Something Piquant this way Comes

This is a recipe I found in a beat-up old cookbook of my mom's. Paul Prudhomme is a chef from St. Landry Parish in Louisiana, right damn smack next to the parish where the Stagg family hails from. He always looked like Dom Delouise to me. I had to make due with a meager pantry, but it turned out delicious(ly?)


Paul Prudhomme's Apple-Raisin Stuffing

Ingredients
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup rice
2 tsp each salt & pepper
1 tsp each garlic powder, mustard powder, and cayenne pepper
1 large chopped, un-peeled apple
2 cups chicken/beef/veggie stock

Heat enough oil to coat the bottom of a heavy sauce pot. Heat the oil until you, if you're at all like me, feel you'll go mad from the waiting. Heat the oil until it smokes, but turn it down a smidge or you'll set the alarms off. I've done that. Often.

Scrape the onions and green pepper - scritch scritch splash - into the pot and stir them up good. Let them brown, just a few minutes. Once they're aromatic and caramel-y colored, add a few tablespoons of butter and a generous handful of raisins. Let the butter melt and the raisins plump, which will take another 3 or 4 delicious minutes.

Now you add the rice. Stir in the spices, and keep stirring the rice. Let the oil coat the rice, and you want all the spices to penetrate. Add the apples. You want the vegetables and fruit and rice and spice to all mix together for a few minutes.

Add the stock. Cover the pot and bring the rice to a boil. Turn the heat down and let simmer for 5 minutes or so. Finally, remove the rice from the heat and let all those flavors meld and pique and settle; about 30 minutes.

Don't be hasty like me. Be a patient cook. Not everything needs to be al dente.

The Coming Election

I'm nervous. Very very nervous. I try not to think about it, but wish I were strong enough to dedicate the next week to making sure Barack Obama gets to the White House. Because he gives me hope. Because he offers solutions. Because he's a mixed brother with an almost unbelievably American background and he makes me giddy.

Me? Miss Apathetic? Good lord.

I'll write about it, if I can think about it. If I can make sense of this coming history.

Carmen Van Kerkhove, founder and publisher of Racialicious, posted on her own website some tips on staying involved in the next week.

So what can you do to help at this historic time?

First of all, make sure you protect your own vote by reading this 12-step checklist of what to do before, on, and after Election Day. And share the list with your family and friends by using this form here.

Then, do one or all of these 3
things:
1. Volunteer for the campaign.

2. Call or visit voters in battleground states.

3. Find and join an event in your local area.

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Confronting the Stranger

Last Tuesday dark and mild, I rode my bike across the river, somewhat stoned. It was an exhilerating ride. I felt swift and immortal, wobbling along the rutted road, probably not paying as much attention as I should have, seeing as I had no bike light or helmet.

I came home and wrote about how alive I felt. Because I was feeling so much.

What made me feel so alive was this battering sense of mortality. At some point, midway across the bridge, I was suddenly aware that I could be dead or that I could die. Not that I hadn't realized such a thing before. As a girl, I would literally lose my breath at the idea that one day death would conquer us all. I was once obsessed with and horrified of the idea of death. But as I got older, I thought about it less and less. Not because I had dealt with the fear, but because I had to tuck it away in order to go on living.

But now, on the eve of my grandfather's funeral, I want to address this. Somehow. I need to. He deserves it. As do my father's parents and eldest sister, who have long since passed. In their memory, I somehow need to confront the idea of death. Of life well spent. What we leave behind; besides the funeral arrangements and pathetic odds and ends that get donated or sold at estate sales.

I tell you what: estate sales have always creeped me out, and I've lived a legacy of estate sales. My grandmother lives and breathes these events, and my mom and aunt plunder them with antiquing glee. All I ever saw were old ladies and lanky men in trucker hats, crates and tables of faded belongings that someone's own family couldn't make use of. The scariest and saddest estate sales were the ones that never even made it out of the house; overwhelmed family members who stuck price labels on items throughout the house and yard signs around the block, drawing you in to their misfortune and hidden history. Why do I want to see your grandmother's sordid collection of commemorative spoons? I never know whether to sneer or to cry. Because of the death hanging over the arrangements.

