May 2010

I wanted to make some bread to go with the leftovers from the last recipe and the Spinach Bread from the Indian Vegan Kitchen cookbook sounded perfect. Here’s my take on the recipe:

2 cups of whole wheat flour (plus a little extra for rolling & flattening the dough)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 cups fresh spinach, chopped and loosely packed It came out to about a handful for me.)
3/4 cups water
2 tbsp OVOO (plus a little extra while cooking, but not much!)

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, cayenne pepper, and spinach. Make a well in the center of the flour and gradually add the water while mixing. (The moisture of the spinach and the type of flour may vary the amount of water needed.) The dough should be soft and easily roll into a ball. Knead the dough for 1-2 minutes until smooth and elastic. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes or longer. (I messed up a bit and almost forgot to add the spinach, so it was a little bit sticky for me.

Dough meet rolling pin...

When I added just a teeny bit of flour to the cooking panel and the rolling pin, I was able to roll out some nice pieces. One looked like this:

A small palak paratha

Heat tava (iron griddle or a pancake griddle). Adjust the heat and add a little oil. Take each ball and gently roll with a rolling pin (Good for shaking at husbands-to-be and chasing them).
As you gently roll the dough into a flat blob of bread, take your time, then gently brush them with a little oil and pop them on the griddle. Let them them get a little brown with a few dark spots on both sides and it will look like you got them from a good Indian restaurant.

You can serves this bread with any curry dish or eat it plain. JOY!

When I was finished, the flavorful spinach bread looked like this:

A plate full of palak paratha with a teeny bit of dough on the side.

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I felt pretty blah today, so lovingly prepared vegan meal would cheer me up. Here’s my take on a recipe from one of my new cookbooks: “The Indian Vegan Kitchen” by Madhu Gadia.

I originally bought “The Indian Vegan Kitchen” because Rich and I give a lot of money to Satish Palace, an Indian restaurant that we LOVE in Montclair, NJ. Also, I promised that I wanted to cook more at home, so I figured I should make it interesting for myself. I was really surprised at how thorough this book by Madhu Gadia really was. It even breaks down the nutritional content! I’ve included that for both recipes, even though Rich and I had slightly bigger servings than indicated here. We still have leftovers for 2 or 3 meals.

A note on some of the ingredients: You can find asafetida in a Indian specialty market. It’s basically a spice powder that has a funky smell, much like the turmeric which can smell a bit like unwashed armpit. This smell disappears completely upon cooking. If you can find a store that focuses specifically on Indian food, you can probably buy a bigger than you need for a much cheaper price than a much smaller container of cumin at a regular grocery store. For example, the bag of cumin seed, a bag of turmeric AND the asafetida cost us $6 total at Urvesh Grocery, 230 N. Main Street, Passaic, NJ. Now, I’m stocked for some other recipes without having to make a mad store dash just for those spices. You can also order these spices online.

Gobh-Mirch Subji and Palak Couscous plated by yours truly

Cauliflower & Peppers (Gobhi-Mirch Subji)
Makes: 12 servings of 1/2 cup each
Nutrition Information Per Serving: Calories 84; Total Fat: 5 g (Saturated Fat: 0.5 g); Carbohydrate: 9 g; Protein: 2 g; Fiber: 3 g; Sodium: 309 mg.

1 whole head of cauliflower
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 sweet yellow pepper, choppped
1 sweet red pepper, chopped
4 tbsp OVOO
1/2 tsp asafetida
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 coups of onion, chopped
2 tbsp ginger, peeled & grated
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
4 tsps lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:
Wash off the cauliflower head. Carefully break the white florets free from the sturdy green stem. You don’t want to mash the florets. Each one should be about 1 inch, but I think breaking them down to a manageable 1-2 bite size is good. Chop the peppers and remove the membrane and seeds. Mix these vegetables together.
Heat oil in a nonstick pan with high sides so everything will fit easily later. Add asafetida and cumin seeds to the oil. Cook for a few seconds until the seeds get a little gold. Add onion and cook until the onion is transparent, then add ginger.

