In defense of the most important meal

I'm one of those people you love to hate. Why? ... I'm a morning person.

I know some of my friends share my sentiments, but I absolutely love waking up to realize that I've been blessed with another beautiful day. Sure, sometimes there are days when I know there is a lot coming down the pike - tests, papers, meetings - but I can't help but think of all of the possibilities that exist with the dawn of each new day.

Maybe the most fun part about waking up - and I hope most will agree with this obsession - is that mornings equal breakfast! Just think of all the amazing breakfast foods: oatmeal, pancakes, fruit and yogurt, fresh orange juice, coffee, scones, omelets ... I could go on for a very long time (drooling the entire way). From this short list that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface when it comes to breakfast related meals, it's easy to see why God put this meal at the beginning of our day - to give us something exciting to think about as soon as we step out of bed.

A wonderful quality about breakfast is that it makes people happy. Have you ever seen a child cry at the sight of a Belgian waffle topped with succulent red strawberries atop a pillow of fluffy whipped cream? Have you ever heard a man groan when he sits down to eat a hot cinnamon roll dressed in a silky-smooth coat of icing? Honestly, what I'm describing right now is downright food porn!

Unlike actual porn, eating breakfast is something that you never have to hide or be ashamed of. In fact, I think I would be quite delighted to eat breakfast foods for almost every lunch and dinner. Tonight was one such example. In the spirit of communion and in support of the Colts football game against the Broncos, my church parents and I, along with a group of their friends, decided to make breakfast for dinner. Each of us made a favorite breakfast treat to bring to our gathering. Janene made a french toast casserole. Denny and Kim made an omelet with ground turkey, spinach and mushrooms. Jenni, our hostess, made oatmeal and chocolate biscuits. I made fruit and yogurt parfaits. As you can tell, we had a smorgasbord of options. As we gathered to pray before serving ourselves, I could tell that everyone was eager to heap our plates with a taste of each breakfast masterpiece.

In a nutshell, breakfast doesn't have to be complicated. Starting off your day with eating breakfast is a way of showing respect to your body. If you want to be a person who is passionate, who serves others (and yourself), you have to put fuel on the fire from the moment you rise out of bed; and that, my friend, is done by the simple act of eating breakfast.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe a day later this week, I challenge you to breakfast... or rather, to break-slow, to break for your health, to break for reflection, to break for the start of a new day full of limitless possibility.

A taste of my roots

I wouldn't naturally position folk music in a food-related self discovery, but after feeling the sensations brought on by the band Crooked Still, I would say their lyrical sound melted into the essence of my family table image.

On Saturday night, I stood in front of the Lifecycle stage at Bloomington's Lotus World Music & Art Festival, my ears captured by the plinky tune of the banjo and the undulating sounds coming from the cello. When lead singer Aoife O'Donovan began to sing, her mellow yet passionate voice took me on a journey. Guided by the dancing rhythms that sailed from the fiddle, the music began to unlock part of my heart and open me to a longing I never knew I had. My head nodded and my hips swung side to side as a smile crept across my face and stayed for the rest of the evening. I closed me eyes and was instantly transported to the heartland.

While the heartland conjures images of the rural Midwest, (where I happen to be going to school) I think that it is a place where the boundaries of nature and man meet and live in equanimity. The heartland I was experiencing, elicited by the bluegrass swing, was a place where I could see my family - my Dad tossing rocks into the cold and glassy creek; my grandfather looking his wife in the eyes as they sat under the stars at night; my great grandfather treading through the forests of Nicaragua to help cure a dying man. This land, this space, while evolving, is a place where I imagine my family growing, laughing, giving, loving. My heartland is enveloped in the roots of my past, which extend to generations of men and women whom I have never met but feel embraced each other with an unconditional love.

It has been almost eight years since I last saw my mother, more than eight years since I can remember my parents showing their love in a romantic way, eight years since I have been able to introduce my parents to my friends. It's now over two years since I last kissed my dad and wished him a good day at work, two years since I tossed the football with him in the backyard, two years since we stayed up late talking about our dreams. These days I find that I am so hungry to have parents, to reach out to them, to feel, really feel their love by just their mere presence.

