SUMMER PLEASURES AND ANTICIPATIONS

Suddenly Toronto has become subtropical, with moist air, intermittent rain, and high temperatures. “At last” the garden smiles, as it bursts into action. In one week it’s gone from torpor (except the leafy greens) to full riotous growth. And as the lettuce leaves toughen in the heat and the rhubarb season ends (sigh!), the chiles and tomatillos, the zucchinis, cucumbers, and eggplants are in bloom and setting fruit. At last.

On Friday I drove north out of the city, leaving at noon just as the long-weekend (Canada Day) traffic was starting to thicken. Once I was in the country, it looked as if the rain we’ve been having so generously had drowned many crops: there were fields of wheat turning yellow with excess water, and low-lying spots covered with several inches of standing water. But farther north, past Shelburne and into Grey county, I was in a different climate zone, where the rainfall had been just right, for there the crops in the fields were standing tall and healthy.

I was on a mission: to do a little visiting with my 87 year old aunt and with friends, yes, but mainly to go and sing with a group of shape-note singers in Durham whom I haven’t seen for over a year. The occasion was a birthday, an excuse for people to make the effort to get together for a potluck as well as the sing.

We sat in a big-windowed living room surrounded by leafy hardwood forest as the evening sky grew pale, and after eating very well we sang and sang, renewing ourselves and connecting. There was a pause for cake with strawberries, and sparklers and champagne toasts outside on the deck, the we came inside and sang some more.

The sky had darkened past midnight blue by the time I left just before 11. I walked out into the damp-scented air of the forest, got in my little red car, and drove down the concession roads that led to the highway and thence to the city two hours away.

That sudden quiet when the car is turned off at the end of a journey, the lovely silence of arrival, is such a balm. As I walked through the garden from the garage I felt relieved to be home safely, but also refreshed and transformed as if I’d been away a week. That’s the power of music and of getting out of town. A change of scene, however brief, lets me see with fresh eyes.

And that’s always a good thing.

Now I have only two days to get my head in gear for my short trip to England and parts south. I’m headed to the Oxford Symposium next week, a three day conference of food and food history. This year the theme is Food and Material Culture. There’s to be a little sale of kitchen tools that people want to off-load. I have one strange spatula that I am prepared to part with, but I am bringing a couple of other tools for show and tell: a bread stamp from Kashgar that is made of bird feathers and a Tibetan butter box made of wood, the aroma of which transports me straight back to nomad tents. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else brings.

And I’m packing several wool sweaters, just to be sure, because I remember how wet and cold it was last year… Surely it will be better this time?

In the meantime I’m expecting friends for supper tonight. We’ll grill over charcoal – lamb leg steaks and some chicken too, as well as shallots and onions and perhaps some late asparagus if I can find any – and talk into the night. Summer is such a luxurious time.

DANCING & SINGING & LEARNING IN SUMMER LIGHT

As I sit in a chilly breeze, by an open door and looking out at the green and growing garden under a clear blue sky, I realise that I often start these posts with the weather. Is it cultural? Some Anglo streak that insists on making itself felt? Perhaps in part, but it's also a reflection of just how much the sky and light and weather generally affect moods and plans and the feel of the city.

Speaking of moods, the break in the heat last Thursday night came just in time, so that Friday night a passle of friends could dance and chat and eat and drink in comfort well into the warm breezy night.  The mood was relaxed, happy, engaged...truly a first summer party feel.

Though dancing was the main event, with talking a close second, there was also what to eat: Fresh strawberries picked that morning in Grey County were a highlight, along with sugar snap peas organically grown there too. We ate the peas raw, almost like green candy, and whoosh! they vanished. On the cooked food front, there were two brilliant cakes, large generous cakes, by dawnthebaker assisted by Evelyn, of Evelyn's Crackers; and some chocolate brownies that disappeared before I even saw them; as well as grilled beef salad, the meat alluringly smoky tasting, I have to say, because of the way the charcoal fire burned, made from flatiron steaks from Sanagan's. I grilled mushrooms of various kinds and they were really the hit for me, because of the (always reliable) olive oil and fish sauce coating of flavour they got just before I put them on the grill. All they needed was a squeeze of lime juice to finish them.