Now, you’re ready to add vegetables. Sprinkle with salt, turmeric, and cayenne pepper. We forgot we didn’t have coriander, but if you have it, add that too! Lift and turn the veggies as you stir so the spices are distributed evenly. Then cover with a lid and reduce heat. The veggies can cook for 10-12 in their own juice. You can add 1-2 tbsps of water if you think it’s about to stick to the pan.

Before transferring the food to a serving dish sprinkle with lemon juice. If you leave it covered in the pan, it will keep cooking and the veggies become mush.

Curried Spinach Couscous (Palak Couscous)
Makes: 6 servings of 1/2 cup each
Nutrition Information Per Serving: Calories 138; Total Fat: 3 g (Saturated Fat: 0 g); Carbohydrate: 24 g; Protein: 4 g; Fiber: 2 g; Sodium: 307 mg.

1 cup of couscous (about 1 box of Near East brand couscous)
1 tbsp OVOO
1 tsp ginger, peeled and grated
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp mint leaves, chopped
1 1/2 cups of frozen spinach
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 cups water

Heat a large nonstick fry pan. We added a little tiny bit of oil before adding dry couscous to roast for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, we remove the slightly browned couscous and set them aside on another plate. A tbsp of oil was introduced to the still hot pan and we threw in the unused chopped onion from the cauliflower recipe. The cookbook said spring onions, but we figured 1/4 of an onion would do.

After 2-3 minutes, add ginger, cumin, turmeric, cayenne pepper, and mint leaves. Stir well.

After the stirring, add spinach, salt, and sugar. Make sure the spinach is covered with all these wonderful spices. if you use frozen spinach. You will want to press the excess water out of the spinach before putting it in the pan. We used a 12 oz. bag of chopped spinach for our batch. Add the 2 cups of water and bring to boil.

When boiling begins, add couscous and thoroughly stir together all these ingredients. Reduce heat, cover with lid and allow it cook for 7-8 minutes until the couscous absorb the water. Transfer to serving dish so it won’t keep cooking and stick to the pan.

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Honestly, I’m going to do Feel-Good Fridays. I will post a video, a picture, or a song that just makes me feel good or other people want to dance. Why? Because people get paid on Fridays and punch out from work. Because it may mark the crest of a party rising or a lover’s embrace. Because 5-6 days out of the week can be drudgery. I originally tried to do Funky Fridays on myspace where I posted songs connected to or derived from the funk (Thank you, Parliament, George Clinton, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Ohio Players, Bootsy Collins, Joi, et. al.), but myspace has pretty much become the less popular social networking kid these days.

Our first F-GF entry was given to me last Friday. Since I’ve been open to pretty much reading in a variety of places, I was invited to feature at TheFUSE, the Friday night slam at the Infusion Tea Gallery in the Mt. Airy/Germantown area. It was an exciting night to see a young slam team come together on their finals night, and they were very responsive to the work. It was a good night to pass the hat, so I made up for not selling a lot of books. Philadelphia looked out for me. However, one of the charming things about last Friday was when Jane Cassady, one of the organizers slipped a tiny, neatly folded note into my hand. “This was in the hat with the money. I thought you might like it.” She smiled and I unfolded it. You may not be able to read it from the photo since it’s backwards, but I wanted you to see how small it was.

received at Infusion Tea Gallery in Philly, 4/30/10

It read as follows:
I wish I had a
coin, bill, or debit
card to drop in this
hat tonite, but …
whenever I can get
the funds, I’ll buy your
book and make a
necklace out of its pearls
for my friends

I have no idea who wrote it, but it felt nice to know that someone took the time to write it. Sometimes, people come to readings because they are looking for someone who talks about things that are relevant to them or reflect their experiences. I am aware that some people can’t afford a lot of things right now, but if we remember how valuable kindness, time, and effort are, we can do so much that a price tag only aspires to achieving.

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If you didn’t already know, I am blogging a lot this summer. Hopefully, about poems, books, movies. I’ll even share some photos and videos, I’m sure.

