waking myself up again

So lately I've been feeling spiritually dead inside, which is not a good feeling to have, and it tends to contribute to a general feeling of mild depression. which I'm already prone to. So.

These periods of disconnect are surprisingly common among those of a Pagan persuasion, so much so that a term has been coined: Fallow Times. On some level just knowing that I'm not alone in going through this helps the climb out of the hole become a little easier.

This was a time of letting the stagnant, devouring pattern of everyday life just sap my interest in things. I know it wasn't a complete disconnect from the gods because I kept getting little nudges in really indirect ways, even as I was wailing and gnashing teeth about not getting any responses to the rote prayers and halfhearted offerings. I heard about mindfulness meditation for the first time ever, and got interested to the point of buying a really nice book that I'm not finished with yet, and it reminded me of the joyful way I used to look at the world.

Everywhere I went on the internet I seemed to keep running into articles and quotes about self-care and personal sovereignty, and how these things are often just at odds with the western ideal of productivity. This type of productivity eats up my energy and good feelings like nothing else. :c

I also haven't been cooking much, lately, and the things I have been making are not inventive, engaging things but basic quick things. One of the funny things about being unemployed was that (thankfully) I had enough resources to cook, and I really deeply enjoyed doing that, as a way of managing my environment and taking care of myself and those around me. It was a job, and I enjoyed it. But now that I'm employed cooking has become just another damn thing I have to do if I want to eat, and I'm already tired from standing on my feet all day or evening. It does not contribute to fun and engaging cookery. I think what I'm going to have to do is just plan my weeks out more thoroughly, and save big cooking projects for my days off. That's what it's going to have to be.

As for crafts stuff: I've had lingering, horrible guilt over the fact that the ram I was knitting for LG's shrine still did not have horns, and that's definitely contributed to a slowing-down of knitting fun. Well. That and the fact that we've had INSANE DEADLY HEAT for like three weeks running now and I haven't really wanted to touch yarn and have anything big and wooly on my lap. (Oddly enough I HAVE gotten the spinning bug during this time, but that involves less actual smothering contact with heat-trapping fiber)

Well that silliness STOPPED TONIGHT. News flash everyone: Reese the Ram has horns, dammit. And they look super cute as he is sitting on my nightstand, all big fat sheep belly and tiny cartoonish legs. This is a good first step, I think, to getting back on track.

Next Steps: doing things on a weekly (or daily, but I don't want to take on more than I can handle while I'm still finding my feet again) basis, and continuing the now laughably extended 30 Days blog posts.

Seasoning!

This post is going to be a hodgepodge of thoughts, much like the fermentation one. Hopefully once I get past the 30 Days posts the blog will tend to lean in more this direction. The 30 Days posts, by the way, are obviously taking more than 30 days but I have a lot of thoughts swirling about the Gender post and I've written it like three times and haven't felt fully satisfied with it so it'll be a while. Don't worry. It'll get done.

Anyway, the topic of this one is Seasoning! But not really like..about spices. Although if you want my opinion on spices my answer is this: CUMIN. Maybe turmeric.

The seasoning I'm discussing here is about process, about shaping something and the way something becomes itself, or, more itself than it was before in its raw state. (okay yes a lot of crossover with the fermentation post)

I've been drawn to things lately that require seasoning: I find it soothing and empowering, using and re-using and repeating these steps to enhance my connection to an object and make it come alive for me and work to its full potential. And this happens in my spiritual work and the kitchen. I'm starting to think that there's really no difference between those two realms.

Let's talk about Cast Iron Skillets. Because they are simply fantastic. I tend to need to boost the iron in my diet,  and cooking with cast iron helps accomplish that. The thing with cast iron of course is that it needs seasoning. If you get one new from the store, it will have a rougher surface, more graphite than black, and THINGS WILL STICK TO IT AND YOU WILL CRY. Unless you season it. The process is basically this: Clean it out with soap and water, dry it thoroughly, don't let it air dry because that way lies rust. Then, IMPORTANT: Slather that thing in fat. If you're of the vegan persuasion use a vegetable oil, but be sure to use one with a high smoke point because you don't want it turning rancid and leaching all sorts of horror out into your food. In my kitchen worklife, I like to use bacon grease. Or if I have extra around from pie adventures, homemade lard.

And then you bake your skillet (or dutch oven, or griddle, or what have you) in the oven, at a low-ish temperature, for a long time. And turn it over, and rub it down with a towel, and make sure that the fat is soaking into its pores. Cast iron has pores. and you want to basically cook that lubrication into the pores, and keep cooking with it and taking it to the cookware spa, basically, until you develop a smooth as glass shiny black surface that no egg will stick to. It's hands-on, sort of intimate caring work that by its very nature fosters a sense of connection and familiarity with a kitchen tool. When I season cast iron, I am helping to bring it to life.

