Red and Green Christmas Tree

Posted on December 31, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

 

Yesterday I noticed something strange about our Christmas tree. It had changed colors. It was green.

(not the best photo: taken in bright sun.)

Of course, what had been more surprising was that when it brought in it was reddish brown. Steve kept complimenting it, saying how unusual and beautiful an Eastern Red Cedar was as a Christmas tree. How great to have a red Christmas tree, not the usual old green.

Outside in mid-December, picking a tree from the tree nursery, I had liked the shape and size of this tree best, but not the color or “needle shape so much. It was a compromise. I couldn’t deny this tree was softer than the Colorado spruce nearby.

Once inside, the tree drank a lot of water. It drinks up about 2 quarts a day. At the beginning it was particularly thirsty.

We don’t have many ornaments. Our usual tree is a silver number from 1965 and it holds only lightweight balls, no lights or ornaments. I had saved some over the years, not many as I seldom had a tree and moved a lot. A few had just made their way to the Christmas box, including this dough ornament made by our niece Sophia of Lil Wayne the rapper. You can see the redness of the needles in this shot.

Well, turns out it was probably coming out of dormancy! We’ve all seen those red (brown) cedars along the road that are shaggy and dormant all winter. But yesterday when I went up to it during the day I noticed it was looking really alive. Particularly better than it had since it first arrived. The top branch still flopped over, but the tree was bright green. And not a single needle had fallen the whole three weeks it’s been inside.

Not exactly a Christmas miracle, but a great way to end the year– something that was dormant getting so lively. I bought this felt chickadee ornament at the birdseed store and hung it up.

And of course, I identify greatly. I’m coming out of dormancy myself these days. Finally starting to taste sweets, get more energy, concentrate longer on more difficult things. Made a lot of food this holiday and had a good time. Though looking forward to a quiet night tonight, just Steve and me and a good dinner. He’s requested potato wedges and we can do that!

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The Coming Year

Posted on December 26, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

 

I’ve spent so much energy, along with everyone else, thinking about the election. How did Trump get elected? Why? By whom? What does it mean? Not just nationally, but what does it mean locally, for me and the place where I live?

I’ve drafted posts, and left them hanging in my “drafts” box. But here, in this space between Christmas and the New Year, I want to tell a few stories of people I’ve been thinking about this past month.

The first is Benedict Gorecki. Ben died this year, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy. He graduated from high school near here in 1945, started a family, and moved to North Dakota where he worked nights and went to college during the day– nearly a decade separate his high school and college graduation. He moved back to Stearns County and started a business. His modest business made him a millionaire, something not mentioned in his obituary. Also not mentioned there was his tremendous philanthropy. He gave large amounts of money to the Benedictine communities and to the St. Cloud Hospital and its healthcare system. His business built things, and his donations built things, too. He did not leave the community, and he invested in the community. He is not alone– but still we marvel at these quiet, rooted people in our area who continue to contribute to the health and stability of the area.

When I bought my house in Cold Spring, Minnesota, I bought it from Tom Braegelmann, who lives in San Francisco and is a successful real estate investor. He is a native of Cold Spring who “got out.” His family name is still strong in this area. He had bought up three houses on a dead end street across from the Sauk River and a park. He put in the work that was necessary– new roofs and updated heating systems, a new garage and some basic cosmetic updates like carpet over the ancient linoleum in the dining room– and he sold them below market value, two to renters and then mine, which had been vacant. I bought my beautiful, 3 bedroom house for $120K. While he was at it, Braegelmann planted trees in the park, bought new playground equipment, and built a pavilion that is used for graduation parties and large family gatherings all summer long. People describe him as a great guy. He contributed purposefully and specifically to the community. His name isn’t on anything. Everyone talks about what a great guy he is.

Finally, I can’t stop thinking about a friend’s brother who lives near Grand Forks, ND, on the Red River. Back in the 1980s, he started his working life as a baker at the largest grocery store in Grand Forks. He got up and drove to work in the middle of the night, and he and a crew made bread, pastries, donuts, all the baked goods for the day. After several years, though, the company went to mixes. His workforce was cut and it didn’t take as long to make what was needed. Then, the company moved to frozen breads and rolls. They still made cakes from mixes, but my friend’s brother was alone making the bread and rolls. And then, the grocery store chain got rid of the bakery. Everything arrived on a truck, and the truck went from there to Wal-Mart for its next delivery. The man lost his job and for the next twenty years has driven trucks of various kinds– garbage trucks, delivery trucks, burial vault trucks. When I went out to North Dakota and drove around, almost all I saw were trucks. FedEx trucks thirty miles from the Canadian border. Men driving trucks. The man, my friend’s brother, was full of stories of young people dying, from drug overdoses or car accidents or suicide. His daughters, the ones with jobs, work at nursing homes. He now has an exterminator route.

