Oatmeal Flax Walnut Cookies

 I baked these while listening to a fabulous CBC documentary about Mickey who mades bespoke suits for the stars for New york's postwar celebrities--radio gold. Another reccomended listen is Sheilagh Roger's extended interview with Ruth Ozeki about Ruth's new novel called A Tale for the Time Being.

I was snacking on black garlic--my new replacement for chocolate. Yes, I gave the latter up because it gives me migraines.

2 c rolled oats

1/4 cup ground flax

1 cup toasted walnut pieces

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2/3 c AP flour

salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 c brown sugar

3/4 c butter

1/2 tsp Mexican vanilla

1 egg

--modified from a Ricardo Recipe

You know the drill--cream butter and sugar, then eggs and vanilla. Mix flour, baking pwder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt, then mix into the wet ingredients. Add the flax, then nuts, then oatmeal. Drop with a medium sixed 3 tbp ice cream scoop bake 14 min.

Eat with a side of black garlic.

Toasty

I am craving the toasty sandwiches of fall. Today I had a Croque Monsieur at Shaktea for lunch and then I made BLT's for dinner with four kinds of heritage tomatoes and bacon from Choices crisped in the oven. As I made dinner I listened to a story about a man wrestling a cougar to save a little boy's life. He literally had his hands around the cougar's neck and was choking it and even gave it a concussion. Strewth! That dude is strong... and brave. I want to take him camping with me. He'd be a great body guard. Cougars frighten me, also bed bugs.

Back 2 The Rain

A week ago I was sweltering and today I am cuddled under my wool blankets and duvets in my long underwear. Happy September. School is about to start, the grant deadlines lurk like nuclear subs and I'm worried about my tomatoes getting the dreaded blight. Anyway, the weather's supposed to clear up for the weekend and hopefully we'll get some beautiful fall days. So cheer up, Ms. Zucchini.

BTW, I made zucchini cupcakes for breakfast. That is the second batch I made out of one zuke from Catherine and their is still a big hunk of zucchini left! That's over four cups of zucchini already. Strewth!

The Feast Sustains Us

As I was cycling back from a meeting at the graveyard (regarding All Soul's Day), it occurred to me that I have a responsibility. As a spiritual cultural worker I am responsible for my own spiritual and physical health. That thought cheered me up. It made me think that we need to pull together as a group and create programs to keep us spiritually and physically healthy. When we are called on to do our job we need to be in the right physical condition and in the right state of mind to do our job calmly and gracefully. This required a certain level of physical stamina.

Yesterday my son and I went to a feast hosted by The Downtown Eastside Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden at UBC Farm. It was a lovely event on a beautiful sunny fall day. I felt very privileged to participate and act as a witness to the feast ceremonies, and I brought a jar of honey and some sage as an offering of gratitude. I didn't take pictures of the ceremonies, but I did photograph the salmon cooking on the fire and more bees in flowers. (Surprise, surprise.) I am still fascinated at how late the bees are out foraging this year and right now they are active in the French Marigolds, calendula, cosmos, dandelions and sunflowers at the farm. Because everything was late this year it's a lucky thing the bees actually still have flowers to draw nutrients from. One of the things that lead to the high rate of winter deaths in honeybees in BC last year was lack of late forage. I am collecting as many late fall flower seeds as I can and yesterday was the perfect day for collecting seeds at UBC Farm.

But I digress. There were many tribes represented at the feast--Gitsan, Cree, Musqueum and many others. I realize with embarrassment that I need to bone up on my knowledge of local tribes and I need to find a map of the Vancouver territories. There were songs to bless the salmon around the fire, letting any bad energy dissipate and collecting the warmth from the sun, the fire, the fish and filling out hearts with that good energy. The elders were honoured, and given a special place to site around the fire. The children and youth were honoured and acknowledged. All throughout the ceremony the speaker thanked us for our patience as these ceremonies and speeches needed to be done because of ancient protocol. Thanking the people present occurred many times throughout the day, acknowledging the role of each person involved was also an important part of the protocol.




It was a feast rich with the gifts of wholesome food--bannock and jam to start with, bison stew, deer stew, halibut soup, salmon, potatoes, beets, and salads made with ingredients from the DTESAK Garden. At the end of the meal coffee was poured into the fire as an offering to the spirits and the ancestors.

