This month, the bottoms of my feet have become a cushion of soft moss. They are long-lived and slow growing, but they do not have deep roots. The gentleness of my step on the ground is compounded by the softening of the earth and by the image I have of my energy running down my legs, like beads of dew, and into the ground, making not only my feet a springy, cushion, but also the earth around my feet.
Attending to my feet therefore has not been about stepping hard, or going deep. It has been about letting myself be a part of the spring thaw.
The month began with pancakes and maple syrup. For “Pancake Tuesday” I made pancakes for three meals, and we ate it with the first batch of maple syrup made from our trees. In non-Covid times, we would spend early March weekends stuffing ourselves with pancakes and syrup at the sugar shacks, letting my older son ask endless questions about the evaporator and enjoying the sweet steam of this bone-warming, quintessentially New England practice (in which I include Quebec - Montreal and New England have been intimately linked since the 1700s). This year I fully appreciated the coincidence between Pancake Tuesday, a tradition from England, and maple sugaring season, which does not happen in other regions. It’s what helps me get through winter. Just like Lent is supposed to do.
I explained to my children: this was the starving time for our English ancestors. Nothing to eat was growing yet, though the ground was just beginning to wake up, and everyone had been eating the food they’d saved all winter. So, they had a solution: to limit what everyone could eat, to make sure no one would eat a lot, or too much rich food, so that there would be enough to get through until the cows had grass to eat, and the people had food again. But before that: there was one last winter party. And that, I told them, was Pancake Tuesday. They knew they wouldn’t be able to make it through that time of deprivation without the memory of something sweet.
how i make pancakes (but I wouldn't blame you if you prefer to try John Locke's instead): beat till foaming some eggs, milk or buttermilk or yogurt, and neutral oil (if you're feeling ambitious, you can separate the egg whites and whip until stiff and fold in at the end; it does make the perfect fluffy pancake, but sometimes I'm in a hurry. A blender can do all of this nicely too). include a big dollop of sourdough discard if you want. add, slowly until it's a pourable consistency, a mixture of whole grain flours and a bit of cornmeal. if you have included sourdough starter, you may want to let this ferment overnight on a room temperature counter, covered. when you are ready, pour pancakes onto a medium-hot skillet, well seasoned or wiped over with a bit of fat, and cook until the edges grow firm and there are air bubbles throughout. add sprinkles (!) or other fancy toppings now. flip, cook til your desired color. keep warm in a toaster oven or serve as you make them.
So Lent is a time for giving up something so that everyone has more to survive. That’s what I’ve been practicing with this month. But food and survival have taken on another meaning too, as war in Ukraine has intensified. I am probably not the only Conventicle member who has made borscht this March. My borscht recipe came from Anna Badkhen’s book Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories, a series of essays about food in conflict zones by a Soviet-born war reporter. “In this environment of apprehension and betrayal,” she writes of the late 1990s in Putin’s Russia, “when you could not trust your own government with your life, borsch was the great leveling force.”
It interested me that Badkhen articulates in this essay a principle similar than the one I described about Lent: that rich food is a powerful cultural antidote to hardship. She describes feasts washed down with Georgian wine, dishes of meat cooked under cheese and sour cream, and home cooked solyanka, a soup made with every kind of meat, raw and cured. “Such unapologetic nourishment — here, have another gargantuan dollop of sour cream, some more lard spread for your bread — was invented by a nation that needed something to compensate for the brutality of life in a country perpetually at war with its own people, at war with itself.”
This is different from escaping through food. This is defiance with food, and reminded me of a fantastic piece by the Kitchen Sisters from some years ago, about Soviet Kitchens. If you’re interested in a great roundup of food x Ukraine writing, visit Amy Halloran’s Dear Bread newsletter. For a non-food but very annsisters related Ukraine war reading and funding piece, see Caroline Criado Perez’s call to fund the Mukwege Organization’s efforts to support Ukrainian women who were victims of rape-and-sexual-assault-as-a-tactic-of-war in the 2014 Russian Invasion, and ongoing today. And for a collection of new poetry written by Ukrainians, check out this moving collection put out in the Globe.
Anna Badkhen's borsch 1 pound lean beef, cut into thin strips, or 1 15-oz can kidney beans (or 1 1/2 c cooked kidney beans) salt and pepper, to taste 3 large carrots, peeled and grated Olive oil or bacon fat 1 medium cabbage, white or red, cored and shredded 1 medium onion, peeled but not cut 3 large beets (just the roots, no greens), peeled and grated 1 large bell pepper (any color - everything will end up being a shade of red in the end), halved and cored 4 large potatoes, peeled and cubed 4 tomatoes, halved 6 prunes 2 tbs ketchup 1 tbs ground coriander (or seeds) sour cream and chopped parsley, for garnish minced garlic, optional 1. Fill a large soup pot halfway with water and bring to a boil. The proportion of water to solids should be about one to one. If youre cooking with meat, add the meat to the cold water and boil it for 10 minutes, then pour out the broth, fill the pot half way with fresh water, add salt, and boil for 10 more minutes. If you're going vegetarian, boil the water, add salt, and skip to the next step. 2. While your water (or broth) is boiling, sauté the carrots in olive oil (or bacon fat) until tender. Add the cabbage, sautéed carrots, and onion to the water (or broth), in this order, and wait for it to boil again. Add the beets. Remove the onion, discard it, and reduce the heat to a simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes. 3. Add the bell pepper, potatoes, tomatoes, prunes, ketchup, coriander, and pepper. If you are making vegtarian borsch, add the beans now. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, until all the vegetables are tender/ 4. Serve the borsch hot, with a generous dollop of sour cream in the middle and a sprinkle of parsley on top. Some people also like to put minced fresh garlic into their borsch plate; it gives the soup an extra kick. Borsch tastes perfect with dark rye bread (with or without butter or lard) and with ice-cold vodka. You can serve leftovers for up to 5 days if you keep them in the fridge. Definitely reheat before serving.
I wanted to be able to tell you about Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas today, a book by a woman which is a letter to a man who asked the woman about how to prevent war in 1938. The way she works through what war means to men and to women is truly remarkable…and that’s only in the first 10 pages. So you’ll have to ask me about it later.
Sometimes you do need a break, from the cooking (and the dishes) and the news. That is okay. May I suggest Tiles, a NYTimes game? The colors and patterns are so rich and satisfying; if you click on settings at the top right you can choose which tile-type to work with. Whatever gets you through, friend.
conventicle news
this week I am doing my first podcast interview, with Adrian Shirk, about her new book Heaven is A Place on Earth. Utopia! Look out for it in the Conventicle podcast tab. I am hoping these conversations will be frequent but not regular. Got someone I should talk to? Want me to interview you for the community? Let me know!