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Spiritual Crisis Blues


Spiritual Crisis Blues

Found my way in by a cracked and solemn weeping willow stump,

Straight into the woods of Oglethorpe County, straight into a cluster

Of wildlife singing, briars tearing into my arms, bleeding,

Bleeding through thin skin, these blue veins growl,

And it reaches in, this “IT”, it tears my soul from my body,

Hangs it in leaves among the water oak trees along the banks

Of this tiny river in the woods, where I knew right then…

What it was like to have spiritual crisis blues.

Standing on a foundation, white clay and red maple mulch,

Spongy earth bouncing. Strangely colored crickets start to gather,

Jump and disappear, but not too far cause I hear their legs strumming

A gipsy chorus for lost loves in the forest.

Me, in this walk alone into the wood. A stroll into my own unknown.

A full sun burns blue down, down into this haunted stream,

Turning muddy waters clear and clean. Crisp they say, it’s OK.

I have the Blues no one wants to hear, and not a friend is near,

Forget family, forget Church, they just back away and say: “it’s yours”,

But I don’t want it, not again, not this splitting soul from bone,

So I dig my hands deep into the blue sands and mud,

Bathe in this clinging soil, and then color this body

With lavender and thistle, blue of my hill people dozens of centuries ago

Fighting Rome and then fighting the King; and finally fighting

The One Christ King. alone, trying to draw near, reaching to pull

The trees lower, and lower so I can grab a bit of the spirit

I lost a few days ago, a few days ago this Christ was just a memory,

A haint, chasing me through groves of dogwood and pecan,

Naw, it would not let go, it would not let me go, this banshee

Screaming my spiritual blues, a blues clutching like Death to my breath

Like there was no letting go, I tried, I ran, I doused my hair with lemon,

Stuffed pepper up my nose and salt in my shoes, begged Lord come back, please.

Expecting something different, something different at least this time…

But the spiritual blues came, wrapped around my body, and I was alone.

I asked the priest, I asked the friend, I asked the family and then no one,

It didn’t matter, they figured these shadows were mine to claim,

They knew this time the spiritual blues won, but what they knew was wrong,

I just wanted to sing, I wanted to purge doubt, doubt like black sulfur water.

Bring down the cypress and water oak trees, find the clean springs

So I can live again, so these screaming doubts between love of the flesh

And love of the mind and love of the soul I thought was mine

Would stop, and turn and go away. Would find itself flowing…from these springs.

These spiritual blues are never easy, and one day someone will listen

And understand, understand, that my soul is at stake and I am tired,

And I am a man: Alive with God. I am this man. I am this man.

A man trying, a person, trying to make peace with Trinity and self,

with all that is here and even more…Peace…Can we make peace?


Tomorrow Fades

Gone the waves

A need flies

On sunlight

Blue this time

Why blue

I was always writing

In orange and

Star lit meadows

The slow Georgia hills

Lay flat then curves

Forever into the far North

A peach tastes so sweet

So much like sunshine

Open above

And I raise a peace sign

Of hope to the clouds

Even though

Everything is changing

Much too fast

Fast fading fast alive

Loss To Grace and Rage to Life

How many different journeys made up my life and death?

This is just a tale of where, when and how.

Of the loves that were woven into the green iris of my eyes,

How magicians were challenged until there was no magic at all;

How when one day while shredding the hedges that lined the waterside

Of this small pond, a place in the woods, a home of cinder blocks,

These waters where I floated in a dark grey metal boat,

A two seater, no motor, just paddles, a quiet slide from one end to the other,

This little boat, born of this small pond, this dark rainbow body,

Gliding over where catfish languished in summer heat,

As though written in by a young Cormac McCarthy,

As if only he could find the words to make believe this was a place

That was never at all. This was a landscape of one among the many,

So alike and yet so isolated, so much the same but then again not.

But it was, sprinkled with angry bream that sparkled back at the sun,

Who shone with fearsome blue, black and silver flashes, broad side,

Pushing the water upwards, blinding their prey, rising to strike

Slow stone fly nymphs, maybe even grab a taste of occasional tad pole,

A feast at dawn where life came to live, a funeral at dusk where it came to die.

On this long day while shredding the hedges that marched

Off into the woods, I raised a fist to the heavens, and cursed

God on every sweaty breath, on each diphthong and cluster of vowels

That I could muster, that I could holler, filled with hatred for a lost childhood,

Broken by phrases locked in brackets, wanting even then to be freed

Of memories dark as darker than miles from any home,

When all I wished was to find was a way to live and to describe…

That only woman “who was to be my love”, and in return that I was hers.

It never came. It never happened. Each curse came upon me.

Each was driven by poisoned water, of soured wines

And rust skinned potatoes, brown and wilted lettuces. No real food.

We would pour three fingers of wormy mescal, then drive away

Up the winding asphalt that moved along among the short leaf pines,

Cruising with an ease most described by the winds,

Most alive in the breezes of a Georgia summertime.

What was it that I wanted, what was I proving in these scorching days

And even hotter nights when I stood alone by the pond,

Screaming at God, begging, then demanding to show me something real.

But we all know how these things go. They go nowhere.

Just a tied fly floating downstream into the rapids.

Down there where no catfish hang around, where silver carp

Pass by and hunt further and further for dead and rotting things,

Things that litter the bottom of every stream and body of water.

Was I really there standing and shouting? Hell yes.

Cussing out God for leaving me to figure how this was “I am”,

A life of struggle, of loss, of slander and success, of always being

Almost then gone. But He was patient. Letting me run the wild

Out of my soul, laughing at this arrogance that lived to destroy,

Standing back when it was certain the next cliff would take me

Coming near when my hands fell off the wheels, turning

Just enough to live another hour. This was how it started.

This was how all this spirit hunting came into being.

These were the moments when a great love of all things woman

Sublimated every text, every conversation that was to follow.

A life’s tease. A significance lost on ordinary dissertations

Of subject predicate, subject object, thesis stated antithesis sworn in,

Brought back home and lost again when critical theory,

A post Freudian exercise, a means of thought built for the analyzed,

It hatched more anger than love at all, and why, why did it go back to the night

When I stood unsteady by a spring in the forest, a place so wonderful

Ruined by my childish raging, a place suddenly dangerous

When hurricane winds marched over from each distant coast,

They met and blasted together in the woods of West Georgia.

The thin pines bowed and snapped, threatened back at me,

As though remembering the night I hated God

And swore not ever would I be among the faithful.

Years later, here I am, just as tormented, just as isolated

As I ever was, but everything is different, everything is by the erratic,

Welcome and worthy Grace of God. I count by the dozens

Those who ran when I changed, when I said God is Love, is patient,

And is all things dark and light, Crayola colored,

Hand painted and chisel formed, swaying back and forth

One moment on the winds, then floating along the brownish waters

Of a hot September pond in the woods, the last before anticipated Autumn,

When pleasure returns to cool this porous South, that the lakes do not dry up,

Nor the springs stop giving life, the pleasure is real, Real Presence.

What can I say? No longer alone cursing at length, now I pray.

Now I wonder if I am a better man, if there will ever be that She

With whom I can walk by the dawn bright rye grass, to speak sunrises

And mental exercises, that maybe one day, I will be forgiven,

Maybe one day I can see it is I who must forgive myself,

Not by God, not by Mary, not by Lord Jesus Christ,

Not by meditations on right action and right faith where Compassion rules,

Once by the tears when I walked into the Hall of 500,

Deep in Guang Zhu someplace China,

500 incarnations of the teaching soul of Buddha,

Later, for me, it was 500 saints,

and above them all they were led by Saint Raphael, sweet Raphael,

Beloved archangel, led onto the bridge from life before Christ, to the one after,

The one opened up by John the Baptist, then Lord Jesus Christ salvation,

The one where it all started to happen. By mortal death came life after death.

….And not by Faith alone, but by Faith with Action…Believe!

But wait, maybe it is by faith alone….Yes. By these ways, by this life lived.

Finding, climbing, rising, doing all I can to find a way back home to God,

The place that is, just is, is always home, that place of Life.

…Please don’t leave me… Faraway is too drear and cold.

Let me be here in this always becoming life of conversion, always moving

Towards God and never from, lead me on my Love, forgiving and patient

Faithful and alive, for some it takes a lifetime to awaken.

Conversion and Salvation are dynamic, sublimating everything.

