Peas, Glazes, Elements, Transformation

This June, picking hull peas in our garden at their point of peak, plump perfection has felt like paradise.  And going to the garden at 5pm and deciding what to make for dinner is so much fun. However, a few years ago I wouldn't have been able to do that. I'm still not as creative in the kitchen as I'm sure I could be, but without the years of getting CSA veggies, and consequently needing to learn to cook, we wouldn't be able to enjoy the bounty of that garden.

Time changes us, life transforms us.

Happy Cat Farm's blue potted capucijner peas reveal a magical transformative process.  (These heirloom peas originate from Duch Capuchin monks of the 17th C and Tim's strain comes from American Dutch Mennonites).  With water, warmth, nutrients and sunlight (the four elements), the purply/magenta flower becomes blue and then a gorgeous dark purple pea starts to emerge and then it becomes entirely green....

And the pea's color variegations and specks reminded me so much of what happens to glazes in a kiln. In a copper green glaze, at high heat, taking oxygen out of the atmosphere chemically changes the glaze in places, turning it red. Soda bicarbonate that has been soaked in water and introduced at 2300 degrees creates a vapor and streaks the glaze blue.

Cultures around the world have described a simple set of four "elements," or the simplest essential parts necessary for life: earth, air, water and fire. Many also include a fifth element, called "the void," the "Aether" or  the "Quintessence, the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestial sphere."  

Native American Medicine Wheels

Sometimes undesirable things happen, a glaze goes bad, a seed doesn't grow well, we make a mistake or something bad happens to us. But if we try to be vigilant, and learn from others and from our mistakes, we can help nurture the effects that we want to see, creating a bit of paradise.

Shino woodfired plate by Janet Martin-Aylam, notice the specks of color on the peas and plate,
including the gold specks near the edge

Baby Turnips and Inspiration

Springtime inspiration was galvanized for me today by Two Gander Farm's baby turnips.  They are transitioning their farm to a Brandywine Conservancy property in Downingtown that preserves 250 acres very close to town. But from that old Miller farm, the vista is nothing but hills of fields and trees and the old homestead - the energy and love that lived there so long ago is still vibrating. People have a lot of love in their hearts to work so hard to preserve something so important.

Inspiration and the inspired are all around us, we just have to notice. For several months now, MC Richards has been speaking into my ear, in whispers and in shouts, from the past and from the future. In one of her last writings, in Studio Potter, 1997, "Form out of Nothingness," she writes:

What are human beings for? ...Always divine, she [the earth], through human hands connected with blood warmth and soul care, bears another quality into the cosmos..When we touch life, we shape it....In the art of pottery, our clay "body" is entered by the fire, and changed. This "body" will never return to clay, but it may be useful now as implement (means) and as a ceremony and celebration (end). [The transformation of clay is a means to an end] reminding us continually of our role in creating life, creating environment, creating love, creating freedom, creating justice.  We can change from consumers to celebrants, passing out the bread and wine to all who come to the table.  We can begin to weaken the habits of compulsive consuming and to strengthen the habits of creating and recreating, of imagining, of doing..The power to heal and be healed is built into the body, into our clay body. 

Interiority is coming down to earth,
weightlessness is penetrating gravity,
warmth is overtaking indifference.

Have you ever seen baby turnips? Deirdre said to slice them up and fry them in butter, then add the tops. We also included some ramps of theirs. And noodles, parmigiane and pine nuts - so sweet, so quick and easy to prepare.

Baby turnips and ramps from Two Gander Farm, Bowl by Shawn Spangler

Sustainably harvested  ramps from Meredith at Happy Cat Farm, Plate by Ron Myers

Ramps in spring

Herb vases for this Passover weekend including Tim Mountz's generous gift of ramps he foraged. Thank you, Tim.

Ramps are in the middle. They still have a lot of roots and should keep in
 the water for a couple of days for other recipes.