Ullie was asked to help with a children's ceremony to protect the garden. Flags in the four colours from the medicine wheel were tied to stakes from the salmon roast were pounded into the corners of the garden. Green for the plants of the earth (North), Blue for water (West), White for the clouds (South), and red for fire (East). This ceremony was filmed for a program on cable TV that teaches children how to speak Cree.


It was a day that exhausted in a good way and it also gave us memories that will sustain us for a long time. The resilience of the Musqueam nation, in particular was referred to and inspired me. What was once a thriving nation of 30, 000 was at it's low point only 90 people, but in spite of this they still managed to preserve their culture. This in itself is a miracle of stamina and strength.


In one simple ritual of gratitude we were asked to really live in a moment with each other in a circle in the garden, feeling the earth under our feet, enjoying the feeling of a full belly after the feast. We were asked to close our eyes and listen to the sounds of the garden and breathe in the fresh air. Then we acknowledged the gratitude for every one of the people around the circle and asked ourselves how it would be if this was the last meal we had ever eaten. A drummer closed this set of ceremonies with another blessing. These rituals were especially important now that the land is threatened for development. I noted a great sadness and seriousness in the eyes of the farm workers who have grown to love this farm so much.

What I realized on my bike ride back from the cemetery is that we need to keep each other in good form to organize and perform these community events. We need to feed each other, metaphorically and physically. This mid-life stage as an artist is especially important as we bear the brunt of the load of this responsibility at this age. If we let our health go--if we don't care for ourselves and each other, the culture will suffer. We're responsible for our bodies, our souls, ourselves--the whole she-bang. We--the eco-feminists at large need to create a healthy environment for spiritual cultural workers. Where do we begin? As witnesses to people like the Musqueam who can teach us some hard-won lessons in cultural survival.

The Late Late Show

The Van Dusen's party's almost over, but those late late blossoms, the bosomy divas and sensual concubines who've had too much wine, show off their sumptuous jewels just before the frost comes to shut it all down. (The light turns Nicole Dextras's leaf letters into stained glass.)

Japanese Maples show off their highlights.

The heritage sweet peas are still pumping out their glorious perfume.

The Stink Iris puts on a burlesque act.

Sedum proves irresistible to the 2 o'clock bees.



Dahilias and amaranth--spiky and bloody.



Hand-tinted echinacea and more of the delicate stonecrop.

I can almost deceive myself into thinking winter will not come this year, that we will enter a loop that preserves this enchanted, bejeweled time. One more day of this, and then they say the rain will begin again. A boy throws a penny into the pond and I make a wish.

Apples and Pears on the Drive

I just love the dusky bounty of these Okanagan fruits--big bins of them lit by the late afternoon sun. Plenty. Abundance. Beauty. Autumn.

A Sweet Saturday

It's almost fall equinox--the perfect time for a good old-fashion extraction. Not the dental kind, thank god, but the opposite--that of the sweet viscous bee-made kind. Saturday morning I headed up to the market at UBC farm and arrived before it was open. I like chatting to the people in line--we talked about raising chickens in the city. Seattlites can have chickens in their back yards, so why can't we? Once the market opened, I was thrilled to see that UBC Farm honey was for sale, so I bought a jar. It has got a beautiful rich golden hue. I can't wait to taste it!

I also bought some red beans from the Mayan gardeners. Oooh I'm a little bit crazy about their beans! This year I'm going to ask for some seeds from them. Maybe they should package and sell their seeds. Maybe we could help them do that. I checked on the prayer flags, sorted them out, untwisted them, and then I bought a big fat piece of bannock and slathered it with with butter and jam. As I drank a cup of herbal tea and chomped on my bannock I watched the volunteers pick flowers and unload tubs of just-picked produce. The Beekeeper arrived and we loaded the extractor into the back seat of the car.


(Photo above by Jean.) I had cleaned off the counter tops in the kitchen to create room for the extractor, jars, and bowls for wax. I phoned neighbors to come and give us a hand with the cranking. We open the rubber maid tubs full of honey-laden frames and prepare to rob the combs. I talked to The Beekeeper about how easy it would be just to sell the comb--it's a novelty that kids and adults love. He said you can buy rounds that fit into frames that you can pop out when they're full and then just pop a top on to sell. Cool! There's also the option of putting a chunk of comb in a jar and then filling it up with honey, which is also very pretty. Some people don't like wax in their honey--chacun son gout and all that.