Around here, we’re lucky. We have a strong manufacturing base for an area this size. The paper mill burned down, and another mill closed, and jobs have left. But we have cabinet shops and snowmobile makers and working quarries. We have machine shops and everywhere people praise the work ethic of local people. We have a strong entrepreneurial streak and local companies pop up now and then. We have a lot of people, too, who are working to make sure African immigrants (primarily Somali) have a smooth integration into our town– learning English and navigating various bureaucracies to get what they need. Holding meetings in churches to introduce people to their new neighbors and talk about Islam, head scarves, and the journey from refugee camps in Kenya to Central Minnesota.

image from New York Times

Overall, I don’t feel as worried about the country as friends in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. In part, it’s because I know my neighbors. And I know we will help each other and we care about this place. And I hope as a country we can hear those who are hurting and find ways to help them transition in the “new economy,” those who want to stay in their beautiful landscapes and make a go of it. Out where the sugar beet union was broken by a long, long strike. Out where the best thing going is fracking and related construction on the west side of the state, even if that means living far from family in tiny, overpriced trailers through another hard winter. Even if that work threatens the water supply.

And, of course, once the pump jacks are set up, the work subsides. Someone still makes money, but not the laborers. With the cheap gas around these days, the boom is already turning back to bust. The money won’t go far, or far enough, back home. And it is just as unclear what we can do on the edge of 2017 as it was in 2016, and 2012, and 2008.

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Being Healthy

Posted on December 20, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

It’s been over a week since my last post. I’ve been busy. Making cookies, grocery shopping, writing for a small freelance project, training my replacement at work… I’ve also tried adding a little exercise program to my routine. Because most of my energy and activities are “head based” and I seriously need to rebuild muscle tone and increase flexibility as well.

I baked my 200 cookies! They are in bags on the porch where it is finally back above zero after a high of -12 degrees on Sunday.

I am watching the snow. And the tracks in the snow– how close the deer come to the house and where they start “running,” the rabbits and other creatures. And then my favorite, Steve’s path to his shop and back, with Annie’s “Y” where she joins the track on skis. There’s a feral cat around and it killed a rabbit! Steve found it lying on the remains (still warm?) out by the garden when he trudged out to empty the compost. One less rabbit for spring.

I am very happy that when I post on Facebook about doing something, like baking cookies, 200 people don’t “like” it. As if baking cookies were somehow heroic for someone “in my condition.” I am going out and having people over so everyone sees I am healthy again. Soon, perhaps, people will stop commenting on my “color.” Though about then I’ll be headed to California and get some color for real.

I am not writing. Not blogs, not one of my three book length projects, nothing. I have a poem rattling around in my head and I’ll get that down… I’m not even reading anything but cookbooks and cooking magazines.

Steve called these “blue sky” days. As in time to be open to anything. Time to be “free writing” as we said in my composition teaching days. Brainstorming. I’ve been talking to people about freelance writing and teaching, about some volunteer projects and ways to be more involved in local organizations– where is help needed? How can I use my talents in meaningful ways in the community?

Because, yes, I’ve been thinking about the election results, too. I’ve got another blog post I’ve revisited all week about what I’m thinking about the election but I just can’t figure out a way to say it for a blog. I’ll return to that. But right now, I’m just busy being healthy.

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Survivorship

Posted on December 8, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I’ve been desperate for a book. Not any book, but the book, written for me and where I am now. So when another cancer survivor friend recommended Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales, I leapt at it. I bought it and also downloaded it on my Kindle so I could start reading right away. I also bought Gonzales’ other book, Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience. Because, like all of us, I want to be told who lives and dies and why and how exactly to survive surviving.

My friend is a scientist.

These books are not really what I was looking for. They are comprised of a series of tales about people who survived extreme conditions. You know, the two on the life raft who didn’t give in to thirst and drink seawater and lay there listening to sharks devour their two friends who went mad and jumped off the raft. The ones who get surprised by a snowstorm at 14,000 feet and yet manage to make a snow cave and survive. And on the other side, the rescue snowmobilers who for some reason ignore warnings not to drive up a mountain because of avalanche conditions and are buried in snow until spring. Why did some rafters put their boats in when the water was so high, and why did others hold back? (My question: Why would anyone put a raft in at any conditions to face Level 5 rapids??)

