"Write now is good."

Fuel for writing

Writing is a cognitively demanding activity. When the brain is working hard, the brain needs energy.

I virtually stumbled across this poster, "Snacks of the Great Scribblers", by illustrator Wendy MacNaughton via her other artwork featured on Brainpickings.

What sustenance supports your scrawls?

Mind the grocery store gap

Image: "Empty shelves at a grocery story" by waitscm

In many urban neighborhoods in the United States, supermarket shortages make it difficult for residents of these areas to buy affordable, healthy food. This lack can contribute to a host of health problems, including obesity and diabetes, as people tend to depend on fast food outlets, corner convenience stores, and bodegas for a majority of their meals. If these local venues do sell fresh produce, it's often at a premium, keeping it out of reach of those without extra funds to splurge.

New York City is a metropolis known for its thousands of gourmet restaurants and eclectic, high-end markets. For many local residents, however, eating a meal from these establishments may well be a mirage. Areas called "food deserts" dot all five boroughs, with areas of highest poverty in the Bronx having the fewest number of grocery stores per resident city-wide. To get fairly priced, high-quality food, people must often travel great distances. In NYC, this can easily entail navigating multiple subways and bus lines and walking many blocks while carrying perishables and heavy liquids. (Imagine a grocery store trip that takes hours and is both physically and mentally exhausting.)

To bring more food-access parity to the Big Apple, local groups and city politicians are looking at the complex relationship between factors which keeps grocery stores out of so many's reach. This 2005 Gotham Gazette story explains this situation and possible solutions well. The New York City Coalition Against Hunger website is an online source representing more than “1,200 food programs” which help an estimated 1.4 million hungry New Yorkers. While the issue is complex, many are focusing their attention on it. Awareness about this aspect of hunger seems to be spreading.

Lack of food access is not just a New York City issue. If you look closely enough at any of the U.S.'s urban and rural areas — the places most difficult for grocery stores to exist, for a variety of reasons — you will find food deserts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service has put its “Food Desert Locator” online. It allows viewers to “get a spatial overview of low-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of people who are far from a grocery store” based on U.S. census data.

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year's focus is on food. As a result of participating, I have not only learned more about food deserts, but also found Civil Eats, a well-written blog, with over 100 contributors, about food issues; The Food Trust, a community-based organization in Philadelphia which promotes farmers' markets throughout the city (and much more); and Just Food, another NYC-based food justice initiative which pairs area farmers and their produce to those who most need them.

Thanks to all at BAD2011 who have again brought worldwide attention, through organizing a network of bloggers, to an issue affecting us all.

What have you done for your muse lately?

Photo: The Nine Muses by dunechaser

How is your muse?
You don't know, you say?

When was the last time you talked with her (or him, or it, or them)?
What?
You don't remember?

It is time to starting talking, my friend.
Ask all the right questions, and listen intently.
With the canyon of silence between the two of you,
You must begin to repair your work relationship at once.
Immediately.
Your writing and creating depend on it.

I recommend the following approach:
Sit quietly without distraction (like teh Interwebs, caffeinated beverages, and juicy blackberries of both fruit and tech kinds).
Ask one question without speaking it aloud. (Muses do like quiet minds and spaces.)
Then wait and listen.

And wait.
And wait a bit more.

Do you hear her (or him, or it, or them)?
Do you recognize the voice? The words? The advice?

Listen carefully and then ask a second question related to what your muse has shared.
Keep listening, keep talking.
A conversation has begun.

Make a promise to talk to and listen to your muse regularly.
Write down key points of your talks — the inspiring mantras, the mysterious phrases which repeat and make no sense, the common-sense reminders of good writing habits.
Review them often.
Acknowledge that your writing needs this ritual,
And that nothing great is ever created alone.
(Or, as my muse-coach likes to bellow, "It takes team work to make the dream work!")

Some wise people I know bake delicious blueberry pies for their muses. It takes them, and their writing lives, very far indeed.

Eating the dragon

Photo: wasabi by photoplasia

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt, "spicy", inspired me to write a haiku triplet. While there is much to say about spices, like spices themselves, a little goes a long way.

Wasabi rapture:
Green dragon exhales full blast —
I cry spring rain, laugh.

Jalapeño sting —
Fiery oil brought shouts, screams, and
Pleas for soothing snow.