It is this hunger that grew within me as I stood before the stage listening to Crooked Still. Their music seemed to be luring me into my past, to untangle my roots and acknowledge a past that sometimes seems less painful if I just forgot it was even there. The sounds churned within me a desire to reach inside my family's ancestry and find the stories of the people I've descended from.

As I sit down at the table each night for dinner, it is this same heartland that I feel a longing to revive - to create a presence where I feel a love and warmth, where I feel apart of a family. While my family might not have come from a people who played the banjo or danced around the magical sounds of the fiddle, I couldn't help but feel that this music was a sound from my loved ones, whispering to me that there is a "hole in the middle", a hunger that can only be filled through the magic of communion.

My Dinner Table

Communion: an act or instance of sharing.

When I think of my Dad, one of the first things that comes to mind was his love of cooking and having dinner parties. Every night, I was always eager to see what he had roasting in the over or sauteing on the stove. The house would fill with the clatter of pots and pans and scents of onion and garlic would guide my grumbling stomach downstairs towards the table.

Our table was long and made from dark wood that was textured as if someone had taken a mallet and whacked it hundreds of times. Running my hands over its surface, it felt as if it had been around for centuries ... I'm sure that's what World Market was thinking when they manufactured it - some young girl hoping that her relatives in Scotland had sat around its edges every night, gobbling down their turkey and sipping ale ... well, that's a vision I am happy to keep.

This table was the scene of countless meals: my Dad and I slicing into a tender pork chop topped with grilled onions and a tangy lime dressing; me and my high school friends diving into bowls of pasta salad and chili that we made for a potluck; the extra-spicy, ignite your tongue on fire jambalaya that my Dad made with triple the spices ... us flinging towels to our guests to blot the sweat off their foreheads. But most importantly, this table is where my Dad and I shared our daily happenings, our embarrassing stories, plans for the weekend, travel dreams, what brought us joy, what was hurting us - how our actions hurt each other.

Regardless of the night, our family table was always a place of communion. There was no grab-and-go frozen dinner, no taking the food to our own rooms, no watching TV. Dinner time was special. The food, while usually delicious, was arbitrary. The conversation, the company, the relationships that were cultivated ... that was everything.

Every time I see a kitchen or dining room table, I always wonder how the empty space will transform that coming evening. Will it remain empty? Will it be buzzing with kids stuffing their face with mac and cheese, speaking with mouths full asking "what's for dessert?" Will it be shared by a husband and wife? Will it be a space of learning and sharing? Will it be a table for one?

Right now, my family table morphs from each day to the next. Yes, there is the table I eat most of my meals at in the condo I'm staying in at college ... but that doesn't feel like my family table. Right now, my family table sits in the house of Tom and Alma, a couple who lives out by the lake I used to row on every morning at 6 a.m.; it sits in my God parents' house in Florida on the island of Longboat Key; it sits in Ft. Smith, Arkansas at my aunt and uncle's house that overlooks the Arkansas River. In truth, my family table is wherever I create and share a meal with those I love and care for. While I do miss that sense of having one table that I can truly call my family table, I can't help but feel blessed that I have family tables scattered throughout Bloomington, Portland and all over the country.

Communion and the family table - two words that will forever be connected in my mind. A shared experience and a place where it can manifest. I don't believe there is any place more sacred.

Paella Perfecta!

The Paella Project - an idea 3 years in the making

After a conversation in Spanish V three years ago, the dream of having a paella dinner finally came to fruition. With an open mind and little expectations, we came armed with fresh vegetables and spices, and hoped the sounds of Rodrigo and Gabriella would lure out our Spanish flare.

