The Green💚Kitchen

Jacky T. gave the luscious avocado on my toast, picked from her ex’s yard. (Hayden mangoes are abundant there, too, so she cans them, and would hand me some). I don’t have much of a garden. The potted plants on the porch are my housemate’s,— but when the tomatoes are big and ripe and the herbs harvestable, he’s willing to share, provided I cook green. I do cook green. My kitchen es muy verde. Napa Valley extra virgin olive oil green. Lime juice green over hoisin sauce smacked on chives and leeks and broiled shishitos and okras vermicelli. Basil leaf green on tomatoes and green and white cucumbers on a pumpernickel bread sandwich with afternoon iced tea— not green, but black, because black tea steeping is golden. Biodiversity green of happy house plants surrounding my kitchen elevate my home cooking to a star. Use the chayote green for soups and/or salad and leave the papaya fruits to yellow. Bake the green mussels in garlic and bread crumbs and wined artichoke vinegar, sea salt and pepper flakes. My hapa rice is not with brown but with green lentils that cook perfectly together, firm, but with a robust tender bite. And in the Japanese curry bowl  with potatoes and crispy shallots and pickled pearl onions, that’s the way to go green comfort food. I love my mother-in-law, Milagros. She has a prolific green thumb (her backyard in L.A. is a micro-orchard of persimmons, other tree plants, and the very tart, very sour green Philippine calamansi bush). When I texted her the picture of my green avocado toast, she wrote back: delicious, wow. I had learned from her to eat while standing in the kitchen, to steam up all my green vegetables cut to fit while the rice is cooking in the cooker, and the one-pot meal is a sauce away (usually something pungent and fermented) when the rice is cooked, and spoon away your meal with your hands to your mouth, just like the locals do in the homeland, and this method exercise will go top down not sideways in you, and your body is the better for it.  Most for-cooking super food green plants, flora and forest vegetations, are vertically oriented and slender and tall. Coconut trees,  banana trees, gingko and pine (for the nuts). Pesto is green. My best gal friend since high school’s favorite emoji is a green heart. The jade plant is green. And it is for luck, and long life.