Tag Archives: cooking

Guascas

I don’t usually write about food, other than what I’ve been growing in my garden, although on my trip to eastern Turkey I tasted some dishes totally new to me (such as hangel, yogurt soup, and dondurma, all of which were delicious). And this past weekend, in New York City, I had a Colombian stew called ajiaco that requires an ingredient that grows in my garden. An herb that I have long considered a weed. Guascas.

While searching the internet for ajiaco recipes I learned that ajiaco calls for guascas, which apparently can be found in dried form in grocery stores that carry items common in South and Central American cuisine. It’s also used in Mexico’s sopa de guías and in some West African dishes. When I looked up guasca, I discovered that it is galinsoga parviflora–naturalized here in North America and found in my garden by the zillions. I pull these plants up constantly from April until October; there are still a few in leaf and bloom out there, despite three recent frosts.

Well then! I harvested some galinsoga and some cilantro that’s also been hanging in there through early November, and bought three varieties of potatoes at the farmer’s market (yellow, red, and white) and a garlic bulb and local onions, and got some of this summer’s sweet corn out of my freezer, and tried making ajiaco.

The act of preparing and cooking food can be nourishing in itself, when I am in the right mood. On a cool and overcast day, trees getting leafless, wind picking up…it was a good day to try a new recipe. The stew turned out well, though I will try a few more variations to tweak the flavor in future. But the thing that struck me as I was looking up various online recipes is that the food writers kept saying “guascas is difficult to find in markets and buying online may be best.”

Hm. How about checking your gardens? Chances are fairly good you’ll find quickweed or gallant soldier growing among the vegetables; it’s considered a “common weed” in U.S. gardens. Next year while I’m yanking the galinsoga out, I will set a little aside for cooking.

https://plantsam.com/galinsoga-parviflora/

The beloveds

In my last post, which featured a draft of a new poem, I should have mentioned my indebtedness to Gregory Orr and to the King James version of the Bible, as well as to Rudyard Kipling for the affectionate phrase “O Best Belovéd.” *

It’s fascinating, the inflections of English–and the way some of our archaic forms of speech still show up, such as the extra syllable pronunciation option for a word like beloved. I appreciate, too, the connotation of one whose emotional being feels connected to another person. We nurture those connections when our children are young, when we fall in love, when we feel intense compassion for another person–sometimes, even, when the person has died and the feeling of being a beloved and having that beloved near linger.

My own best-beloveds fall into all of those categories. I believe I can say I have a full heart.

~

As my last two posts featured poems of sadness, I wish to change things up. This one’s a love poem and a food poem, a cozy piece for the approaching darker weeks.

stewcook

 

Says the Stew Cook to Her Belovéd

Cat’s leaped on the kitchen counter, pawed a walnut from the bowl.
Liter of red wine waits for dinnertime—can’t say I’m not tempted, though.

Low sun highlights the bottle’s deep maroon while I make stew:
turnips, potatoes, garlic’s liquor, bay-leaf—needs only you.

Cool weather calls for firelight and whatever cooks long.
This cook longs to influence your taste, your tongue.

Since night’s expanded its acreage, taking over December,
we can build upon the dark, fill nooks with aromatic hours.

Come taste soup, share coriander scent, sip from this spoon.
Lick clean the bowl, my love, cover pots, come to bed soon.

 

~

 

~~  * I recognize, however, that for many many readers, the word Beloved will most closely be associated with Toni Morrison’s daring, beautiful, wrenching novel by that title–a work I highly recommend.