These stories are followed by an analysis of what was going on in their brain chemistry that allowed some to survive and others to make very bad decisions against their own better judgment.

Many of these survivors (including the author) put themselves into unnecessarily risky situations. I have a long history of calling these people (think of basically all the people written about by John Krakauer) idiots. It is clear to me that large parts of the earth are uninhabitable for humans, and so should be steered clear of and treated with supreme respect.

Think of the clear messaging of Werner Herzog: Don’t ever trust the grizzly. Or this, from Burden of Dreams, made while filming Fitzcarraldo in the Amazon jungle: “Taking a close look at what is around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel.” 

From “Aguirre: Wrath of God” by Herzog. Another of his classics about the warring forces of man and nature.

What we have to fight the chaos of nature, per Gonzales, is this: our brains. Our ability to manage our impulses and also to be present mentally to find solutions even if they mean ignoring previous training.

What we have to fight the chaos of nature per The Truth about Cancer, are foods that take care of inflammation and free radicals. There are many sites and books like TTAC, and many speakers, too. TED talks. PBS specials. People are afraid of cancer and want to know what they can do to prevent it or, once they have it, to kill it without chemicals– often to beat a rather hopeless diagnosis they have been given. And so like pitting reason against emotion, these sites and speakers– many of whom have inspiring and stunning stories of their own survival– pit Western medicine against either Eastern medicine or an alternative theory of the body at the cellular level. They give people a road map to follow. I’m not saying they’re wrong. I’m just not at all helped by these answers. And though I’m conscious now of “cancer preventing” foods, I know that I was eating organic food, super foods, and food grown from my garden for six years, and in that time I got cancer, out of the blue, with no family history or obvious “causes.” I can say with confidence that my diet and my lifestyle helped me tremendously in the fight against the cancer, but it did not prevent it.

Of course, no one has the answer that can tell us who survives and why… or how to go on surviving once treatment is done.

The other day I was filling out our online forms for health insurance for 2017. I stopped at the question: “Does anyone on this application have a terminal illness?” Below it were the two graphics: a pink woman, like the figure found on a women’s restroom, with my name below it, and a blue man with Steve’s name beneath it. Do I click my box? I stared at it for five minutes, thinking about what a terminal illness is. In the end, I clicked “no.” When I told Steve he said: “We all have a terminal illness. It’s called mortality.”

I do wish Gonzales’s books had told the stories of more ordinary people and their survival. When I got the book Surviving Survival in the mail I went to the index and looked up “cancer,” and I found one story spanning three pages. It was a story as harrowing as any of the others in the book. Seriously, what some people suffer with cancer and treatment makes my nine months look like a cakewalk. The point of this story was that the woman looked forward to a bicycle trip in Turkey when she was finished her treatment. There was then an analysis of the benefit of travel for the survivor. Travel, it seems, stimulates our brain and nerves to make more pathways. Being in an unfamiliar environment stimulates growth in the brain. And we need that, particularly after chemotherapy has killed so many brain cells (it kills all the fast growing cells, not just skin, nails, and hair but also brain cells). I know lots of cancer survivors who take off afterward on a trip. It seems more about their bucket list than the need to rebuild their brains! In any event, it’s good to know it is therapeutic. I have several trips planned, though none of them to exotic, unfamiliar places. No biking across Turkey!

In the end, we write our own stories of survival. We live as long as we can, and then we die. Hopefully we’re not taken suddenly through violence or accident (stay out of the rapids and off the mountains, people). While we are here, we need to love one another and engage. We should do our best to be helpful. And eat well, enjoy food, and enjoy the natural world and each other. That is all I’ve got. Happy Holidays from me and Werner.

Quote from “Grizzly Man,” image from Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/chinquist123/timothy-treadwell/

 

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Secret Music

Posted on December 3, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

all about side effectsI have good news. Very good news. I have finished my cancer treatment. It consisted of eighteen weeks of chemotherapy beginning March 1 and ending July 6. Major abdominal “debulking” surgery on September 7 and six more weeks of chemotherapy that began October 12 and finished up in time for a week off before Thanksgiving.