It did not occur to me until recently that there was anything I'd call magical involved in this process, but it snuck up on me and caught me unawares. During my ongoing study of hoodoo I realized that the basic repetitive care annointing process I'd been using on my skillets is essentially the same steps one would take to make a mojo hand, or various other types of conjure working. These things need to be "fed," to use the terminology, which emphasizes that what is being made is a living spirit, and it needs to be sustained through continued care on the part of the practitioner.
I gave my number 3 skillet a name without even really thinking about it. I call it Baby Skillet and I'm very protective of it, which, okay, looks a little deranged to an outside perspective, but Baby Skillet and I have an excellent working partnership and my breakfasts would not be the same without it. By that extension, I would not be the same without it.

More recently, in my tea-appreciation journey, I've purchased one of those Really Excellent Ancient Chinese Secret Totally Superior Yixing Clay teapots you may have heard touted at Teavana. I'm not going to get into my problems with Teavana here, but yixing (or zisha) clay has some really nice properties that make for really, really, amazing tea preparation, depending on the type of tea. Not so much green tea, since the pots tend to hold heat too well and turn it bitter. But oolong? puerh? spot on. And it did not come as a surprise to me at this point that my new teapot needs to be seasoned, though repeated brewings and washings and care. Already by the third brewing, the teapot has lost almost all of its "I've been in a box" smell, and the tea that comes out of it is starting to taste better.

Of course this is going to be a long process, and the teapot (I'm thinking I'll call it Marceline? since it's sucking up color?) is still very much in the absorption process so the tea does not quite have the nice thick mouthfeel that it would if I brewed it in a nonporous container like a gaiwan. But I'm okay with that, really, because I know that if I keep working with the teapot and invest time in a long-term relationship with it, this will be more rewarding for me in the long run.

Day Four: Prayer and Offerings

4. Beliefs – Prayer and Offerings

It’s only been recently, relatively speaking, that I’ve started giving any thought to prayer at all. I’d say within the last year, two years or so. Before that time, so much of my spiritual life was directed towards self-improvement and using tools like journeywork and Tarot to get a better perspective on my life and issue that needed resolving. You know what another great tool is? Therapy.

To be perfectly honest, this is proving a very difficult post to write. I feel like there’s a lot of ingrained embarassment about it, like...I feel like all my athiest friends will judge me for talking about how I pray. Is that weird? I feel it’s a little weird, being self-conscious about admitting this. Yes, when I am troubled, I pray and it makes me feel better. I can’t be sure if anyone’s actually listening, or if this is all in my head, but for the most part my worldview is appreciation and honoring above absolute understanding. I can take it on faith that my prayers help me, and that they give some pleasure to those I’m honoring.

Of course sometimes it’s not about supplication, like “help me get through this troubling time.” Sometimes prayer is all about the spontaneous creation of words, put together and sent out into the world to be enjoyed. So in that sense I view it as performance art. A very private sort of performance, but the idea is there all the same, and there’s a certain amount of staging that is required. I usually like to accompany prayer with an offering, just to be polite and reciprocate. If I’m asking a deity for something it’s only logical to offer something in return, to maintain a good relationship.

Making offerings is a bit of a trial and error process, but it’s highly interesting. It’s hard to describe how the process feels, but it’s like a change in air pressure, or a tingling on the back of my neck like the kind that happens when you catch someone watching you. Deciding what kind of offerings to make is a sort of intuitive process. Sometimes water is sufficient, particularly if I’m outside. It’s easy to libate, isn’t doing any harm to the environment, and I can partake of it without getting loopy, as opposed to say, a nice merlot. Other types of offerings I’ve branched out into. In my initial “hey anyone wanting to work with me, here’s some gifts for you” offering I used ghee that I’d made myself out of organic butter, and that got a pretty strong response. The amount of work I’ve put into an offering increases the likelihood that it’ll be well-received, I think.

I wasn’t expecting milk to go over as well as it did with Shining God. By the time I started offering it I’d done enough research and meditation to narrow down a bit which solar deity I was working with, but the huge favorable response to milk was a great help—I had the strongest impulse to pour it out on a rock as opposed to just a bowl or on the grass and I couldn’t quite figure out why until I did it, and it was such a strong visual key that things immediately clicked. It was very emotional, in a weird way.

