Sense of Journey » Patterns of Engagement

Comfort foods and common meals

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Feb 242009

OK, quick, name your top five comfort foods, the meals you count on to relieve some of the anxiety of uncertain times. Umm, the flavors, aromas, textures, and probably not-so-subtle spices of times gone past, the everyday, home-cooked meals, with “secret” ingredients, like mustard in macaroni and cheese, that you sat down to at the end of another one of “those days,” magically calming the tummy and somehow making sense of it all.

My wife and I got to thinking about comfort foods recently and discovered that years of living overseas have complicated grocery shopping. Yeah, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese and pot roast are still easy, but where do we find the really good kimchi? And it’s gotten harder to hide the tofu from the boys when they visit, since that’s what they look for, along with a little freshly grated ginger and a splash of soy sauce.

We split on Spam, which I still associate with something you could count on for a quick, satisfying repast while hiking or hunting with colleagues in the Alaskan bush. I have, however, abandoned dried fish and seal oil (with just a hint of Worstershire sauce) on the basis of supply as well as political correctness now that I’m back living “Outside.”

We’ve been intending to go vegetarian-we have, in fact made several attempts-but the “comfort” of kale hasn’t kicked in yet. I think we’ll get there, but it may take either times of greater calm, or paradoxically, more intense concern, to just make the shift.

If you are what you eat, than changing what you eat changes what you are. There really is a deeply “spiritual” dimension to food; a literal communion with family, community and the planet, the physical substance of shared well-being.

Champion Sumo wrestlers (it’s absolutely true!) as well as Tour de France competitors depend on specifically tailored, “technical” diets, sometimes veiled in secrecy for added psychological as well as physical advantage. Are there really special ingredients for success?

My wife claims I think too much about food; I tend to remember places, events, encounters based on what was on the table at the time. The most amazingly profound meal I ever had was an iftar (the fast-breaking meal after sunset during Ramadan) in Tanjung Pura, the “county” seat in North Sumatra from which our staff circuited the cluster of coastal villages we worked with. I have never felt so welcomed, never so honored by the attention to detail and the sense of inclusion as during that overnight visit with the county chief and his family during an intense time of spiritual reflection in the midst of everyday occupations. Despite 9/11, this is my image of Islam.

Or the preparation of winter kimchi in Ch’eong Ju, a provincial capital in the center of South Korea. Still my standard for kimchi, all the more fulfilling for the many hands that went into its preparation before being stored in a barrel and buried in the backyard as an anchor condiment for the breakfasts, lunches, snacks and dinners of the next three months.

Maybe the common meal is what plants the comfort into comfort food; the direct association with those with whom we share a commitment to care, at the most intimate and enduring level.

And this would be why common meals–as pot lucks, village feasts and community festivals–play such a powerful role in establishing and sustaining community cohesiveness.

“The upstart spring…”

Compass Bearings, Featured No Responses »

Jan 112009

Some moments become almost mythical in experience and memory, creating a broader frame of reference for the unfolding of personal and community journeys.

The Alaskan village of Selawik spanned both sides of a river near sea level as well as the island in the river’s midst; the primal role of river as life was a literal reality.

The progress of the year was measured by freeze-up, break-up and the seasonal running of the Sheefish for which both the village and the river were named, as well as the migratory patterns of caribou herds. And aside from the airstrip–frequently rendered useless by high cross-winds–the river provided the primary avenue of travel and transport–by boat during summer, by snowmachine in winter.

It was far easier to get around over ice and snow-covered tundra and river, and fresh water was readily available from the clear river ice, nearly three feet thick by mid-winter. Remove the surface snow and chop away.

As the ice thinned, the more bold–or foolhardy–marked the dangerous areas to avoid with twigs, creating the odd illusion of young saplings randomly scattered from shore to shore. People carried pocket knives to pull themselves out in the event of breaking through, and for several days before break-up, all crossings ceased.

Those with upstream fish camps headed out early so they could report back the progress of the breakup as they followed the open water in boats.

And when the day arrived, everything came to a stand still. The electricity was turned off before the movement of ice could potentially sever the power lines that stretched from bank to bank to bank, across the river bottom. All was silent as young and old gathered to sit along the banks to watch the season change right there, right now, before their eyes.

You hear it first, a subtle clinking and crunching. Then what had been firm enough to walk on just days before began to subtly shift and move, the sound of breaking ice growing in volume and breadth.

Teenagers scampered across still solid areas to retrieve the last of the clear ice; some mounting the floes as temporary rafts, others reaching out from boats that had been left through the winter at the riverbank. As the entire surface of the river heaved and advanced, several flotilla of tree trunks and branches, uprooted and carried down from the mountains by the rising spring flood, began to appear–and were quickly retrieved for firewood.

And sometimes days later, in more shallow reaches, ice sheets that had formed on the river bed before the surface froze over would abruptly release and bob to the surface, unpleasantly surprising unsuspecting boaters passing through.

Some moments become almost mythical in experience and memory. In this moment, I became more deeply aware of the rhythm and flow of this community, and the ongoing desperate struggle of reconciliation with other lifestyles and rhythms, just as objective and unyielding in their own way as the freezing and breakup of the river. Are there limits to human adaptability?

Or could we be living in such times when long-frozen patterns of memory and tradition begin to break free and we can come to know ourselves and each other in a free-flowing awareness of common
ground and origins?

Have we reached, by destiny and design, the point of convergence, where the streams of disparate journeys and conflicts may find their end in a common milestone of fresh possibility and the creation of a new, shared legacy?

The frozen misery of ages breaks, cracks, begins to move
The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the flood, the upstart spring
Thank God our time is now…

[A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Frye]