Meatless Soups/Stews

The Summer of Love

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I can’t get that song, “San Francisco,” out of my mind. Maybe it’s because we drove over both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge last weekend on our way to our grandson’s college graduation ceremony. Maybe it’s because San Francisco is in the news so much – for both the good and the bad. Maybe it’s because I think we all need a “summer of love.”

Scott McKenzie recorded the gorgeous song back in 1967 – the summer now referred to as “The Summer of Love.” Although in today’s Andy’s Corner Andy questions just how “lovey-dovey” that summer may have been, to me the reference to a summer of love seems incredibly apropos, given the fact that Andy and I got married in May of 1967.

However, while around 100,000 folks were gathering in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in June of that year, dreamily talking about love and peace, Andy and I were saying our (very, very teary) good-byes, as he prepared to leave for Army basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey…with a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam almost inevitable. Having been drafted made the situation even more difficult. Believe me, we thought more about Canada than San Francisco!

It’s hard looking back at that summer and imagining those two different and conflicting scenes. The nation was so divided.

Another memorable song – recorded in July of 1967 – was the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” Upon listening to the song in May of 2023, Andy and I both commented that “love isn’t all we need!” Fifty-six years later cynicism may have overcome us. Nonetheless, hearing and seeing the Beatles when they were so young – and were performing in such a casual setting – is a treat. As you watch the video below, be sure to be on the lookout for another very famous musician among those gathered around. Admittedly, I had to check in with our son to make the absolute identification. I’m not as “hip” as those 1967 hippies!

I was 23 the summer of 1967. That summer, while I was consumed with thinking about love…and war, another young woman, born just a day after I was, was thinking more about food – and plotting her first book on that subject. Her name? Frances Moore Lappé.

Frances Moore Lappé in the late 1960s while she was researching Diet for a Small Planet. (Courtesy of Frances Moore Lappé/Penguin Random House)

Diet for a Small Planet, Lappé’s first book, didn’t come out until 1971, but she was working on it in the late 60’s at Cal, where her husband was in graduate school. At first Lappé thought of the book more as a political manifesto – pushing us away from meat and toward plant-based diets. But her very-supportive publisher, Betty Ballantine of Ballantine Books, encouraged her to soften it a little by including recipes.

In 2021 the 50th Anniversary edition was released – with some recipe updates, moving the ingredients toward a more world-view of food, rather than Mediterranean-focused. Over 30 million copies of the book have been sold over the years. Not bad.

Lappé has kept up her activism throughout her life. Her publications include 2004’s You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear and 2017’s Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want. Her 2021 updates describe the good and the bad and the ugly, relative to changes to food and farming and the environment. I love that Lappé has such an upbeat conclusion to that edition – the final lines of this Amanda Gorman poem:

The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Today’s vegetarian recipe comes from the 2021 edition of Diet of a Small Planet (surprise!), and it’s based on a 1970’s recipe which was served for lunch to the patrons of San Francisco’s Ecology Center. It was tweaked a bit for the new edition by adding coconut milk. I think those who participated in the Summer of Love would approve. Or should I say they’d LOVE it! 🙂

And here’s a shout-out to all of those new college graduates who are looking forward to a life committed to working together to improve our world – and to Silas, our grandson, whose major at Cal, fittingly enough, was Society and the Environment.

And let’s hope that love returns. Fingers crossed for a lovely and love-filled summer of 2023…”for there is always light.”

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Free to Be…You and Me

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Gender stereotypes? Weren’t they paying attention all of those times I played them Free to Be…You and Me?
Female voice:
They're closing' down Girl Land
Some say it's a shame.
It used to be busy,
Then nobody came.

Ringmaster voice:
Welcome to Girl Land, my good little girls
Admission's a wink, and a toss of your curls
There's fun for all, from eight to eighty
You go in a girl and you come out a lady...

Wonderful Girl Land...
The island of joys!
Where good little girls
Pick up after the boys

So, come on in… and look about…
You go in a girl,
And you never GET OUT!! HaHa!....

