happy summer solstice
bluefoot, oyster, lbms, enoki, chantrelles, and a big, beautiful, and orange mushroom
here is what i know i want:
a room that is quiet
with good light, and
living green growing plants
and generous dinners with people i love
when we drink too much wine, laughing
with the absurdity of living and the pain of bearing witness to each other & these circumstances
eat well tonight- this day has been the longest in the year.
i am eating leftover stir fried rice (my new favorite vehicle for every summer veggie – recipe forthcoming) stirred into squash soup with a slice of sour dough bread, fried in the skillet.
but here is another way to use any and every veggie…
tofu scramble
Press a
block of tofu
between kitchen towels under a weight (like the joy of cooking but put a plastic bag or waxed paper under it so it doesn’t soak your book).
slice 2 or 3 celery stalks into chunky half-moons and chop a small onion. Smash, peel, and mince 2 or 3 cloves of garlic.
Heat a big fry pan—like a 12 inch cast iron skillet—and add 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil. Sauté the onions and celery for a few minutes then add the garlic. Cook until the onions are translucent. How long this takes will depend on how high your heat is and the volume of veggies you are cooking. I like to cook it on high heat, stirring often, to move things along.
Crumble the tofu into the pan. I leave it in fairly big chunks; some folks like their tofu scramble in rubbley little bits. I think it is supposed to make it more “scrambled-egg like,” but I am against pretending food is not what it is and i don’t like the texture of nubbley mush. Let the tofu brown a bit then sprinkle in 2 teaspoons or so of turmeric and a half teaspoon or so of cumin. Stir in a tablespoon of Bragg’s or soy sauce.
Slice whatever mushrooms you have into similar sized parts for even cooking. For example, slice about half a dozen crimini mushrooms into three parts each; take the stems off if they are really woody but on the very small ones especially (which you can just cut in half) you can leave the stems on. Add the mushrooms and cook the whole mess for about another 10 minutes or so, until the mushrooms are juicy. You may want to cover the pan. If you have a lot of mushrooms, you may want to cut them along with all the other veggies and just set them aside until they need to be added to the pan.
***
tofu scramble—just like omelets—lends itself to incorporating pretty much whatever veggie leftovers you have around. That pile of greens you made last night with hot sauce, that half a can of chick peas in the fridge, or some of those tomatoes your neighbor brought over because his garden exploded at the end of the summer are all candidates for tofu scramble. You can serve it with that last ½ inch of salsa in the jar. Although humble and accommodating, tofu-scramble is utterly brunch-worthy, and in my opinion, stands up to a bloody mary as well as any omelet.
two things to read (that I did not write) and two to eat (that I did create)
Sex, Striptease & Feminism
by Sarah Katherine Lewis, posted Tuesday, 8 May 2007
A popular narrative about sex work, earnestly discussed in Women’s Studies courses throughout the nation and represented in countless “I stripped my way through college!” memoirs, is that adult labor is automatically, and by definition, feminist.
The argument goes like this: By using sexual stereotypes professionally, by “owning” them (using them consciously), and by “subverting” them (choosing which stereotypes to exaggerate and which to discard), a sex-working woman is participating in a feminist reclamation of both personal and economic power.
Her deliberate use of gender-drag turns wearing a g-string and gyrating on stage – or behind glass – from an act done merely to pay her rent into a strong, assured and transgressive statement more akin to political performance art.
You can’t objectify me – I am objectifying myself, shrewdly and self-consciously, in order to obtain power through money, and control through being considered sexually desirable.
It’s almost as if sex work is the most feminist thing a women can do – because if women are objectified every minute of every day against our will and without any personal benefit, why not grab the reins on that process and make a decent living wage at it?
If women’s bodies belong to everyone, some feminists argue, why not be the ones to profit from our own bodies instead of being consumed for free?
If we’re going to be forced to sell regardless, we may as well name our own prices and take comfort in pocketing our own net gain.
It beats working a minimum-wage job forty hours a week while performing a second, unpaid, full-time job as visual erotic entertainment for society at large, simply by existing as a female in the world. Why not demand payment for that second shift?
And, as it turns out, that second shift pays far more than minimum wage – and all you have to do to claim your paycheck is to agree to perform a ritualized acknowledgment of your status as entertainment by revealing your body or performing sexually.
Goodbye polyester smock and plastic nametag – hello tuition payments!
[To Read the rest of this fantastic article - at least to " There is nothing more objectifying than poverty." - please visit: http://edstrong.blog-city.com/sex_striptease__feminisism.htm.]
Young Women Re-Craft Feminism as DIY Project
By Courtney E. Martin – WeNews correspondent
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)- Two young women- strangers – sit across from one another on the subway knitting brightly, multi-colored scarves on the F train heading into Brooklyn.
They give one another knowing smiles and one removes her earphones. “So where do you get your yarn?”
Knitting, crochet, quilting, weaving, silk screening, sewing, book making, scrapbook making and amateur interior design have hit the big time among many young women.
According to the Crafts Report, a trade magazine based in Iola, Wis., almost half of crafters in the $13 billion-a-year industry are under 45 years of age and two-thirds are women.
Boutiques selling handcrafts, craft fairs and Web sites such as GetCrafty, KnitHappens, Craftster, ChurchofCraft and Knitty are measures of a boom.
What’s going on?
Homemade wares were once the key to survival, but as industrialization replaced locally produced goods, they became basement hobbies by the 1950s, largely sequestered off in a cultural corner.