Really, things could not have gone better. After that first week of the diagnosis where I just kept laying out the best case scenario and just kept getting hit with the worst case scenario, treatment went better than expected and the surgery was a complete success and the recovery not difficult and Wednesday, November 30, I learned that, as had been happening all along, the chemotherapy knocked my CA 125 marker down by halves each round, finishing up at 20.4. All that matters is that it was below 35, but I like that number. A friend said it reminds him of the little “26.2” stickers marathoners have in their car windows. The cancer treatment was certainly a marathon. And so now I am free to have the port removed and not required at the oncologist until the end of February, when I will have a scan and blood work to see where we are. Hopefully this monitoring will become routine and continue far into the future, with longer and longer intervals as we go along.

Yet I am a permanent member of the “living with cancer/survivorship” community. And I am glad to be a member. This fall, as I was getting ready for surgery, my college friend Phil Cantor’s teen daughter was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. I wanted to jump in and send her something, as so many people sent me gifts in those first days. I sent her a couple books, including a graphic novel by a cancer survivor  that may have been inappropriate for a teenager and my own book of poems. Here is Moey’s introduction of herself in a comic book she made about chemo side effects.

Moey Dworkin Cantor author page

This comic has a lot of information about side effects, including something I had not thought about. She informs her readers about the effect of chemo on the ears.

Moey ear ringing page

I had ringing in my ears, and the ghosts here really do it justice. The sound kind of swells and subsides and is in the far back of your ears. It doesn’t block out normal sounds. I came to associate it with low red blood counts and fatigue, but Moey is right, it probably had more to do with losing the little hairs in my ears.

This is the page I liked the best:

Moey Cantor ear side effects 2First of all, I’m not sure if this is a ghosties fiesta but it is the coolest drawing of the inner ear ever. And it also reminded me of the strange experience I had of hearing music while undergoing chemo. It happened three times.

Twice I was in bed and there were people talking downstairs. I knew the music was somehow a distortion of their voices, but it was gorgeous. The experience lasted a long time, and made me feel really peaceful and happy. I just lay there and listened to the music, a kind of jazz with multiple instruments and no dissonance, all harmony. The music was real enough to wonder if it was playing downstairs, but I knew it wasn’t. I had myself a private performance in my head– or in my inner ear.

The other time it happened was on the drive home after surgery. I told my parents: “I hear organ music.” I knew it was from the sound of driving on a highway with a metal median strip and wires. I could remember, of course, the normal sound outside the car of rushing through the landscape with other vehicles and tires on the ground and wind…

But for me, there was organ music. Rich and deep and again, comforting.

There is grace everywhere. Even in the odd, surreal world of chemotherapy. Thank you to Moey Dworkin Cantor for putting some science behind it for me. And for the incredible way she is creatively dealing with her disease and the terrible treatment. I’m grateful also for Phil, the way he is sharing his family’s journey with his friends on Facebook and helping all of us understand the life and love that are also present in this terrible, difficult time.

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Arrival (review)

Posted on November 27, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

arrival-posterSPOILER ALERT! I’m gonna tell you pretty much everything that happens in this film.

Thanksgiving weekend is a good time for movies, old and new. We saw Arrival two weeks ago, when it opened, and I started a review, but it was too early to give everything away. Now a lot of people have seen it and so it’s time for me to add my two cents. This review has two parts. The first explores the “aliens” plot, which is fantastic and worth the price of admission. However, I left the film feeling this really empty space in my stomach over what the film did not address about suffering. It kind of left us with a huge challenge and no way– within the context of the film– to address it.

But let me be clear– I love this film! It made me think and its framing of the alien encounter question in linguistics (how can we speak their language) was super compelling. I like to think and this film gave me a lot to think about. It’s deeply flawed, but also super cool.

I actually think Arrival is less about aliens than it is about our relationship to intelligence, particularly artificial intelligence.  It reminded me more of Her and Ex Machina than Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At its heart it is a film about the nature of intelligence (and in some ways about the morality of a cool, perfected intelligence).

Arrival‘s premise is essentially this: language shapes the brain and the language or languages we know make us who we are. A superior, advanced, intelligent language, if we could learn it, could reshape our brains in a way that would make us kinder and more unified and also took us beyond the limits of the time continuum (our lives would no longer need to be linear).

arrival-language-translation

The idea is explored through an alien encounter. Aliens arrive in giant, monolithic space ships that hover over 12 locations. A linguist, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), is brought to the site in Montana to make contact with and try to figure out the purpose of the visit. She is joined in this task by a physicist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). The question is the very human question always posed: are the aliens’ intentions toward us good or evil? The question itself reveals how humans are shaped: we ask this basic question of all “others.” Are you here to befriend us or destroy us?