Female voice:
And soon, in a park that was Girl Land before
You'll do what you like, and you'll be who you are
As you wander in, and wander out
And pretty soon, forget all about

Girl Land, Girl Land, beautiful Girl Land

“Girl Land” “Wiliam’s Doll” “Don’t Dress Your Cat in an Apron,” and “Lady’s First” (which our daughter remembers terrified her) are just some of the songs on the Marlo Thomas’s children’s record Free to Be…You and Me, which she produced just over 50 years ago. Our daughter was 1 1/2 years old when it came out – November of 1972. Our son was not even a blip on the horizon. We bought the LP – and it was played over…and over…and over in our home – for many years to come. Andy, au contraire, says he doesn’t remember hearing it played that much. Could that be because he was at work – while I was at home cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids? 🙂 To Andy’s credit, he does remember spending “quality” time playing a game with our grandkids that could have corrupted their moral fiber. You can learn about all of that in today’s Andy’s Corner.

Listen to the song “Free to Be…You and Me” (by the New Seekers) here

Marlo Thomas remembers that when she was planning the album she “gathered these people around and I said to them, if you could have anything said to you in your childhood, what would you have wanted it to be? And Herb Gardner said, ‘I would’ve liked to have been told that it was all right for a boy to cry.’ And I said, I would’ve liked to have been told that at the end of every fairy tale, the girl, the princess, doesn’t have to marry the prince and that she doesn’t have to be a blonde all the time.”

You’ll get a huge kick out of watching this: It’s All Right to Cry. Rosey Grier – played pro football (NY Giants and LA Rams -1955 -1967; took away the weapon from the assassin Sirhan Sirhan – 1968; sang “It’s All Right to Cry” for Free to Be…You and Me – 1972; wrote the book Needlepoint for Men – 1973.

The song that got me fixated on the topic of freedom is “Baraye,” which means “for” or “because of” in Farsi. Written and sung by Shervin Hajipour, the 25-year-old Iranian who won a 2023 Grammy for Best Song for Social Change, the song repeats messages posted online regarding protests in Iran. Hajipour was arrested in Iran after the song’s release but later parolled. One of the concluding lines – “For women, life, freedom” has become a rallying cry in Iran – and elsewhere.

Freedom. Without getting overly-philosophical but acknowledging that “freedom” is a pretty complex topic, I think FDR’s hand-written note about the Four Freedoms is worth a read. He wrote it as he prepared to give his January 1941 State of the Union address to Congress. “Freedom from fear” would be very high on my list.

Freedom. Just as I was dancing through the house singing “you and me are free to be you and me” Andy casually suggested that I might want to delve a little deeper into the subject and re-watch this video from 1980’s The Blues Brothers. Aretha Franklin’s hysterically-funny song and dance is entitled “Think” – but it might as well have been named “Think about Freedom.” Mrs. Murphy, Aretha’s character, freaks out when her husband, a blues guitarist, announces he’s leaving and rejoining Jake and Elwood’s Band.

Here’s a link to the lyrics. And here’s one of the best lines: You need me (need me);And I need you (don’t you know); Without each other there ain’t nothing people can do, oh.

Freedom. Jon Batiste’s 2021 video Freedom is a far cry from the humanitarian intensity of “Baraye” or the political philosophizing of FDR or the sassy feminism of Aretha Franklin, but it’s the perfect ending for my blog. N’awlins. Upbeat. Fun. And on point. I think I may be in love with Jon Batiste.

I just reminded myself that this is a food/life blog, not a music/dance/life blog. For the food aspect of today’s blog – freedom wins again. Freedom to make a recipe into what you want and like. Freedom to add to, take away, make it yours. We’ve got the basic lentil soup – but you can make it Persian or Creole or be wild and crazy and go for German or Mexican. You can make it vegetarian or vegan – or not. Be free.

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How to Cook a Wolf (along with Pigeons, Calf Brains, Kidneys… and Water)

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Ann’s bedside reading stockpile

[Note: Andy and I have swapped roles for today’s BigLittleMeals post. Andy is doing the blog and I am taking over Andy’s Corner].

The other day I noticed a book on Ann’s night stand with the curious title How to Cook a Wolf. Out of curiosity, I picked it up and began to randomly thumb through it. It was written by MFK Fisher, about whom I knew little except that she was supposedly a renowned food writer and that she had lived in a house on the property of the Bouverie Preserve not far from our place.

Additionally, I knew that Ann was so intrigued with a photo of MFK Fisher with her cat that she tried to emulate it for a Facebook post. What I didn’t know was that Ann and MFK Fisher had an “unexpected” Louisiana connection, which she reveals in today’s Andy’s Corner.