And me,  I am surely one of them. Thank you my beloved, hope and desire.

(Once again, back home to God, thankfully born into this life.)

But I Cannot Say Her Name

               (I miss)

A voice.

This piano.

Once maybe twice

But more than thousands,

So many songs

And meditations,

Nocturnes formed

On miles of sky

Lain out on grasses

Disappearing.

Disappeared.

Hope.

Each time

We were together

These things sustained.

How I wish they were now.

You were all.

This was desire.

And it is here

Passion is alive


Tomorrow Fades

Gone the waves

A need flies

On sunlight

Blue this time

Why blue

I was always writing

In orange and

Star lit meadows

The slow Georgia hills

Lay flat then curves

Forever into the far North

A peach tastes so

Much like sunshine

And I raise a peace sign

Of hope to the clouds

Even though

Everything is changing

Much too fast

Fast fading fast alive

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Three Poems: Tomorrow Fades; Loss To Grace and Rage To Life; But I Cannot Say Her Name (I Miss)


Caution, Catholic Crossing Ahead:

 

Tomorrow Fades

Gone the waves

A need flies

On sunlight

Blue this time

Why blue 

I was always writing

In orange and

Star lit meadows

The slow Georgia hills

Lay flat then curves

Forever into the far North

A peach tastes so sweet

So much like sunshine

Open above

And I raise a peace sign

Of hope to the clouds

Even though

Everything is changing

Much too fast

Fast fading fast alive

 

 Loss To Grace and Rage to Life

How many different journeys made up my life and death?

This is just a tale of where, when and how.

Of the loves that were woven into the green iris of my eyes,

How magicians were challenged until there was no magic at all;

How when one day while shredding the hedges that lined the waterside

Of this small pond, a place in the woods, a home of cinder blocks,

These waters where I floated in a dark grey metal boat,

A two seater, no motor, just paddles, a quiet slide from one end to the other,

This little boat, born of this small pond, this dark rainbow body,

Gliding over where catfish languished in summer heat,

As though written in by a young Cormac McCarthy,

As if only he could find the words to make believe this was a place

That was never at all. This was a landscape of one among the many,

So alike and yet so isolated, so much the same but then again not.

 

But it was, sprinkled with angry bream that sparkled back at the sun,

Who shone with fearsome blue, black and silver flashes, broad side,

Pushing the water upwards, blinding their prey, rising to strike

Slow stone fly nymphs, maybe even grab a taste of occasional tad pole,

A feast at dawn where life came to live, a funeral at dusk where it came to die.

On this long day while shredding the hedges that marched

Off into the woods, I raised a fist to the heavens, and cursed

God on every sweaty breath, on each diphthong and cluster of vowels

That I could muster, that I could holler, filled with hatred for a lost childhood,

Broken by phrases locked in brackets, wanting even then to be freed

Of memories dark as darker than miles from any home,

When all I wished was to find was a way to live and to describe…

 

That only woman “who was to be my love”, and in return that I was hers.

It never came. It never happened. Each curse came upon me.

Each was driven by poisoned water, of soured wines

And rust skinned potatoes, brown and wilted lettuces. No real food.

We would pour three fingers of wormy mescal, then drive away

Up the winding asphalt that moved along among the short leaf pines,

Cruising with an ease most described by the winds,

Most alive in the breezes of a Georgia summertime.

What was it that I wanted, what was I proving in these scorching days

And even hotter nights when I stood alone by the pond,

Screaming at God, begging, then demanding to show me something real.

 

But we all know how these things go. They go nowhere.

Just a tied fly floating downstream into the rapids.

Down there where no catfish hang around, where silver carp

Pass by and hunt further and further for dead and rotting things,

Things that litter the bottom of every stream and body of water.

Was I really there standing and shouting? Hell yes.

Cussing out God for leaving me to figure how this was “I am”,

A life of struggle, of loss, of slander and success, of always being

 

Almost then gone. But He was patient. Letting me run the wild

Out of my soul, laughing at this arrogance that lived to destroy,

Standing back when it was certain the next cliff would take me,

 

Coming near when my hands fell off the wheels, turning

Just enough to live another hour. This was how it started.

This was how all this spirit hunting came into being.

These were the moments when a great love of all things woman

Sublimated every text, every conversation that was to follow.

A life’s tease. A significance lost on ordinary dissertations

Of subject predicate, subject object, thesis stated antithesis sworn in,

Brought back home and lost again when critical theory,

A post Freudian exercise, a means of thought built for the analyzed,

It hatched more anger than love at all, and why, why did it go back to the night

When I stood unsteady by a spring in the forest, a place so wonderful

Ruined by my childish raging, a place suddenly dangerous

When hurricane winds marched over from each distant coast,

They met and blasted together in the woods of West Georgia.

 

The thin pines bowed and snapped, threatened back at me,

As though remembering the night I hated God

And swore not ever would I be among the faithful.

Years later, here I am, just as tormented, just as isolated

As I ever was, but everything is different, everything is by the erratic,

Welcome and worthy Grace of God. I count by the dozens

Those who ran when I changed, when I said God is Love, is patient,

And is all things dark and light, Crayola colored,

Hand painted and chisel formed, swaying back and forth

One moment on the winds, then floating along the brownish waters

Of a hot September pond in the woods, the last before anticipated Autumn,

When pleasure returns to cool this porous South, that the lakes do not dry up,

Nor the springs stop giving life, the pleasure is real, Real Presence.

 

What can I say? No longer alone cursing at length, now I pray.

Now I wonder if I am a better man, if there will ever be that She

With whom I can walk by the dawn bright rye grass, to speak sunrises

And mental exercises, that maybe one day, I will be forgiven,

Maybe one day I can see it is I who must forgive myself,

Not by God, not by Mary, not by Lord Jesus Christ,

Not by meditations on right action and right faith where Compassion rules,

Once by the tears when I walked into the Hall of 500,

Deep in Guang Zhu someplace China,

500 incarnations of the teaching soul of Buddha,

Later, for me, it was 500 saints,

and above them all they were led by Saint Raphael, sweet Raphael,

Beloved archangel, led onto the bridge from life before Christ, to the one after,

The one opened up by John the Baptist, then Lord Jesus Christ salvation,

The one where it all started to happen. By mortal death came life after death.

 

…Please don’t leave me… Faraway is too drear and cold.

Let me be here in this always becoming life of conversion, always moving

Towards God and never from, lead me on my Love, forgiving and patient,

Faithful and alive, for some it takes a lifetime to awaken.

Conversion and Salvation are dynamic, sublimating everything.

And me,  I am surely one of them. Thank you my beloved, hope and desire.

 

….And not by Faith alone, but by Faith with Action…Believe!

But wait, maybe it is by faith alone….Yes. By these ways, by this life lived.

Finding, climbing, rising, doing all I can to find a way back home to God,

The place that is, just is, is always home, that place of Life.

(Once again, back home to God, thankfully born into this life.)

 

 

 

 

But I Cannot Say Her Name

               (I miss)

 

A voice.

This piano.

Once maybe twice

But more than thousands,

So many songs

And meditations,

Nocturnes formed

On miles of sky

Lain out on grasses

Disappearing.

Disappeared.

Hope.

Each time

We were together

These things sustained.

How I wish they were now.

You were all.

This was desire.

And it is here

Passion is alive

NOTE to you all yeah Poetry is alive and I say the name, Jesus Christ.

There are these three poems I have been transcribing from dream, notes and words hammering away, on events from undergraduate scenes where it turns out terms of Faith have been in my poetry all my life, it is just that now it is infused with all that I can as Grace and Real Presence. These things expose the beautiful, supernatural, Gospel alive, embracing the great studies and life in Buddhist and Catholic contemplations. To say the dangerous, forbidden, sacrificial and salvation wise to sundown and light mornings, it is by seeking it live in Imitation of Jesus Christ in these times of isolation and introspection, of examining Faith and the crazy miracle that I woke up one day sitting in Mass and a happiness more subliminal and pervasive than any I had ever felt. I apologize to anyone put off by expressing the Beatitudes, Grace and Gospel, of intense readings of Isaiah and the Songs in my life and poetry.