There was some sticky rice left over, and not much else.  Clean-up was easy easy, with help, and done before 3 am. Ahhh

The late nights I used to keep in university and afterward are not as easy now. I mean, they're easy enough at the time, and fun, but the lingering afterward of sleepiness and dopiness at odd hours of the day is a little long - at least three days. It's like jetlag I guess: pleasures that are paid for later.  The easy answer is to make sure to get to bed in good time. But these long limpid-light evenings are irresistible, and so I find myself up and outside in the soft air until way past midnight, way past one, .... you get the idea.

Pedalling around with an old friend on Saturday evening for example, listening in for a half hour here and there to various offerings of the Toronto jazz festival, was a perfect way to linger through the summer evening and make every moment a pleasure. Then yesterday I took my bicycle to Ward's Island for an afternoon singing (shape-note singing) at the small beautiful church, over a hundred years old, made of wood, with generous clear acoustics. We sang with the doors open to the green outdoors. Every once in awhile one of the long trailing tour bus cart things would come by and pause for a moment in front of the church, the guide's amplified voice telling stories of the past to bemused? bored? sleepy? tourists.

At singing we sometimes sight-read a new-to-us song, most often sight-read with the benefit of having sung it before a few times, or often in some cases. We sing a capella and the harmonies are delicious, the syncopations of rhythm occasionally startling. Yesterday was a long packed sing; we tried all sorts of less familiar tunes. And by the time I was sitting at the dock gazing at the mirage-like view of acqua railings framing the city's skyline across the water, I realised I was pooped. Yes, my voice was a little tired, but more it was because of the concentration. Reading music and words and trying to stay focussed seem like easy pleasures, and they are, but/and at the same time they do take effort.

And so although yesterday was not a heavy day of work, last night I was ready to catch up on sleep and dream a long night away.

One more thing, to do with food: I have leggy broccoli raab in my garden, grown from seed. I snap off pieces and then watch them regrow. The same goes for the kale that lasted through the winter.  I chop stir-fry the greens, or float pieces in soup. But I also chop the kale and include it in tender greens salad. Delicious. Last night I did that, and also used it in a simple soup made with masur (red) dal. I tempered the soup with chopped spring onions and some ginger cooked in olive oil, along with a blend of freshly ground cumin and coriander seed, and a couple of dried red chiles. A dash of white wine left over from the party finished it nicely.

Last week I gave the last class of my six-week Foods that Changed the World course at U of T's School of Continuing Studies. I miss it already. There was a pattern of intense reading and thinking and organising for weeks beforehand and also every week all through the course, as I tried to sort out what to cover, and how.  I'll be giving it again next year, and hopefully will be able to do a second food-and-culture-related course too.  More when I know.  And my student feed-back was very good, which always feels great. The thing I learned from it that I will try to do better with next year is that I should have had everyone introduce themselves and give a little of their background. We had some amazing resources in there, and it was only by "accident" that we learned of the expertise and food-related history of the class members.

It's always good to have a clear idea of how to improve and do better next time. And it's a luxury to have a "next time" to work with. Happy summer everyone.

IT'S UP TO ME TO FIGURE OUT FITNESS IN ALL WAYS

A beautiful penultimate morning of August here in Toronto that makes me feel renewed. That renewal also comes because of the seems-like-very-solid-and-sensible-advice-to-me advice that I got yesterday from a therapist named Damien at Athlete Care yesterday. I'd gone in to see him (my friend Ilse had recommended him highly) about this fallen transverse arch situation I've been living with since June.

Of course the failing of a piece of my body is disturbing. So it's been an odd summer as I try to come to terms with it. I've bought Birkenstock inserts to wear in my shoes and a new cushy pair of runners. But the basic message I got at the foot clinic was that i would need to depend on those inserts, and on wearing shoes in the house and never going barefoot, from now on. Even that I swallowed (grumbling, natch! but I did accept it).

But then my ankle started to hurt, with an intermittent pain, sometimes when I used it, sometimes after. Not good. Clearly whatever adaptations i was consciously making, and my body was making on its own, were doing damage or shifting things around, in a way that seemed to be making the situation worse. Time to rethink, I decided. Was there something going on centrally that was somehow causing all this? Maybe I needed to dig deeper? Cranio-sacral perhaps could help?