Think about this question in terms of immigrants and it’s even more disturbing. Nationalists around the world seem to assume the newest population of immigrants are threatening until they become like us. And the way we expect them to become like us is to immediately learn our language.

Around the world, at the 12 sites, humans are learning how to “read” the alien language. The peoples of the world won’t share their knowledge with each other, and are portrayed using some very American stereotypes. The Americans are ahead of the game in doing this work, and the Chinese and Russians want to blow the aliens out of the sky.

Finally, all 12 sites are given a message. The aliens have brought a gift– or maybe a weapon. Or maybe an advantage. Translation is as always imprecise. The play of these three words: weapon/advantage/gift is key in seeing how language shapes our brains and guides our expectations of “encounters,” especially with others– and these aliens are brilliantly “other.” If you choose “gift,” the intention of the aliens is good. If you choose “advantage,” you are guided by competition. If you choose “weapon,” you think the aliens are bad. The aliens are clear– they are giving this gift/advantage/weapon to humans in the hopes that the humans will use it in a way that will someday save them. They need help in the future from humans and so have traveled to deliver this thing. They deliver it in 12 pieces. The gift is their language which, once learned, will give Louise the ability to achieve world peace. But the 12 nations need to share to put the puzzle of the language together. Louise uses a little trick (only possible if she understands the language) to get the nations to work together. And yes, this is a crazy privileging of Americans as the best and smartest humans on earth.

But what is this knowledge embedded in the alien language? We are in the Biblical garden here. But it is not the ability to discern good and evil that Louise learns. The language works its magic to free Louise from the time continuum. Her life is no longer linear. She “knows” her experience in total. In fact, she’s begun “knowing it” as she’s learned the language, which we thought were flashbacks and couldn’t understand why they were causing her such panic and confusion. And that is where (just like in Genesis) a moral dilemma is expressed. And, unfortunately, where the film ends.

Louise’s knowledge, her reshaped brain, cannot save her daughter, who dies at an early age of “a rare disease” that looks like leukemia. Being free from the time continuum doesn’t mean she can live multiple lives– she still gets one. But she can make some choices because, she realizes over the course of the encounter, the daughter is the result of her marriage to Ian, which has not happened yet.

Knowledge does not make her immortal. It does not free Louise from suffering and death, from grief, from all the things that lie ahead in life. And that is unsettling. Should she not have given birth to the daughter, knowing how she would die? Should she turn away from Ian and marry someone else? Does she still have the free will to act differently?

Throughout the film, we have seen, in the grey skies of the Pacific Northwest, Louise’s grief. Her loneliness. Her struggle to move forward from her daughter’s death and her divorce from Ian (angry that she knew what was coming for their daughter and didn’t let him in on the knowledge or engage him in the decisions).

Playing with time is always terribly problematic. The way this film plays with time makes us question our happy ending. World peace! World peace! And Louise doesn’t keep the knowledge to herself– we see her teaching others the language and sharing the gift. But her “ending” is the isolation and grief we’ve already witnessed– and which we thought was her “beginning.” We thought somehow the romance with Ian (which we all saw coming) would rescue her from that terrible divorce and the grief over her child’s death, not be a major contributing factor to her depressed state.

Some have questioned whether she was selfish in having the child knowing she would suffer and die young. As someone acquainted with suffering, I think this is bad thinking. The goal of life is not to avoid suffering. Suffering has a place in life and especially in relationships. Life’s purpose is loving others, and suffering teaches us a lot about love.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t explore this idea. It gives us moments and a puzzle. It gives us a main character who is supposed to be the epitome of enlightenment, the keeper of the gift, and she is consumed by a kind of grief that is lacking in mercy and/or redemption.

In a way, that’s a problem with our addiction to and ultimate privileging of knowledge (science). It needs to be balanced with a spiritual dimension (or maybe some poetry?). Otherwise, we’re likely to be left with a huge, unsettling hole in our center.

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Miso Soup

Posted on November 21, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

miso-soupI’ve been doing some serious larder cleaning the past few days. I’ve also been getting into soup season. We’re leaving for Chicago tonight to get ahead of the snow/sleet/freezing mixture moving in overnight. Like my mother, I like to leave an empty fridge behind!