The promise was that life would get harder, that the closer to God the more the stones and diversions, fear and at times pain just beyond pain, and yeah, it’s all true, it does get harder, more difficult, but at the same time there is the development of what I hope is becoming a better Man and a better Artist, and that maybe if I am lucky someone will feel this pulse and agree, or argue against, how this living in Imitation of Christ has found life in my poetry, in the place it has always been, it’s just that now I am writing from a perspective of being towards what has been here all the time. Blows me away. It is OK to say Lord Jesus Christ. It is perfectly fine. This is the center of the Mass, when Heaven and Earth meet, this one moment in the Eucharist when Christ is here in the sacraments, in the body and blood.

Deeply, and sincerely, I don’t expect a bunch of people to read or even care, but I do hope that someone, anyone, anywhere has a conversation that just wants to burst out, that wants to be born, an argument or agreement, anything, anything that tests or supports the reason Why. I dig it. I am as surprised as anyone. Ask any friend past or present, I do believe and it grows stronger. Pretty cool. But it blew me away when I saw it in my poetry. Modern, post Whitman, Strand and Wright, in today a poetry as it always was not blast off rhymes and memory beats. I often write, automatic writing, and edit later, but it is all studied and edited, manicured and fashioned into a certain way afterwards but the meanings and intentions are unchanged. Oh well, if anyone see this and has a good conversation, please, please I am starved for insights and similar explorations, but not starved to be swayed to Protestant or agnostic, even back to Buddhism, and there is a lot in the teachings that foreshadow Jesus, that send a similar message, but nothing equates to the Salvation, to the gift that are the teachings, prophets, sayings, life and death, ascension of Jesus Christ. Those who’ve known me all my life, you understand, I know you do. Don’t be afraid. He really did say “I give you this, this 11th Commandment and it is Love, to love one another as I have loved you.” I hold this dear. This is as naked as a contemporary writer can get. Don’t hate. Turn from evil. I honestly love, even in the margins, always in the Church, so interested in our parish and parishioners, all the emotions in Mass, I love my friends and family even more, there is love.

And I think  this finishes off my week of total exposure and raw heart. To top it off a bloody migraine got its claws into me Saturday morning and has not let go, but I have to write, even through the kaleidoscope and purple star thistle memories…

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Green Waters Here Eleven AM Today Forever (a poem)


Green Waters Here Eleven AM Today Forever

Midmorning in the woods where the sunrise first spoke,
Riding together in a green aluminum 3 seat boat, sweetly
Sliding across the mirror slick surface of a Georgia pond,
Radar paced ringlets whisper, gesture, circle back into the rising paddle,
Into my hands as we move through the waters, one shore to the next,
Schools of crappie idle about in fallen pines, in lake grass, in dark waters,
And I tie in the rubbery spine of a tiny Yamamoto worm, cast about,
Cast about, 9 foot leader sailing, drift and float, sinking slightly shoreward,
Cold pulling it down, fluttering by a sunlit shallow, brushing the nose
Of a dozing spot bass…Twitch awake! and sped straight into a dazzling fight,
A Southern bass hungry in chill waters, power, crazy 3 pounds of muscle
Whipping the fly rod tip down bend flex and over back again, loose
Then running towards deep green shadows of a rotting locust trunk,
And I lowered the line down below the water just enough to wear pond scum
On my face from pulling up so fast, setting the hook, guaranteeing
That tonight we eat, we share life back and forth with our corner of the lake.
That’s right, we give and we take, and try to keep it that way,
Like, why destroy what we love or poison what gives us life?
It’s so much easier, and better overall, just to float along from time to time,
Catch what we can eat and pass over all the rest.

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Poem: On A Blueberry Plain


On A Blueberry Plain
Thick, bramble and blackberry, rhododendron, scrub pine,
A line of wisteria holding it fast to the vines from tree to tree,
Broken Cherokee rose limbs reach back to hold onto barb wire,
To touch the ever present tall grasses from fence post to fence post,
Walking the tree line, looking deeper and deeper among it all,
Maypops and dandelions brush leaves together,
Muscadines attach to the wisteria tightrope and grab onto anything
That will hold them high, and so grow our first crops. Together in groves
And small forests that pop up between highways and suburbs,
In the back yards of 1940s warehouses and busted down barns,
Lining the state lines of Tennessee and North Carolina
Beside marshes and run off blueberries tangle along the way into every
Thicket, onto flat fields and rich red lands, the blueberry
Towers in it’s lack of elevation, pine scented and dark blue,
From sweet to tart sour, fresh jelly jam sauce and frozen snack,
Decoration, delicious and power rich with no alteration
From Chemists and Shadows, just this perfect little
Dark diamond up against them all, up against old cotton pastures
Until it has become our beautiful darling, our new super berry,
Super fruit growing stronger than the Georgia peach,
Stronger than all the sweet corn, soy, wheat and peanuts
You can find, stronger as it is still pure, it is still alive
In spite of the Doctorates and deeply plowed DNA,
At least there is something we can still hold, eat,
And declare it is ours, it is the body, good old blueberry,
Muscadine and wild Rose, you keep my heart alive,
You give us here a bit of hope. You give life while asking nothing
But to grow and to leave their essence alone.

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Post Roast and Yeast Rolls Rambling in October


AUTUMN OVENS AND A STYLE OF ROLLS
Rains in the early morning have a kind of gastronomic compass quick at work. It’s like a persuasion of sorts, this rain. I can practically see the colors change across the hardwood tree canopy in this last bastion of woods in Clarke County. Turning over and looking at a lone rose in my backyard, a rabidly budding rose hips bush gives it’s wild best to keep me in citrus-y tea all winter.
But that’s just the start of a great morning. The flavors of a classic Sunday beef pot roast and yeast rolls shakes me out of bed. You and I both know it builds a pretty strong case to get in the kitchen early.
The cut of beef is the rump roast which is above the round on the haunches of beef cattle. It is a tough cut of meat that tenderizes in the Dutch oven as it roasts with the vegetables, stock, seasonings and vinegar or wine. You can use an iron Dutch oven or clay. I like both but am using the cast iron version as it is closest to what my Mother used to make hers, and I am personally more comfortable with iron. Giving the secret to her recipe was part of my brother’s requirement for my sister in law when he married. He loves it that much, we all do, actually. Fresh pearl onions are key. This is not her exact recipe.
The yeast rolls were intoxicating. They would sit in front of heater vents with cheese cloth laid over the top like a blanket of mist. The timing for the rise perfectly matched our return from Church. Come home, change cloths, wait for Mamaw and any other guests to arrive, then it was time for pot roast, gravy, mashed potatoes, English peas, yeast rolls and sweet tea. This was Sunday in Autumn. This is a purely American meal with nods to the West African and French culinary sources that permeated the South during her formative years.

Depending on the corn, peas or beans in season we would shuck them all week off and on while sitting on the front porch, waving at neighbors, my buddies on their 3 speed bikes with banana seats and butterfly handlebars, watching my sister’s boyfriends drive by and give a honk of any number of Mustang Fastback, Camero, Firebird, Cutlass 396, Shelby Cobra, Ford Torino Cobra, Mercury Montego MX, Buick GSX, Dodge Super Bee, ‘66 Corvette, Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda, Pontiac GTO, or Dodge Challenger, muscle car set of wheels that would make any kid drool with excitement over these gas guzzling wonders of the back roads, Plymouth Road Runners spinning out doing doughnuts at the ball park, her eventual husband driving up in a Oldsmobile 442 ragtop, my brother running off to pitching practice, me just running off, our crazy beagle/fox terrier dog Bob chasing every single car that turned onto our street, Mother talking about her sisters and the history of our town. “Just what is the other side of the tracks?” Yeah, this was sitting on the front porch as it was meant to be, shelling peas for supper and watching the coolest cars in Tucker stream on by through the warm autumn afternoons. Slow Food? We lived it then and we can live it today. The easiest place to start is with local produce, the flavors will send most memories into family meals and occasions free of discord or time. That was our home during the twilight of sleepy neighborhoods, scenes that we alone have the power to continue and evolve.

