do some annual maintenance. Today, it's time to sweeten the lawn and gardens with lime.

 Here in New England, we typically have acid soil, due to pine needles and acid rain blowing east from the smokestacks of the West and the Midwest.

Certain plants love acid soil and grow well here in New England--ferns, pachysandra, begonias. Certain weeds also tell us that the soil is acid--dandelions, stinging nettles, lambs quarters, and sheep sorrel, among others.

Lime is slow-acting and eventually "sweetens" acid soil.

We too can sweeten our own acidic and acerbic tendencies by practicing gratitude and kindness. Feeling like a sourpuss doesn't really feel good anyway. As much as we might love to zing out a tart reply when our feelings are hurt, a zinger is meant to sting the other person into recognizing us. Speaking harshly only pushes people away.

Let's sweeten our own inner soil with some gratitude right now. Name 3 things you are grateful for.

That's the way to grow friendliness.

Sweet Winter Parsnips

My neighbor, Connie, told me to harvest my parsnips. Now. Before they get woody.

So it's all parsnips, at every meal. Sauteed in butter. Added to soup. Mashed parsnip potatoes.

Parsnips become sweeter after they freeze. So they're a sweet early spring vegetable.

My 96-year-old hospice client was a very sweet woman. Perhaps because the only food she ate for the last year of her life was Lorna Doone cookies. She kept surviving the winter of her old, old age. Living well beyond the forecast of leukemia. Living well and happily despite her loss of memory.

Now her daughters have sweet memories of her.

Sweet Hoya

My hoya plant is blooming, so, after dinner, when i'm yearning for something sweet, but not too sweet, i walk into my solarium and lick the hoya flowers.

Each waxy umbel has about 30 very small, star-shaped flowers, and each flower secretes 1 drop of nectar, which smells like perfume. That's 30 drops of sweetness :)

Bees drink nectar and produce honey. With the hoya, we humans can also go straight to the source.

The source for our spiritual practice is our sense of integrity. We feel more integral with all of life when we abide close to the 5 precepts:

Today i intend to:

do no harm to anyone,

take nothing that is not freely given,

use my sexual energy wisely,

speak truthfully and helpfully,

and keep my mind clear.

This ethical behavior sweetens our actions.