Feeding the Hungry Ghost (4 page)

You know best what kind of metaphoric soil you need, where you feel your happiest, truest self, where your own strength is
coaxed forth, where you can set down strong roots and lift your face to the sun.

Or maybe you don’t know. Maybe you’ve been so pelted with misery seeds, you barely know what you look like, let alone what you need. They say suffering is wonderfully character building. I say you’ve got plenty of character as it is. I say whatever’s giving you grief should just get out of your way and get out of town. Until it does, though, you’re stuck. You’re going through hell, it’s taking every ounce of your strength, and you can’t quite see how you’re ever going to return to that blissful, faraway place called normal.

Start by nurturing yourself. A basic way to give yourself the care you need is to pay attention to what you eat and to make healthier choices for all concerned — for you, for the planet.

Seeds are an easy place to begin. While vegetables still have their detractors (why?
why?),
anyone can chomp on a handful of seeds. If you’re struggling, they’ll support you nutritionally and offer a sprinkle of badly needed cheer. If you’re happy, they’ll only make you happier. They offer a crunch that bespeaks indulgence, but with it come the phytonutrients and fats our bodies hunger for, the kind that give us a nice inner glow, no microdermabrasion required.

Some seeds we snarf — sunflower seeds, pepitas (pumpkin seeds).

Some seeds we use to impart deep flavor in cooking — cumin, cardamom, mustard, coriander, fennel, to name a few of my favorites.

Some we eat without even realizing what they are. All your legumes, from teensy red lentils to massive gigantes are, botanically speaking, seeds.

And some we mean to get around to trying, because we hear
how tremendous they are for our health, yet we’re daunted by them — flax, chia, and hemp come to mind.

Well, honey, your time has come. Whether you’re flourishing or faltering, you need more of these teensy guys in your life. Flax rules when it comes to omega-3s, those excellent fatty acids. Chia seeds are right up there in the omega-3 department, but they also have a fantastic amount of fiber and antioxidants. Ancient Aztec warriors thrived on them, and they were pretty tough guys. Hemp seeds, tiniest of all, offer more protein per ounce than any animal protein.

Use them individually or mixed together in a seedy cocktail as a topping for casseroles and roasted vegetables. We love texture. Add them to grain dishes, both sweet and savory — oatmeal isn’t oatmeal for me without a sprinkling of seeds. And chia and flax make excellent egg substitutes in baking. Mixing the seeds with a little water forms a bonding agent. Not only do you get the body-supporting benefit of the seeds; you get the nice cohesive quality of eggs without the cholesterol and without ruffling a single chicken feather.

SEED CAKE

I believe in backing up talk with something worth eating. So when I was thinking what kind of seedy recipe to use here, I thought of cake — seed cake, simple but soulful and long beloved in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Its origins date back as far as the Middle Ages, and back in the day, the seed in question tended to be caraway, making for a treat that walked the line between sweet and savory. Good as far as it goes, but trending toward heavy, and certainly heavy in vegan-unfriendly ingredients like butter, milk, and eggs.

Vegan baking, like life, is about balance and compromise.
Rather than weird you out with a bunch of arcane ingredients you’ll have to shop for, I’ve swapped the traditional dairy and eggs for other items that are whole and plant based and fairly get-table. I’ve also swapped caraway seeds for anise. Like caraway, anise is excellent for digestion but has a gentler flavor. It’s mildly licorice-y and is mellow in the mouth. It joins a symphony of other seeds for a moist cake of haunting fragrance and flavor.

Seed Cake

Serve as dessert or as an anytime restorative with coffee or tea.

Serves 8 or so

1 cup unsweetened soy or hemp milk

2 tablespoons ground flaxseeds (also known as flax meal)

2 tablespoons ground chia seeds

2 teaspoons anise seeds

1½ cups whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

¾ cup evaporated cane sugar
*

cup hemp, flax, or canola oil, plus more for the pan

½ cup unsweetened applesauce

cup raisins

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly oil an 8-inch round cake pan or a 9-x-5-inch loaf pan.

In a small bowl, combine the soy milk, flaxseeds, chia seeds, and anise seeds. Stir gently to combine and let sit while you assemble the other ingredients.

In a large bowl, sift together the whole wheat flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Add the lemon zest.

In another large bowl, stir together the evaporated cane sugar, hemp oil, applesauce, and lemon juice. Add to the flour mixture, along with the soy milk mixture, which, thanks to the seeds, will have thickened madly. Stir together, then fold in the raisins.

Pour into the prepared baking pan. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake is golden and puffed, and a tester inserted in the center comes away crumb-free and clean. You can also give it a gentle poke with a finger; it should spring back when baked through.

Remove from the oven and let cool. Wrapped well and refrigerated, the cake keeps for several days.

