Feeding the Hungry Ghost (3 page)

You deserve nourishment — nourishment from the food you eat, of course, but also from connection, balance, radiant good health, and the fun that seems to be happening at a party to which you were not invited. Hate that.

All the books and articles about weight loss and feeling better are great as far as they go. But to me, that’s not far enough. Our relationship with food goes beyond a single meal or even a meal plan. Where food comes from, how it binds us to the planet and to each other, and how it makes us feel, matter more than what’s on the plate. The things we hunger for — comfort, unconditional love, connection, meaning — aren’t on the usual menu.

I think feeding that deeper hunger and serving the world start with what you serve for dinner. It means thinking beyond what’s on your plate. It means seeing food as something that strokes the soul as it stokes the body, food as connection to and communion with the earth and each other. That’s asking a lot of dinner. Get used to it. Asking a lot is what I do.

In elementary school, I was the annoying kid in class, arm raised, always asking why:

Why do people smoke/wage war/do drugs/have unprotected sex if we know it’s bad for us?

Why did we take America from the Indians when they were here first?

Why is Jenny Slater in the bathroom crying?

I still ask a lot of questions, especially the big, cosmic kind. I’m convinced our food holds the answers. I’m
Huffington Post’s
Meatless Monday blogger and a syndicated columnist, the Edgy Veggie. I’m plant based by passion and profession; but don’t get weirded out by this detail, please. Think of me as the vegan who’s inviting everyone to the table.

I’m not a self-styled guru, a nutritional wonk, a New Ager, an earth mother, a pedant, a product peddler, or a proselytizer. I’m a fourth-generation Floridian who loves broccoli, and loves being vegan but isn’t hard-assed about it. I have sex with nonvegans — at least one, my husband, Benjamin, an amazingly patient man. Married to me, he would have to be. We have a mixed marriage. I am vegan to the max; he is an exuberant omnivore. We work it out. Call it crazy love. We have no history of interesting addictions, trauma, arrests, or experiences in rehab. We’re not devoutly anything, but we’re well and living in Miami.

Miami is not exactly a bastion of the faithful, which explains some of our collective quirks. It is many faiths and a lot of secular — and a little crazy-from-the-heat nuttiness. Miami sits at the bottom tip of Florida, and Florida is at the bottom tip of the United States. It has a history of attracting people who’ve tanked out their other options and have run away as far as they can. Go much farther south and you hit water.

Florida’s best-known Catholic priest made tabloid headlines a few years back by disporting himself on the beach with a woman.
The media had a feeding frenzy. Sinner! Hypocrite! Bad guy! The Catholic Church was not too happy, either. I was not one of his parishioners, but I thought, hey, given the recent filth uncovered in the church, a priest and an age-appropriate woman in love does not seem the worst thing in the world. Amid the media shouting, the priest reminded us there’s a deeper, more complicated story, the one that comes of being human. That means we’re all prone to messing up.
“God’s not all that interested
in you falling down,” he said. “God is interested in you getting up again.”

This is a divine spirit I understand, someone I’d love to have over for dinner. I just can’t wrap my brain around a divine spirit who’s vengeful and pissed. Not that we don’t try God’s patience forty times before breakfast. Funny, every time I start to write about faith, I wind up writing about food.

Feeding the Hungry Ghost
takes its title from the Tao concept of restless souls still hungry, still seeking, even beyond the grave. In ancient Buddhist scrolls, hungry ghosts are edgy, depicted as bug-eyed, big-bellied, and fierce. Wouldn’t you be if you’d been staggering around for centuries without getting what you need? Hungry ghosts are assuaged by prayer and food. The same things do the trick for hungry mortals, too. We are hungry for so much more than food. But you know, like the guy at my talk, we’d all be glad to have something good to eat, too, and not have to struggle.

