FOOD RULES

     In no particular order:

1. Slice a red-pitted kiwi on the octagonal bias around the skin and making its head a flat base approach. 

2. Never go to Whole Foods on a Sunday morning run unless your fridge in both compartments are assuredly empty— i.e., money is precious these days, don’t overstock or overextend your groceries, please finish everything first before you spend again, no matter if what you’re eating the night before are only two apple bananas and tarragon tea. 

3. Always feel good about modesty.

4. Par-boil legumes and grains ahead of time (garbanzos, pintos, orzos, farros…) rinsed in tap water first and then drain, after immerse filtered cold water in the pot for a freshness bath, add each a tablespoon of butter and olive oil, add black pepper no salt, in the simmer for effects of introductory spice and creaminess when done, use later as salad ingredients or soup purées.

5. Be kind to an in-training checkout staff ringing up your food even if there’s a mistake let it go, smile, and say it’s all good, sincerely.

6. One thing you will notice in my kitchen if ever you come visit, it’s generally clean— expediency was a training I’ve learned as a moonlighting line cook in NYC, professional sanitation is vital to the purity of food, dispose rubbish as you go, always wipe down surfaces, work to the best you can immaculately and beautifully.

7. In the book Island by Aldous Huxley he wrote: “do everything lightly though you’re feeling heavy” - this is a favorite advise given me by my photographer cousin living in Paris - still try to eat something healthy, fellows, for your soul to keep from breaking its heart; you live for others too, cousin said, no matter if you’re alone.

8. Flavor in advance your ice cubes in the freezer so when your yearning for a drink they’re ready in your high ball glass swirling with tricolors (I make ginger tea ice cubes to mix with my homemade kombucha naturally sweetened by mango). 

9. Call your sister (or a closest family member you have around) while cooking and share what you’ve got going; you don’t have to bring up missing mom’s food, sometimes calling means that already, intuitively she knows, that her absence still burns hiding in your heart, instead keep it joyful like it always was when she was still alive.

10. Don’t cry. Be strong on your table. Love, live, write. You are the poet of your food.

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MY DAILY BREAD

 

“They were calling certain styles by the name of lilacs and another manner assumed a verbal guise… metaphors such as these soaring from their lips while other street cries/sprang from sparrows finding scattered oats among interstices of the curb… and two of them croaked on the same day, if we employ the metaphors of their lips.”       - Carl Sandburg -

I fasted yesterday until four a.m. this morning when I woke up, and left my cottage serenely, walked to the direction of valley in supplication that when I reach her oasis, she may restore. My daily bread doesn’t always constitute food; I pray for “another” source of power released spiritually within me. And Mother Nature never lets me down: because I focus my body’s strength to its sublime elevation, I ain’t no saint, mind you, instead earthly use the transfigurative power of words to get by. It has always surprised me that choosing poetry as my “career path” didn’t turn out as bad for me as the odds against it were high, that I would be hungry and can’t sustain life with art. Yes there were Herculean struggles of the artist I had to overcome physically and emotionally in times past, but at the end of the day, or at my bottom, I made a blessing of what I’ve got (in my heart), (poetry), and lived til now. I don’t need a lot in my life; I have but only a few; books surround my home, and beauty handed down by nature to my table (like these beaming sunflowers), and they “fill” all the space I need. Of course I have a practical side, too, as a cook. I prepare greens as green as a deep forest image, portion them out on Sundays to last a few days as lunch for work and dinner when I get back, my long cooking chopsticks do so well in divvying up into bowls spread across the kitchen counter like banchans, glad to see my “daily bread.” These greens (like collards and chards and kales, simply braised in olive oil and red wine vinegar, a little kosher salt a little black pepper) are so nutritious I am injecting in my body not bulk but the “substance” of stars which created our planet’s abundant biodiversity of edible plants, and that is matter and energy in nuclear form in my stomach. I daresay I eat my words literally. (Please don’t try this extreme lifestyle at home, unless your “calling” is a life of monasticism through poetry). Very rarely that I sleep through uninterrupted when I have had nothing to eat all - but that night I took an oath to leave food to itself as to honor the primal concept of the food web shared by all species of earth, I never forget the lessons Mowgli (in Kipling’s Jungle Book) took to heart that beasts and prey can’t have it all, there is a time for richness and sacrifice, time for high and low, the jungle will never allow the advantage of one but everyone - and I slept like a wild boy in the cusp of a sacred forest tree, high in the balance of life, and woke up restored, inside out. 