I wonder when I first became aware of death? The first death I can remember is that of my paternal grandmother, and yet, 20 years later, all I remember are small details; very little about the idea of death. A 4-year-old's sense of responsibility; a new flowered dress with matching straw hat for the service; my grandfather, stately in a brown suit, taking the podium; being puzzled over my crying sister; the laden table of food awaiting the guests, flush against the dark wood-paneled wall. This is the first death I'm aware of, but there is no accompanying sense of the universality of death. Not at 4.

I must have become aware of my own death shortly thereafter, because, as comical as it may seem, at 5 or 6, I shut my windows to the idea of vampires and was unable to reopen them for more than 10 years. Mythical death, or the paralyzing idea of undeath struck me then.

I've sometimes wondered if I am so mystified by death because I've had so few confrontations with it. One grandparent at 4, a grandparent and an aunt at 22, and now my grandfather. I can't help but think it's all downhill from here. Like a waterfall, more people in my life will pass. And more will force me to think about death.

I never had any sort of religious introduction to death, no explanations or justifications. There is no hell or heaven in my history, just life and, well, not life. I've listened to, maybe even contributed to conversations regarding afterlife. One friend may think after-life is equal opportunity, another hopes we each go where we believe we'll go.

Death was never introduced to me, so how do you confront a stranger? How do you discuss a mystery?

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Jazz and Autumn Leaves

Something about autumn makes me want to listen to jazz. The reedy voice of Billie Holiday, the somber passion of John Coltrane, somehow seem to accompany the shower of autumn leaves. Yesterday, I listened to Nina Simone the entire 45 minute walk to and 45 minute walk from work. Nothing has ever made me hold my head up so high.

When I got to work, I did some reading on Simone, and have so far really liked what I've seen. She trained in classical piano at Juilliard, funding her education through teaching piano lessons and playing in jazz clubs. She became heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement in the early 60s, infusing her records and live performances with powerful messages on equality, love, and violence. She expatriated in 1970 (I tried to think of a better word...), spending time in Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, before settling in Southern France, joining the likes of James Baldwin and Josephine Baker.

Side note: I've been following the blog of a contemprary expatriate Miles Marshall Lewis who is developing his memoir on "life in Paris following in the footsteps of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Chester Himes but (of course) with the prerequisite hiphop generation twist." I'm pretty stoked for this book's arrival. You should check him out if you're interested in thoughts on race, nationality, popular culture and the arts. Terribly interesting.

Thoughts when on a sugar high

"Under the pavement - a beach!"

"In food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of man."

I feel like all of my co-workers have something that they live for outside of the office. Something greater than a hobby; an obsession or a goal. Cecilia is a singer with performances to prepare. Stephane is training for marathons. Lisa performs folk music. Amber has the baby and Barry his music and Carter his kids. But me? I cook and craft and bike with no real goals.

In a fit of distractedness at work, I came across a little more inspiration. I printed out some information on The Congress for the New Urbanism, which put me on a tentative path, or it has at least got me thinking. The CNU is an organization which promotes pedestrian-friendly, "neighborhood-based development." Established by architects, its ranks have swelled to the thousands with landscape architects, planners, economists, real estate agents and developers, lawyers, government officials, educators, citizen activists, and students.

Reading about the CNU puts in mind how I felt after reading the interview with David Pinder in Bad Subjects (which, sadly, appears to be defunct.) I have so many thoughts about this city: biking and busing and walking, economic access to various modes of transportation and the racial and cultural opinions on each; the supposed economic boom as evidenced by multitudes of expensive new housing but belied by a breakdown in education; the ease and encouragement of business venture but lack of assistance in sustainability. To name a few.

I ran into Aytan on Tuesday, and he mentioned an impending need for free and low-cost housing. In all of the news on the economic crisis and corporate bail-outs, no one actually mentions the small-scale impact: that all these companies pushed through mortgage loans that couldn't be paid; houses were foreclosed; the people in those houses must go somewhere, no? I've heard no anchorman, no politician, no pundit mention the housing - or lack of housing - crisis. Shame on them all.