At first, the directions seemed intimidating ... how on earth do you peel a tomato with massacring it? Blanch green beans ... do they mean bleach? After a little help from ehow.com, we quickly learned that both techniques were legitimate culinary processes and that chefs conquered these tasks in their sleep - but the true test ... could three 20-year-olds take on the challenge? With a ladle we surged tomatoes into a pot of boiling water and then with ninja like precision, plopped each tomato into a bowl of ice water. With skeptical thoughts, we took hold of the tomatoes, wondering if we would be able to peel them ... and low and behold, the tomatoes undressed themselves like a hooker in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Blanching the green beans, rather similar to the tomato peeling, proved to be an even easier task. From the boiling water to the ice water, we soon began to boast that blanching was our new favorite cooking technique and one that we preformed rather well.

The rest of the steps were interspersed with laughter and conversation until we read that once all ingredients were combined, there was to be no stirring of the paella until it was ready to be served. The statement caused us to reel in shock and horror ... not stir the paella ... wouldn't the poor ingredients need some help in intermingling, after all, it is such a large pan and how could the rice not need a little assistance traveling through the broth to meet their fellow comrades? Despite our nerves, we decided that we must attempt to keep our hands off the paella until it was time to eat.

Well, our need to check on the progress of our prize creation got the best of us - that's right, we did the paella "no-no". We stirred. But, after the 45 minutes it took to absorb all of the delicious broth, it still looked and smelled like paella... yet until it reached our lips, we were unsure of our culinary success.

With the paella spooned into large white bowls, we sat down at the candle lit table and squeezed lemon wedges over our steaming cuisine. With forks in hand, we closed our eyes and sampled our creation.

The cayenne pepper tingled our taste buds - the green beans crunched between our teeth - the artichoke hearts glided across our tongues and the tomatoes burst flavorful juices amidst a mouthful of saffron infused rice and vegetables. After three years of waiting, this, we soon realized, was heaven.

The evening progressed with "ohhs" and "ahhs" until we licked our bowls clean. The meal, far surpassing our expectations, is soon to become our newest tradition. I can only imagine that when any one of us peels a tomato, blanches green beans or hesitates to stir the simmering paella, we will think back to our first experience and remember that sweet taste of success, our Spanish paella.

- Taylor Smith 7.3.2010

Made with Love During Times of Sorrow

German Pancake ~ Karen Smith

Ingredients:

3 eggs

¾ cup milk

¾ cup flour

½ tsp salt

1 ½ T butter

½ + tsp vanilla (for the adventurous, add as much as you want!)

Mix ingredients and pour into a cast iron skillet. Place in oven at 450ºF and bake for 15 min. Turn the oven down to 350ºF and bake for 10 min.

Christmastime recalls memories of vibrant red poinsettias, the scent of sweet, green pine, and the sounds of countless Christmas CDs playing continuously from Thanksgiving until December 25^th. Yet the memory that brings the most warmth to my heart is the thought of my Mom’s famous German Pancake, which she made every Christmas Eve morning. The word pancake may conjure images of a plump stack of flat, doughy circles, drenched in sticky syrup, but after one bite of my Mom’s German pancakes, the idea of eating a pancake is forever a magical experience. Just the sight of a golden cradle of hot fluffy pastry embracing the cast iron pan instantly causes the glands to salivate. While Christmas day may have been the most exciting event in terms of material gain, Christmas Eve morning marked the highlight of my year’s culinary delights.

After my Mom passed away from ovarian cancer in the fall of 2003, looking at December 24^th on my calendar became a hard thought to bear. My Dad convinced me that together, we could make Christmas seem as normal as possible by creating our special Christmas Eve breakfast. I wanted to place my complete confidence in my Dad’s hopeful suggestion, but the thought of making the German pancake without my Mom seemed sacrilegious. As we whipped the ingredients in the same vessels my Mom used year after year, I began to think that Christmas was going to taste just as sweet as it always had. We placed the mixture in the oven and did the only thing we could do … wait. Those 25 minutes were some of the longest minutes of my life, and when we pulled our creation out of the oven, the seconds that followed made my heart sink. In the bottom of the cast iron pan was nothing I had ever seen before – a stout lump of white dough that looked nothing like the flaky, light pancakes my Mom had made. My Dad and I looked at each other with disgust written all over our faces. The only explanation we could provide to the great flop of our German Pancake was that it was made without the loving hands of my Mother; the mixture, void of her generous dousing of vanilla and brisk whisking strokes, lay deflated, uninspired inside the once proud cast iron pan. When following a recipe, it’s not always about using the right ingredients and following instructions to a tee, but more importantly, it is about the love and joy that is put into the dish that truly makes it come to life.