I feel like at this point I could start to completely ramble and I have to go to work soon, so I’m going to wrap this up with a brief non-inclusive list of things I’ve used as offerings:

Artwork, small bits of sculpture, words, sex, mentrual blood, water, milk, tea (green, oolong, black, pu-erh), alcohol (beer, vodka), incense (loose and sticks), ghee, bread, honey, strawberries, knitting

And surely this will expand as time goes on.

Fermentation and Culture

Thoughts on fermentation:

It may seem a little out there to have a post about tea on my spirituality blog, but this is a perfect example of how my thought process works, regarding daily spiritual practice.

The first infusion (rinse) went into a bowl, and that along with half of the second infusion (which I drank) got left as an offering. In drinking tea I cannot help but think about all the work, the human effort and inspiration that went into crafting the tea, and how the combination of different forces and factors has created the beverage I consume daily. Pu-erh tea in particular has a lot of work put into it, and it’s a group effort between the leaf, the person crafting it, and the bacteria that ferments it (and, eventually, the person brewing and drinking it).

Fermentation is one of those weird, ancient food prep techniques that really makes no sense when you think about it, allowing things to rot and then consuming them anyway and somehow that makes the food different and in many cases better tasting and better for you than just eating it raw. What the hell, man! The first people discovering cheese when like, their mare’s milk got jostled and bacteriafied in a leather pouch on the way from point A to point B must have freaked out. It’s one thing, really, to eat something like that once because you know, early human cultures, subsistence level society, etc, you’d better clean your plate. If you are working with limited resources, yes, it makes perfect sense that a food-mistake ends up getting eaten or drunk anyway. But the weird thing, the special marvellous human magic thing, that happens when people decide to do it again, on purpose. We as a species are great at making tools, and taking disparate elements and combining them and making something completely different from them. And we’re great at thinking completely outside the box. We think nowhere near the box. The box is on a different continent.

Eventually, through generations of experimenting and probably lots of people getting poisoned from bad fermentation efforts, we end up with with a standardized process to make edibles that are really delicious, infinitely varied, and full of the energy, focus, and passion of a lot of human beings: Beer, bread, yogurt, cheese, dried sausage, miso, pu-erh. When I sit down and take the time to actually think about it, it blows my mind.

The thing about fermentation is that you need bacteria. And these days, in modern western society, bacteria is a thing that we in general are terrified of. Every day at work I am confronted with great huge pump bottles of antibacterial hand sanitizer, because it’s cold and flu season and for god’s sake get the germs off your hands. But I always take the time to wash my hands with soap and water instead, because I don’t want to kill off all the bacteria on my hands. And I especially don’t want to do it with glorified rubbing alcohol that dries out my skin and creates a billion little microcuts and allows more bacteria, the different, nasty death-kind, to get into my bloodstream.

Bacteria are weird. We vilify them and fear them and yet we need them, to make things we consider staple foods. A group of bacteria isn’t called a population, it’s called a culture. And that makes me think about what defines a culture, both human or bacterial. In both cases we have a group of individuals working in harmony, and that group creates something unique, something that differentiates it from other groups, something that leaves its mark on the world. As an artist and a crafter and a cook I participate in my culture, and I try to add to it and enrich it with my efforts. I can’t do it, can’t create or savor or fully participate, without the aid of other people and other organisms, and without the forces that create and maintain life on this earth.

And for that, I offer the tea I brew as thanks and recognition. I hope it was well-received. 

Pu-erh Tea

Tea Adventures: Ripe Pu-erh

About three weeks ago, I bought a lovely little gaiwan, or lidded cup, in the interests of furthering my tea appreciation. I adore oolong teas and I want to learn more about the traditional Chinese gongfucha tea ceremony and, generally, the style of brewing that focuses on multiple short infusions of the tea to get a lot of brewings out of a small amount of leaves. It's practical!

The gaiwan is totally adorable, and a much better learning tool than say, immediately jumping into a yixing clay teapot, because those things can be a serious investment (they were the best part of that crappy second episode of series 1 of Sherlock, IMO). The gaiwan is also way useful, since it's nice glazed porcelain it's not going to absorb the aroma and flavors of tea like unglazed yixing ware, meaning that I can try out a lot of different kinds of tea in the gaiwan and not be locked into just, say, tieguanyin. Granted if I had an yixing teapot I'd be drinking tieguanyin all the damn time, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. My first try with the gaiwan was with some gunpowder green that I have had sitting around for a year, I'm not gonna lie, because it's rolled so tight the tea keeps very well, and I've made a dent in this giant pound bag but man. 

It worked nicely, but I didn't get any pictures of the process. This afternoon,however, I decided to be bold and try a type of tea I've never brewed before: pu-erh. With the gaiwan came two little samples of pu-erh, one "raw" traditionally-processed bunch from 2008, and one "ripe" or artificially fermented (and therefore cheaper, more consistent, and easier to brew) sample from 2006. I went with the ripe sample, and I still have about half of it left over for another go, but I'm totally not done with the first brewing yet.