I also attacked my crazy cookbook shelf in the kitchen. I now have my clothes down to the level that I can leave them out all seasons (well, I put some sweaters away…) but my cookbooks need seasonal shuffling. I made a stack to get rid of, another for “reading” that I don’t really cook from and can go upstairs for bedside reading, and then put the summer cookbooks (garden-based and/or preserving) in a high cabinet and the ones I’m most likely to use back on the shelf. Very satisfying.

Last night I went into the “Asian supplies drawer,” which is pretty full because I did not follow through with my Japanese cooking adventure plans last winter.

I made a miso soup without any real recipe. The principles are to build flavor and to not let the miso boil. The inspiration is the current “noodle bowl” craze. So any recipe would just be a suggestion.

When we sat down, I said: “This is a really cancer-prevention-friendly meal.” Sweet potato, carrot, ginger and kombu are all ingredients that show up in The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen cookbook. Buckwheat noodles instead of egg noodles and a handful of frozen kale would have upped it even farther and made it gluten free.

Sweet potato is a new ingredient for me– I still associate it with yucky sweet recipes and usually only make them at holiday time mashed with curry powder and butter. They are showing up more and more in soup recipes. I’ll include an easy carrot soup recipe below.

This soup was warm and flavorful and took about 20 minutes. I think it will make its way into our regular rotation this winter.

Miso Soup

1 8″ strip of kombu (a sturdy seaweed found in good Asian markets)
4-6 cups water
1 Tbs minced ginger
soy sauce to taste
2 Tbs miso paste (any kind, I had yellow)
dried mushrooms soaked in boiling water and cut in small pieces
2 carrots, sliced or diced
1 yam or sweet potato, sliced/quartered
2 nests of thin egg noodles, udon/buckwheat noodles, sobu, rice vermicelli, any thin noodle really
scallions, white and light green parts sliced
protein: chicken, tofu, shrimp

I began by setting the dried mushrooms in a small bowl with a cup or so of water from the kettle. I put the water and kombu in a medium-sized pot on the stove to boil. Then I chopped the carrots and sweet potato and peeled the shrimp. I didn’t have scallions.

When the kombu had boiled about 7 minutes, I took it out and put it in the compost. I dumped in the mushrooms and their broth, the sweet potato and carrots and cooked for 3 minutes. Then I turned down the heat and added the shrimp and noodles, soy sauce, ginger and miso. (You can dissolve the miso in water first, but I think it’s fine to just dissolve it in the hot broth from the tablespoon.) I also added a handful of garbanzo beans I had in the fridge. After a couple minutes would be a good time to add greens and scallions and taste for more soy sauce. When the shrimp pink up and the noodles are done, the soup is ready! (Note: Other noodles might take more time.)

Happy Slurping!

They don’t get easier than this soup, especially if you used bagged carrots. It is tasty, rich, gluten free and very cancer-fighting!

Easy Thai Carrot Soup

1 package of peeled baby carrots (2lbs) (or, 2 lbs regular carrots chopped)
1 peeled sweet potato cut in large pieces
1 coarsely chopped onion
3—4 cloves fresh garlic
1qt vegetable broth
salt/pepper to taste
4-5 Tbls. grated fresh ginger- or in chunks
1 can coconut milk
sweet chili sauce (optional)

Place carrots, potato, garlic and onion in a pan with the broth and simmer until soft. Add the ginger and taste for salt. Puree in a food processor, then stir in the coconut milk . Choose how thick you like your soup by holding back some of the broth or adding more for a thinner consistency.

If you like a bit more spice, stir a few spoons of Thai sweet chili sauce into the soup. [Every bottled sauce is different, so check for spiciness].

[The recipe makes enough for 6-8 people]

 

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Flageolet Beans for the First Snow

Posted on November 19, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

snowy-pond

The first snow of the season came late, but it came on strong. Yesterday was our first blizzard, and anyone who could stayed home and hunkered down.

Seemed like a good day for a pot of beans! In my latest shipment from Rancho Gordo I received a pound of flageolet beans. Everywhere you read about them, they are lauded as special beans. Light green and delicate, the food sites recommend you enjoy them for what their inherent gorgeous bean-ness.

Hmm. These kinds of statements always remind me of my brother, the wine salesman, telling me about a particular white wine he put in my Christmas box: “It’s not so much what it is as what it is not.” To which I wanted to reply: “So, does it taste good?” I’m not that impressed with most bean-ness (though I gotta say, I can taste the difference between hummus made with canned beans and the hummus I made the other day with Rancho Gordo dried garbanzos. I’m gonna get ruined like my brother has ruined me for wines).

baconAfter surveying the wide range of recipes, I decided to not make soup but just cook a pot of beans in a good broth, and the secret flavor ingredient bacon.