Similarly, for Eduardo Machado, in his memoir Tastes Like Cuba, as he transitions from the lavish culinary traditions from his childhood in Cuba to new gastronomical finds in America, he discovers that recreating the meals of his youth is not simply a matter of supplying a laundry list of ingredients. Although it becomes nearly impossible for his mother to acquire the same ingredients in American that she used in Cuba, it seems that any attempt at trying to transcend their feelings of exile in America come short as her mock Cuban concoctions fall flat, serving as bitter reminders to the reality of their circumstances. After his mother’s efforts to make a typical Cuban meal of fried steaks, Machado reveals an honest, childlike reflection of the results: “Frying the steaks was disastrous […] The rice was not high quality. The split peas were not black beans. But worst of all, the steaks were tough and the chunky bready was greasy. She had tried her best, but it was not close enough, and for her that was the same thing as a failure,” (107). Machado later goes on to realize that he “had not missed Cuba [but] missed the food for sure,” (120). From these realizations, the audience can gather that Machado holds on to the remnants of his Cuban nationality through his relationship with Cuban food. His connection with the meals of his youth in Cuba is one made from memories of comfort and satisfaction. His mother’s inability to reproduce these same feelings through the familiar recipes she used in Cuba suggest that in order to create a meal, it requires more than just a batch of ingredients; through love and a homey environment, a meal’s true flavors bubble to the surface.

Together, Machado and I experienced a painful reminder of the loss of something very important to us through failed attempts of creating normalcy through cuisine. With these experiences in mind, it becomes apparent how one attaches national and family identity to food; a family recipe is an extension of this identity, a bit of recorded history that holds the hope of a continued growth. However, a recipe, no matter how many times it is made, can never be perfectly replicated. A recipe, while it supplies a list of the same ingredients and directions for the cook time after time, does not contain the details of who made the dish, the inherent traits and idiosyncrasies of the recipe’s originator, or he description of the environment in which it was made. Examining the creation of a recipe, or the recreation of a favorite meal, shows how great is the influence of what goes into a meal besides the physical ingredients, and how the outcome of a meal can influence the spirits of those who partake in its communion. For Machado, in his never-ending longing to recapture his Cuban youth, and for myself, trying to conjure the familiar tastes of Christmases past, we come to realize that the memories of past culinary experiences are intrinsic – the focus should not be to recreate them to a precise memory, but to enjoy their newfound taste in their own present surroundings.

Works Cited

Machado, Eduardo. Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home. New York: Gotham Books, 2007.

Finding home at Bloomington's Farmers' Market

A Taste for Trust

For nearly 35 years, the family table has had a reason to rejoice in Bloomington, Indiana. In 1975, when a group proposed to the city council a plan to organize a market to “connect backyard gardeners and small farmers with consumers” (Robinson, Hartenfeld), seeds were planted in the heart of the community that would allow for a weekly celebration of the famers’ sweat and labor, the precious nourishment from mother earth, as well as the joining of the pastoral and the ever growing college town. Experiencing the farmers’ market on a Saturday morning, one will find a world that extends Bloomington’s thriving gardening scene to local inhabitants and college students alike, creating a sense of community where trust is the foundation between the grower and consumer.