Now I understand all the hype about ramps. Cooking them is really fun and they're delicious. First toss them in olive oil and lay them on an already hot grill. They immediately turn a brighter shade of green and then start to puff up!  Pull them off as they wilt. They don't need to be on the grill for more than a minute. We chopped them up and put into smashed potatoes.

Puffing up

There's a poem by Wendell Berry I found that seems appropriate when eating ramps:

I have taken in the light
that quickened eye and leaf.
May my brain be bright with praise
of what I eat, in the brief blaze
of motion and of thought,
May I be worthy of my meat [ramps].

Root vegetables – Pressure and Darkness

Darkness is increasingly filling our days. Dusk on the east coast by 4pm is so early. December, while looming darker, also holds the promise of the solstice and an excuse for sparkly distractions. 

These beets are from October. Because they were cooked in a pressure cooker, their color isn't washed out.    They have an endless depth of beautiful burgundy darkness and are embraced by the pot’s special rim.

Bowl by Mel Griffin

Pressure is defined as the force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the surface of an object. Pressure happens, especially during the holidays.  Pressure can be a pain, it can be helpful sometimes, and it can be downright terrific when it happens to food inside of pressure cookers. To cook foods, a small amount of boiling water is trapped, which increases the pressure inside, which then increases the actual temperature of the boiling point of water.  Root vegetables sit in a basket above the water and become soft within minutes. It has a higher nutritional value and tastes better than other cooking methods too. Microorganisms are killed. It’s more energy efficient. And, the best part: you don’t have to peel the vegetables first! The skins literally slide right off of root vegetables (if they’re hot, it helps to do this with cold water).  Modern pressure cookers safely release excess pressure, and they save so much time and headache in food prep.  

Here’s a good pressure cooking chart http://www.hippressurecooking.com/p/cooking-times.html

Under pressure

Beet Salad
Salad with arugula, cooked beets, scallions and goat cheese with a dressing of equal parts balsamic and olive oil, a bit of maple syrup, garlic, pepper and salt.

Speaking of garlic, you can peel it in 10 seconds without knives! And it works in a small container, no matching giant metal bowls needed. 

no title

The growing season is over and I haven't had the time or been inspired to write in a while. But the Occupy Movement has been going on: Americans have been calling attention to corporate greed and control over government, asking for a return to democracy. And, as the winter holiday season approaches, I've been thinking about my pot-making and pot-selling processes and motivations, wondering about the vast commodification of art - what it means to make art for art's sake, as opposed to buying and selling...as I visited our nation's capital....

Voulkos, 1976, at the Renwick. Clay for clay's sake.
It's even better to smash your head up against the wall and see exactly where his thumb went through.
(Why don't museum curators ever let you see the feet of pots!?!?!)

Wedgewood creamware with decals, middle 1800s, at the (controversial) DAR.
 Doctor's container for leeches.  On the right, it says "Prosperity to the United States of America"



Warhol's Shadow Paintings, 1979. It was the first time it had been shown in totality, and when displayed in the round Hirshhorn walls, it felt like walking through a film strip. Warhol refused payment for these.

The group is interdisciplinary, defying categorization, focusing on veterans, homelessness, growing food, access to land, gazettes and bulletins, environmentalism, liminal photography and dancing gophers. Wikipedia informs that a "liminal situation" can also be applied to entire societies that are going through a crisis or a “collapse of order.”

Going in the camera obscura/liminal camera/truck/darkroom

The most exciting part of the exhibition was going into the giant pinhole camera/developing studio.  It was a truck!  This video below is taken inside the truck and someone is explaining how easy it is to make your own camera obscura. For a while we just sat and watched people walking upside down on the mall. It became remarkably apparent what a bounce we have in our step as we try to defy gravity - that force that keeps us connected to earth.

In their writing, they mentioned their photographs in relationship to an influential 1936 Walter Benjamin essay on the aesthetics of art entitled "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction." Benjamin was trying to wrap his mind around how the appreciation of art would change under the influence of photography and film, 'mechanically reproducible' mediums that can essentially exist without an original. He was a Jewish Mystic writing at the time of great upheaval in Germany, without realizing his ideas were prophetically predicting the power that film would have in nazi propaganda. Unfortunately, in  his essay he discounts the much older mechanically reproducible mediums of bronzes, terra cottas, and woodcuts as not being legitimate art.