I went out in the snow and brought in what I assume are the last of the fresh herbs: rosemary for the recipe, and also thyme and sage. I actually think the sage was a mistake– I’d use just the rosemary and thyme in the future.

late-herbsI hadn’t thought ahead to soak the beans overnight, so I brought the pot to a boil and then let it sit for a couple hours (quick soak). Then I drained and rinsed them and put them back in the pot and simmered for 30 minutes while I prepared the other ingredients. This also produced an excellent bean broth to which I added a vegetable broth bullion cube.

The recipe also called for fennel, which would be great, but I didn’t have any. So I substituted celery (diced and frozen from the Farmer’s Market).

First, render the bacon, then saute the mirepoix in bacon grease. Seriously.

mirepoix

The other change I made was to add a splash of white balsamic at the end. I got this from somewhere else, but I always love a splash of vinegar at the end as a flavor enhancer.

I had some thawed boneless chicken thighs, so I made some cutlets (didn’t bother breading them) marinated in lemon juice, cooked in more lemon juice and capers, served with sauteed mushrooms on top.

Here is the link to Ina Garten’s recipe. 

flageolet-beans

beans-and-chicken-dinner

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Fragility 2

Posted on November 19, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

snow-november-18-2016
All day today I’ve been grappling. I guess I’ve been grappling for a week now. Finally I stood still and formed the question I’m grappling with: “How long after the last treatment do you know it’s the last treatment?”

I’m looking forward to my next oncology appointment on November 30. I am completely convinced that my CA-125 will be below 35 and that combined with the scan after my surgery will make me officially “cancer free.” After one round of chemotherapy the CA-125 had dropped from 118 to 43. So, after the second round, I expect it to be in line. Nevertheless, my oncologist has scheduled chemotherapy afterwards, just in case.

And if I am declared free and clear, my oncologist tells me, we will enter a phase of “watchful waiting.” He looked me in the eye when he used that phase, and I knew he meant: You are stage IV. We will be watching for when it comes back. My oncologist is a straight-talking realist. And though I know all this is in God’s hands, and I know I can do nothing but submit to my inability to control my future, I believe in my heart that it is gone. If not forever, for at least ten years. It is beat back good.

Still, I am waiting to know in my brain and heart that it is over.

One sign of it being over will be removal of the port. The port was installed in late February to facilitate the chemotherapy. I’ve been asking my mentors, two women who also have survived ovarian cancer, how long after chemotherapy they had their ports out. Neither of them had ports, even one woman who two years ago went through the same chemotherapy regimen I just completed. Basically, I will press to have the port removed before the end of the year. In part, the “rush” is about insurance, but also if I keep the port I have to go in every month to have it flushed. And I have to have it. In my body. Which I don’t want.

So when the port is out, will I know it is over?

gty-gwen-ifill-pbs-jc-161114_12x5_1600When I heard about Gwen Ifill’s death on Monday, I immediately went looking for the cause. Cancer. But I had trouble– it took me another day– finding the type of cancer. Diagnosed less than a year ago. In treatment all through the conventions, right up to the election. I’d noticed her absence that night but not thought too much about it. I had not gone looking to see if she was ill. But once I heard of her death I went looking for cancer, and then the type. Endometrial.

la-et-ms-sharon-jones-cancer-valerie-june-revi-002Tonight I learned that Sharon Jones died today. I knew it was coming, but it was still a shock. Only a few weeks ago I looked to see if she was still touring and saw a long, long line of dates. I knew she had been performing all summer despite neuropathy and flying back and forth from New York to get chemotherapy. I hoped the tour dates were a good sign. Pancreatic.

Everyone seems more fragile to me. Everything seems fragile. I’ve been thinking about cooking over Christmas. I’ve been hoping my tastebuds will be well enough to enjoy pie.

I know my tastebuds may or may not give me the pleasure of chocolate back. But I hope they give me back the joy of pie. Pie!

When I can taste pie, or almost every other thing, will I know it is over? When I have back the feeling in my feet? I don’t know. But every day I move toward that knowing.

 

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The Underground Railroad (review)

Posted on November 17, 2016 by susanmsink@gmail.com

underground-railroad-coverJust yesterday I wrote a review of Colson Whitehead’s amazing novel, The Underground Railroad, on Goodreads. And today I hear he won the National Book Award.