But no, really, it all felt lke a functional problem that I was failing to understand. Thus Damien.

His advice? Strengthen, stregthen, work on getting the muscles in the foot and lower leg strong to support the (now weaker) ligaments. He had me stand on two feet and go up onto the balls of my feet as high as possible, then down, and again and again. Then he asked me to try it just on the one left (injured) foot. Yikes! It wobbled and was unsteady. There, he said, that's what you need to stregthen. I'm to go up and down, on two feet before a walk or before getting going in the morning, just to increase blood flow to the muscles, and then do it on the injured foot, up-down-up-down, as often as I can in the day, in reps. The other exercise is to use the foot and ankle to pull against resistance. I mean I can do ankle circles, but it's a more effective strengthener to pull against resistance. (I hook my foot under the edge of a counter and use it to pull me up into a sitting position.)

I'm feeling so energised by this. Aha, I can help myself! Yes, it's a brighter picture altogether, Damien's view (no need for orthotics, once you're stronger you'll be fine barefoot etc), but the energising aspect is that it depends on me, it's up to me, and doesn't rely on outside aids or medications or tricks or... Damien's opinion (and of course not everyone would agree, but one can pick one's advice as one picks anything else, no?) is that most problems are a result of insufficient muscle strength or else overuse, too much pounding. And as we age, we need to focus even more on maintaining muscle strength to support our decreasingly elastic tendons and ligaments.

Sounds like a plan.

Now what's the emotional or intellectual equivalent of this physical advice about sustainable fitness and freedom from injury or impediment?

If I start from the same approach, then I can frame the issue this way: as we age we lose resilience, not just of ligaments etc but also some mental elasticity. We're no longer able to multi-task as easily. If we're too overloaded with different thoughts, we start to forget names or show some other sign of slippage. It's not a pretty sight and it can be very distressing (is this Alzheimer's? is the first panicked thought when it happens).

Clearly the first step is to try to keep our heads clear of unnecessary clutter. That would be for example fruitless worrying about the future or the past or...let's just leave it as fruitless worrying. The other kind of clutter is that which comes when we let ourselves think about too many things at once. With the internet always beckoning, it's easy to slip out of a task and into checking email or looking at the latest tweets. That shifting back and forth builds up debris and clutter that stops us from thinking clearly. It turns us all into ADD sufferers, mental magpies leaping from thing to thing and unable to setttle on anything or think about any one thing in a sustained way.

And that leaves us without the ability to think things through clearly.

I'm just feeling my way here, but the advice I'm trying to give myself, and to live by, is to make a list for the day, and try hard to stick to it, to move from task to task sequentially and not to think much about the next one until this one is done. (And to not check email every half hour either!) The limited forward planning required as I make the list and (loosely) structure my day is very steadying I find.

Those of you who work freelance will probably recognise what I'm talking about. Maybe those of you with jobs that are already structured won't know what I mean. But in your off-hours you may have these distracted and unproductive patterns. Mine are for sure in need of tidying up.

Today for example, my list is a nice easy one. I have five recipes to retest today for Rivers of Flavor: two delectable sweets, a fab pork noodle dish, a salsa variant, and a steamed noodle streetfood from Kengtung. I've got my shopping lists made, and at the other end of the day there are a couple of people dropping by whom I hope to feed with the results of the testing. Getting it done is one goal, but feeding friends is a wonderful motivation for staying on task all day.

Now to jump elsewhere: I went to the Southern Ontario shape-note sing last Saturday. We hold it at the beautiful Detweiler Meeting House southwest of Waterloo, a stone building in rolling farm country that has fabulous acoustics. People came from six states and four provinces, the potluck lunch was a spectacular spread, and the singing warm and intense both. From there I headed to a friend's place north of Lindsey, set in a glade in the woods. I sang to myself as I drove the three hours. I was feeling foolish and over-ambitious, but happily anticipatory too. And it was wonderful to arrive. What an oasis of peace and generous conversation! There was no singing in my sleep, no thought, just a deep plunge.