And now, photographic evidence of my adventures in being brave and a grownup and trying new things:

My gear all set up. Yes I am using a shot glass as a drinking vessel because I don't have nice small teacups.

GREENS.

I have been craving miso soup lately. I have no idea where this came from, since I think I've had it maybe once before. what is that about. WHO KNOWS
Also, part of my not even new year's resolution, just a resolution, whatever, is to eat more damn vegetables. It is difficult to be mostly vegetarian when living with a vegetarian who does not like many vegetables. Being the cooking one in the house, it is my job to fix this problem.
So I've spent the last two days, I think, browsing 101 Cookbooks and looking at all these gorgeously-photographed dishes and tonight we made a grocery run to get things for an ACTUALLY INTERESTING SALAD.
like watercress and dandelion greens and spinach and kale interesting. with GOAT CHEESE.
All those things also go great in SOUPS which I am intensely in favor of because it is winter and in the next couple days we're going to get a snowdump again and that equals soup.
It also equals Girlfriend has developed a passion for homemade bread and we're making another loaf or two tomorrow. And fresh baked bread goes wonderfully with both salads AND soups.

And because Wegmans is an awesome chain of stores we picked up some organic white miso and tofu so it will be MISO SOUP TIME SUPER SOON OMG YOU GUYS.
we will be getting our green vegetables, for sure.

Bone Soup!

Like Stone Soup, only with more carnage.
Girlfriend's mum did a chicken in the slow-cooker a month or so ago, and since she doesn't eat soup, I asked if I could have the remains of the bird with which to make DELICIOUS STOCK.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011, everyone. Does it feel like we're living in the future yet? do you still want your damn jetpack? Me too, friends, me too. But come next year I'll be laughing my ass off at the people who've misinterpreted the Mayan calendar and think that the world is going to end. I'll have to make a special "ha don't you feel silly" pie for the occasion. What do you think says that? Key Lime?

ANYWAY. If you, like I, slept in a whole heck of a lot today and feel like you've missed most of New Year's Day, you may feel a little groggy upon waking. And so I present one of my new favorite recipes, fresh from my own brain. It is delicious, filling, and requires just enough steps to sort of wake you up and ease you into conscious activity without being life threatening. I think.
Also good, probably, if you've got a hangover! So here's the World's Greatest Fried Egg Sandwich:

1) Decide you want eggs.
2) Open the fridge to see that there is only one egg, and opt for a Fried Egg Sandwich. But it will be so delicious you will not miss that other egg, if you normally eat two for a serving.
3) Melt some Delicious Bacon Fat in Baby Skillet. While you are doing this, warm the egg up by letting it take a bath in a bowl of warm water.
4) Check to see what kind of bread you have. Hmm, that last kaiser roll is looking dry, better use that up.
5) If the kaiser roll is incredibly dry and would stick to your mouth like cotton balls, slice it in half and put it in the toaster. TOAST THAT THING.
6) Crack the egg into the skillet, get a piece of shell in the skillet, grumble to yourself in disgust and fish it out with one of the larger bits of eggshell.
7) Cover skillet with a well-fitting lid!
8) If the kaiser roll is toasted, get it out of the toaster and only burn your fingers a little bit, and then slather both sides with miracle whip (or, if you're a better foodie than I am, your own homemade mayonnaise). Slather it. I'm not kidding.
9) Get some baby spinach out of the crisper drawer. Ooh, that's not going to be good for much longer.
10) Check the egg, and if the whites are all set nicely, flip it over. My egg today was rather old, so I did not have it as runny as I normally like. This was over hard. like Dale Cooper hard.
11) When the egg is done, put it on the bottom portion of the roll. put the skillet back on the burner.
12) Toss the spinach into the skillet with the delicious bacon fat, turn it over a few times with your spatula to make sure it's got a good coating of fat, and cover it for about a minute. While this is happening, slice some fresh mozzarella that is not so fresh anymore and has gotten a little too tangy for Girlfriend's taste but you still think it's delicious, dammit, and slap those pieces on top of the egg.
13) Check the spinach, stir it around a bit, flip it, sprinkle some salt on it, and cover it back up.
14) Do some dishes while you wait another minute. Or get some juice.
15) Turn the heat off, uncover the spinach, give it one last stir just to check that all the leaves are gorgeous and shiny dark green and wilted but not SO mushy that they're falling apart. They should be just nice and clumpy. No falling apart spinach. If it looks absolutely wonderful (which it will), spatula it onto the cheese-covered egg, and top with the other half of the kaiser roll.
16) Eat sandwich, exclaiming loudly and passionately how awesome it is, to anyone who is around. Even if you're alone in the house.