SOUTHERN POT ROAST (because I just cannot call it Yankee)
Use a 3 pound round, chuck or rump roast for this dish. Cooking time is approximately 2 ½ hours start to finish. Cook in 300 degree oven, allowing 12 minutes per pound. Start on stove top. You can use either iron or clay Dutch Oven, this recipe is for cast iron. If you cannot find pearl onions then use cipollini onions which are flatter than round. They are perfect for roasting and I like them both equally but have used the cipollini more professionally than the pearl variety.
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, high quality here
5 strips Bacon or guanciale (smoked/cured jowl)
3 to 4 pound Boneless round
12 Black peppercorns
24 Pearl onions, peeled, whole
2 Bell peppers, seeded, diced
1 1/2 cups Butternut squash, peeled, 1 inch dice
1 1/2 cups Pumpkin, peeled, 1 inch dice
2 cups Red potatoes, 1 inch dice
4 large Tomatoes, chopped
1 pint Beef stock
1 cup Burgundy or balsamic/red vinegar blend
1/3 cup Dale’s Marinade
1 tablespoon Rosemary, fresh
1 ½ teaspoon Thyme, dried
5 Bay leaves
6 cloves Garlic, smashed
3 tablespoons Leaf parsley, chopped, washed
3 tablespoons Cane or Date molasses
3 ounces European Butter

Everything takes place in the Dutch oven.
Heat the olive oil and bacon together over medium high heat. When the bacon is rendered remove it from the pan and add the beef. Brown it on all sides.
Add the potatoes, pumpkin and bell peppers, cook two minutes. Add squash, onion and tomatoes, cook three minutes and then add rest of ingredients except the butter. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. This will be roughly 20 minutes on the stove top. Baste the roast before putting in oven. Put bacon on top of roast. Cover and cook for 60 minutes at 300 degrees. Remove. Keep covered for 10 minutes. Check tenderness and temperature. This will not be rare or even medium rare, it is a pot roast which means it will be cooked completely in the juices and vegetables held in by the design of the Dutch oven.
Remove meat and vegetables. Skim fat. Add butter and stir into the liquids. Stir in 1 tablespoon flour to thicken into consistency of a gravy. Serve in gravy boat at the table during supper.
YEAST ROLLS
Yeast rolls are exactly what they sound like, rolls made with yeast as the ingredient to give it rise and body. Biscuits use baking soda and baking powder for this effect but is not as light or flaky as can be found in yeast rolls. Yeast rolls take time, a bit of work and an accurate oven. There are dozens of recipes and techniques. I am using a recipe that best approximates that of my youth.
A few words on yeast: we have dry active, fast active, compressed fresh yeast cakes, and brewers yeast. Yeast dies over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Brewers yeast is used for the nutritive benefits as ingredient, gravy and for brewing beer. Dry yeast keeps a long time in the pantry and requires about 20 minutes to foam and rise in warm water. Fast acting dry yeast has very small grains, can be added to flour when warm water is later added to mix or will rise within minutes when mixed into warm water. Yeast is a living thing. Salt inhibits yeast. High heat kills yeast after it has risen and holds the flours in tight or big bubbles for rolls, pizza and various bread doughs. When making basic yeast breads you need to have your yeast mixed into 80 to 100 degree Fahrenheit water for 15 minutes or until it has doubled, even tripled in size but not much more than that as it will become too loose and will not have enough binding molecules.
Yeast is a single cell organism. A pound of yeast has 32, 000,000,000 cells of fermented sugar cells known as yeast. Yeast requires bread so it is not gluten free. Recall that the glutens given to intolerance in some individuals are wheat, barley and malt. Some people are sensitive to oats as well but in general oats are safe for those who are gluten intolerant.
Makes 20+/- rolls. Use a 9 x 13 pan. 375 degree oven, cook 15 minutes.
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar/baking stevia
2 eggs (large)
1 teaspoon salt
4 cup bread flour (finer and higher gluten content than all purpose style)
2 1/4 teaspoon yeast
Warm the milk to between 90 and 110 degrees F.

Mix all of the ingredients either with electric mixer dough hook or by hand.
If it is dry add a tablespoon of warm water or warm milk.

Knead until it is smooth and pliable, elastic and not sticking to your hands.
Place the dough in a lightly oiled metal bowl, cover with a damp towel and place in a warm area to rise for an hour or so.Butter the pan.
Split the dough in half, then into 4 equal parts. Divide again, then divide into 3 balls. Cut into 24 pieces. To form rolls, hold a small dough ball inside both hands, cup with opening between index finger and thumb, squeeze into a ball as it emerges from your hands. Sort of like playing but with great results. You are making little balls with just enough air introduced by the gentle squeeze so that they will rise into smooth rolls. Line them up in the greased casserole or baking pan so that they are barely touching, at best not at all. Cover with warm, damp towel. Dough will rise by half before they are ready to bake.
Remove cloth, bake 15 minutes. Very light tan. Brush with softened butter. Serve warm.
Morning rain on the gutters,
Poplars and elm, waterfall
Rattling attic fans and me.
Morning rain rumbles cloud-side down,
Each drop chasing the other,
Faster and faster into lawn and waterway,
Into deep aquifers and the starving Oconee,
A thunder clap snaps Polaroids
Of me awake into one dream in the 8 a.m.
World alive, there is more than this.
Red Mule grits swimming on the stove,
Pale white Vesuvius ready to blow.
The smell of turkey sausage
And French red hen eggs,
A touch of curry
And I’m ready to go….
Go where? Go here?
Already now the day is clearing,
Footfall in the pines so light and steady,
Rosehips, acorns, mushrooms
And sweet peas line the trail,
Trails down river where darters and perch
Fight for water time with catfish
And snapping turtles.
This is morning. My morning here.
A beautiful Georgia morning
In the land of the Creek and Cherokee.

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Slow Food Greater Athens dinner at Harry’s Pig Shop


Tonight we had a very, Very good Slow Food Greater Athens dinner at Harrys Pig Shop here in Athens. Except for the grapeseed oil and sherry vinegar on the salad, salt and black pepper, everything was either grown or raised within 20 miles of Athens or close, but most certainly Georgia born and raised.
I forgot to take home a menu so this is from memory:
It was wonderfully family style starting with red Turkish style peppers fried in olive oil with kosher salt, beautiful leafy greens salad with radishes and peppers, field peas cooked traditional Southern style, yellow and green beans with the “snap” still happening, purple and creamer mashed potatoes, braised pork shoulder with hot vinegar & Berkshire roast sliced and perfectly tender and juicy.

Following up a dinner at the Branded Butcher is no easy feat and the folks with Lee Epting Catering and Harry’s Pig Shop met the challenge head on. Things are becoming exciting for Slow Food Greater Athens and local foods as whole as we continue to promote, advertise, shop, dine, form friendships, salvage our heritage fruits, vegetables, grass fed beef, Berkshire and red hogs raised outside of the cesspools that are factory animal farms. The more you know the more you learn to avoid the bad stuff and gravitate to the foods that not only taste far superior but are far healthier for us and for the local economies. Want to support local economy? Support local, independent restaurants, local farms, ranches and the people who work them all.

The worst thing (I am prejudiced) Ivy League economists stated at the beginning of the Recession in 2007 was to slack off of dining out and to pinch pennies on food. OK, so what is completely wrong about that cynical approach to our home state, or any home state? It undercut and nearly crippled the second largest employer in the Nation and then gave Monsanto free reign to get guys like our Senators Broun, Issakson and Chambliss to cozy up to the factory farms while making it harder for true organic farms to operate. After that it influenced the poor health of our country. How? By foods that were lacking in actual nutritional value, to state it lightly. Bad food, bad health, bad brain and what do you get? A mess of back peddling and blame on everyone except the true culprits.

Food is as political as it gets. I just wish that a watermelon radish, French red hen, brook trout, butterbean or Cherokee purple tomato could speak. But that begs a pretty cool question, which is, “If a chicken spoke could we understand it?” Put Harry’s Pig Shop in your dining rotation here and you will be happy. Please, join Slow Food Greater Athens and help contribute a small part to what makes living here so absolutely sublime. When I talk to people from some of the American major food cities they openly tell me that they simply do not have the access to fast and fresh, organic and clean foods and meats as we do here. The only other place I have lived where it was comparable was Mendocino, CA. I am sure there are others, but for now, our Athens is at the top of the heap.

We dine at a different restaurant every month. The Chefs and restaurants have all been happy to work with us for our dinners, to serve family style, to show off and of course to keep it local. We are having a membership drive this month. Regularly check our Slow Food site for ongoing information for events Farmers Market at Bishop Park and Downtown at the Courthouse, a membership meet and greet at Farm 255 and to add even more good things we will be screening the movie “Greenhorns” at Cine in November. Greenhorns is coproduced by the folks at Farm 255 and is about farms across America, small farms, people doing the right thing for each other while still supporting local economies! Now, who can argue with that? Great food and keeping the money close to home is the stuff of a strong community. See you soon.

