Agiftfromtheheart's Blog

I hope anyone reading had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had imagined that our day would be bittersweet, and more full of sacrificial praise than any other kind…and yet it was a genuinely happy day. We spent it with my family, at my brother’s house in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I had prepared a macrobiotic Thanksgiving dinner for Tim, and set it on the table for everyone to try. My sister-in-law needed all the burners on her stove top, as I suspected, so I was glad to have brought along my little electric burner. I set it up in the laundry room, and had my own make-shift kitchen there. I had crock pots keeping other things warm. It worked great!

We decided on a ground seitan loaf, made with whole grain bread cubes, herbs and spices. We ground the rind of an organic lemon to mix in, and the loaf was delicious. Emily put it together for me the night before. I also made pureed millet and cauliflower “mashed potatoes”, and sautéed brussel sprouts. I made a sage brown sauce to go with it (which we could have done without — it was kind of nasty, in my opinion). I also took along some of the tofu “mayonnaise” that I made earlier in the week, and that was much tastier with the loaf than the brown sauce. Emily made a tofu pumpkin pie (sweetened with brown rice syrup) in New York, and brought it with her on the train. It was delicious — I think I liked it more than the usual kind. I made some tofu “whipped cream” to go on top, and that was also very good…better than the Cool Whip that was also on the table. On Thursday morning, I was inspired to check for watercress in the stream, and there was some growing! I picked a big handful, and took it for garnish around the seitan loaf. I didn’t have any snacks made for Tim before dinner, and he stayed away from the table with the cheeses, olives and other appetizers. I ate them, though. It was pretty much all I could do to get the other foods prepared, but maybe next time I can plan some special appetizers, too. There is no reason why not, with careful planning.

There was not much talk of cancer at the Thanksgiving family gathering — it was the first anyone had seen Tim or me since the diagnosis. His illness was acknowledged, and everyone embraced us, and then they let it be. That was the nicest for us, and for them. Tim and Emily and I had a great time during our time together, too, and it was the comfortable old dynamic of our little family. We played three games of 3-handed cribbage in front of the dining room fireplace on Wednesday night. Emily liked our macrobiotic meal of leftovers on Wednesday, and her cats finished off the squash/beet “red sauce” that we had over some brown rice pasta. I think it reminded her of her childhood, when I cooked vegan meals for us. We missed our other daughter, Kristy, so far from us in Slovakia, but we know she is doing well there.

This morning I was up early, as usual, and did some writing on the Buddhist precept of “not lying”, for my chaplaincy course. I had some thoughts on how the call to Christian discipleship is so similar to the call to be a Bodhisattva. I might condense some of it for a blog entry on another day. I have to write a paper on the precept for my next class, which is in about a week. I love studying the precepts, because there are so many ways to examine each one, and I always come away with new insights.

It is the weekend again, after today — I am looking forward to some quality time with Tim. Maybe I’ll make some fresh wreaths for our front doors. I am undecided about decorating for the holidays this year. On one hand, I am so busy, and it is a lot of work to put up and take down the decorations…and I am not feeling greatly festive at the moment. I played some Advent hymns on the piano this morning, trying to get myself in the mood for Christmas preparations. It will be so different this year, with none of the holiday goodies that we are used to — I guess we will need to start some new traditions!

I will be going to the Veteran’s Hospital on Sunday, to do my work in the hospice, but am not sure what else we have planned for the weekend. There is a lot of food in the refrigerator, so I will probably not be making a lot of new things. I was hoping to bake bread on Saturday, but my bread sponge lost some of its elasticity overnight…not sure why…so I have to see if it snaps back. I refreshed it this morning, and added a little extra flour to give it more bulk again. I won’t waste it by using it before I think it is ready.

We hope to hear some good news about an appointment at Johns Hopkins soon — we need to get Tim started on his treatment.

I am trying to get into a kind of rhythm with this new cooking style — indeed with cooking at all! I have not been doing much of it for some time. Since I work all day, Tim and I arrive home about the same time…hungry. Most of the recipes we are using now involve a certain amount of time cooking whole grains, chopping raw vegetables, with meal planning to be sure we are getting our nutrients… and this is not easily done at the end of a work day. I decided I would have to do a lot of meal prep for the week on weekends. Some things I will do after dinner during the week, so that we don’t have a week’s worth of food losing nutrients by sitting around in the refrigerator.

Tim says he has lost weight over the last couple of weeks, now that he is not eating sugars, meat, daily, eggs, convenience foods, or processed foods of any kind. He is happy about that, although he was not heavy to begin with. He and Emily are running a marathon in a couple of weeks, and I guess he thinks it will be less to carry. We also know that when he starts the hormone therapy there will be a tendency to gain weight and retain water. With exercise and the macrobiotic diet, perhaps we can keep all that to a minimum. He has started taking extra calcium and vitamin D to help keep his bones healthy. He will be subject to bone loss, just like a post-menapausal woman, and prostate cancer also likes to move into the bones. There is so much to learn. My cousin, Brent, has a friend coming up from Brazil, and she is going to try to bring some graviola leaf tea along for Tim. It grows there in the jungles.

