Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [159]
Cut sweet potatoes into chunks, cook in steamer basket or microwave until soft, then mash. Chop and sauté garlic and onion in a large skillet. Add spices and sweet potato and mix well, adding a little water if it’s too sticky. Turn burner very low to keep warm without burning.
4 flour tortillas
4 ounces Brie or other medium soft cheese
2–3 leaves Swiss chard (or other greens)
Preheat oven to 400°. Oil a large baking sheet, spread tortillas on it to lightly oil one side, then spread filling on half of each. Top with slices of Brie and shredded chard, then fold tortillas to close (oiled side out). Bake until browned and crisp (about 15 minutes); cut into wedges for serving.
Download these and all other Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes at www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com
WINTER MEAL PLAN
Sunday ~ Roast leg of lamb with mint jelly, baked Yukon Golds, and multicolored beet salad
Monday ~ Vegetarian chili
Tuesday ~ Pasta with pesto, olives, and grated cheese
Wednesday ~ Steak with winter potato salad or baked sweet potatoes
Thursday ~ Bean burritos with sautéed onion and dried tomatoes
Friday ~ Crock-Pot chicken soup with vegetables, served with warm bread
Saturday ~ Cheese and mushroom tortellini with tomato sauce
* * *
19 • HUNGRY MONTH
February–March
As I grow older, more of my close friends are elderly people. I suppose I am auditioning, in some sense, to join their club. My generation will no doubt persist in wearing our blue jeans right into the nursing homes, kicking out Lawrence Welk when we get there and cranking up “Bad Moon Rising” to maximum volume. But I do find myself softening to certain features of the elder landscape. Especially, I’m coming to understand that culture’s special regard for winter. It’s the season to come through. My eighty-four-year-old neighbor is an incredibly cheerful person by all other standards, but she will remark of a relative or friend, “Well, she’s still with us after the winter.”
It’s not just about icy sidewalks and inconvenience: she lost two sisters and a lifelong friend during recent winters. She carries in living memory a time when bitter cold and limited diets compromised everyone’s immunities, and the weather forced people to hunker down and share contagions. Winter epidemics took their heartbreaking due, not discriminating especially between the old and the young. For those of us who have grown up under the modern glow of things like vaccinations, penicillin, and central heat, it’s hard to retain any real sense of this. We flock indoors all the time, to work and even to exercise, sharing our germs in all seasons. But vitamins are ready at hand any time, for those who care, and antibiotics mop up the fallout.
Tying my family’s nutritional fortunes to the seasons did not really involve any risk for us, of course. But it did acquaint us in new ways with what seasons mean, and how they matter. The subtle downward pulse of temperatures and day lengths created a physical rhythm in our lives, with beats and rests: long muscles, long light; shorter days, shorter work, and cold that drew us deeper into thoughts and plans, under plaster ceilings instead of an open sky. I watched the rank-and-file jars in our pantry decline from army to platoon, and finally to lonely sentries staggered along the shelves. We weren’t rationing yet, but I couldn’t help counting the weeks until our first spring harvests and the happy reopening day of the farmers’ market. I had a vision of our neighbors saying of us, “Well, they’re still with us after the winter.”
In late February, official end of “Hungry Month,” I was ready to believe we and all our animals had come through the lean times unscathed. And then one of our turkey hens took to standing around looking droopy. She let her wings drop to the ground instead of folding them on her back in normal turkey fashion. Her shoulders hunched and her head jutted forward, giving her a Nixonesque air—minus the eyebrows and crafty agenda. This girl just looked dazed.
Oh, no, I thought. Here we go. Farm animals lucky enough to live