Mark these dates on your calender for Slow Food events:
Slow Food Harvest Fest, October 13th, 1 to 4 pm at Farm 255
This is our membership drive and there will be music by Adam Klein, New Belgium beer keg, snacks courtesy Farm 255, and just a nice day in October.

The 2nd Annual Harvest Feast is on October 14th, 4-7pm at The Hill which is a dinner benefit for Wholesome Wave.
So far The National, Farm 255, Branded Butcher, Gymnopedie, Harry’s Pig Shop, Athens Chefs Association and a couple of others yet to
be announced will be featuring their take on current cusines. The price is $60 and WINE is included.

Food Day in Georgia is October 24th and Slow Food will have a table that day at the Farmer’s Market Courthouse event. Food Day! What could be better than that other than Sweet Tea and Fried Chicken Day in Georgia?

Taste Your Market on October 27th, 8 to 12 pm, Farmer’s Market we will have a table cooking whatever is looking the best from our diligent and dedicated local farmers. Chef Walt Light and Chef H Lamar Thomas (me) will be cooking.

The movie “Greenhorns”, November 13, either at Cine or the Tate Center, early evening, $10 per person. There will be discussions concerning small farms, restaurants and what you can do to help things along for the cause of clean, fresh foods.

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Summertime in the South…or What’s In The Box?


WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
Travel food and box lunches work within a delicate boundary between tasty, safe and easy to eat. A road trip with soggy sandwiches? Fast food? Health safety fried foods and meats? Gummy starches and carbohydrates? There is a way to have the best of all worlds with proper preparation of key ingredients, observation of temperature and time sensitive holding. I am concentrating on starches and side dishes.
Always look to the hottest regions of the world when putting together a box lunch. Humidity has a huge effect on picnic foods. Keep in mind basic terms for your meal: Does it need to be kept cold? Will it hold well? Can it be assembled when you are ready to eat or will it be a completed dish? Can it withstand heat for long? Will you eat it with your fingers or are dishes, chopsticks, knives or forks necessary?
We are making barley with lemon, sumac and cilantro; cold sesame lo mein pasta; and Japanese sweet potato salad with spiced ham and roasted sweet peppers. These are easy to make, filling, full of good vitamins and amino acid. Barley is much more than a beer ingredient, soup or breakfast. Only the sweet potato salad is gluten free this month.
A good substitute for hulled and/or pearl barley is spelt. Though spelt does have gluten it has been found to be tolerated. I like using spelt, when I can find it. Spelt looks like giant barley and is based in Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions. They are both high in good cholesterol, magnesium and phosphorus. It is a popular grain today but is still scarce in some areas, hence, barley, pearl barley in particular, is our grain for this rich salad. Hulled barley is more nutritious than pearled or polished. Barley, malt and wheat gluten are the primary grains responsible for gluten intolerance.
It’s funny how pulses and grams that became animal and bird food in the last century have now made it back to the daily table as delicious and enriching starches. This change is a great thing. Imagine a life without quinoa, amaranth, barley, lentils, millet and spelt? Some may still live without these amazing grains. The loss was all mine, and many others, up until the mid 1990s when quinoa and amaranth, the super grains of the Americas came to prominence. They are perfect for our beautiful South.
Lo mein/Canton noodles are wheat, water, salt and egg. They are available flat for sauté/stir fry and round for soups. Shanghai noodles are the larger, round style, which is what many American diners are used to in American-Chinese restaurants as lo mein. You can also use ramen pasta for cold dishes. This is not the instant, which is a college staple and easy lunch dish. The Japanese ramen interpretation of lo mein that has less fat content than Chinese lo mein. My friend Karen at Fooks Grocery suggested using ramen and it was a great addition alternate recipes for cold sesame noodles. You can use dry or fresh for the cold pasta dish, Sesame noodles. This particular dish shows up as a late night take out dish in movies all the time. Sesame noodles can be addictive. If you are using up pasta in your pantry then spaghetti and linguine are both good substitutes for Canton/lo mein pasta.
Sweet potatoes are grown all over Asia. There are around 70 varieties from purple to tan. The one we are using, the Japanese sweet potato, has a thin skin and is pale yellow, not deep orange which is the more common variety here in the South and in China. It is less sweet but as high in nutrients as any other sweet potato variety. They hold well for tempura frying, chips and as a diced salad style. Japanese sweet potato starch is used along with lime starch in making gluten free shiriitake noodles. Because of their versatility and health benefits sweet potatoes are amazing in any and all preparations, and yes, it is also used for making spirits (booze!) in Africa and Asia. Imagine a friend saying they had a sweet potato hang over.
Barley With Sumac and Cilantro
There are 250 kinds of sumac. The one we use for cooking is an Arabic sumac that is red and has a lemony flavor perfect for fish, lamb and grain dishes. It is not “poison” sumac we find here in our easements and woods. You can find sumac in the Athens area at Taj Mahal on Baxter Street. There are limitless ingredients of the subcontinent here so ask questions in the store. I go there specifically to buy sumac, starches, spices, fenugreek leaves and curry leaves. Our barley today is pearl barley. Puffed and ready to eat hot in 20 minutes. For our purpose you will cook the barley the night before and then add seasonings the next day. I am using the puffed so that it is similar in appearance to spelt/farro.
You can add things like chevre and ground lamb/turkey in grape leaves, various sliced olives, almonds, kim chee, seaweed salad and just about anything that complements grains.
1 cup pearl barley
2 cups water
½ teaspoon kosher sea salt (sea salt has no ammonia or bleach)
Bring salted water to a boil. Stir in barley. Reduce heat to simmer. Stir. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from heat.
24 leaves sliced fresh cilantro
1 ounce roasted red peppers, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4th teaspoon ground white pepper
1 teaspoon sumac
Stir ingredients and cover. Let rest 10 minutes. Chill. Garnish with chopped almonds.

Sesame Noodles
You can use fresh or dried Chinese noodles for this dish. Always check the labels on Asian noodles/pasta and you will notice at least one key ingredient: wheat flour, rice flour, a bean flour or potato and tapioca flour. Western pasta is basically wheat flour. The different flours used in Asian pastas is what gives each one a distinctive flavor and texture.
Making cold or hot sesame noodles is easier and faster than most any other pasta. It took me 20 minutes to prepare this recipe. I cooked ramen and lo mein pastas to compare and found the lo mein to be better for the cold and ramen for hot/warm. Notice that the final sauce is not thick. If you make it too thick then it will become gummy upon refrigeration. Combine pasta and sauce while warm.
If you have trouble with peanut butter then use almond or cashew butter.
8 ounces lo mein
2 quarts boiling water
1/3 teaspoon kosher sea salt
Cook noodles. Drain and rinse under cold water.
1 teaspoon ginger, minced
3 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped into a paste
1/3rd teaspoon Indian red chili
½ teaspoon sambal oelek (Vietnamese Chili Garlic paste)
2 tablespoons brown sugar or date palm molasses
½ cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons peanut oil or coconut oil or corn oil
1/3 cup vegetable stock
3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
4 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon toasted white sesame seeds
3 stalks green onion, chopped
Cook brown sugar and peanut butter in the oil until it is warm throughout, add garlic, ginger and chili. Heat on medium for five minutes. Stir so that it does not stick to bottom of the pan. Stir in vegetable stock, soy and vinegar and continue to cook and stir for ten minutes on medium low.
Add noodles to sauce and cook for two minutes so that the noodles are coated and there is a light sauce. Add toasted sesame seeds.
Other garnishes can be sliced pickle, cabbage, cucumbers, cilantro, green onions, chopped nuts or zucchini cut into thin strips to resemble pasta using a microplane vegetable slicer.
Sweet Potato Salad
Potato salads have been lunchbox, picnic and travel favorites for generations and there is no reason to stop now. What we can do is expand on the many kinds of potato. We are using Japanese yam for this particular recipe but sweet potatoes are just as perfect. Be careful on how long you cook the diced potatoes as they go from gently firm to very soft in seconds. Frequently check for firmness as they boil.
The addition of honey and molasses was a last minute idea when I was cooking a test batch. You can experiment with various honeys from local uncooked which is the healthiest to any number of honey from around the country and globe. The same holds for different kinds of molasses when you start comparing grape, date, sorghum and cane. Unsulphured Blackstrap molasses is truly healthy, in fact it is the only processed sugar that is considered to posses healthy nutrients iron, calcium, magnesium, trace minerals, B and E vitamins. It has more calcium than milk.
2 tablespoons corn oil, coconut oil or grapeseed oil
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
10 ounces Sweet potato, peeled and cut into small cubes
8 ounces Ham, cut into small cubes
1/4th ounce dried mango, minced
1/3 cup yellow onion, diced
2 stalks celery, small dice
2 Parsnips, small dice
1/3 cup chicken stock
3 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine
1/3rd cup Cashews
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses
1 tablespoon Roasted Italian herbs: thyme, oregano, basil
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
2 tablespoons European butter like Kerrygold Irish, Plugra or local dairy
5 ounces Irish gouda or young swiss cheese, small cubes
Saute potato, ham, mango, onion, celery and parsnips in oil on medium high heat for five minutes. Add chicken stock and cooking wine, cook until liquid dissolves. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the cheese, and cook on medium low for five minutes. Remove from heat and add cheese. Refrigerate. You can also add any other fresh or dried fruits such as cherries, pineapple, pears, apples or grapes.
Of course any bread, cheese and cured meat is excellent for picnic, lunchbox or travel. Whether you are at home, school, on the back porch, in the mountains, by a stream or on the sea there is always a place for the new and unique plays on old standards for the picnic basket. The most important thing is to look to those close or far away and offer your peace and friendship. Any good Food can be sustainable, local and universal.