Our culture has a need to separate things as either 'art' or 'craft.'  The Museum of Contemporary Craft in Manhattan changed its name to the American Craft Museum and most recently to the Museum of Art and Design, eliminating the word craft altogether. Warhol could have cared less about categories! Of the Shadow Paintings, he said, "Someone asked me if they were art and I said no. You see, the opening party had disco. I guess that makes them disco décor.”  Funny.

This notion of how we define and categorize things was expressed at a large exhibit of Mel Bochner at the National Gallery of Art. He uses words in different kinds of visual constructions.  An early exhibit of his was called "Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed As Art." His work makes one wonder if it is poetry or art or just visible things on paper!

Self Portrait, 1966

It doesn't matter what category something fits into, what matters is how you respond to it.

In the spirit of Bochner, here is my word construction for "pottery":

pottery, art, craft, fine art, traditional
art, ceramic art, design, utilitarian ware,
functional pottery, decorative art, folk art,
outside art, production pottery, studio pottery,
earth dirt clay mud fire glaze transformation
identification realization resonate
spark understanding 

nourishment
fulfillment 
a vessel to hold leeches

Japanese clay basket at the Freer-Sackler, to express snow on the mountains. Breathtaking to me.
 Unfortunately, I didn't get the name or date, I think it was 18th C.

At the end of our visit, Ruben pondered, "how can it be that people are so smart and so stupid at the same time?" He was referring to how we can make space ships and great art, and yet not know how to stop damaging the earth and each other.

No answers for Ruben, but Trey Flemming and Annie Baum-Stein of Urban Apiaries and Bill Shick at SHARE Food Program are not being stupid. In the video, learn how there is No Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder in Philadelphia!!!  (Friday Arts is a local program absolutely not hindered by categories)

Watch Extended interview with Trey Flemming on PBS. See more from FRIDAY ARTS.

Mushrooms - Rain into Transcendence, Light into Dark

September equinox is a time of balance when “day and night are equal”

After that, across the world, a lot of holidays are celebrated that have similar themes.

Higan is a week of Buddhist services observed in Japan on the equinoxes.

Christian Michaelmas (also known as the Feast of Michael and All Angels) usually close to the equinox and Rosh haShanah.

In China the Moon Festival is celebrated around (but not precisely) the time of the September equinox.

 

Judiasm observes the “high holy days” for 10 days just after the autumnal equinox. It starts with the first day of the Jewish calendar month, the new moon, to start the new year, Rosh ha Shanah. The shofar, the ram’s horn, is blown to open up the doors of the mind and the heart.  The last day is Yom Kipur, day of atonement.

The light is fading, but within us is the beginning of the world.

The rain promises so much more...

Mushrooms are absolutely everywhere right now. It's amazing. Something wonderful born of so much rain and greyness, death and decay.

 

Safe ones, easy to identify, in the woods right now (but don't take my word for it)!

 

Plate by Bernadette Curran.  Put in a hot pan to release the water, and then olive oil and garlic added, cooked for about 10 minutes. ready for a little sauce and noodles. Super delicious and good for you.

Water - Watermelon, Mushrooms, Sensitive Chaos, Vortex stream effect

Water has been a prevalent force these days.This summer, both its long absence and its over abundant presence have been noticeable in taste and looks of fruits and veggies.  Tomatoes were divine and abundant, and then over saturated.  As Claire wrote in her blog, the rains have pushed the tomatoes to bursting. Then, came the peaches and melons - the sweetness from the drought followed by the juiciness from all the rain.

