Feeding the Hungry Ghost (17 page)

One by one, finely chop the celery, bell peppers, and, finally, the greens, in the food processor, add to the skillet, and stir to combine. Once the vegetables start to soften and coalesce, in 5 to 7 minutes, give them a last stir, then reduce the heat to low. Cover, and cook for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are welcoming and tender.

Your roux and vegetables are now ready to meet each other. Gently stir the vegetable mixture into the roux, until everything is well combined. Raise the heat to medium-high and add the vegetable broth plus any juices from the drained greens. Add the thyme, bay leaf, and cayenne. When the mixture starts to boil, cover, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour more, or until the gumbo darkens and thickens a little more. Oh, don’t complain; be generous of spirit. Call a friend, check your e-mail, pour yourself a glass of wine, if it helps.

Splash in the vinegar and season with sea salt and pepper.

GENTLE NUDGE
the
SIXTH: SEASON
to
TASTE

You could call the way this riot of fresh greens coincides with Lent divine intervention, a great cosmic meant-to-be. Or you could call it seasonality. This term has gotten a lot of buzz in the past few years, which goes to show you how out of whack we are. Until the last century, seasonal eating was all we did. We would harvest the fruits and vegetables available to us when they were ripe and ready. Some we dried and stored for winter, but most we’d eat right then. This makes sense.

Then came refrigeration and air travel, and we could get fresh grapes in December. We could get everything all the time. And we still weren’t happy. Because the grapes didn’t much taste like grapes, as they were grown for sturdiness rather than for that low, slow building of tannic skin and sweet, juicy flesh, and hint of soil and rain that’s inherently grapy. The grapes were picked underripe so they wouldn’t be dead by the time they got to you, then they were flown or trucked in from another country.

International travel totally rags me out, so how can it not do the same to a grape?

Then there’s the cost for out-of-season stuff. The earth has limited amounts of oil, limits we’re bumping up against. Depleting our finite reserves for a bunch of grapes because the mood strikes is not, as your accountant will tell you, cost-efficient.

The problem is, we’ve gotten out of sync with the rhythms of the earth. Our go-go society makes us feel guilty for being other than 24/7, when really, lovey, no one is 24/7. Or if so, it’s because whoever it is has staff. Even the planet doesn’t do 24/7. Twenty-four/seven is a lie — there, I’ve said it.

But do we listen? Not from the looks of things. Eating out of season is like living in a foreign country without understanding the language. You might be able to get by with frantic gestures
and shouting, but you miss the nuance, all the lovely ways of this place. You miss what the earth is trying to tell you. It’s saying, pay attention. Live in the moment. Gather ye rosebuds — and broccoli buds and nasturtium buds — while ye may, because they won’t be here tomorrow. Or if they’re still around, they’ll have lost their luster.

Luster is the best reason to eat what’s ripe now. Think of fresh popcorn versus stale; flat champagne versus a bottle that bubbles and sparkles. Food tastes best when it’s fresh. Seasonal eating is nature’s way of directing you to food at its most vibrant, when it’s crazy-mad with chi (Chinese for “life force”). It connects you to the earth and its seasons and throws a little meaning in, if you’re looking for it. Mostly, though, it’s about having a good time, about adding a little more luster to your life.

Roasted Beet Salad with Chili-Lime Vinaigrette

Beets, mangoes, and jicama (also known as Mexican turnip) are Mexican crops, and they feature in spring and summer salads like this one, sparked with a chili-lime vinaigrette. It’s suitable for Cinco de Mayo and pretty enough for Mother’s Day.

Serves 4 to 6

2 good-size beets (save greens for soup or for sautéing — you know how I feel about waste)

Juice of 2 limes

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar or apple cider vinegar

2 teaspoons agave nectar or honey

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon chili powder

3 to 4 bunches fresh baby greens (arugula, butter lettuce, watercress, or spinach)

½ jicama (also known as Mexican turnip), peeled and diced, or 1 young white turnip, peeled and diced

1 orange, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces

1 mango, peeled and chopped (if available)

cup almonds or pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped

1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Wash the beets, wrap them tightly in aluminum foil, and roast for 1 hour. Remove from the oven and let cool. When the beets are cool enough to handle, slip off the skins and chop into bite-size pieces. (The chopped, roasted beets can be wrapped and stored in the refrigerator for a day.)