From Ann’s Facebook post. Ann is on the left with our cat (then a kitten), Choco Latte. MFK Fisher is on the right with her cat, Charlie.

Admittedly, How to Cook a Wolf is not the kind of book I would normally take to the beach for pleasure reading; I prefer obscure sociological thrillers such The Social Construction of Reality or The Division of Labor in Society. However, it didn’t take much thumbing through the book before I was hooked.  Not only is Fisher entertaining and witty, she has a keen eye for the social and philosophical significance of our daily food-based routines. What better sociological thriller could I hope for?

Last House – Fisher’s home in Glen Ellen

How to Cook a Wolf was published the year before I was born, in the midst of WWII. A glance at her chapter titles, such as How to Be Sage Without Hemlock, How to Keep Alive, How to Make a Pigeon Cry, and How to Comfort Sorrow makes it clear that this is not your run-of-the-mill cook book.

WWII Poster: Basic rations per person.

On a practical level, Fisher’s essays and recipes are aimed at helping folks to survive while at the same time eat well during the food rationing and wartime hardships of her day. But she is writing about much more than that. For her, how and what we eat is metaphorical for our basic human needs.

It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it (a quote from her 1992 NY Times’ obituary – which is worth a read in itself).

When reading How to Cook a Wolf it’s hard not to think of the many parallels between the stresses of the war-time 1940s and the current stresses we are experiencing in the pandemic. While these two crises are different in many obvious ways, Fisher’s words are still particularly relevant to our current situation.

Anne Wallentine, in a recent Eater post, claims that Fisher’s book is “essential reading” for right now:

As our human-made systems are wrenched apart, Fisher’s advice on attitude, thrift, and how to nourish yourself and others in a crisis is newly relevant. Right now, the future is unknowable, the present uncertain. But the past is always available, and Fisher’s exquisite prose offers it up for both insight and escape.

Beyond the metaphorical side of food, Fisher does offer up some solid non-metaphorical recipes. As today’s guest food blog author, I feel obligated to say something about these recipes.

I’ll admit at the outset that a few of her recipes are a bit off-putting to me. I’m not real keen on trying such dishes as Calves Brains, Kidneys in Sherry, Roast Pigeon, or Aunt Gwen’s Cold Shape (quartered calf head).

I realize that my preferences are culturally biased and I feel the sting of Fisher’s admonition (although I actually do like Rocky Mountain Oysters!):

One way to horrify at least eight out of ten Anglo-Saxons is to suggest their eating anything but the red fibrous meat of a beast… when you eat a stuffed baked bull’s heart, or a grilled lamb’s brain or a “mountain oyster,” you need not choke them down with nauseated resolve to be braver or wiser or more potent, but with plain delight.

A good source for some of the more interesting Anglo-Saxon-friendly recipes in the book can be found at Four Pounds of Flour, a blog from about 10 years ago that reproduced and discussed many of the her recipes. It’s worth taking a look at.

In today’s blog we are including one recipe. It is from the chapter entitled “How to Boil Water” which begins with a story about a young woman who “didn’t know how to boil water” until she got married. You have to read it to appreciate her tongue-in-cheek narrative, even if it seems a bit gender insensitive by today’s standards.

Soup prerequisite?

Eventually, the chapter evolves into a discussion of how to make soup, for which boiling water is generally a prerequisite.

As a steady diet, plain (boiled) water is inclined to make thin fare, and even saints, of which there are an unexpected number these days, will gladly agree that a few herbs and perhaps a carrot or two and maybe a bit of meager bone on feast-days can mightily improve the somewhat monotonous flavor of the hot liquid.

One of Fisher’s “mightily improved” boiled water recipes, which we include below, is for A Basic Minestrone. According to Fisher,

Probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry, as well as for those who are tired or worried or cross or in debt or in a moderate amount of pain or in love or in robust health or in kind of business huggermuggery, is minestrone. (Just so you know – “hugger mugger” used as an adjective can be defined as secret or clandestine. Minestrone sounds perfect for December 2020!)

Ann made a pot of this soup a couple of weeks ago to serve for lunch with our good friend Lynne. As we sat on our deck on that chilly day – separated by six feet of social distance – and savoring the hot soup and each other’s company, I couldn’t help but think of MFK Fisher’s suggestion that food, security and love are entwined, maybe even more so during trying times like these.

So, enjoy the soup and find security and love during this season of uncertainty.

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