I actually reviewed two books on Goodreads yesterday. The second was the photographer Sally Mann’s memoir, Hold Still. What might be surprising is how both of these books helped me think about race in America.

One is a novel set in the 1850s, following the journey of Cora, a runaway slave who takes a literal underground railway (with conductors, trains, and tunnels) to get north. Her experience, told in a realistic narrative style, explores the exploitation, murder, and varied experience of discrimination suffered by African Americans (not just Africans in America). Reading it builds empathy for the current fears of African Americans.

While I was reading it, I also watched a video blog by a woman in Kansas who recounts the story of how her great-grandfather established her current farm as a pioneer in the 1870s. He was born in the 1850s in Tennessee, a time and place recounted in The Underground Railroad. That is how close this history is to us. Also, many things that happen in the novel are recognizable in recent history. The establishment of Jim Crow, medical experimentation and exploitation, establishment of the role of the black housekeeper and nanny. Let us not say– “That was so long ago it’s no longer relevant.” Let us not think, also, that this is not our history, too.

hold-still-sally-mann-coverSally Mann had a black nanny. I picked up Mann’s memoir because I have always loved the photos she took of her children. And indeed, the best part of the book is the section where she discusses these photos (with lots of reproductions of photos including “drafts”) and recounts her experience of her connection with the land where her family lives and of being a mother. The descriptions of and discussion of artistic process are inspiring and revealing. Her stories of the fears involved raising children in such a wild place are equally engaging.

After those chapters, though, she dives into the story of The South. She travels, making landscape photos for a large project. And everywhere she is photographing the “haunted South,” haunted by plantations and hanging trees and the spot where Emmett Till’s body was thrown off a bridge, near the place where a historical marker is riddled with bullet holes.

Gee-Gee holding Sally Mann as a baby

Gee-Gee holding Sally Mann as a baby

She also tells the story of her nanny, Gee-Gee, their love for each other and its limits. The way that Gee-Gee could not come inside Howard Johnson’s with them when they traveled, and seemed to never use the bathroom, and the way the family accepted this. What Mann writes is this: “I loved Gee-Gee the way other people love their parents, and no matter how many historical demons stalked that relationship, I know that Gee-Gee loved me back.”  It is 14 pages before she tells us “It is likely that her mother died in childbirth because as an infant, Gee-Gee, born Virginia Cornelia Franklin, was brought to Lexington [Virginia] and raised by her mother’s sister, Mary Franklin.” She tells what she knows and can discern of Gee-Gee’s life, and acknowledges her family’s “blindness and silence.” (To read an early draft of this chapter, click here.) Gee-Gee’s experience and Cora’s experience in 1850 in a “free” South Carolina (one chapter of Whitehead’s novel) are very close.

emmett-till-memorial-sign-720x405My husband and I, in one of our many recent conversations trying to discern the meaning of the presidential elections, were talking about the way the coasts and many urbanites write off working class people and huge swaths of the country, especially rural areas.  And we got to the issue of The South, and the feeling of many Southerners that they are written off or treated as stupid based solely on their accents. “Just look at the stereotype of the white sheriff, that caricature with the hick accent.”

I don’t know how I would have heard that three months ago, but in the wake of reading those two books (and to be fair, I do often have this response), my response was: “No, that stereotype creates an ‘other’ out of Southern whites that lets other whites in America pretend that the racial history of the South is not everyone’s history.” I really believe that. Because when white Southerners are being stereotyped in this way, they are being seen as “the racists” and as backward in ways that primarily, I believe, have to do with the history of slavery and race. Maybe I’m wrong, but this is what I think. And so it is important to see Whitehead’s book, and Mann’s book, as about all of us, as about American identity. And to realize that as long as we make racism or the treatment of African Americans as a story about “others” (including the police), it’s not going to end.

This is the same approach I take to issues of sexual abuse and domestic violence in this country. As long as we see victimizers as “other,” and the issue as not about “us,” as long as we normalize and minimize, we continue in our “blindness and silence” even as we express outrage. I think outrage, actually, is just another way of looking away and saying it is not us. It is a form of condescension.

So let us not condescend with our outrage, and let us not dismiss by putting “in the past” the behavior of this country and its citizens. Let us read to understand the experience and reactions and expectations of African Americans and where they are coming from. Let white people, too, not dismiss it as stories about the past or the South but understand why we might should be treated with distrust. And let us work to change the systems that keep us all here.

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