The first step of the extraction process is to scrape the caps off the top of the wax. There is an electric tool that makes this go faster, which we agreed would be an asset, or just a number of scrapers, so more than one person can do this at once. The first side is easy to do because you can lay it flat on the table, but to keep the honey from running out, you have to hold the frame vertical when you do the other side--it would be helpful to have a stand to do this.


The extractor holds three frames and having nine, we did three extractions, flipping the frame once one side had been emptied. We put a spaghetti pot on a chair under the extractor, with a sieve covered in four layers of wet cheesecloth. You could use one layer of finer cheesecloth, I suppose, or a fine strainer which means you can do away with the cheesecloth all together. Once it's been strained of hive detritus, you just put it into clean jars. We used a ladle and a funnel, but it's better if you can use a pail with a spout. If we are going to have a hive in the neighbourhood, I think it's very worthwhile to invest in some of this equipment.

We tried the method of separating out the cap wax from the honey by heating the mixture until it's all melted in a double boiler. When you let the mixture cool, you the wax rises to the top. The cooked honey on the bottom can be used for baking, and has a "burnt honey" taste. Well, there was still lots of honey in the wax when I lifted it off the top--so I guess this is a process that takes more than one go to make it work. Also, I'd advise you not to use your good pots to do it--get one from the thrift shop.

The smell of warm wax and honey is comforting, but it does become cloying after a while. It wasn't until the next morning that I tasted it on toast. It's generally a medium-bodied mid-summer honey and some frames had darker honey than others. The beekeeper also told me about the hygroscopic quality of honey--on damp days it can absorb moisture and weigh more than on dry days--so you can have the same-size jar containing the same weight of honey and one may have less honey than the other. Cleaning the extractor was a bit of an adventure--lots of hot water in the bath tub and I literally used a toothbrush to clean the wax off the frame-holders.

And today I cleaned honey off the floor, the pots and pans and shelves, and socks. Honey everywhere! It was a good excuse to give the floor a good scrub and rearrange the feng shui in the kitchen. Blessed by honey, the energy flows much better there now. Tonight Pierre used the honey mixed with soya sauce to make a "jus" for our ling cod. We had rice and beans and carrots from the garden--one of my favourite meals. Happy fall equinox everyone!

Puttering

After five days of intense grant writing, I am taking a day off to putter in the garden. Whatever you call it--frittering, puttering, pottering about--I love it! I do the seed-saving rounds on my flowers and let them dry in cake pans in the porch. I pick the scarlet runner beans that are finally arriving and growing at an alarming rate.


This one little batch of blanket flowers was the best $3 spent on a plant this year. It's blossoms have been very long-lived. Next year I'll grow some from seed. They grow wild on the prairies around my childhood home.


The one patch of nasturtiums that survived the aphids has been given new life by the Indian summer.
Harvesting carrots, watering the tomatoes, finding the rare pea pod, and pulling up dead plants: all these things are good for the soul. Happy puttering everybody!

Belabored Day

Somehow, I've got to get excited about fall. Right now it just looms over me like a shadow of a mountain of unfinished paperwork. I've got to get excited about writing grants. (Well, being finished the grants will feel good anyway.) I've need to anticipate the hours spent researching and reading with a mug of hot tea and a couple of low-fat shortbread cookies. (I wish shortbread was low-fat.) I've got to be excited about fall cleaning, seed saving, exercising, PAC meetings, teaching, and rain. Oh yes, there will be rain. There will be walks to school in the rain, nutritious lunches to make while it's raining. And somehow in the midst of all this stuff I've got to make some art: writing, drawing, cutting stitching, pasting, and melting in the rain.




But fall is also about getting together with friends for potlucks and cocktails... hanging out with the moms, sharing our stories of elementary school angst and preparing nutritious lunches. There will be chocolate. There will be port. There will be trips to Coco et Olive for the two bite espresso brownies to quell the back to school blues. There will be the anticipation of planning for next summer. Sigh. Oh, and there will be lunch at that new Northern Italian place: La Quercia. I'm looking forward to that. Did I mention there will be credit card debt?

Fall, get ready for your close-up. You're on.

BTW, did I tell you I had a dream about doing a photo shoot with Michelle Pfeiffer?