Plant

I’ve been neglecting you, friends. These past two months have been incredibly busy, and hard. It’s been better, though, since I ended my contract at the cafe two weeks ago. Only two months in and I was feeling on the verge of what a francophone would call burn-out, what a nutritionist would call adrenal fatigue, and what I would call desperate times. I was coming home every afternoon, too exhausted to read, or write, or make a soup, or call my best friend, or water my plants, or take a walk under moonlight, or a hike in the sunshine, or meet a friend for a mug of something warm, or really hear how Lulu’s day was–too exhausted for care, both for self and for others and that is a bleak place to be, indeed.

It wasn’t only the hours that were draining. And, without getting into too much detail, I was beginning to feel like I wasn’t doing the work that everything in me–heart, spirit, hands, mind–so badly wants to do. Work that contributes something positive to my community, something honest, creative, uplifting, nourishing, healing.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So I left. It wasn’t an easy decision in some ways, and in other ways it was the easiest one.

Now, I’ve been focusing my energies on my nutrition practice, a few other projects that I’ll share w/ y’all soon, and on all that care I’ve been missing out on these past months.

Like baking this apple pie. This recipe comes from another blog–Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook–the first blog I ever followed. This was back in 2009, October, when I was subletting a tiny room in a light-filled apartment on 4th Street in the East Village, mending a broken heart from the passing of my grandma Stella. The apartment had a spacious (by NYC standards) kitchen and was in close proximity to a farmer’s market and one of the ways I dealt w/ my loss was through making some of Lucy’s recipes, feeling transported to a small village in France (though Lucy’s based in Lyon), a plot of land where there are green walnuts to harvest for nocino and an apple tree that yields and yields.

I’m not sure if Lucy is still blogging, but I return to her archives from time-to-time and I always leave her page feeling galvanized. These past two months, I haven’t spent much time in my kitchen and it’s been nourishing, in all the ways, to rekindle my relationship to home-cooking.

I’ve made this pie dozens of times since that Fall. The crust has an almost sablé-like texture and the addition of apple-sauce is down-right genius, making this comfort food feel even more like a big ol’ cozy sweater. It’s incredibly versatile — I’ve used spelt flour and, once, a mix of spelt and rye flours instead of the whole-wheat flour, yogurt instead of the petit suisse or cream cheese, olive oil instead of walnut oil, cardamom instead of cinnamon…in short, unlike other baked things, it seems pretty darn hard to mess this one up.

The one adjustment I’ve made that I’ve really come to love is to chop the apples into even, on the smaller-side cubes. Chopped this way, they bake evenly and take on a texture that approximates pillows, marshmallows, clouds. If you’re particular about one part of the recipe, make it this.

The other adjustment I’ve made is that I use whole cane sugar (like rapadura, sucanet, or jaggery) instead of processed ones. If you’ve never baked w/ whole cane sugar, now’s the time to start! It’s minimally processed (sun-dried instead of exposed to heat, high-pressure and bleach like white or brown sugars) and its taste has a depth & richness that other sugars lack.

I’ve never been in touch w/ Lucy, but I’ll sign off w/ a merci to her for all the work she does. And especially for this recipe for her Favorite Apple Pie.

We’re deep into late summer, the season where all is ripe, ready to be pulled from soil, stalk, vine. It’s harvest-time and for me that means 2 things: #1. cramming as many summer activities (swimming in the lake and biking long-stretches beneath already-starting-to-fade green and eating as many raspberries/tomatoes/summer squash as possible) as I can into these ever-shortening days and #2. preserving, because this harvest season, like all seasons, is turning and for this Winter I dream of a cupboard lined w/ jars of home-canned tomatoes, a freezer-drawer filled w/ home-frozen berries and cracking open a jar of home-fermented dill pickles on some bone-chilling night.

In Geneva, we’ve already had a few down-right Fall-like days and I made this chowder one fresh evening with some frozen chicken broth from last Winter. The recipe was adapted from Jessica Prentice’s Full Moon Feast, a beautiful book about what feeds us (and it’s so much more than just food, y’all) throughout the year. Each chapter is named for each month’s full-moon–harking back to an age where time was so deeply interwoven w/ what was on (or missing) from our plates– and Prentice uses a mix of history, folk-lore, nutritional science, and personal anecdote to deepen our connections between ourselves and our food.

The first full-moon of late summer was traditionally called the “Corn Moon”–corn meaning “grain” long before European colonialists encountered zea mays (or the corn in this recipe). Prentice talks about agriculture–how it’s shaped our social, cultural and environmental landscapes–and about balance. To paraphrase: yes, the way most grains are grown in the U.S. are corrosive to both our planet and ourselves and yes, many folks would agree that the rise of agriculture was, indeed, the starting point of this anthropocene epoch. But also: grains have seen us through many a long-mooned night, and, when prepared properly, nourished us for thousands of years.

Like corn. Corn was held, in many cultures, as something sacred–a symbol of survival and sustenance, something that could be stored to see one’s community through the barren Winter. The corn that has nourished indigenous Americans for centuries has little to do w/ the majority of corn grown in N.America (and shipped elsewhere) now. Genetically-modified, grown in petroleum-based fertilizers, sprayed with petroleum-based chemicals–this kind of corn is not a symbol of life, but of war and death.

Perhaps that’s why so many nutritional camps have sounded alarm. Many foods have become controversial in these past years, but none more so than wheat and corn. For me, these foods are prime examples of why nutritional guidance should be nuanced and not applied with such broad strokes. The corn I used in this recipe is an old variety, grown in organically-cultivated soil from a neighboring farm. If I wanted to, I could shell and dry its kernels and use its flour all Winter long. Sounds pretty sacred to me.

When I say nutrition should be nuanced, I don’t mean complicated. Sometimes it can be as simple as just eating the foods around you. Like a corn and potato chowder on a harvest new-moon.

Harvest Corn + Potato Chowder

Adapted from Prentice's Full Moon Feast

Ingredients

3 ears corn and the cob
1 quart chicken broth
3 tablespoons ghee
2 tablespoons za'atar or dried thyme
3 small leeks, sliced into rounds
1 carrot, diced small
4 handfuls potatoes, cut into chunks
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup raw sour-cream + 1 tablespoon for garnishing

Directions

Slice the kernals of your corn into a bowl and scrape the corn "milk" into the bowl, as well.
Heat your broth in a small pot with the corn cobs and simmer covered for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, add ghee to a heavy-bottomed soup-pot. Saute the leeks until translucent. Add carrots and cook and stir for another few minutes. Add potatoes and enough stock to cover (if you don't have enough, just add a little water). Add big pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer (covered) until the potatoes are well-cooked (about 15 minutes).
Add corn kernels and simmer for another 5 minutes or until tender.
Remove from heat and add sour-cream and stir. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Garnish w/ a spoonful of sour-cream and enjoy w/ a slice of buttered rye-bread.

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Franco-American Apple Pie

Harvest Corn + Potato Chowder