Ground black pepper dust
Dances, settling into cream,
Charging it with bite.

For more spicy writing, check out this week's Sunday Scribblings.

Kitchen fear

supper is almost ready by CherrySoda!

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is "in the kitchen":

As a twenty-something enthusiastically rattling about the wilds of New York City, I treated my kitchen merely as a room which held another sink (in addition to the bathroom). I also stored cookbooks there, which I read with great passion yet from which I never cooked. The hearth of my petite urban abode remained a mausoleum to my lost art of preparing food. I had plenty of encouragement in my culinary neglect. My cousin residing on the city's Upper West Side had a stack of take-out menus which she affectionately referred to as her "recipes." A co-worker living on the Upper East Side used her oven to store her dry cleaning. Our trio wore our anti-cooking badges with honor. In the "city which doesn't eat at home," we were not alone.

Returning home late from work, or, more likely, returning home very late from being out with friends, I'd almost always grabbed something on the way there. ("So sorry, my Kitchen, I've already eaten!") Somewhere amongst the thousands of delicious and affordable restaurants and cafes Gotham offered me. Someplace more fun, where I could talk and laugh and people-watch and sample other lives and cultures, through both my eyes and palate. Someplace where I wasn't alone.

Cooking by myself in my kitchen made me feel lonely. As I wasn't a particularly good cook, I had no ability to whip up delicious meals to successfully entice an entire social life over to my pad. It was pasta and sauce, mac and cheese, beans and rice almost every night. I was unable to envision anything beyond beige carbs. Taking action in my kitchen made me feel like a failure.

So I headed to my hearths away from home to be fed, among them family pizza parlors in downtown Brooklyn, falafel hot-spots in Greenwich Village, and noodle shops with jade-green veggie dumplings in the East Village.

Let me stay in the East Village a moment: luscious berry smoothies with flax seed oil added for extra Omega 3s; all-I-could-eat, home-style, buffet Indian food complete with tabla and sitar players AND mango lassis; frite shops instantly dispensing fresh crisped potatoes; Bento boxes featuring incredibly edible sushi. Then I found something intriguing: a vegan restaurant which featured a community table. Total strangers were welcomed to take a meal, sit next to someone they probably didn't know, and see what happened. Sometimes talking and laughing happened. Often people read quietly to themselves as they ate, sitting next to other solitary reading people.

Those restaurants, run with so much care and passion, supported me as I grew into my full adulthood. Because many opened their kitchens to feed me and countless others, I was nourished, for as long as I needed, until I took a few cooking classes and began to nourish myself.

For more takes on "in the kitchen," click here.

Happy 1st Birthday, Sunday Scribblings!

Underground foodies unite! (Anybody up for world peace?)

It's amazing how Web 2.0 technology is connecting people.

Based on my own experience, I can attest that people are creating vibrant, supportive creative and writing communities and are collaborating on projects. I've heard of an adventurous group writing a novel together — and none of them have ever met (can't find this link!).

On PSFK today, I've posted about one such community soon to launch. Curious Fork/Furious Cork promises to be interesting, innovative and yummy.

What I'd like to see next are some creative communities working to solve global conflicts, hunger, illiteracy and poverty.

Anybody know of any? Anybody interested in working on these? I'm sure they are out there. Please leave a comment.

My yummy Great Aunt E.

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is "yummy."

My Great Aunt E. lived a full 102 years of life. She embodied a sweetness rarely found in those who’ve lived through more than a century’s worth of what debacles humans can create for each other.

Aunt E. smiled big in every picture. She hugged us warmly whenever we saw her. At every family gathering, she proclaimed how good the food looked and how wonderful we all did, too. She sent us cards emblazoned with flowers and butterflies and kittens, just to say hello, even though we lived barely a five-minute drive from each other.

Her sweetness contained not a bit of sappiness. She lived in a retired person’s apartment building, home also to an energetic activities director forever dreaming up ways to keep his charges’ circulation flowing. One day Great Aunt E. called us with more thrill in her voice than we’d heard in awhile. She had just won first-place in the walker race (as in those who use a walker to steady themselves as they step), beating out five other lady seniors, all younger than she. My great aunt went on to fiercely defend her title of “Walker Race Champion, Female” for a number of years, well into her late 80’s.

