War Is Not the Answer!
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HOW can I think of food when the world is exploding around me? When little girls are killed in their classrooms, cities and villages are bombed into extinction, innocent lives are destroyed, and entire cultures are disappeared, lost both to history and to memory? I know I’ll be attacked for saying so but I don’t give a sweet damn (or anything stronger): War has never been a solution.
Look, I grew up in World War II, when we fought fascism, fought for freedom, fought to save Europe from the Nazis; I went to high school during the Korean War, when we struggled to prop up gutsy little South Korea, the first of many Asian dominos that had to be defended by the U.S. from the Communist hordes; I grew to adulthood, studied, worked, married, had babies, marched, demonstrated, petitioned, sang protest songs, and wrote letters as our hapless armies surged into Indochina to secure one of the most corrupt regimes in a very corrupt world. And then there came, in rapid and deadly succession: Grenada, Panama, Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan, plus innumerable minor incursions in Africa and Western Asia, often barely mentioned unless and until they exploded into flames. Not to mention Venezuela.
And to what end?
Is the world safer today than it was in 1975? Is the United States more secure, more peaceful, more productive, after 251 foreign military incursions since that date? Have we produced freedom yet? Anywhere in the world? I don’t think so. If you wish to offer counter evidence, please, be my guest. I’d love to hear about it!
I’ll say it again, loud and clear, once and for all: War has never solved any problems. War does nothing but shift the balance. But it does do one thing effectively: it creates new problems. Just you wait!
So how dare I think about food? How can I imagine cooking? How can I conceive of something tasty and comforting, something that draws people (friends, acquaintances, strangers, enemies) together around a table to break bread, share food, offer another spoonful of sauce, an extra potato, a slice of cake, a helping of rice, along with chatter, gossip, ideas, hard facts, educated guesses and misinformation, speculation, argument, stories of the past and dreams of the future, along with the hopes that propel them?
Generosity is what’s called for: Let’s simmer up a pot of chowder or minestrone, posole, tom kha gai, or borscht, and invite the neighbors in for supper. Let’s sit down together and eat and talk and eat some more. Sweetness is called for too: Let’s make a cake and share it. Let’s make a batch of cookies and send them to someone who needs care and consideration, possibly to someone we don’t really like, just because. Let’s make a pact to get along, to respect boundaries, to approach and cross them gently, to find that other people are interesting and all people are worthy of listening to. Let’s take communion around a table of shared food. To hell with war—it cannot solve our problems.
You could start with Pistou, a spring soup from the south of France that’s fragrant with fresh basil and a hint of garlic. It’s one of two famous soups from Provence, the other being bouillabaisse, the great seafood stew, and if you think of this as a bouillabaisse for vegetables you’ll see that the two are very much alike. Everything fresh and seasonal from local farms and markets is combined and then exalted when a big dollop of basil-rich, garlic-rich, oil-rich pistou (pesto) sauce is stirred in, with more sauce served at the table. Don’t feel restricted by the vegetables I’ve listed. If fresh peas, fava (broad) beans, or other greens are available, by all means dice, sliver, chop, or shuck them and add to the pot. Scroll down for the recipe below.
Despite the clouds of war, time, as they used to say in the old news reels, marches on, and just like that it’s March. True, spring is still a long way off from where I sit on the coast of Maine. Morning temperatures are in the icy single digits (that’s Fahrenheit, friends), the ground is still laden with a crust of snow and the snow itself has grown ugly--dirty, grubby, coated with a grey-brown gritty pelt of sand and gravel, dog poop and auto exhaust. March is the harshest time of our year, when winter has grown old and spring is still below the horizon. But there are bright spots, hopeful touches, nonetheless—as the light grows stronger, the chickens perk up and start to gabble in the henhouse and then to lay again so we have eggs, the very image of spring. (It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out the origin of Easter eggs.) With eggs, my thoughts turn naturally to cakes, especially those very simple Italian farmhouse cakes that every massaia or farmwife whips together so quickly and has ready, covered with a printed cloth, on the table for tea or breakfast. If you stay in an Italian farmhouse or at an agriturismo, you will invariably be served a slice of ciambella with your morning coffee. I especially like this one because it’s made with ground almonds which gives it a pleasant density and citrus which sparkles.
I said above that a little sweetness helps in these gloomy times. Why not invite a friend over late some afternoon for a cup of tea, coffee, or perhaps a glass of wine with a slice of this simple cake? Why not cut several generous slices, wrap them in colored tissue paper or put them in a cookie tin, attach a spring blossom to the top, and drop them off at the kitchen door of someone who needs cheering. I don’t mean to be Pollyanna-ish but this is a time that cries out for gestures of caring, of connection, of just plain love. Reach out, please, extend a hand, connect!
You’ll find the recipe below—just scroll down.
