Feeding the Hungry Ghost (29 page)

Diwali is about light, but it’s also about sweets. All the winter holidays are.

On St. Lucia’s Day, the girls of Sweden play St. Lucia herself by serving their families coffee and sweet spice buns known as lussekatter — Lucy cakes. How do they do this wearing flammable headgear? What do they do about hot, dripping wax? They’re supposed to resemble the martyred St. Lucia, not become her.

There can be a degree of martyrdom involved with making the favorite sweet at Hanukkah, sufganiyot — little yeast-dough puffs fried in oil. They’re akin to Greek loukoumades, Russian
ponchiki, or Spanish buñuelos. The official story is they honor the original Hanukkah miracle — the light in the temple that somehow burned for eight days on a day’s worth of oil. The truth of it is, people love fried food, and any excuse is good. The other truth is, frying adds calories and fat but no nutrients to your meal. My own personal truth is I’m fry averse and find dealing with hot, splattering oil almost as death defying as wearing candles on your head. Plus cleaning up afterward makes me cranky. Crankiness defeats the purpose.

Christmas sweets — where to begin? Candy canes, gingerbread men, yule-log Christmas cakes, a bazillion versions of Christmas cookies, and, of course, the ever-contentious fruitcake.

I will out myself. I love fruitcake — the real stuff, with its origins not in a factory but in ancient Rome. Fruitcake dates back to the fifth century, appearing in
De re coquinaria
(
The Art of Cooking),
the oldest surviving cookbook in the Western world. Back in the day, your prototypical fruitcake comprised simple ingredients, mostly chopped dried fruits and nuts. Within simplicity can lie complexity. The sumptuous oils of pine nuts, walnuts, almonds, and pistachios embraced and enhanced the winey sweetness of dates, apricots, plums, and raisins for a rich confection that endured (without preservatives) long after Rome fell.

It is the great-grandmother of sugarplums, the traditional English sweetmeats. All dried fruit were plums as far as the Brits of the Middle Ages were concerned. The sugarplums that danced in their heads were confections of nuts and dried fruit their ancient forebears might recognize.

And here we are today, with much of what we eat made of ingredients unrecognizable by ourselves. Do we eat too much processed food? Yes. Too much processed sugar? Yes. But sweetness
is there for a reason. Some food historians believe we gravitate toward sweet food because in ancient agrarian times, when food was scarce, we turned to nutrient-rich dates and honey to sustain us. Good story.

I think we want to get it right. We want to be good and loving; we want to be sweetness and light. We just need some incentive. Honey, cookies, candy, yule logs, and sugarplums sweeten our mouths and our spirits. Sweetness primes the pump; it encourages us to be good. We are all, at heart, tantrumy two-year-olds. Bribe us with a cookie, and maybe we’ll behave. The winter holidays have their backstories — the whole birth-of-Christ thing for Christmas and the rededication of the temple for Hanukkah — and here is where it gets tricky and divisive. Strip away the details, and the message is the same — miracles are possible, be it a star that lights up the night or the temple light that keeps burning when it should have gone out. We will care for the persecuted and vanquish the baddies. Including our own. We have both goodness and evil within us, and triumphing over our own dark impulses is the real miracle.

Hey, don’t you religious guys even talk to each other? We could have one big holiday, all of us. We may belong to different faiths, different clubs, but we’re more alike than we are different. Handily enough, Kwanzaa celebrates
umoja,
community.

If it’s a matter of finding the common element, look no further than dessert. Sweetness has been part of our culture — all our cultures — for millennia. It’s a far more effective way to reinforce what all these holidays teach us than the commercial buying fest we engage in these days. Toys and gadgets break. Often on Christmas morning. What endures are
samadhi
and
umoja.
You may not have known the words before, but you know what they mean.

Multifaith Sweetness and Light Sugarplums

These sugarplums require no cooking, no fuss, no frying, no candelabra. They get their sweetness naturally, from dates, common in many Middle Eastern desserts. Cardamom is beloved in both India and Sweden. The religions may view things differently, but we all share a desire for sweetness and light. File this under things you can throw together in a food processor that come out quite good.

Makes 2 dozen sugarplums

12 dried Medjool dates, pitted

8 dried apricots

½ teaspoon cardamon seeds

½ teaspoon anise seeds

1½ cups walnuts

¼ cup ground cinnamon or unsweetened cocoa powder

Put the dates and apricots in a food processor and pulse briefly, until they form bits that just start to come together in a mosaic. Add the cardamom seeds, anise seeds, and walnuts. Pulse again until just combined; the mixture will not quite adhere to itself. For lack of a better word, we can call it dough.

Wrap and chill the dough for at least 2 hours and up to overnight.

Pour the cinnamon (or cocoa) into a shallow bowl. Grab a generous pinch of the dough and roll into a ball about the size of a walnut. Roll the dough ball in the cinnamon until it’s dusted on all sides. Continue with the remaining dough until you have 2 dozen sugarplums. The dough tends to absorb the spice, so roll the balls in
the cinnamon a second time; they’ll be prettier, more uniform, and easier to handle.

The sugarplums can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2 weeks or more; the flavor improves over time.