My great aunt impressed by making mysterious desserts. She called one signature cookie “sand tarts.” Completely covered with a tan grit, they looked unappetizing. She proudly described how hard she worked to make the sand look real. We never understood why and we never asked; it was a family recipe and was not to be questioned.

These homely treats surprised those bold enough to believe they were as yummy as Great Aunt E. bragged them to be. They were light and buttery with tiny pecan bits sprinkled throughout. They possessed a wide range of pleasing textures unusual in something so small. We gobbled them every time she offered them to us. Though none of us have had a sand tart for years now, we still talk about them and can almost taste them when we do.

My grandmother might have the recipe somewhere, though probably not. My great aunt, fiercely protective of her signature creations, probably kept the recipe tucked away so no one could discover her secrets. A baking competitor could be lurking nearby, looking to steal the formula and pass it off as her own at the next bake sale in her apartment building’s lobby.

Great Aunt E.’s competitive drive kept her going. Ever upping the ante in her own life, she pushed herself just to see how far she could go. She went far, and well.

For more "yummy" writing, visit this week's edition of Sunday Scribblings.

"...the soul needs chocolate."

Behold an image of Dagoba's LAVENDER organic chocolate bar.

Yes, lavender.

Why am I writing about this? Because I've tasted almost every type of chocolate I've ever had access to, and none actually slowed me down while I consumed it. With this bar, I took small bites, savoring them. It took me three entire evenings to actually finish one bar. I usually gulp chocolate in some vacuum-like frenzy, tasting little and consuming much in record time; I feel silly afterwards, a bit guilty, and vow to slow down next foray. With the Dagoba, I felt reflective. I smelled the chocolate slowly and noticed that the lavender aroma was so strong, yet the taste of it was barely there.

I could go on.

It's dark chocolate infused with lavender essence througout. It is subtle, thought-provoking. Sense-provoking is probably more accurate. Wild blueberries peppered throughout the chocolate round out this unusual, delicious combination.

Dagoba talks of its research into the "alchemy of chocolate." Alchemy is chemistry, but, as importantly, it is also magic. And in small type on the back of its wrapper, they mention their philosophy: "You can deprive the body, but the soul needs chocolate." Enough said.

Whole Foods Markets, seeming to spring up most everywhere lately, carry the entire Dagoba Chocolate Bar line, judging from the shelf space I saw it occupy. Go to the online source to see even more: www.dagobachocolates.com

I didn't plan to write food or product reviews on this blog, but I wish I'd bought more.

Enjoy.

Quit the "Clean Plate Club"

So it turns out that overly strict parenting might contribute to an increase in childhood obesity. I'm so glad that this issue is finally getting press, as CNN reported today:

Study: Strict parenting might lead to obese kids.
Flexible rule-setting moms most likely to avoid chubby kids

"CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- 'Clean your plate or else!' and other authoritarian approaches to parenting might lead to overweight children, a new study finds.

"Strict mothers were nearly five times more likely to raise tubby first-graders than mothers who treated their children with flexibility and respect while also setting clear rules."

Here's my reasoning: If a child feels full, yet a parent makes them continue to eat, the child learns that their own feelings of being full should be ignored. With this self-denial repeated meal after meal, day after day, children become so disconnected from what it feels to be hungry or full that they eventually cannot regulate themselves. This can lead to overeating because kids can no longer "hear" their bodies when their bodies say, "Full! Enough! Stop eating!"

Here's another dire consequence: When a parent encourages children to ignore their own feelings, I think this extends to other areas, too. After being made to ignore such a basic human experience of hunger/fullness, what else will children ignore in themselves? Being sad? Happy? Confused? Do all feelings now get pushed a little deeper down inside? If so, this can lead to depression.

There is something else at work here. Children spend their early years just learning about which foods they like. It is said that it takes 10-20 tries for some kids to decide if they like a new food. It is a natural process for a child to refuse food at certain times. Strict-feeding regimens short-circuit this developmentally appropriate approach.

We all know people who were forced to clean their plates as children, often under threat of punishment. For those that I know, mealtimes and eating remain a source of conflict and discomfort.

Shouldn't eating be enjoyable instead of stressful and miserable? Indeed, it seems that children's quality of life depends on it.