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Phở Night

The nice family invited me over for homemade phở at their place last night - and it was a dinner to remember for a while (Vietnamese is one of those herb-centered world cuisines I love in their virtuous soups, this rare opportunity to experience traditional cooking was a time to savor and to learn secrets of the recipe and meet new friends). The broth is the soul, said my gentleman host, onions for sweetness, and dried star anise, cloves, cinnamon, ginger for complexity and clarity.  We are both from the north country, my wife and I, and it is where this soup was born, he added. Restaurant or food truck phở always comes with beans sprouts, basil leaves, jalapeño and limes to dunk in the soup, but at their home one garnish stood out that surprised me: cilantro. It's not a stretch of the imagination to add another herb component to it, it's just not indicative, I mused, but that's the kind of revelation I was hoping for to see (and how it was sliced, minced fresh to smithereens with raw onions was interesting), and besides it was home cooking as in the north country and not commercially for sale here. And it made all the difference to the phở, deepening its umami by enriching the hoison sauce and chili paste tandem condiment to its taste, the vegetables' heat swimming in perfume oil with a kick. I also never had artichoke tea before, and that was served alongside our dinner. Conversation at the table I shared a travel story with the family of my visiting Vietnam on backpack moons ago and seeing the country by bus and foot. In Hue, central Vietnam, passing a university district I had asked the students on break on the street smoking in their medical school uniforms where I could get what they would get themselves this great soup. Come follow us (a bunch of them were actually headed to the unassuming shack just across), and they all unanimously said: here. We sat around a soot-covered vat under burning wood constantly adjusted by the large madame sweating in her apron and ladling out this food ambrosia into our waiting bowls heaping with white noodles and cut herbs and vegetables (the florets of the basil, I was instructed, must be picked out by pressing down on the base and sliding up to the tip of the stem and dislodging these velvety micro-blooms directly onto the steaming hot soup to poof its magic), and then Let's eat. "This is in a way so many of the great meals of my life have been enjoyed, sitting in the street, eating something out of a bowl I'm not exactly sure what it is, scooters going by, so delicious, I feel like an animal, where have you been all my life?" (Anthony Bourdain, in Saigon). The home of my hosts sits on a beautiful bluff with harbor views and town lights dimming the black ocean, and the flow of our dinner was absorbed in talk that converged new relations with a convivial beginning. We all got to know each other well, and food was the harbinger at its best.     

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WONDER TARO

This morning before getting up I finished the novel The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez.  It's part elegy and part a writer's life in the city (New York) adopting a great dog (a gentle giant Dane) at the last year of its life. On a rented beach house in Long Island was the final summer they would spend together, and in the end, Apollo (its name), couldn't leave his friend's side, his head on her feet solemnly as they both watched the crashing of the waves on the shoreline sand. They both couldn't eat that morning, though they tried, she handing him a piece of bread from the table, he accepted and bowing his head, but that was it. It was time to go.    

...

I was surprised about the graveyard I was pointed to by a forest dweller at Iao while I was hiking out from the spring as he suddenly appeared in hiding from a hamlet of taro plants (beautiful edible plants with elephantine ears leaves and rhubarb red stems): I buried her there.  I wondered if it was my imagination that he was actually there and talking to me about the ancient story of the island where once upon a time the sky and the valley were demigods and had made love and sprung the taros as their perpetual children. He looked as though a character from Kipling's Jungle Book, a man-cub raised by wolves; he was wild-looking, yes, but his eyes' expression was from out of this world, deep like an unknown sea. He dug around the patch and handed me a root-fruit of this endemic vegetable. The myth is living. And he came close to my face and said, inhale this breath, (I did closing my eyes), so I know you will protect her story.

...

As a cook, a culinary mentor moons ago had admonished me that food you prepare no matter how good your kitchen skills are without history it's not going to taste ever good. And that's why I think it's worth my longtime commitment and love to write my blog for food's sake, going more than a decade now. So finally, my taro soup is a fairy tale. And it's wonderful to have. 

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WHAT’S COOKING?

     My brand new cottage ohana is surrounded by trees, outside my living room window is a hanging banana blossom at its peak, and adjacent are tangerine fruits and foliages expectantly perfumed coexisting in the soil with tear drop-shaped avocados the size of small bowling balls (the creamiest variety, I'm told, according to my local plant-grower friend, Rick the Duck). Behind my bedroom window is a massive mango tree adorned with decorative light bulbs, and at night always looks festive. I moved here this weekend, it happened so fast it's like a thunderbolt blessing, as if Thor was saying: You got your wish cook poet, welcome home.

     And it sure feels it. My dwelling is its own structure-little blue house tucked quietly behind the main residence, my former flat with Mrs. Cole was upstairs on the second floor of her house, but this time is a sweet independence I have a cabin in the deep woods. And my books are my only furniture. But this pot you see in the picture (with a lilikoi on top) was from a kind soul I stayed with temporarily in transition to my cottage and as parting gift handed over two sauce pans with handles, when I was staying with him I boiled my water and transfered them in glass bottles when cooled down, he was thoughtful of my "kitchen practice" and I appreciated the gesture on my leaving with this hand-me-down gift.

     I went to Whole Foods this morning at store opening (7am) and raided their aisles, filled my cart with vegan food overflow - from coconut vanilla bean yogurt to fresh-cut collard greens I requested the produce guy (Eddie) to do for me and was glad to, no stems, please, just rough chop the leaves and he disappeared in the back; to cauliflower rice not instant to tap-poured upcountry kombucha strawberry ginger dispensed in a nine dollar mason jar. I was mindful of my lack of cutlery and cookwares (except for this saucepan large enough to boil vegetables and potatoes), and that's exactly what's cooking in it right now: Okinawa sweet potatoes in turmeric tea - my lunch for later when they cool down, and I will spread myself on the vast hardwood floor in my empty-of-furnishings new home - and love my space - emotionally filling me with happiness, achieving a humble abode out of pure luck to call my own. (Housing on Maui is extremely competitive, to say the least, but my "prayers" were answered). 

     "With a single pot of homey. Look for me, the prophet said, pinning a flower behind his ear. I'll always love you." (Christopher Merrill, Iowa Writer's Workshop)

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