But on my other hand is my obsession with food communities. I printed out an article called "Mezze Ideology: Community, Class, and Multicultural Cuisine." (Shame on me; I oughtn't use so much paper. But there's something about a page I can tote around that makes so much more sense than an article read on a computer screen.)

There's a subscript to the title that says something about the author giving his colleagues a "lesson in class and generosity." I think this makes the article sound trite or didactic, which I didn't find to be so. Like the folks at Re-Thinking Soup at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Schaffer attempted through food to both build community and discuss food politics. I'd like to do that. He mentions reciprocity in hospitality, too, and MAN I wish other people would have dinner parties and invite me. I love hosting potlucks, but I'd like to be, well... repaid.

On that selfish note, I'll be back with more later.

Sugar high dwindling. Body aching. Silly homemade applesauce cookies.

The X-Files and tiny investigators

I've been watching episodes from the first season of the X-Files with Melanie and Rosy lately. My dad and my sister were deep into the show when it was airing on television, but being the squeamish, easily frightened child that I was (resulting in the squeamish, easily frightened adult that I currently am) I never really watched it with them.

But now I've caught more episodes in the last 30 days than I had ever seen in the show's 10 year run. And while it's hard for me to turn away from an investigation story after I've watched the first intriguing 10 minutes, I know it's bad for me to watch.

Why?

Because every time I watch a particularly bothersome episode, I go to bed with a series of freaked out dreams. I couldn't even tell you what my dreams were about last night. Only that I was unable to sleep.

There was one non-frightening dream, though, that I had around 3 in the morning.

The dream involved two tiny investigators. Like a couple inches tall. They had all of the equipment needed to solve crime in and around homes where big people live; a car, for instance. A tiny tiny car. But they are driving around in their tiny car and are trumped by a forest of broccoli; they can't get through, but they need to in order to continue their investigation. And then, skipping forward in time, they have to enter the Kenmore. So these tiny people don thick, arctic circle clothing and enter the frigid land of the refrigerator.

That's all I remember of the dream. Cute, no?

The Year without a Summer

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by the truck I'd been dreaming about. My body felt like I'd been exercising strenuously the day before rather than the under-the-weather ache I'd felt the last time I'd forgotten to take my medication.

However, I woke up elated. Fresh. Eager to take on the day. Probably a little manic. Something I hadn't felt in quite a long time.

I've run this cycle of manic depression, I suppose, for the last 10 years, and decided about this time last year to attempt a change. I had tried therapy, and stopped, both because it was too expensive and because I'm skeptical of the psychology machine. All of the members of my immediate family, unbeknownst to me, had been taking psychiatric drugs, for a variety of ailments: situational depression, anxiety, clinical depression, bipolar disorder. I wanted to strike some compromise. Between skepticism of psychotherapy, a desire to get help, and a feeling of being victimized by these hereditary ailments. (Hereditary or lifestyle - nurture vs. nature. I'm still not sure which.)

So I visited a psychiatrist. I wanted an easy solution; I didn't want to think too deeply about the fact that I was going against my own long-held decision to find other means than psychotherapy. I was in a new relationship, I was at a relatively new job, I had a new living situation; I didn't want to fuck things up by doubting what I wanted to believe was progress.

The psychiatrist had treated my entire family at one time. I know now that very few psychiatrists or psychologists will do that. They are risking unbiased opinions if they do. Both my mom and my sister had stopped seeing him, and this worried me, but my dad had offered to front the co-pay for me, and in a financially influenced crunch, I went to this doctor.

He quickly and with very little ceremony, prescribed Cymbalta. I had heard of it, mainly from television commercials, and was eager to take the proffered free samples. (I had no insurance; I felt that I wasn't in much of a place to be choosy.)

The first thing I noticed was an increased ability to concentrate. I've always been an easily distractable person, prone to restless movement and mind. The weekend that I started taking Cymbalta, I was schedule to drive to Rochester, MN with my then-boyfriend and his family. I noticed, triumphantly, that I was able to read with very little distractedness, for the entire 4 hour drive.

After that, for the next few months, I felt productive, hopeful and less prone to anxiety attacks. Great, I thought; even if Dr. W. makes me uneasy, I'm not negatively dwelling on things to the point of complete inaction.