It is Monday, a new week — Thanksgiving week. Friday night used to be our burgers-and-beers night, and this past Friday we rented the new Woody Allen movie, and ate our dinner in front of the T.V. . I had a fire going in the wood stove, and it was companionable. Saturday, I got up early, and started looking at recipes. I didn’t get very far before I had to leave the house to meet a customer at my business. I also needed to finish loading a kiln, so it could fire over the weekend, and one of my workers came in to help me get that done. Around Noon, I was back home. Tim left for a run, and I walked out the back door to contemplate the ruins of my herb garden. There wasn’t much to salvage, and I wished I had kept up with it over the summer. I found some spearmint, still green under some tall weeds, and picked it to make tea. Next year, I will become a gardener again, so that we have fresh, organic produce and herbs. We will look into how to treat our fruit trees organically.

Discouraged by the weeds, I went back to the kitchen. The Vegetarian Kitchen cookbook had a section on making a natural sponge, or “starter”, for bread (rather than using the commercial, powdered yeast for leavening). Apparently it will be nix on powdered yeast. I ground 2 cups of hard, red winter wheat berries in my VitaMix, mixed a cup and a half of water into the flour with my hands, and poured it into a glass jar. I covered it with a clean dish towel, and set it aside. I will need to add 1/4 cup water and 1/3 cup whole wheat flour every day for six days, washing the glass jar out every day. My book said to keep the fermenting starter out of metal containers. Then we will have “starter”, and once ready, I will only need to babysit it once a week — right after I mine it for bread-baking. I will make bread on Saturday morning. Right now, I am wondering how many other kinds of flour I can use, while still having enough gluten in the dough for the rising process. I am thinking about grinding up some basmati rice for rice flour. I think that would make the bread taste really nice. I also like barley flour and soy flour, but know I will have to be careful not to use too large a percentage of those, or my bread will be like a brick. I will check at the health food store to see if the powdered gluten is available from whole wheat flour, or only from unbleached white. That would help the bread rise. I have done the sponge “feeding” process now for two mornings. Instead of just making coffee and feeding cats, my morning ritual now excludes the coffee, and includes washing sprouts and refreshing my “starter”.

Saturday night, I made brown rice, and also pulled out some vegetables that needed to be cooked. I steamed the last of the organic green beans, and put a little umeboshi plum vinegar over them. There were a few small zucchinis in the vegetable bin, left from another recipe earlier in the week. I cut them up with some onions, sauted them in some organic olive oil, added some barley miso, and served them over the rice. Neither Tim nor I are huge fans of zucchini that is not disguised in bread, or in an egg flan with cheese — but we really enjoyed it made this way. The miso adds such a nice flavor.

Sunday was my marathon cooking day. I woke early, and was in the kitchen before 6:30. First, I refreshed the “starter”, and washed my new jar of sprouts. We are already eating the first jarful. Then I sat down with cookbooks. Thanksgiving is this week, and I ignored any prep for that, other than deciding a menu, and making a short shopping list. I will deal with that on Wednesday night.

We used up all our protein-rich seitan from the previous week, so it was time to make more. I think that fresh seitan will be a staple, which will need to be made each week. Tempeh is another protein staple, but tempeh-making is a bit more complex than I can cope with right now. I will buy it, and keep a couple of packages on hand. I made the dough this time with 6 cups of whole wheat flour, and less than 3 cups of water. It was very stiff, and I mixed it like crazy again in my Kitchen Aid mixer with the kneading attachment. When I was tired of mixing it, I kneaded the dough a little more by hand, and then put it in a bowl, covered by lukewarm water. It sat there for about half an hour.

Meanwhile, I decided to grind 5 pounds of wheat berries in my VitaMix, so that the flour would be handy for refreshing the “starter” sponge each morning. I had previously decided to make a “red sauce” for pasta, from the Vegetarian Kitchen book. It is mostly steamed and pureed carrots and winter squash, with a cooked beet for color, plus some other herbs, a little garlic, and a couple of drops of my brother, Tom’s, killer hot pepper sauce. I know peppers are supposed to be taboo (a member of the nightshade family, with eggplant, tomatos, and potatos) — but a teeny tiny bit of his hot peppers makes a huge difference. I had some shitake mushrooms soaking overnight, and I chopped them, and added them to the sauce. This can go over rice pasta noodles one day, and some tofu strips Tim bought on another day. It made a lot of sauce! I suppose I can freeze some if it is too much.