BIRTH
and
REBIRTH

If other species are aware of seasons of the year and hours of the day, they don’t make a big deal about it. We humans, on the other hand, have arranged our lives around the calendar and the clock, all culminating at midnight, December 31, when all the days and nights of one year end and a new year begins. If that doesn’t mark us as an interesting species, there’s the fact that we observe this big do-over by drinking ourselves silly and kissing anything that moves.

When we wake up the next day, the world is hushed, quiet, curled in on itself, because after all, the planet hasn’t partied like
a fiend. It’s feeling fine and doing what it always does — what any sane life form does — in the depth of winter: it rests, gathers strength, and waits for spring.

Not us, though. The New Year’s Eve hangovers barely wear off before we’re pacing our cages, eager to get back to the normal rhythm of our lives. And yet, we feel a heightened awareness and expectation. It’s a new year! Everything feels new and fresh, and this is wonderful. Hope and the glimmering of possibility keep us light. Guilt and remorse weigh us down.

And yet guilt and remorse sell. We’re attacked by ads shaming and shouting at us to lose all our holiday weight, join a gym, get six-pack abs. I’ve got nothing against a six-pack, but I hate all those “new you” things because I’m not so bad and you’re lovely the way you are. And I hate cleansing diets, especially those sold in kits comprising little more than a bottle and a powdered, unpalatable mix of mystery ingredients.

A certain detox or dietary rethink is appropriate after the binging Bermuda Triangle of holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve). However, I dislike being shouted at. The new year deserves to be entered gradually and gently, rather than dived into headlong, because the shock alone could kill you. Going from a month of party foods to a diet solely composed of lemon and water may help you pee off a few pounds, but it’s nothing you can stick to, especially when it’s bitter and gray outside. It exacts a toll on your body and soul. It makes you cranky and weak.

Winter tends to make me cranky, anyway. Yes, even in Miami. On a bad day, when the wind bites through my pathetic idea of a warm jacket, the one that makes me look like a homeless person with no fashion sense, when I’m frazzled by deadlines and deadbeats, the new year reveals itself to be pretty much like last year, with all the baggage, all the stress, but without December’s
sparklies and parties, plus a massive holiday credit card bill to pay off. It’s fine for the tourists to go around in their wifebeaters and shorts, flip-flops and sunburns; but it is winter in my soul, and it’s hard to feel the benevolent force in, well, just about anything.

This is a good time to go back to bed. Until April. A normal person would sleep. I bury myself in blankets, dutifully close my eyes. They pop open. I’m so rigid with tension, I all but levitate. My brain will not shut up. “So, Ellen,” it says in that snarky tone it gets when I’m vulnerable. “What happened to your big plans for this shiny new year? You know, achieving world peace, solving global food scarcity. Where are you with those? From here, it looks like you’re just lying there. Wasting time.”

I have made absurd, unattainable New Year’s resolutions. And they only wind up frustrating me and making me feel like a loser. So for quite a few years now, I’ve resolved to embrace chaos. Because it’s coming at us whether we like it or not. I’m still not great at it but have grown more comfortable with the concept; there are things in the world beyond my personal control — oil spills, war, hunger, illness, stuff like that. I hate that I can’t fix these things, but I am learning to be — oh, who am I kidding? I’ll always worry. I don’t like to worry, but I’m good at it. However, because I’m learning to embrace chaos, I’m okay with my own worry. I can even let some of it go. A little. Then I worry some more.

I envy people who take comfort in faith — the defined, institutional kind — that God will provide, or if something really wretched happens, it’s okay because it’s God’s will, or — inshallah — that it will happen as Allah wishes. These are especially the times I’d like to ask God, Allah, or whoever’s in charge, just what the hell he’s after.

I’m not entirely sure I believe in God. I understand he/she
believes in me, which I find most cheering. I think if there is a God, it’s bighearted despite our quirks and craziness, able to focus on the big picture, see what we’re doing and basically shrug and say, “Oy, what can you do?” I was raised Jewish, but Reform. Really Reform. My husband, Benjamin, thinks my family’s so Reform, we deserve another category — Mellow. Benjamin was raised Lutheran, and in his childhood did refined things I associate with WASP-dom. He attended cotillion. His family ate Jell-O salads. They belonged to a yacht club.

But in both his case and mine, the formal religion part just didn’t take. What resonates with Benjamin about Judaism is latkes. At every Jewish holiday, he asks, “Is this the potato pancake one?” What resonates with me is the more secular part of Judaism, the concept of
tikkun olam,
healing the world, the social responsibility part.

Am I Jewish? According to liturgy, yes, but among the list of modifiers I’d choose,
vegan
and
female
would come well before it. Also
nervous.

In each new year, I try, again, to come to terms with human frailty, mine, yours, big, small. When I come splat against yet another of my human limitations, I have an ungodly response. I get pissed.

Good karma takes way too long for me, but the karma of being pissed bites me right back in the ass every time. So I begin again. I need definite — and positive — intention. I can’t just lie in bed and hope war will end. I need to take action.