In a small bowl, whisk together the lime juice, balsamic vinegar, agave nectar, olive oil, mustard, cumin, and chili powder. You should have about
cup of dressing, ample for this salad plus leftovers.

Arrange the greens on a platter or on individual plates. Top with beets, jicama, orange, mango (if using), almonds, and cilantro.

Drizzle the dressing on top.

*
Available in many culinary shops and a bazillion places online.

*
Chickpea flour is available in some natural food stores and in Middle Eastern markets, where it’s sometimes called besan.

“Summer surprised us,”
writes T. S. Eliot. The phrase comes early in “The Waste Land,” and it also surprises the reader, already so lost in the poem’s rich layers as to be startled by these five simple syllables that come in the eighth line.

I still feel a kid’s deep-hearted yearning in summer, an itch to be outside, to run till I flop down on the grass and pant like a dog. Summer in Miami is hot and wet-blanket humid. It is something you enter, like a sauna. The sun bleaches out the sky. Lawns crisp in the heat. So do the sunburned tourists, who stagger around, eyes vacant. Natives know enough to go inside and seek air-conditioning. On the upside, the riffraff have taken off, and we can get into our favorite restaurants without a reservation.

Summer surprises me, too. What surprises me is how quickly it goes. It’s no sooner Memorial Day than it’s Labor Day, and everyone’s talking back-to-school this and that. Summer over, game over. I think of scripture, particularly the Old Testament, Jeremiah 8:20 —
“The harvest is past,
the summer is ended, and
we are not saved.” In other words, more than half the year is shot, and what have I got to show for it?

It was not always thus. Summers of childhood were open and endless. On Saturdays, my parents would rent a cabana, a fancy name for a bare, cement-floored roomette on the beach where they could unload their carload of stuff and me. I would run screaming into the water, the waves roughhousing me until my lips were salt numbed, my eyes stinging, and fingertips puckered. I could be counted on to drop my lunch in the sand, to run from my mother as she tried to slather me with sunscreen, and to howl as she rinsed off my coating of salt, sand, and sunscreen under the spray of the cold-water public shower.

On the Fourth of July, we’d stay into the evening. Separate families would gather and mingle, and a frenzied parade of dogs and children ran up and down the beach. We ‘d write our names in sparklers and set off fireworks, the big, lacy ones I loved and the boomy cannon-shot kind that got the boys revved and made me hide behind my parents. The fathers, of course, would grill. I don’t know why Independence Day has become synonymous with incinerated meat. Something about the rockets’ red glare? There would be hot dogs, with their upsetting name and more upsetting rubbery pink skin. Someone was always shuttling me away from my architecturally challenged sand castles to hand me a bun with a hot dog sporting a racing stripe of mustard. I liked ketchup. Dropping a peanut-butter-and-raspberry-jelly sandwich in the sand was tragic. Dropping a hot dog? No loss.

With the grilling came the attendant salads — potato salad and coleslaw. Potato salad was soft and white and bland, but it made sense. It was a salad made from potatoes. But what on earth was a
cole?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t in the slaw, which was always, always, always shredded cabbage, carrots, and maybe
some onion, bound by bottled mayonnaise and vinegar. Sometimes it featured celery seeds, a clear sign the cook was a bit of a rogue. Or a southerner.

The good part about getting older is sometimes you do attain some wisdom. Maybe not the secrets of the universe, but you learn that
cole
refers to vegetables of the mustard-green family, which includes cabbage (also kale, collards, broccoli, turnips, brussels sprouts, mustard greens, beloved to me all). You also learn you can slaw just about any fruit or vegetable and toss your edible confetti with things other than mayo.