Don't you feel better now? I know I do. and I am ready to face the day! Er...afternoon. or evening. whatever. I have more knitting to do.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Awesome!

Today I woke up at ass-o'clock in the morning (read: before sunrise) and made pancakes. These were the most perfect pancakes I have ever seen in my life. I'm still kind of in shock that they turned out so beautiful and tasty.

I've made pancakes before, of course, but there's always problems with them: the first ones are too pale, then they get too dark or I don't watch them carefully and they get too dry, or if I make them too large, they crack down the middle when I flip them. Also, they are unevenly shaped, and not obedient when stacked.

These pancakes are different. The most notable difference is they are from SCRATCH. And that's a beautiful thing. I used this recipe and true to form, it produced good old-fashioned pancakes. These are the pancakes m grandmothers would have made. Well, one grandma, anyway, but she died before I was born. The grandma I grew up around was (and is) very much enamored of the Modern, and she probably would have used bisquick for pancakes because it was new and shiny and convenient. None of that for me!
The pancakes turned out extra awesome because of wonderful, HTCLYG-esque tricks, like warming the egg and milk to room temperature, and beating them together before adding the melted butter. (The only time I prefer to use the microwave). The butter, by the way, was half organic ghee that I made, because I'm living with barbarians who buy salted butter. What the hell? So I tried to cut the salt by mixing it with delicious, salt-free ghee, which was also used in the skillet.

Ahh, the skillet. I could wax poetic about it for ages and ages, but that would get repetitive and probably a little creepy. So here's the cliffs-notes version: Baby Skillet (yes I named it) is a size 3 cast-iron skillet, manufactured by Griswold sometime between 1930 and 1950. I bought it for $10 at an antiques mall in Geneva, and I think it might be the best $10 I have ever spent. Baby Skillet requires very little lubricant, and almost no cleanup because nothing sticks to it. Nothing.

So: I mixed up the batter, let it sit while I heated the ghee in Baby Skillet and washed some dishes, feeling very productive and responsible. Right before pouring the pancakes I whisked the batter again for more rising awesomeness. (Have I mentioned that I love aluminum-free baking powder? I love it. A lot.) Slightly less than a quarter cup makes the perfect sized pancake for Baby Skillet, with just enough room to flip them with ease.

And Oh. They were gorgeous. The very first pancake had that pale, fried, first pancake look to it because it had absorbed all the excess ghee in the pan, and that one I broke my fast with after my morning prayer, and it was quite good, all saturated with pure butterfat goodness. NOM. The rest of the pancakes were normal, and by normal I mean perfectly uniform, even golden brown on top with smooth circular edges and they were all pretty much the same size. And I stacked them up neatly on the plate and it was....You could illustrate a children's book with these pancakes, that's how pristine they were. They are what bisquick pancakes dream to be, when they cry themselves to sleep at night. As for the taste: not too dry, dense but not throat-chokingly so (as pancakes can be, you know), nice rise but they didn't look like biscuits on crack or anything. I added vanilla extract and cinnamon to the batter, and mmmmmmmm were they tasty. very nice subtle flavor that complemented butter and syrup nicely. A bit too big to be silver dollar pancakes, but...wow. I'm using this recipe again.

By the time I made enough for Girlfriend (who had to get up even earlier than me, poor thing) and about half for me, the pan was getting a little dry again, but that's after about nine pancakes. I added a smidgen of bacon fat (aka "THE GOOD STUFF") and made a couple more: one for me and one for the ancestors, who got their own plate and a candle at the table while I ate. I adore ghee for its amazing cooking power and because it's vegetarian and I can fry things for Girlfriend now, but nothing, nothing, not even perfect old-fashioned pancakes cooked in ghee in a cast-iron skillet can compare to the taste of perfect old-fashioned pancakes cooked in a cast-iron skillet with bacon fat.
It was like I was transported into a magical sepia-toned world of From Scratch, with old-timey fiddle music and Auld Lang Syne and fresh-churned butter and pie crusts and rainbows and everything. The only thing that could have made it better was actual bacon. Another day!

After breakfast I cleaned up and started a money-drawing job-getting spell, having done like days of research on Lucky Mojo's pages. My foray into hoodoo begins! I like the intuitive nature of correspondences, the detailed process of setting lights. I found I was able to focus my intention really well. I'll keep it going and we'll see how it turns out. I have a good feeling about this. :)

And now, a freaking nap. I got like three hours of sleep.