plate by Ron Meyers

Then the rains came down in the name of Irene.  The bands of clouds, the giant spiral she was, the wind, the power, the flooding, the dampness….The water….The subsequent crisp, blue-skied perfect days and the happy, giant mushrooms growing all around us in the woods in central PA.  When I discovered huge patches of giant mushrooms, as many as 15 different varieties, the experience of not being able to pick and eat any due to our ignorance of the forest gave me a strange emotion I can’t name.

this is just a few of the species, upon close examination, many are spiraling

tiny hot peppers from Happy Cat Organics

Grilled mushroom and watermelon Ceviche- from Latin Grill, strange sounding combo, but wonderful!
Soak thinly sliced fish (recipe calls for sashimi grade striped bass, we used tilapia but maybe orange roughy or halibut might have been better) in orange juice and lime juice for at least 10 minutes
Grill about 10 wild domesticated mushrooms (i used oyster, shitake, portabello) in olive oil till soft,  chop, and add to a salsa of:
     Chopped Poblano and other hot peppers
     Chopped Cilantro
     Julienned red onion
     salt and pepper
     some lime juice
Add fish and watermelon balls just before serving.

At Camphill Village Kimberton Hills there is a fountain called a Flow-Form.  People are drawn to it. It is a special fountain designed to mimic the natural movement of water that is difficult to see in most conditions.  I’ve been reading “Sensitive Chaos” by Theodore Shwenk.  Put very simply, through extensive observation and research, Shwenk realized that the natural state of water wants to be in a sphere, and when forced upon by gravity, wind, movement and matter, it moves in both spirals and in rhythmical waves, influenced by air, temperature and matter (water, air, fire and earth).  This explains why we have meandering rivers, why a hose writhes like a snake when you turn it on, why intersecting waves on a lake make such perfect patterns, why rivers carve rocks into flowing forms, why spirals are visible in plants and more primitive species, and why bones and muscle, and even the heart chambers, spiral.  Spirals may not be visibly evident in form, but evidence of them is ubiquitous.  It conjures the image of DaVinci’s man as a golden rectangle, the ancient Yin Yan symbol, and more…


As I write this, the news announced that a man wanting to drain his property opened a manhole and was sucked down the drain by a whirlpool vortex. !

Water has changed and is changing our planet.  71% of the earth is covered by water. Human beings are 70% water… (Beer is about 90% water)...I am going to keep thinking about the words  Sensitive...Chaos.........

you can see it yourself with cinnamon and water!

An aeolian harp (æolian harp or wind harp) is "played" by the wind. It is named for Aeolus, the greek god of wind.  The harp is driven by the vortex street effect where the motion of the wind across a string causes the vortex stream effect, and this alternating vortex causes the string to vibrate!

 flowform slideshow

Chaco, AD 450-500

post-Chaco

China, 5000-3000BC

Minoan, Kamara style, 2100-1700 

Tomato Rainbows

When I was picking up my Sankanac CSA share this week, the tomatoes
ranging from green, yellow, orange, red and a purply red, made me think
of a tomato rainbow. Then when I went on to pick up my first North Star
CSA fruit share, and berries at the Anselma Market, I realized we probably
really would have a complete rainbow. And Black and White to boot!  Here is what we came up with:

notice Ruben's Yin Yang

The swiss chard, pears and apples all had had greens and purply-reds which didn't seem to fit into the rainbow, but then I found that there is a phenomenon called supernumerary, or stacker, rainbows, that have a faint repeating pastel band of greens and purples underneath!





After we built our rainbow, Ruben asked why the government gives money to grow bad stuff (I think he was referring to the giant single monocropping that requires intense pesticides and GMOs) , if we know that it's bad for the environment and that processed foods made from these things are bad for our health.  I said the original intention was to help feed a lot of people, including the whole world, which is something that makes this country great. But now that farmers and scientists and consumers know more, it would be better if old policies could get updated and farmers could be encouraged to grow a lot more different things.

Ruben concluded:  "It's not that good food is expensive, it's that junk food is cheap!"

Speaking of food diversity, check out this image that seed-saver, Tim Mountz, shared.