And that's the other important ingredient to good health, mental and physical: getting rest and sleep. It's while I sleep that my foot and ankle muscles will grow and strengthen. It's when we sleep that our "brain muscles" renew themselves. We're all so ambitious about the things we want to do in the evening. It's as hard to let go sometimes as it was when we were three and were told it was bedtime. "But I'm having so much FUN!"

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT!

It's such a hot night that eveything is sticking: my forarms to the table as I type, my legs to the chair, and my brain to...I'm not sure what, but it's not an enhancer of clear thinking, for sure!

No complaints though. This house has a good cross-breeze, and anyway I like the feeling of sweating out all that's inside from time to time. It's like an ongoing sauna. The trick with the hot weather of course is the traditional wise technique of having a quick shower anytime you are feeling hot or sticky or fed-up or on edge because of the heat. Instantly you get a lovely little shiver as the wet clings to your skin when you step out of the shower. That momentary cooling from evaporation sends the heavy loggy feeling away and refreshes you. And somehow it makes everything manageable, creates an optimism, I find, so that the heat stops being oppressive and becomes just a bath of sensation to move through.

Bicycling helps too. The breeze from pedalling along is surprisingly cooling, so a bicycle rather than walking is the way to get around in the heat.

Had a question today from a friend who'd been told by a Vietnamese friend about a bitter leaf and flower that is around in the fall in Khmer parts of Vietnam, or maybe in Cambodia. I hadn't heard of it, but her question reminded me of the great spice (not herbs, not yet anyway) page by Gernot Katzer. He's exhaustive and quite meticulous. It's a great resource. Bookmark it so you can go to it any time you have a question. This link is to the SE Asia part, but you can move on from there:
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/spice_geo.html#asia_southeast

I went to Shape Note singing this evening (it's once a month in Toronto). What a treat. There's a southern Ontario sing in late August not far from Waterloo in an old Mennonite meeting house, a fab stone building. Before that there's a huge sing in Maine on July 30. These calendars of events that different people keep track of are like different maps laid over the months with their own linkages and contour lines and internal necessities. My map right now involves catching a plane to Kelowna tomorrow so I can visit my aunt Wendy, who is my mother's identical twin. It's always a struggle to decide to go see her, for though my mother has been dead for over thirty years, there's stil a wrench when I see my aunt, a pang and thoughts of how things might be different. And then I am pulled into her present and can let the pangs go, mostly.

The other event, now the fifth annual, but this will be my first time, is the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, in northern Maine. There are two days of conference, designed to help those who want to to learn new skills, and it's followed by the Bread Fair, on Saturday. Dawnthebaker and I are going to drive down, a lovely trip through the Eastern Townships, ten or eleven hours from Toronto in total, at least that's what Google Maps tells me. I would have guessed nine hours or so.

I posted a couple of notes on Facebook about managing the heat. One of them is to get up early, cook something in the early morning, then put it in the frig. That makes supper an easy pleasure, cooked veg dressed as a salad, over cold rice for example. That was supper today (I had new beets, fresh from my CSA delivery and spectacular. The other is the smoothie made of fruit and not much else. Tashi made a raspberry one, adding in some mango that was around. He added just ice and a little honey, no milk product at all. It was a beautiful red. But then I got home and found the red currants, needing to be eaten. SO I cleaned them of stems and blended them to a gorgeous thick puree. I mixed it fity-fifty with the end of Tashi's smoothie, then added some gin.

Now THERE'S a summer drink! wow. Summer pudding is slices of bread that line a bowl, which is then filled iwth raspberries and red currents, covered with bread slices and a weight pressed down on top overnight. It's fab. SO I figure my drink is Summer Pudding Gin. But surely there's a more elegant name waiting to be discovered?

Happy showering and slowing down, everyone!

AND A FOOTNOTE: ANn Bramson had some good ideas about ways to strenthen the Burma book. I have now done those edits and reshapings and I sent the anuscript off yesterday. I've altered the title a little. Now it's:
RIVERS OF FLAVOR: RECIPES AND TRAVEL STORIES FROM BURMA

SINGING AND CELEBRATING, RAIN AND SHINE

Last week I mentioned deluges in the title of my blog posting, and this week I have more drenching and storming in mind as I write. I always think of August as a rainy month, but this second half of August is outdoing itself, all monsoony, warm and dripping with lushness everywhere. Little frogs were hopping across the wet black pavement as I was driving down a country road today and my car smells damp because I've left the windows open several times recently and been caught out. The rain has come pouring in and getting things dried out hasn't been a very successful affair. I feel extra-foolish because this is a shared car. No fun for my co-owner to sit in a car that smells of damp underwear!!