In the meantime, expect to see me on a b o u t a w o r d, the blog of professor and author Ruth Ellen Kocher next week.

I’ll be blogging here as well, but for the month of May 2010, I’ll be the guest blogger for The Basin Blog, another tributary of the Tidal Basin Review.

Finally, there’s an official blog for the anthology of Bop poems that I’m co-editing with Afaa Michael Weaver, the creator of the Bop Poem. Visit Bop, Strut, and Dance to read the submission guidelines and see examples of Bops from Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Brandon D. Jackson, and G.E. Patterson. There’s more content to come to get you inspired to write Bop poems this summer.

Other than that, I’m disappointed that Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog has decided to stop generating some of the best blog content that I’ve ever read online. Even though I don’t always agree with every writer featured, the range of the writers and their subject matter always made me want to check in. I figured I’d share a link to Oscar Bermeo, who’s made some cogent points about this very topic.

So, enjoy your clicking and surfing. I’ll be back with more soon.

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“precedent: –noun 1. Law . a legal decision or form of proceeding serving as an authoritative rule or pattern in future similar or analogous cases. 2. any act, decision, or case that serves as a guide or justification for subsequent situations. –adjective pre·ce·dent 3. preceding; anterior.”

I promised myself that 2010 would be the year that I rededicate myself to blogging. So, here I am. there’s so many topics to discuss, and I feel like find a focus is difficult. I can always discuss books or poems, but I feel that there are so many things to discuss.

The repression of SB 1070, as well as banning of ethnic studies classes and teachers with accents is weighing heavily on my mind. On the other hand, I am praying for my cousin who works the border patrol and has been in close proximity to officers who have been killed. His job is maintaining the Mexican border who are nothing like the characters “Under the Same Moon”.

In this film, a bright and adorable little boy finds his way to his mother in the United States who is working to support him and her family back home. She misses her son dearly and is blatantly mistreated by at least one boss who threatens to turn her in to immigration. I am one of the people who thinks, if you work, you deserve a chance.

Since my cousin is career military and African American, he has seen more of some people’s criminal background checks than he’d ever like to tell me. He tells me, “It’s not like what you think, Tara.” When he has described the acts of felons and how many times he’s been called the “n-word”, even though he’s one of the few officers who knows Spanish, it reminds me how complicated race has become in communities of color.

It also reminds me that “us vs. them” is a reinforced mentality on a regular basis. This is also evident in the film “American Violet” when the main character (portrayed by Nicole Beharie) cannot find a job after she is arrested at her full-time waitress job and her former employer’s are threatened. The jobs that she applies for, at the lowest income possible, are given to Mexican Americans, and the hostility between the Black and Mexican characters is palpable. All of this revolves around safety and income, and how color, somehow threatens that.

This week, my fiance and I were hoping that the car bomb in Times Square was not set by a Middle Eastern man. Not because we wanted to blame a white man from a fringe group or something equally ridiculous when it comes to avoiding bloodshed, but because we know that every Middle Eastern man will be a suspect again.

I am not excited about the possibilities of racial profiling or the elimination of ethnic studies in any form. I am worried. Because all I can think of is the word precedent. Once the cornerstone is laid for one law, it is a foundation for others to build upon.

When I was in undergrad at Loyola University, I kept warning my classmates that the cut backs on affirmative action were going to impact funding for students of color, and that student loans were going to increase. I kept reading The Chronicle of Higher Education, and I felt the situation getting grim. When I completed my bachelor’s degree, my student debt was $15,000 which I managed to pay off in 2003 with a string of non-profit jobs and a shoestring, no-frills budget. Now, I meet college students who accumulate that much debt in one semester, and there are President Obama’s reforms on student loans going into effect. StudentLoanJustice.org and Reduce the Rate were already talking about this issue, but at least we’re addressing it…now.

This is why I get so aggravated and often quiet. People don’t always see the need to be critical AND pro-active until the concrete of a precedent has been set. Please, don’t be one of those people.

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