Even as we tweet endlessly about mindful eating, we have grown more disconnected from our food. Frankly, mindful eating sounds like a chore. But what if it felt like hanging out with a friend, one who feeds you terrific things, maybe even one who pops a bit of moist, velvety, and winningly dark chocolate cake in your mouth and then explains that hand-feeding is an Ethiopian custom of friendship and kinship known as
gursha.
That’s what I want
Feeding the Hungry Ghost
to be.

To discuss food without discussing our relationship to it, be it ties to a recipe, to the culture, place, or time it comes from, or even to the pleasure of food itself, is to miss the bigger picture. Saffron, tarragon, cardamom, and cumin make food taste better. Culture, connection, and faith do the same thing for our lives. They make it delicious. They feed us.

I’m not here to enroll you in the Hungry Ghost Boot Camp. I won’t attend a boot camp, let alone run one. I am more inclined to want to learn when not being shouted at or forced to wear unattractive footgear. And I am not into lies. You know, Change Your Life and Save the Planet in Five Steps and that whole genre. Because change takes a few steps more than five, and the hunger that needs feeding is something profound. So honor it. Honor yourself. I do. That’s why I don’t prescribe steps (or follow them). I prefer to be coaxed, gently nudged.

You have to eat every day, anyway, so you might as well fall in love with the right stuff. Why is our relationship with food important? For the same reason being alive is important. Because it is. Because you’re here, so you might as well go for the whole delicious, authentic experience. Perhaps you subscribe to Thomas Hobbes’s belief that life is nasty, brutish, and short. Honey, I’ve had days where I’d find it hard to disagree. But the thing is, it doesn’t all suck. There’s you, right? And you’re not so bad.

And since you’re here, alive and kicking, you might as well feel good. My wonderful friend is one of over a hundred million Americans who, despite their wonderfulness, have stratospheric cholesterol levels. Being wonderful does not make you exempt from the troubles of life. The trick is having the resources to handle them. It means nourishing every bit of yourself, soulfully and emotionally as well as nutritionally. I’ll coax and gently nudge you along the path and cheer you on, every step of the way.

Can you do it? Hell, yeah. It’s not only possible — it’s energizing and delectable. We’re not talking diet; we’re talking about feeding our deepest hunger, for a more vital self, for more loving and meaningful connections, for a nourished and nourishing world, and yes, for fabulous food. That’s what to eat for dinner. It’s all interconnected. And it all adds up.

I’ve divided
Feeding the Hungry Ghost
into four chapters to help corral all this faith/food talk:

1.   The Seed (for January, February, and March)

2.   The Flowering (for April, May, and June)

3.   The Harvest (for July, August, and September)

4.   The Compost (for October, November, and December)

The earth has its rhythms, times of growth and bounty, of quiescence and regeneration. We call them seasons. Seasons are the way the world speaks to us. It even tells us what to eat, with trees providing juicy fruit to cool and hydrate us in summer, when it’s hot; and dense, durable root vegetables grown from deep within the earth to sustain and nourish us in winter, when it’s cold.

You have your own seasons, too. We all do — the darker days, when life reveals itself in all its sharp edges, and bright days of delicious joys. The calendar offers a way to start the conversation, but the main topic is you. And what to eat for dinner. We’re all hungry. So let’s begin.

a
NOTE
on the
RECIPES

Life gives us many reasons to stress. Making dinner shouldn’t add to them. I think of a recipe as a GPS — it’s the directions to get you where you want to go, the end result being something that makes you smile and sigh as you eat and gives you the sense the world is looking out for you. At the very least, a recipe should enable you to create the fixings for a meal that tastes great and isn’t a headache to make.

When a recipe here calls for a carrot or an onion, I mean any carrot or onion you can get your hands on without a struggle. If it’s local, farmers’-market fresh, and organic, terrific. If it’s slightly past its prime and you can’t remember how it wound up in your kitchen in the first place, I’m delighted to give you a way to use it up. Unless otherwise indicated in a recipe, I’m not picky about the carrot’s size, color, variety, or provenance. I leave that up to you. Likewise for the size of chopped bits. I’m attracted to crunch, texture. I like to see the components that go into my meal. Others prefer food finely chopped, diced, minced, or mirepoixed until their food achieves a sort of oneness. Go with what you like.