All the burners on my stovetop were covered! I had broth starting for the seitan, I was steaming carrots and winter squash, sauteing onions, and boiling beets. I decided to make extra beets and extra squash to use in other recipes. I went back to the ball of dough, soaking for our seitan. Tim was out of bed, and helped me wash the starch and bran out of the wads of gluten. It went reasonably well this time, and didn’t fall into shreds. It does take a long time. This is going to be the weak sister in my food prep schedule. Because it can’t be rushed, I decided to make a meditation practice out of it. I just submitted to the inevitable tedium of the process, and reined in my thoughts to be fully present washing those balls of flour. I remembered a book I read recently, Goddesses In Older Women, and while I don’t think I like the idea of being a “wise crone” just yet, I appreciate the archetypal centeredness of the Greek goddess, Hestia, with her peaceful position at the hearth. Maybe I need to bring more Hestia into my life. I will remember to make a visual feast of the colors of each vegetable, to inhale the cooking smells…to slow down, put my mind back into my body, and prepare this food with love. I am also thinking about ways to use my two crock pots in this new cooking style, in case Hestia elbows out everything else in my life. It seems that the microwave is not used in macrobiotic cooking, so there is another time-saver out the window. A pressure cooker is used in a lot of the recipes, and I don’t have one of those. I might need one. I also need a new rice cooker.

It wasn’t so very long before the gluten balls were simmering in their broth. We didn’t lose as much dough in the rinsing this time, so there was a lot more gluten in the pot than last week. I also saved the bran, straining the washing water with each rinse. I will use it in a lentil loaf, or something. The other liquid formed two layers, and I used the clear liquid as part of the broth for some soup, and the thick, white starch I saved for thickening sauces. I put the jars in the refrigerator for later use. Now that it is cooked, the gluten has been transformed into seitan. We will use the seitan ground up with garbanzos and whole wheat bread crumbs in a loaf for Thanksgiving. There is enough for sandwiches, also — I can grind it up with some tahini and walnuts, and I think it will be good. I can even put some herbs in the spread.

Earlier in the day, I had put some red lentils in a pot to soak in water. A couple of hours later, I added 9 cups of liquid — the cooking liquid from last week, the rinse water from the gluten, some purchased organic vegetable stock, and the water used to boil the red beets. A side note: beware boiling soup with gluten water in it — the starch makes it boil over at first, like a pot of potatos or pasta! I added shoyu, some wimpy herbs left in my garden, some steamed mulit-grain tempeh, miso, sea salt, kombu, and kale. There is a lot of kale in a bunch, and it doesn’t cook down as much as spinach. I was starting to eye that kale clump in my refrigerator with concern; I have vowed not to waste food. Since kale is our new best friend, it will be going in a lot of dishes. The soup smelled wonderful, and made a big batch. Our daughter’s Siberian cats begged for a taste, and so we put some in a saucer…we filled the saucer twice before we cut them off! Why do cats like lentil soup? Is it just Siberian cats that do? They’ve had their noses in the bag of compost trimmings, too. Our all-American Maine Coon cats were oblivious to the lentil soup, although Echo is partial to cantelope and mangos.

After the boiling and steaming, chopping and dicing, I was left with extra beets, extra winter squash, garbanzos, and seitan. I found a loaf recipe for Thanksgiving dinner, using some of the seitan, and there will be sandwich spread made with some more. I think that will use it up. The loaf will make leftovers and sandwiches, also, for Friday and the weekend. I chopped  the beets for a side dish. I will use the extra squash for apple/squash soup for a meal on Friday. The garbanzos will be used in the loaf, and the extras will be made into falafel balls for sandwiches. If there are more, they can go on salads. That uses everything up! I think I will make a soy “mayonnaise” for sandwiches. They can get a little dry with the whole grain bread and lack of fat in the spreads. I will probably make that tomorrow night, so that it is still fresh for the weekend. It uses tofu, and tofu can get that beany smell and taste, if it is not fresh. Once I get used to the routine, and figure out our basics, I can venture into the occasional muffin or fruit dessert recipe. If I didn’t work every day, I would have more time to putter over this during the week, but that is not my situation.

Five hours later, I was looking at a stack of cooking pots and measuring cups. I decided it was easier to reuse pots that were already dirty, rather than to keep washing them as I worked. The glass stovetop was one big stain from the starchy water in the lentil soup. There were little white polka dots on the wood floor, from the starch splashing out of the gluten rinses. Tim was a trooper, helping to clean up the mess. It didn’t look like a lot of results from five hours of work, but it is the basis for a week of meals. Another week, and I am a little smarter. That’s progress! The refrigerator is full of wholesome food, and we are building Tim’s health.  This week we hope to hear back from someone at Johns Hopkins, so that we can get him started on his course of treatment. Until then, we are doing everything we can on our end.