I was dismayed yesterday morning when I awoke early, to realise that it's already that time of year, when the days aren't bright until after six. Yikes! The overcast sky didn't help of course, but it sure seemed dark and autumnal out at 5.45. I was up early because I had a dish to make for a potluck, and needed to be on the road by seven. The event? The all-day southern Ontario Sacred Harp singing at the Detweiler Meeting House, in Roseville, near Waterloo. Singers came from Michigan and Illinois, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as well as from many parts of Ontario, so that we had over seventy-five people altogether. The sound was intense and wonderful, and the mood very buoyant.

I raced away early from the singing, dashing northward to a hand-fasting, a druidic wedding you might say, in Grey County. I got there in time, just, to find another group of about seventy people, this one also happy and full of good energy. We were garlanded with flowers and helped ourselves to a little food and drink in a big marquee tent, then we all walked up a grassy track across a green meadowy hill. From there the track led into an austerely beautiful pine forest, all vertical lines, with a cushiony pine-needled floor. We formed a circle in the forest and watched as the couple made vows and received blessings. A small fire was lit, we were smudged in all directions, and there were words about the power and generosity of the earth air, wind, rocks, trees... But as we watched the couple's vows, the trees started swaying high above and then suddenly the heavens opened and cold cold raindrops came pelting down on us. It took only moments to drench us through.

There was no point in rushing away, and there was something intimate, however odd it sounds, abut sharing the rain and cold together. So we didn't hurry. Instead we all walked in a straggling long line back up the track through the forest, chatting, laughing, shivering, across the big open green field, now windswept, wet and chilling, and back to the tent. I had dry clothes in the car; many others lived within twenty minutes' drive, so they headed home to change. The couple we had come to celebrate went into the farmhouse and changed into comfy warm clothing. When we all reassembled in the big dining tent, it was as happy survivors, who knew that none of us would forget our friends' wedding, our shared drenching, or the feeling of community we all shared. Druid magic? Perhaps so.

No-one seemed put out, or upset. No-one there had illusions that they were in charge of the weather. We'd put ourselves in the hands of mother nature and she'd spoken, reminding us to enjoy things as they come. And we did!

On the food front:
For the wedding potluck, Philly made a pair of small round loaves that were purple-red, and each decorated with a large heart on top. The bread, flavored with roasted beets and a little honey, was hauntingly delicious. She's passed on the recipe. I'll post it if anyone is interested... Meantime, here is a link to the recipe that she started with (and adapted): http://www.cookingbread.com/classes/class_roasted_beet_bread.html

At the singing there was an amazing pie-like cake, layers of grated apple separated by tender crust. The man who made it said the recipe came from a newspaper and that the writer had said it was from his?her? Polish grandmother. It's very easy-sounding, and short, so here it is, roughly as he told me. I haven't yet made it myself: 3 pounds of grated apple; one cup each flour, non-instant cream of wheat, and white sugar; one teaspoon baking soda; and butter for the spring-form pan and to be dotted on top. Mix all the dry ingredients together. One third of the dries go in the bottom, then half the apples, and repeat and then the last third of the dries on top, then dotted butter. Bake at 350 for an hour, and cover for the first half-hour of baking, then uncover so it browns a little on top. The moisture in the apples wets the dries (and I guess the covering is to prevent moisture escaping as it all heats up and steam-cooks). It was not very sweet, simple and delicious, very tender, and felt like another take on the SImplest Apple Cake that is in Home Baking. That recipe is from a good friend, whose mother, a survivor from eastern Poland, used to make it with an incomparably light hand.

I gathered more fennel pollen late last week from the gone-wild black fennel plants in the back yard. it was for a friend who had found very fresh scallops at the market. We cut them in half, tossed them with a little olive oil and salt and the fennel pollen, so they had a speckling of green-yellow, and then ate them, just like that.