Say a particular recipe in this book really appeals to you. You look at the list of ingredients, and they’re all among your pet delights. Except you’re missing one item. So what are you going to do? It’s the end of another workday, and you’re already out of your elegant if constraining office wear and into your comfy wouldn’t-be-caught-dead-going-out-in-public wear. Do not go food shopping on my account — go swapping. Feel free to substitute ingredients. Use what you have. Quinoa or another whole grain can pinch-hit for bulgur; scallions can stand in for an onion. It may not be as written, but it will still be fine. All will be well, you’ll have prepared a meal you can cozy up to and enjoy, and you’ll have no tears to dry.

Sometimes while you’re following a recipe on the road to dinner, you find side paths, back roads that beckon and lead you to new places. Feel free to try a different vegetable, another herb. Take the road less traveled by, as Robert Frost put it. Go, explore. Strike out on your own. The recipe will work fine your way, my way, any way. Honor yourself and your own taste. Trust your gut.

I’m serious about cooking, about its adding pleasure, meaning, and connection to our lives. I am relaxed in my approach to it and hope you will be, too.

The recipes in this book aren’t processed; they’re primal. They embrace all cultures and are made from real food from the earth, food that goes back centuries. These dishes connect us with the past, with each other. And since many involve whole grains and beans, they’re high in protein and fiber, and low in cash outlay — always a plus. Making and eating these dishes won’t make you see God, but they may return you to the ability to see and hear your own not insignificant spirit. And that alone could change the world. Now go. Cook. Eat.

Seeds are where it all begins.
They promise the start of things. They’re superconcentrated sources of energy. I look at everything growing in my backyard, from my newly sprouted purslane to the ten-foot firebush exploding with firecracker-red flowers, favorite of zebra longwing butterflies and hummingbirds, to our thirty-foot live oak, which stretches its lanky, leafy limbs out to provide shelter and canopy. They all began as seeds — everyday magic.

Nature makes that kind of magic easy. You drop a seed in the dirt, cover it with soil, give it some water, leave the sun and the seed to make friends with each other, and honey, you’re in business.

But then there’s the fine print. Firebush needs direct sun and can handle shallow, sandy South Florida soil. It’s a tough native. Purslane is supposed to be a weed and thus thrive like a weed, but mine’s anemic, timid, probably suffering from sunstroke. Even weeds have their needs, and purslane prefers filtered sunlight. A seed only fulfills its superhero potential if it gets proper nurturing.

Then there are your more metaphoric seeds (and I do love a metaphor), the new beginnings life offers you — the joy of a new job, a new love, a new home, a new baby, a new year. Such new beginnings endow you with all the energy of a seed. You’re awakening, feeling your way, tentatively reaching your roots into the soil. These kinds of seeds are times of hope; but they’re always times of change, and change is tough.

Here’s what’s even tougher — you don’t always get to choose a new beginning. Losing your job or breaking up with your partner wouldn’t make anyone’s list of top ten fave life events, but suddenly, there you are, in it up to your adenoids. That seed generates an energy of its own — like a tornado, it rips up your life and knocks you on your ass. It takes a herculean effort to roll out of bed in the morning. Where’s the joy in that, ace?

And while it seems to be raining seeds around you, both the happy kind and the seeds you wouldn’t even wish on your ex, think of yourself as a seed, too — a really gorgeous, spectacular, one-of-a-kind seed. But your gorgeousness can’t come into full flowering unless you, too, get the nurturing you need.

For me, it means rooting myself in my community, being part of the initiatives that bring real food and real people together. Sometimes, I confess, I need to force myself to attend this meeting, that event. But I’m almost always better for it. The people I meet inspire me and energize me and take me in directions I didn’t know I wanted to go. You’re growing oyster mushrooms? Wow, how do you do that? How can
I
do that? You’re teaching children to cook? Can I volunteer? I’m lucky to be nourished by my native soil.