On Saturday, September 19, I became a first time visitor of the weekly community affair:

“Where is the ATM?”I keep asking, but no one seems to know the answer. Why should they know? The farmers have come in full force this sunny Saturday morning – pick-ups loaded down with piles of rough skinned potatoes, cartons of freckled apples, and bundles of bursting yellow sunflowers. It’s 10 o’clock and I already feel like I’ve missed the opening scene of Thorton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ as I stroll into the middle of the marketplace, watching customers greet their neighbors, taking the time to stop and say their hellos before quickly darting off to snag the glossy, purple eggplants that have caught their attention. These people, I think, have found their place … rather, they have transcended the boundaries of time - the 21^st century, materialistic lifestyle, and have been able to sink their teeth into the bucolic landscape that was once the epitome of a wholesome family lifestyle. Their concerns do not revolve around money, and surely not plastic credit cards. Their greatest anxiety is not my lack of an ATM, but of the tender give of a peach upon first touch, the vibrant shine of the heirloom tomatoes, or the sweet scent of an apple as it is held directly under their nose, trying to draw out the image of the countryside from which they were plucked. This, I realize, is the Midwest.

Eyeing a sign over a table crowded with red pails filled with green and cream colored winter squash, I read the words – “Heartland Family Farms”, the small inscription underneath, “no chemicals”. These last two words serve as a symbol of trust between the farmer and the customer. In a world that obsesses over disease, pesticides, and genetically modified crops, this sign, this note, this pail of squash, is a reassurance that here, the sun, rain, soil – the sweat, labor and gentle touch of the farmer’s hand, are the only things that envelop the produce filled tables. From the seed, to the ground, to the market, to your mouth, the last taste that lingers on your lips are traces of the Bloomington community – not the far off lands of Ecuador or Peru, not the underside of a price tag peeled off after a purchase at Kroger.

Pausing in front of a stand for Capriole, Inc., I become saturated in the flavors of the heartland, the essence of Bloomington. A generous sample of white, fluffy goat cheese embracing a wooden spoon slides into my mouth, causing me to stop all the thoughts that are running through my head. A taste so simple and savory, I quickly discover, cannot be found in an airtight plastic container. Who ever thought the love and care of a farmer could become a noticeable difference in the quality of fresh produce? Karen, the women dishing out samples of the delectable cheeses, touches my arm as I begin to leave, chiding me, “Sweetheart, you’re not done yet.” A smile crosses my face as she slips two more spoonfuls of cheese into my hand. Meanwhile, the man next to me experiences the same magnanimous gesture. Instantly, he buys the first two cheeses that he samples; yet Karen makes sure no hasty decision be made as she describes in detail the specific traits of each cheese – which one is best when served with braised beef, a slice of toasted French baguette, or a glass of chilled sauvignon blanc. Together, they are collaborators in some elaborate scheme as they envision the presentation of his findings at the family table that evening – a table that will soon be surrounded with the shrill sounds of a child’s laughter, the warm whisper of a mother’s loving advice, and the beaming smile of this proud father who has placed before his kin a piece of the community, a trusting relationship harvested within the Saturday morning farmers’ market at the Capriole, Inc. cheese stand. Karen sees no division between her customers and her family – she enriches the community as she places each sample of cheese into the hands of her neighbors, sharing with them the distinct pleasure and magic that a family run farm can create within the fruits of their labor. Karen, I learned, is not even one of the owners of the farm; she told me she simply desires to help her friends “feed the community,” a gesture that most certainly shows her joy of sharing this union with her community in her quest to have no one go on with their Saturday without the touch of such creamy goodness escaping their lips.

Today, I too have experienced the luscious treasures of the Saturday market; my unexpected desires have been fulfilled. My hands have now felt the tenderness of fall’s plump, ripe tomatoes, gripped the untamed green stalks of a boisterous bunch of carrots, and coddled the sweet, airy morsels from a bag of fresh kettle corn. But more so, my hands have felt the work of a proud, trusting community. Not only do locals pile their baskets with the region’s freshest and finest, they fill their minds and bodies with the richness and resources from their own community. When walking through the market entrance, worries are left outside next to the MARSH shopping carts and Kroger 10-for-10 specials. Once inside, swept into the pastoral, your cravings for quality are quickly nourished through the relationship of trust within the Bloomington community farmers’ market.

“The ATM,” I suddenly remembered, transported back into the world of credit cards and ominous grocery lines; yet come next Saturday, the importance of an ATM will fall behind me, for I will find myself on the other side of the equation, enjoying the produce of my neighbors and tasting the trust of my community.