FULL MOON AND OTHER GOLD LIGHTING OUR WAY

We've just passed through a momentous milestone, the period known in France as the Toussaint holiday (because November 1 is All Sants, and November 2 All Souls' Day in the Christian church). In North America Hallowe'en tends to grab all the attention, the night before All Saints, and in Mexico and area it's the Day of the Dead that is foremost. All these are connected to this magical tipping point, the time when we are halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter Solstice.

Long ago I spent the Toussaint weekend in Paris. I was seventeen, a time when everything feels clear and memories get sharply etched. My memory of that time is of older women dressed in black walking to church, a dull grey sky with occasional drizzle, Notre Dame and other churches grey with chill and stone and centuries of prayer and incense, and a feeling of claustrophobia (all that belief, all that black-garbed sorrow) together with exhilaration (I'm here, in Paris, and isn't the stained glass amazing, and the gothic stone and the sense of timelessness!?!). So the Toussaint always resonates for me, forward and back, and becomes a time to remember the dead and treasure the living and all the possibilities in life.

Yesterday afternoon, just as the moon came full (at 2 in the afternoon here in Toronto, I was told), a friend was telling me that this was a particularly powerful full moon, given that it falls at Pagan New Year. Aha! It can be no accident that northern European christians celebrate the saints and the souls at the same time of year as their pagan ancestors (and modern pagan descendents too of course) celebrate the time when the veil between the worlds of the living and of the dead is at its most transparent... WIth the full moon overseeing it all this time, let's hope we're well launched into a productive fruitful year.

(And this same full moon marks the Thai festival of Loi Kratong, when everyone makes a small raft of banana leaves, places a flower or other beautiful thing on it, and a lit candle, and floats it down the river in the evening; the idea is that all one's bad thoughts and bad deeds and bad luck get carried away, a lovely idea... almost as lovely as the sight of all those little barks and their flickering fragile candles bobbing their way downstream and out of sight.)

Last night at Robert Lepage's Stravinsky production (of the Nightingale and other stories), there was another huge full moon hanging in the sky, with the members of the orchestra on stage below, and then in place of the pit, a huge volume of water, a giant pool, sent little reflecting ripples of light across the ceiling. It was fabulous, the music, the staging, but still nothing human-made can compete with that magic of a fat autumn moon in the sky, the scuttering sound of dry leaves blown by the wind, and the sharp clarity of chilly autumn air.

I find myself wanting to swallow it all so I can hold it in my mind's eye and not lose it. One way to do that is to keep an eye open for landscapes or sights that are especially wonderful, like the glimpse as I drove to Grey County last Friday of a line of trees on a green grassy slope casting a golden "shadow" on the grass, made of the golden leaves that had fallen from the trees in the last couple of days.

Another is to cook and eat the treasures of the season. The best this week has been a pumpkin soup made of organic small pumpkins bought from Potz, a version of the Silky Coconut Pumpkin Soup in Hot Sour Salty Sweet, with chicken stock and coconut milk as a base. It was great the first day, but predictably my favorite has been as leftovers, the soup used to poach a farm-fresh egg. The soup is golden anyway, but then the colours get richer as the egg yolk adds another deeper golden note to the mix...

And up there in Grey County, apart from general loveliness, there was a really good visit with my Aunt Libby; an intense sauna in the forest, including a walk through the trees just in my bathing suit, so warmed from the bones outward was I; then a feast with Jon and Lillian; then a truly wonderful session of shape-note singing; followed by a long easy drive home through the dark to Toronto and a welcoming house.

On another topic, but so connected to my feelings of happiness about my time in Grey County, I read a short essay this week by Todd May, at http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending/?th&emc=th about the way in which limits give things value. He's saying specifically that the fact that we die, all of us eventually, gives life more meaning and makes it more seriously treasured. I think that's right. Each sensation, each relationship, each good moment (and a lot of bad ones too) are precious because life is finite, time is short, and it's up to us to give shape and meaning to the time we have.

And if indeed we've just passed through Pagan New Year, it seems a fine thing to head into the dark of winter with a sense that it's up to us to light our own way in the world.

CHAOS vs THE HARMONY OF COMMUNITY

I had thought, last Thursday, that I would write about the intense day and a half of Indian food cooking that I did last week with Anne MacKenzie, making food to be shot for publicity photos for Cooking with Stella, a film that is being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.  The film opens in Canada in March 2010; not sure about the US plans.  And yes, it involves lots of food, is set in Delhi, and is a social and cross-cultural comedy.