GENTLE NUDGE
the
PENULTIMATE: YOUR DAILY SERVING
of
AHIMSA

If you thought meditation was challenging, ahimsa will challenge you at a whole new level. It means doing no harm to a single creature, whether it’s the ant you inadvertently flatten on your way out the door or your boss. Oh, you wouldn’t really hurt your boss, of course. Not physically. Not intentionally. But the ratty, mean, low-down thoughts you — or at least I — have a dozen times a day are anti-ahimsa, too. Negative energy counts.

Ahimsa is not the same as sit-on-your-ass passivity. When supreme love guides everything you do, it is actually the ultimate power. At least that’s the theory. Perfect ahimsa is not possible because we’re not made perfect. No sense going around trying to act more ahimsa than thou. All we can do is practice ahimsa with humility and strive to get it more right than wrong most days.

How does it feel to come at the world from a loving place? Relaxing. Your shoulders are down, your face relaxed; your chest — and heart — feel open. You can let the world in and your love out. It feels like chai tastes — warm with spice, sweet, and creamy. It feels pleasantly evolved.

If you’re having a crappy day, you might want a cup of chai to help you get there. When you’re feeling more loving, you have more love to give.

Also known as masala tea, this Indian blend of black tea and sweet seasonings boosts serenity, circulation, and good spirits. In Indian restaurants, it’s usually served with steamed milk, like a latte. A version of chai may be served in your favorite café or coffee shop, often with a whole lot of added sugar. I make it unsweetened and with almond milk, which complements the spices and has a richer mouth feel than soy. But use vanilla soy if you prefer, and sweeten as you wish. Think of chai as eggnog without the egg and booze but with all the spice and happy-making qualities intact. Unlike eggnog, it’s served hot, all the more warming and welcoming in winter.

Ahimsa Chai

Serves 4 to 6

1 smallish lump of fresh ginger, minced

½ teaspoon cardamom seeds

1 cinnamon stick

4 whole cloves

½ teaspoon anise seeds

A few peppercorns

4 cups water

A full infuser of loose black tea or 4 black tea bags (may be decaffeinated)

1 cup almond milk or vanilla soy milk

Drop the ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, anise, and peppercorns into a medium saucepan. Add the water and bring to a boil
over high heat. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes. Uncover the saucepan and drop in the tea infuser. Re-cover the saucepan and simmer, letting the tea steep, for about 5 minutes.

In a small saucepan, heat the almond milk over medium-high heat, until it just reaches a boil. Turn off the heat.

Strain the tea into mugs or teacups, adding as much steamed almond milk as desired.

I do not automatically bound out of bed each morning feeling all full of ahimsa. Being plant based at least offers a leg up. If a creature gave its life for your dinner, that not-ahimsa vibe is going to catch up to you sometime. Going meatless has long been an integral part of Hindu practice. The Vedic text
the Manusmriti
or
The Laws of Manu,
written sometime around 200 ce, argues the ethics of eating meat back and forth, then concludes, “You can never get meat without violence to creatures with the breath of life, and the killing of creatures with the breath of life does not get you to heaven; therefore you should not eat meat.”

If the name of the text is almost impossible for a Westerner to pronounce, the message is clear — a meatless diet promotes ahimsa. It may even get you into heaven. Meanwhile, here on earth, it encourages us to feel compassion toward everything with the breath of life. That means all animals — including ourselves and each other. Being meatless is healthful and holistic, leads to a better integrated you, and racks up karmic goodness, too. At the very least, it means we’re not making things worse. And it’s anything but bland.

A meatless diet may be more than you’re ready to bite off, metaphorically speaking. Try doing it for one meal. For one day. See where it takes you on life’s journey.

Veggie Bhaji

Celebrate Diwali — or any day — with this vegetable bhaji. It’s quick to make and fireworks-bright, with just a bit of jalapeño providing a small, pleasant explosion in the mouth. With a food processor fitted with the shredding disk, it’s a breeze to make. Otherwise, seize your favorite chef’s knife and slice the vegetables finely. It will go quickly. Think of the light. Purple cabbage adds eye appeal, fancier cabbage like napa or savoy is more tender and cooks quickly — the variety you use is your call.

Serve with brown basmati rice, or scoop up with naan, roti, or another flatbread (see Flatbread from a Starter,
page 214
).

Serves 4 to 6

3 tablespoons canola or coconut oil

1 tablespoon black mustard seeds

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 tablespoon unsweetened dried coconut (optional but very nice)

1 onion

½ head of purple, napa, or savoy cabbage

3 carrots

1 red bell pepper, sliced into skinny strips

1 jalapeño chili, minced

Juice of 1 lemon

1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped

Sea salt

Shred the onion, cabbage, and carrots.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over high heat. Add the mustard
seeds. Cover with a lid and cook until the mustard seeds pop, about 1 minute. Uncover the skillet, reduce the heat to medium, and add the cumin, turmeric, and coconut (if using). Cook, stirring often, until the spices start to toast and the mixture becomes fragrant, about 1 minute.

Add the confetti of vegetables to the skillet and stir together over medium heat. Add the sliced red pepper and minced jalapeño to the skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about 10 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and cilantro. Season with sea salt.