Farmer Claire on her Inverbrook Farm blog reminds us that on August 1 we passed through Lammas, the midpoint between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. It is also traditionally the celebration of first fruit, and coincides with North Star's first weekly share.  She says: When the weather is hot, and cooking seems less appealing, nothing could be better than simple pairings of cheese and fruit—cheddar and tomatoes, feta and watermelon, yogurt and peaches, brebis and melon—all possibilities with the Hillacres Pride Cheese Share and the Highland Farm sheep products available at the farm.

The abundance and grace of the work of small-scale farmers stand in stark contrast to what is happening in much of the world.  May an abundant harvest of rainbows be upon us all.....

1. Cucumbers, Carrots, Cabbage, 2. Beer and 3. Glazes: Three is a magic number

.

Viktor Vasnetsov -

Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf

 

Three is found all throughout expressions, stories and fairy tales from cultures around the world.

Understanding complexity derived through the simplicity of three can be a life-long pursuit. The three basic ingredients found in a food recipe, a beer recipe or a glaze recipe can become all consuming.  Three is a magic number, of course.

"They've been,

they are and
probably will be"
Stevie Wonder, the Secret Life of Plants

I.  Glazes are made up of three basic minerals from the earth:

1. Silica - the glass, or quartz –  will melt at 3000-4000 F.  Agate, amethyst, opal, jasper are types of silica.

2. Feldspar - the melter, or flux – allows the silica to melt at a lower temp.

3. Alumina - the sticker  - combines well with silica make the glass tough and bonds the glaze to the clay because it is a main ingredient in clay. Rubies and sapphires are crystalline forms of alumina. 

Other optional ingredients in smaller amounts include metal oxides such as copper, iron or cobalt to add color or change the quality of matte, translucency, or opalescence, In a "reduction firing" oxygen is taken out of the kiln, or the amount of oxygen in the kiln is “reduced,” and metal oxides give up their oxygen and change color.

 

Different types of the three ingredients, added in different proportions, and in different combinations, and fired on different clay bodies, at different temperatures with different fuels, for different lengths of time produce different results! Not to mention the varying influence of the kiln gods on any given day....

Shimmer - Cone 4-8 (fired with baking soda sprayed in at cone 6 2232 degrees F) 

Silica – 12.9

Custer Feldspar- 44.6  (a flux containing mostly potassium)

Whiting – 21.8 (Calcium flux)

China Clay - 14.85 (Supplies alumina and silica)

Lithium oxide - 5.9 (another flux)

II.  Beer is just
1. Hops

2. Yeast

3. Sugar (from malted barley)

And yet….like glazes, the complexity astounds.

AMatt's bubbling yeast waiting to be added to the cooled wort
(boiled hops and malt). 

Matt writes:  All the different beers are generally the result of the combination of the above ingredients: what type of hops and when they are added, what type of malt, (and the fermentability of the extracted sugars), and what type of yeast.  Added to these basics are additional sources of variability, such as the particular characteristics of the hops from season to season, the fermentation temperature, and the length of aging.  Three basic ingredients, endless combinations.

Simcoe (hops) IPA



III.  Cucumbers, Cabbage, and Carrots - three veggies that don't require cooking in the heat of mid July.  Basic ingredients that help them along seem to come in threes. So simple, yet so complex!

1.Half-sour sun-fermented cucumbers:

3C Water, 2 TB Vinegar, 1 TBSalt  

Heat it to dissolve the salt, add to sliced cucumbers, dill with roots and sliced garlic. Shake. Sit in sun for two days….
 

2. Boubie's Cucumber Salad

Salt the thinly sliced cucumbers and let them stand for at least a half an hour, then drain water. Add:

1/4C lemon juice, 1/4C white vinegar, 1tsp-2tsp sugar.  Onions, dill.

Mug by Pam Lau, Claire's first cherry tomatos with basil, olive oil and cheese, cucumber salad

  

3.  Tangy Coleslaw:

1 C Vinegar, 1C Olive Oil, 2/3 C Sugar 

Some mustard powder, celery seed with cabbages, carrots, onion…