Dried flowers, a dusty letter,
Japanese figurines, yellow light
on the brick mantel shines,
wipe your eyes, look again,
and still it shines a cracked
and dingy pastel,
the morning itself seems like a postcard,
a loved memento of the life you’ve had.
But waking always brings this pause,
this gaze into the past…
You wish it was easier
to shake away the dreams,
just set them on the shelf
beside the light,
turn around and go your way,
To find something that will last.
And today these wishes
Do come true,
Today I woke and saw you.

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Shirred Eggs and Liquor recipes


EGGSEPTIONAL AND EGGSTRAVAGENT SUMMER BRUNCH

Brunch is an affair that always brings to mind extravagant egg dishes, Belgian waffles, out of the ordinary sandwiches and fun drinks, either alcohol or non alcohol. This is a relaxing time where it is either a moment for lovers or for large groups. Happiness is the theme, and anytime there is good food and close friends then joy is surely expressed. Some of my fondest brunch memories are of dim sum restaurants, Southern fare and of coveted long afternoons on the Mendocino Coast watching the whales and tourists flow along with the fog.
We will be making one egg dish and several liquors and drink bases. The brunch table is a place of flowers, fresh cut fruits, rich muffins and biscuits, it is where you want to shine your best, but to also give airs of relaxation. Setting the table with carafes of drink bases, sparkling water, chilled espresso and teas adds to the sense of celebration. Any day with your beloved friends is a day to celebrate, actually.
Georgia just gets too hot too soon now so our egg is a baked dish, also called shirred eggs. I have been making various baked/shirred eggs for over 20 years. There are as many variations are imaginable. Shirred eggs tend to be British Isles, French and Scandinavian inspired dishes. The one today is Scandinavian and uses the last of the root vegetables of the season along with sausage style ground turkey. It is parsnips, carrots, onions, turnip, sweet potato, turkey sausage and farm eggs baked in an iron skillet with chicken stock, truffles and rosemary.
Do not be daunted by the prospect of making your own liquors, ginger ale and chai. We are making Kahlua, Irish cream, Beautiful and Green tea liquors. The recipes are for a quart of each. They keep indefinitely and nothing is wasted.
BRUNCH COFFEE AND ICED LIQUORS
For many people brunch means Bloody Mary and mimosa style drinks. They are mainstays for very good reasons of being both delicious and recognizable the world over as drinks that define a weekend brunch. Everyone has their own best Bloody Mary recipe. How about if we build our own liquor recipes?
Ginger ale syrup is an excellent addition to the grand old Sazerac and various bourbon cocktails. Peach bitters should have a place next to classic Angostura bitters on your bar shelf.
GINGER ALE
1lb ginger, unpeeled, cut into dice
2 stalks lemongrass, trimmed and roughly chopped
2 small fresh chilies, stems removed
1.5 cups sugar
1 quart water
Combine ginger, lemongrass, and chilies in processor and mince, stop and scrape down as necessary.
Place puree in saucepan with the sugar and one quart of water, bring to boil, reduce to medium and simmer about 15 minutes. turn off heat, cool, strain, chill. This can be kept for several weeks refrigerated.
To serve, place about 1/4 cup syrup in glass full of ice. Top with soda water. Makes about 8-10 glasses. This is good with the green tea or beautiful liquors as well as an amazing ingredient to Sazerac.
A Sazerac is basically rye whiskey, and bitters. Peach Bitters works best. Muddle a sugar cube and the bitters with crushed ice. Pour the whiskey over the bitters and ice. Pour a dash of anise flavored liquor and a dash of ginger ale base into an Old Fashioned glass and roll it around the glass so that the inside is coated. Pour out the excess liquor. Strain the muddled whiskey into the glass.
CHAI LATTE
The word ‘chai’ translates as black tea.
1 cup Milk
2 cups Black tea, strong
1 Cinnamon bark
¼ teaspoon Ginger
1/6 teaspoon Cardamom
1 tablespoon Sugar or brown sugar

Combine and keep warm. Strain. Pour the liquid into cups or reserve in a sealed container in your refrigerator. You can make as much as you will drink within a couple of days.
If you are drinking it right away then steep and strain. In a separate container froth 4 ounces of milk or cream. Milk frothers are cheap and well worth owning. Add coffee liquor or Irish liquor to chai, spoon froth on top and sprinkle with fresh grated cinnamon.
KAHLUA
Makes 1 quart
1 1/2 cups espresso, cold
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4th cup molasses
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 quart vodka
Combine espresso, sugars, molasses and vanilla in a large sauce pot and bring to a boil. When it hits a boil turn heat down to a simmer and let cook for about 20 minutes. Refrigerate 12 hours. Add vodka. Cover and let stand again overnight in refrigerator. That’s it, easy kahlua and half the price. You can vary the flavors with different coffees and with alternate extracts such as a touch of almond extract. And we all know what we get when we start mixing vanilla and almond…. Irish Cream!

IRISH CREAM
This is one of the most delicious and rich liquors around. You can make it as thick as you like with the condensed milk and chocolate.
1 cup heavy cream
1 pint sweetened condensed milk
1 quart Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey
1 1/2 cups espresso, cold
1/2 cup chocolate syrup
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon dark vanilla extract
Mix it all together and then mix again in bar blender at high speed for about a minute so that it is completely blended. This will keep forever and a day in the refrigerator.
And you know what happens when you have your own homemade Irish Cream in the house? Chocolate martinis. Blend with vodka and a touch of orange liquor and swirl chocolate sauce around the top of the drink. Irish cream liquor is extremely versatile so be adventurous and see what you do with it in cocktails, cooking and as a topping for ice cream and cake desserts.
BEAUTIFUL
This is called Beautiful for the reason that it seems to make people feel that way, beautiful. This a strong liquor so use sparingly until you are used to the intensity.
1/2 cup Cointreau
1 cup Grand Marnier or Napoleon Mandarin Liquor
1 pint Brandy
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
½ cup cran-raspberry juice
1 cup orange juice

Make a syrup by heating the orange and cranberry-raspberry juices and sugar together just below a boil for 20 minutes, simmer. Remove from heat and add alcohols. You can substitute pomegranate juice and it will still be delicious. This also a great place to use the berry-vinegar drink base we made here a few months ago. Cover and refrigerate for several days before serving. This is best in a cordial glass or over ice. For fun you can serve it warm and float a tablespoon of cognac on the top and light it, when the flame dies, drink. Beautiful has many variations.
GREEN TEA LIQUOR
24 ounces strong green tea, brewed
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 ½ cups water
1 pint sake, good grade
1 cup vodka
1/2 cup orange blossom honey
1/2 cup chopped peaches