Well here's a little about that food:  We made Masala Dosa, Sambhar, a Kerala Shrimp Curry, a Mango Salad, some fresh chutneys, and that weird western favorite, Butter Chicken.  Friends stopped by to eat the props, of course, and still there was plenty to feed Dom and Tashi that evening.  I'd made a double batch of dosa batter, so there was some left over.  I put it in the frig and miraculously the fermentation was slowed enough that it made good dosas the following evening.

It was all a reminder that once you embark on it, Indian home-cooking is not difficult, and is in fact very forgiving, as well as delicious.  I expect homestyle dosas will now re-enter our weekly routine.  The kids have already made another batch of the potato masala (boil potatoes, peel off skins, chop; heat oil and drop in mustard seeds, some curry leaves, onions, whatever, then add the potatoes and cook to heat and flavour them; top with coriander leaves).

But food-thoughts were pushed aside a day later.  On Thursday a huge storm came through here, dumping gallons and lakes'-worth of rain (over two inches in an hour) and leaving the sky an emerald green.  Farther north, in Grey County, the storm action was catastrophic, for there a huge tornado came ripping through the town of Durham and up Glenelg Concession Two, tearing roofs off houses and barns, destroying barns and other buildings completely, and killing one eleven year old boy.  We have dear friends whose places are a mess of broken glass, uprooted trees, and wrecked buildings.

This is Kaos, in the Greek sense, out-of-control nature or life, or whatever you want to call it.  There are photos on Facebook, and outpourings of love and concern, and offers of fundraisers, etc.  That's one form of social reknitting, a kind of action at a distance that is warming and important.  The other help and support is the tangible one that has been happening since the tornado:  friends and strangers have come to clear away trees that lie like broken spillikins all over lanes and barnyards, to help pick up debris (pieces of torn metal and splintered beams that lie everywhere) from fields and yards and laneways, to provide food for those who are working at the clean-up....

The help doesn't make the damage disappear, but it does bring some sense of order, and an assertion of order.  It's practical help, in a physical sense, but it's also social and emotional help, for it's community working to try to knit together the social confidence and the fabric of everyday life that the chaos and violence of the tornado tore open.

I am reminded of when I was in Phnom Penh right after the coup that chased Ranariddh out of the country (leaving Hun Sen in control) in the summer of 1997.   There was broken glass in the streets, and most of the foreigner community had fled, but locals were asserting everyday normalcy:  going to the market, carrying on, resisting the impulse to panic or to admit that the fragile society of the country was once more close to unravelling.   

So I guess what I'm saying is that when the tornado hits, or the earthquake, or the political revolution, we are taken to a place where chaos/Kaos rules.  But we are social beings, so we use our best weapon, our sociability, to fight chaos and the panic it makes us feel.  We restore order.

And yet in all this is also the lesson that we are NOT in control.  There are larger forces out there, and we don't know when the chasm will open, so we must live well in the moment, eyes alert to help our neighbours, and hearts grateful for whatever we have of health and happiness.

I'm not trying to preach.  And apologies if it sounds as if I am.  I'm just trying to stay mindful, that everyday obligation!

Two days after the tornado there was a shape-note singing at the Dettweiler Meeting House, south of Kitchener-Waterloo.  People came from Illinois and Pennsylvania, from Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as from Toronto and Durham and London Ontario.  The meeting house is a gorgeous elegant Mennonite stone church built in 1855 and restored now, with lovely acoustics and a peaceful cemetary out back, set outside the hamlet of Roseville.  We sang and sang, and those of us who are not believers in God or Christ or any of the usual gang, sang with just as much feeling and pleasure as those that do call themselves Christians.  

For again it was community, in this case the community of music, the lovely close harmonies, and the feeling of shared harmony, that brought us there and gave us joy.  We paused before the lunch break (an incredible pot-luck spread of summer bounty) to sing for those who were suffering, from illness or tornado loss or other trauma, and also for those who were dead and gone.   It was healing, and uplifting, in all its imperfection and heartfelt intention.  Wonderful.