My sister warned me that first night I came home with Cymbalta that Dr. W. was too quick to prescribe without discussing causes of anxiety nor side effect of medicating; Cymbalta has some wicked withdrawal side effects, she told me. I had recently started taking a regimen of birth control, and felt confident that I could keep to a schedule of medication that would help me to avoid missing any dosages.

And I was. Able to keep my doses timed, with the help of a phone alarm and a disregard for social disapproval of taking BC in public. Until May, when I missed my first dose - I was at Riversplash with a group of friends and, in a reaction to the crush of the crowd, started bugging out. I retreated into a painful self-scrutiny that no friend and no beer could yank me out of. I got home and took the meds and fell asleep and thought, never again.

Then, in late June, I missed another dose; I was unexpectedly at my boyfriend's house and had forgotten to pack my little plastic box of pills. At his apartment by myself (he was at a rehearsal, and I had gotten stuck with no transportation), I had no crowd to worry me, but my body started aching. I began feeling more and more tense, my head started pounding, and my mouth went dry as a desert. I didn't think much about it except to demand Nic drive me to my apartment when he got home so that I could take my medication before going back to his place to sleep.

I haven't missed it again until last night. I left the Cymbalta at home when I had to stay at work until 9. I kept myself distracted, there was a pleasing mix of interaction and alone-time, and when I got home, I fell asleep shortly, forgetting to take it. Didn't even think about the withdrawal that was sure to come.

I realize now that I may need those manic up moments to accomplish things; Cymbalta had been suppressing the down times as well as the up times, and I hadn't even realized until last month that I'd been feeling glum and grey for the year that I'm been taking Cymbalta and birth control.

I did a little research this morning on the side effects of Cymbalta (please don't think I went a full year without researching this; it's only now that it has galvanized me to action.) Some are far out of my range of experience (auditory hallucinations, brain zaps), but some I was experiencing (nausea, body aches, chronic fatigue) and hadn't realized they were related to the drug.

I spoke with Kate recently about holistically approaching my (mental) health, and have mad appointments in that direction.

What's strange is that I've missed these manic up days. I know, if I stop taking Cymbalta, that withdrawal will be very difficult, and the manic down days will surely suck, but, well... we'll see.

Why I'm so tired today

Buendia called me last night. Midnight, actually. To apologize. It was surreal. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, I tend to reach for it automatically, without even waking up. And he asnwered the phone in an expectant monotone; "hi." As if I hadn't erased him from my phone and should know immediately who it was calling me at 11:51 on a Wednesday, two months after we broke up. Maybe it sounds silly that I erased him from my phone, but it was to preserve myself. Any temptation to call him would have been a temptation to beg, and I don't ever want to put myself in that position of indignity.

We spoke for over an hour, and I don't even know about what. How many times can he apologize and justify, how many times can I ask the same questions? "I got scared," he said, "I don't think I know how to love after Barbara. I'm in a dark place. I'm sorry I hurt you."

"I'm hurting," were my responses, "why are you calling?"

I wanted to tell him that the time we spent together were my only sunny summer days. I wanted to tell him that I'm ill at the thought of staying here one more year, yet afraid to get up and go. I wanted to tell him that in his place popped up 3 boys I don't know how to handle - one who wants me, one who I want, and one, well, I'm sure in the years we've known each other we've never known what we want from each other. I wanted someone to listen to me explain why work is killing me right now, and the escapist medication and alcohol are not helping.

"I haven't been sleeping," he said. I've been sleeping, Nic; I've been sleeping too much. I'm tired and listless, and he helped to put some of that into motion. Or lack of motion, rather. His dropping out of my life brought up all these questions that I've asked repeatedly and have yet to compile any answers.

To what extent do I need my family nearby?
How do I make new friends and challenge myself socially?
What do I think my value as an employee is and should be?
Do I want to move forward to higher education now or later? Or ever?
How much can I rely on medication, conversation and exercise to purge my demons?
How do I learn to trust myself in relationships?
When will I realize my own self-worth?

This growing up stuff is awkward. Painful. Sometimes terribly exciting. When I was little, I imagined that all problems would be easily solved, that there would be no more turmoil or insecurities. Hmph.