Make the tea and set aside. Combine sugar and water. Make simple syrup by bringing it to a boil and then simmering for 15 minutes. Pour into the tea and honey. Chill. After it is cold add peaches and sake, blend in drink blender. Strain into glass or plastic container and cover. Set aside in a glass or plastic sealed container in a dark, cool place for at least a week.
Green tea liquor is good with sparkling water over ice, as a martini base, with sushi, as a summer sipping liquor or with fruit juice and soda water for a brunch cocktail.
SHIRRED EGGS
For a rich European or Northern California style brunch egg there is nothing better than shirred eggs. Oven baked eggs also reduce the amount heat distributed in your kitchen during our hot months here in the South. Be careful not to over cook them, and believe me, this is easy to do. Check your dish five minutes into cooking to see if the eggs are cooking at a good pace.
You can use individual small iron skillets person or cook it all in one big iron skillet for this particular dish. Many shirred egg dishes are cooked in ramekins and even as a brunch pizza with spinach, fresh mozzarella and garlic.
3 ounces parsnips, peeled and diced
3 ounces carrots, peeled and diced
3 ounces turnips, peeled and diced
2 ounces onion, diced
3 ounces sweet potato, peeled and diced
3/4 cup chicken stock
¼ teaspoon ground thyme
¼ teaspoon basil leaves
1 teaspoon rosemary, minced
1/3 teaspoon paprika
1/3 teaspoon Indian red pepper, ground
1 teaspoon ground sea salt (sea salt because it is not bleached)
6 ounces ground turkey
2 ounces extra virgin olive oil
1 ounce butter
1 shaving of truffle for each egg. If no truffles then use rehydrated dried Chinese mushrooms or cepes.
Sauté the turkey and spices in olive oil and butter on low heat. When it is cooked add the vegetables one group at a time, pour off excess oils and then put in 375 degree oven. Cook for 15 minutes. Add chicken stock. Gently crack 4 to 6 eggs, depending how hungry you are, at compass points in the skillet. Keep the yolk and white as close together as you can by forming a well in the vegetables when you add them.
Bake for 10 minutes. Put one truffle shaving on top of each egg. If you must have cheese just grate Swiss or mozzarella over the pan and let it melt from the heat of the vegetables. Serve your friends and beloved with happiness and open conversations. The best things begin around a lively table.

Everything flowering
Everything alive
Turn anywhere
In an afternoon drive
Here and there
Trees are blooming
Roses reach out
Towards every passer by
They seem to shout
“Look at me, won’t you please?”
And in the kitchens
The cooking smells cry
“It’s time to gather here”,
And so we do,
We gather and we love,
We see all things in Spring
Are in and of God,
So we turn and say Hello,
Shake hands and smile,
Knowing all the while
This life is as good
As we make it,
We do as we should
As we would wish
Were done for us,
Fresh flowers,
Fresh foods,
True friends,
What is common
Is uncommon
And never simply
Sentimental
When done with heart
With purity and peace.

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PANKO: THE OTHER WHITE BREAD CRUMB


PANKO: THE OTHER WHITE BREAD CRUMB
Modern American and Japanese food, art and medicine have an ever widening audience in both cultures. This exchange is not one sided. Our relationship is one of progress and growth. For every bite of wonderful, salt water expression in sushi, buttery Kobe beef, crisp tempura and gluten free pastas that we experience here, there is an equal reaction to hamburgers, Southern fried chicken and American-Italian foods in Japan.
This month we are exploring the uses of the coarse, white panko breadcrumb. Panko has been present in restaurants for a few decades but is fairly recent as a common grocery store product.
We import healthy foods and we export the fast food side of our culture. It would be amazing if our modern Southern, Northern California, New York and New Orleans food culture were more energetically marketed. They do appear in hotel restaurants around the world so that is a good start. Panko is one of those ingredients that make this expansion possible. We will be cooking fried panko pickles and baby bok choi; sautéed daikon (large white radish) pancakes with chili garlic sauce; and oven roasted panko salmon with orange sweet soy sauce Yes, Pacific salmon season has started!

Japanese holistic approaches to health have entered American homes with a positive integration of food, décor, mind and body. Modern American poetry has had an interesting and personal impact in Japan. Two scholastic literary collections that include things I have written have shown a great deal of interest in Japan. “American Diaspora”, a text book on the sense of geographic and cultural place for American poets; and “Last Call: The Bukowski Legacy Continues” which is a text of poetry and prose following the styles of Poet/Novelist Charles Bukowski. For every tanka and haiku that we all wrote as undergraduates, there is a contemporary American poetic form taken on in Japan and Asia. This is what makes all things “world” so beautiful, the exchange of culture through health, Art and cuisine.

Other dishes that make world foods possible are fried foods, pickles, pancakes/crepes, rice and pastas. How we prepare them is what defines recipe origins. Something as old as breadcrumbs has taken on vastly diverse manufacture and use. Some of us grew up knowing only Italian seasoned and plain breadcrumbs. Progress changes things. Japan found a way to toast bread from the inside out using electric probes in the bread dough. This way of bread baking made it possible for a whole new kind of breadcrumb, the white panko breadcrumb. It is cooked crispy from the inside out so that there is no crust and the texture is uniform throughout the bread.
Panko is coarse, white and allows for fast and crispy cooking. Progressive Chefs have found hundreds of ways of using panko throughout American and World cuisines. You can find panko in almost any grocery store. Some still keep it only in the Asian section, but most will have it alongside Western style breadcrumbs.
Bok choi or bok choy is a member of a family of Chinese cabbages. I have heard the word choi used to describe leafy vegetables in general. Bok choi has no cholesterol or fat, and is high in vitamins C and A. Raw, it has a crisp and clean flavor. I think all chois taste great, think of a marriage between baby lettuces and cucumber and you have a sense of the flavor. They are highly adaptable from raw to fried. Sesame oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce and fermented black bean (soy beans) and garlic each are compliments to bok choi. The bright flavor and crisp characteristics of bok choi is a perfect match for panko fried pickles.
The first time I saw fried pickles as a beer food was in Sausalito, CA. A table of Japanese men were eating fried pickles and drinking draft beer. I thought it was pretty cool because fried pickles are Southern and Japanese, with each culture thinking it is their own creation. That scene was in 1980. Thing is that open fires and boiling oil tend to encourage cooks to put anything to the test. Salty, sweet and sour, fried pickles take on a vibrant flavor that begs you to eat more. They are good as bar food or as an appetizer. Pilsner is the perfect beer for these crispy bar snacks. Salty and sour makes you thirsty, hence they are primary flavors in bar food.
FRIED PANKO PICKLES AND BOK CHOI
The dipping sauce is mayonnaise based. I recently bought two different kinds of Philippine vinegar bbq sauces at Fooks Grocery and in three days one is half full. They are that good. The brand is Kuratsoy from Isabel Village in the Philippines. It is a blend of coconut vinegar, “spices” and soy.
The world of vinegars is populated with white, apple cider, sorghum, cane, balsamic, pomegranate, red wine, sherry and champagne to the complex Japanese brown rice and deep, bitter Chinese black vinegar. Vinegars, alcohol, stocks, fruit and vegetable juices are all important for deglazing hot woks and sautéed dishes as well as important ingredients to our sauces and marinades. Never underestimate the quality of a vinegar, it’s all a happiness.
Isabel Village Mayonnaise
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons Dukes mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Kuratsoy extra hot thin bbq vinegar
1 clove garlic, minced
1/6 teaspoon thyme
1/6 teaspoon basil
1 tablespoon cilantro, chopped
Combine well and refrigerate. Tightly covered, this will keep for several weeks.
Bok Choi
3 bok choi, washed, thick slice
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Slice and toss with oil. Refrigerate until ready to eat.
Pickles
10 dill pickles, 5 cut in spears and 5 cut in thick oblong slices
¼ cup milk
¼ cup Greek yogurt (plain)
Combine milk and yogurt, stir and add pickles. Refrigerate for two hours.
1/3 teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon ground Indian chili or ground red chili pepper
1/3 cup unbleached white flour or brown rice flour
1 cup panko
Mix dry ingredients.
1 quart corn oil heated to 350 degrees