But in an era of rising anxiety about the effects of globalization – on everything from the economy to social cohesion to the biosphere – many young women in their teens, 20s and 30s are joining a push to make things local and more personally connected. And for many of them knitting and stitching is the way in.
“There’s something undeniably empowering about saying, ‘I made that,’ whether the finished product is a crocheted tea cozy, a water bottle chandelier or a rig to connect your iPod and a car stereo,” says Julia Cosgrove, managing editor of ReadyMade, a Berkeley, Calif., magazine chock full of craft project ideas. “The DIY movement offers its members the utmost independence, so it’s no surprise that feminists, who had long fought for independence and equality, should find a home within its confines.”
[To Read the rest of this fantastic article, please visit: http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3061/context/archive.]
summer strudel
this basil – in bloom – and veggies from the farmers’ market wrapped up with cheese in phyllo dough
don’t fear the strudel – it is just like a fancy burrito.
heat your oven to 375º and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper – especially if you want to make the strudel and refrigerate it to cook later – or grease it lightly with butter.
Thaw a package of phyllo dough. You are only going to use three sheets so if you are not interested in trying some other phyllo recipes you can make this filling and use it in tortillas like a quesadilla or as a layered frittata. Anyway, onward-
prep your veggies. Scrub clean, leave the skins on, and slice thin:
1 small summer squash. Slice your squash very fine, so you have thin circles edged in green. If it is short and squat rather than long like zucchini, then cut it in half then slice. The one I took home from the farmers’ market was the size of a tennis ball, gum drop shaped, and green with white speckles.
5 new red potatoes, about the size of ping pong balls. Slice them very fine, so you have thin circles edged in red.
peel and slice:
½ of a sweet yellow onion
melt 4 tablespoons (half stick) or so of butter or olive oil in a hot skillet. Pour off all but a table spoon into a cup to use with the pastry later. In the remainder, fry the onion and potatoes until the onions are translucent and the potatoes just begin to brown – about 10 minutes over a medium high flame. Every few minutes, turn them carefully with a fork; the potatoes this thin are delicate.
in a medium sized bowl, mash together with a fork:
1 cup pre-cooked cannelloni beans, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and
¾ cup fresh soft cheese. Sounds vague, but the label on the tub from the upstate organic, humane dairy says “fresh soft cheese” so I don’t know what else to tell you. Whatever local, happy white soft cheese you can get will be delicious.
pick a handful of fresh basil leaves. I ended up with about a half cup of shredded basil – suit yourself. Pick the leaves, and layer them, staggered side by side to make a wide stack, then roll them up like a cigar. Slice along the circular end to make fine shreds. Stir into the beans and cheese, along with:
¼ cup or more fresh sweet peas.
unroll your phyllo dough on a cutting board, and lift one sheet to your paper-lined baking tray. Brush lightly with butter, layer another sheet, brush with butter, third sheet, butter. Drop several tablespoons of the cheese filling onto the stack of phyllo, making a rectangle of filling with an inch of pastry above and below and two inches to its right. Layer slices of squash over the filling then add a bit more cheese & beans. Layer the potatoes and onions over that and a little more cheese and bean. You’ll have more filling than you need. Fold the two inches of pastry to the right over the filling then fold over the top and bottom pastry margin. Using the parchment paper to help you, fold the strudel over and possible over again to seal. Brush the entire outside with melted butter. Slash diagonal cuts across the top.
store in the refrigerator until ready to use (even over night) or bake immediately for about half an hour or until the outside is golden brown.
You can make this recipe vegan by making sure you use vegan phyllo, subbing olive oil for the butter, omitting the cheese entirely, and mashing the beans more thoroughly. Try adding tofutti sour supreme or tahini to make it creamier. Other veganizing ideas – please leave ‘em in the comments.
kohlrabi salad with purslane and mysterious mini-greens
the kohlrabi plant has its own special way of being a vegetable
The Kitchen Gardener’s Companion, Pat Katz’s A-Z encyclopedia for using the food that you grow, 2000
oh, pat, it’s true. kohlrabies look like alien vegetables or vehicles – door knob sized bulbs of waxy celery green or purple like shredded purple coleslaw cabbage. Since hardly any one eats it, kohlrabi gets compared to everything: cabbage, turnip, cauliflower. It is like the asian pear of veggies. Impossible to describe; go find them.
5 small purple kohlrabis, broken off from their stalks and leaves. Pare away any nubbins or hard spots but no need to go so far as peeling. Cut them into cubes. Sauté them in a bit of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Let them sit in the hot pot until your greens are ready.
pick over 5 generous handful of greens. This week I got purslane, some mild form of mustard with tiny, ruffled leaves, and a mysterious micro-plant with a transluscent stem and two bitty leaves, like clover. I think any mix of mild fresh summer greens would be good, but the purslane’s nice because it is so juicy and queer.
in a big bowl, toss the greens with the hot kohlrabi and dressing. For the dressing, shake together in a jar:
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
¼ cup of olive oil
½ tsp sea salt
½ tsp black pepper
¼ cup minced, fresh cilantro
It is surprising that kohlrabies are not better known, since they are easy to grow and store, as well as being easy to enjoy in many different ways. Their name is German, taken from the Italian caroli rape, cabbage turnip.
The Kitchen Gardener’s Companion, Pat Katz’s A-Z encyclopedia for using the food that you grow, 2000