Remove pickles from marinade and drain. Put the dry ingredients in a plastic bag. Add the pickles to the bag. Shake. Take pickles out of bag, shake off excess starch and fry for 2 minutes. Using a spider or slotted spoon lift pickles out of oil and drain.
Scatter the bok choi over a serving platter, spoon Isabel Village Mayonnaise in the center of the plate and around the edges. Stack pickles on the bok choi. Garnish with chopped Chinese parsley/cilantro and very small amount of coarse sea salt and crushed dried pepper. Dried jalapeno is very good pepper choice for this dish. It can be found in the Latin section of the grocery store along with several other kinds of dried pepper. At one time or another, try them all, learn how each has an important flavor.
DAIKON PANCAKES WITH CHILI GARLIC SAUCE
This is comfort food at it’s finest. My favorite is Hong Kong style but there are Korean, Taiwanese, Beijing, Vietnamese and of course Japanese styles as well. Our chili garlic sauce is simply, Srirracha. Srirracha was made by a Vietnamese immigrant in Los Angeles back in the 1970s because he was trying to recall his grandmother’s home cooking. “Rooster sauce” became an international hit.
Daikon is a mild white radish. They look like huge white parsnips. They are good raw or cooked. Daikon is used a lot in sushi restaurants. It is great cold to mild weather food. One of my fondest food memories is that of eating radish cakes hot off the stove, it was snowing and we were in comfort food heaven inside looking out at late winter. Radish cakes are popular at dim sum restaurants.
1 ½ cups daikon, peeled and shredded
2 cups cold water
Soak in cold water 30 minutes. Drain.
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 clove garlic, crushed and minced
½ onion, minced
1 egg, beaten
½ cup panko
1 teaspoon Five Spice Powder
1 teaspoon paprika
4 ounces corn oil for frying

Combine. Add daikon to mix and mash it all together. Shape eight pancakes. Heat oil in large iron skillet and pan fry until crisp outside, hot inside. Serve with Srirracha and chopped cherries for a complete set of flavors. Srirracha is also good mixed with mayonnaise.
PANKO SALMON
Panko is the star today but with salmon season beginning it is a tough call as to what is our feature today. Pacific salmon are: Chinook, chum/keta, sockeye, coho/silver and pink. Stick to this set of salmon and you will never go wrong.. What does this mean? Buy Alaskan to Washington Pacific salmon in season, your body, taste buds and the fisheries will thank you. Do this, pretend that Atlantic Salmon has never been farmed in the Pacific Ocean. See how plentiful and untarnished the waters can be?
SALMON
2, 7 ounce salmon fillets, skin on (crispy skin is tasty!)
1 teaspoon pink sea salt
1 tablespoon sweet rice vinegar
Mix vinegar and salt. Rub on flesh and skin.
1 cup panko
Dredge flesh side of salmon in panko. Press it into the meat so it holds.
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon olive oil

Heat iron skillet with butter and oil. Put salmon in flesh side down. Cook three minutes. Use a fish spatula and turn. Cook two minutes and then finish in 450 degree oven for five minutes.
4 ounces Pearl River dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons date palm sugar or date molasses, or brown sugar/molasses
4 tablespoons fresh orange juice
Combine and heat over low heat until thickened. Stir as it cooks.

Set salmon on plate, drizzle sauce over salmon. Shredded carrots and zucchini, Indo-Asian pesto, and Japanese pasta is very good with salmon, and of course a side of wasabi is always welcome.
April is a big, breezy, blossoming, farmers market ready, food crazy, happy, pollinating month of rebirth and hope. Spread the love. There’s always love to spare.

For every passion
There is compassion,
With a prayer to peace,
To faith and hope,
This is our life alive
At the start of each day.
In each sunrise, sunset,
A thousand possibilities
Are cast into the world.
From the farmers we see
Heirloom seeds,
Heritage crops,
Climbing vines
Of wild sweet peas,
Peppers, peppers, peppers,
All fill the carts
Of our local markets.
And then,
Winds crash down
From the Nantahala range,
Carrying rain clouds
And the thrill
Of June tomatoes,
Silver Queen corn,
Buckets of squashes
And piles of potatoes,
This is Georgia
At the beginning of Spring,
When our hearts
Reach as high
As Jack’s beanstalk
And our spirit
Dares to touch
The heavens above.

Posted on

Lynching In Oconee


Moore’s Ford Lynching, 7.26.1946 Version 2

There aren’t a lot of prayers rising

I ain’t sung before, at least sincere,

Hang me in a meadow for my soul

To dry, katydids and sparrows shout

Over the wheatgrass and river oats,

Pass me over to the laurel

And hemlock so I can watch

The Appalachee flow all green to brown,

Coneflowers and aster pave

The red dirt banks,

Scratch my nails on the rocks

Here so I can follow my way

Back home again,

A low sun breaths out

Last shadows left for me to see,

Nothing is as dark eyed

As this stupid lonely dusk,

Curtains draw out on the horizon

And the Southern stories

Of Cormac McCarthy line up

Like Walton County pines

Waiting for the ax to fall,

Smell of smoke,

Remington crack and wet rope,

All I saw before the light died out

Was this beautiful Southern land,

And then,

Four dead, and an unborn killed,

Dared argue with a neighbor,

Now just a road marker,

A pastoral song more alive

By Moore’s Ford Road, shot or hung,

Where trickle meets a stream

And at last I’ve run out,

Years before JFK and Johnson

Rose to clear the way,

There’s never a good lynching,

Tick, tick, tick…..

First it was race and now it’s wages,

The winds snap and fade.

proletaria

politics philosophy phenomena

Poems for Warriors

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Ps 147:3

LUNA

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Confessions of a Readaholic

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susansflowers

garden ponderings

𝓡. 𝓐. 𝓓𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓼

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Claudia Hernandez

RhYmOpeDia

Immature poet imitate...but the mature one steal from the depth of the heart

hotfox63

IN MEMORY EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC - Tennessee Williams

errinspelling

Lordess

Welcome to my world.

Discobar Bizar

Welkom op de blog van Discobar Bizar. Druk gerust wat op de andere knoppen ook, of lees het aangrijpende verhaal van Harry nu je hier bent. Welcome to the Discobar Bizar blog, feel free to push some of the other buttons, or to read the gripping story of Harry whilst you are here!

the poet's billow

a resource for moving poetry

MY TROUBLED MIND

confessions are self-serving

D.H. Glass

Author. Poet.

Sketches from Berlin (& Parts Beyond)

Poetry, Fiction, Essays & Art by M.P. Powers

proletaria

politics philosophy phenomena

Poems for Warriors

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Ps 147:3

LUNA

Pen to paper

Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Musings and books from a grunty overthinker

Confessions of a Readaholic

Eclipsed Words

Aspire To Inspire

Art at the push of a button

Photography

Tiger Blog

susansflowers

garden ponderings

𝓡. 𝓐. 𝓓𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓼

Poetry, blogs and more.

Claudia Hernandez

RhYmOpeDia

Immature poet imitate...but the mature one steal from the depth of the heart

hotfox63

IN MEMORY EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC - Tennessee Williams

errinspelling

Lordess

Welcome to my world.

Discobar Bizar

Welkom op de blog van Discobar Bizar. Druk gerust wat op de andere knoppen ook, of lees het aangrijpende verhaal van Harry nu je hier bent. Welcome to the Discobar Bizar blog, feel free to push some of the other buttons, or to read the gripping story of Harry whilst you are here!

the poet's billow

a resource for moving poetry

MY TROUBLED MIND

confessions are self-serving

D.H. Glass

Author. Poet.

Sketches from Berlin (& Parts Beyond)

Poetry, Fiction, Essays & Art by M.P. Powers

proletaria

politics philosophy phenomena

Poems for Warriors

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Ps 147:3

LUNA

Pen to paper

Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Musings and books from a grunty overthinker

Confessions of a Readaholic

Eclipsed Words

Aspire To Inspire

Art at the push of a button

Photography

Tiger Blog

susansflowers

garden ponderings

𝓡. 𝓐. 𝓓𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓼

Poetry, blogs and more.

Claudia Hernandez

RhYmOpeDia

Immature poet imitate...but the mature one steal from the depth of the heart

hotfox63

IN MEMORY EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC - Tennessee Williams

errinspelling

Lordess

Welcome to my world.

Discobar Bizar

Welkom op de blog van Discobar Bizar. Druk gerust wat op de andere knoppen ook, of lees het aangrijpende verhaal van Harry nu je hier bent. Welcome to the Discobar Bizar blog, feel free to push some of the other buttons, or to read the gripping story of Harry whilst you are here!

the poet's billow

a resource for moving poetry

MY TROUBLED MIND

confessions are self-serving

D.H. Glass

Author. Poet.

Sketches from Berlin (& Parts Beyond)

Poetry, Fiction, Essays & Art by M.P. Powers