Improvise and Overcome

June 2, 2016 / cziemke / Leave a comment

008 Counting in Kiwi - Number 8 wire, that'll sort it

Kiwis take great pride in what they call their “number 8 wire” mentality. In a small, remote country peppered with small, remote communities, specialised materials can be hard to find. So, Kiwis have learned to make do. A Kiwi bloke, it is said, can fix anything with a piece of number 8 fencing wire. Kiwis are proud of their ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

When an earthquake knocked down Christchurch, they built a shopping mall out of shipping containers and a cathedral out of cardboard.

My Dad had a bit of the number 8 wire mentality. The wife wants a $1000.00 Tiffany lampshade for Christmas? Make one out of chicken wire and coloured glass. CCI02062016 Dragged your feet until all the Christmas trees are gone (Southerners put their trees up the day after Thanksgiving)? Build one out of dowels and holly branches from the garden. The wife flushed a toothbrush down the toilet and got it stuck in the U-bend? Take the toilet out onto the driveway and melt the toothbrush with your blow torch.

Okay. That last one didn’t work out so well. Turns out ceramic toilets can catch fire. Which it did, burning for several minutes (long enough for neighbours to come gawp from far and wide) before breaking in half. Try living that down. I hear someone related that story, to gales of laughter, at Dad’s Memorial Service. Oh. Wait. That was me.

I’ve learned some things about improvising since moving to New Zealand. Cake flour not a thing? Take three tablespoons out of each cup of standard flour and replace with potato starch, then sift the hell out of it. No graham crackers? Use digestive biscuits. Chickens escaping into the primary school next door? Plastic snow fence. Broken accordion? Get a digital piano until you can find an accordion fixer — or a new accordion.

I haven’t found a way to use number 8 wire to fix an accordion.

The career you built over 25 years goes up in flames, along with your mental health and sense of self worth? Take your crazy pills and build a new self. One that you love. One that honours who you are, not who you think you should want to be.

She’ll be right. She'll be right

I came to New Zealand to be a Professor of Defence and Security Studies and a Southern Hemisphere consultant on countering violent extremism and cross-cultural communication. Three years later, I’m a fairly anonymous food blogger and brassica evangelist. I’m also an aspiring accordion virtuoso with a broken accordion accidentally finding my bliss, and myself, on a digital piano.

Some would call that a failure. I call it a rebirth.

Food and music, it turns out, are a pretty good “number 8 wire” for a broken soul.

When I was in High School, I took up the saxophone so I could play in the Stage Band (part big-band, part Dixieland, part jazz, part dance band). 1004065_10151784467223410_1185793730_n-3 We played everything from World War II-era swing and Dixieland to Dave Brubeck and Frank Zappa, but I longed to learn to improvise. To take break free of the chart, fly, and make jazz magic all my own.

But I was too shy and, I thought, too female and too caucasian. I didn’t know the rules, and there must be rules. I reckoned I was too lazy and enamoured of my creature comforts to make it as a musician. In the 1970s, when I was teenager, becoming a professional chef certainly wasn’t a thing. Girls who could cook taught Home Economics. And I had this brain . . . and I could write . . . and I grew up around scholars . . . and history was in my blood.

So I followed the recipe. Played the notes that were written. Coloured inside the lines. Did what was expected of me.

White girls can’t jam.

I went to college. I got As. I earned a free ride to Graduate School. I got married. I got divorced. I got a Ph.D. I got a job at a Defense think tank. And I struggled to find ways to transform my longing to create into national security analysis. Sometimes, I almost succeeded. I hated about 50% of the work I did, felt “meh” about 40%, and loved about 10%. And, I reckoned, that was probably better than most people do. I made good money. I had amazing colleagues and friends all over the world. I did some valuable work. I traveled the world. Sometimes, as with my countering violent extremism work, I did work that made me proud and gave me joy. I don’t know if I made the world a better place, but the world made me a better person.

Then my parents got old. And they developed dementia. They weren’t eating. The house was a tip. But they didn’t want to leave. Again, I tried to follow the recipe, play the notes that were written, colour inside the lines. To be a good daughter. To make their lives better. To make them happy.

But this time, I failed. I hadn’t saved them from the indignity of getting old. Not because I wasn’t good enough, or didn’t try hard enough, or failed to follow the rules. I failed because failure was inevitable. I know this now. My parents were never going to be as they were. Our little family was gone for good.

So, I thought, was my anchor. I spent my life following the script of the good daughter handbook; working to make my parents proud. Not because they expected it, but because I did. But now I wasn’t a daughter. From now on, whether I liked it or not, my life was an improv.

I was terrified. I was setting out on a seven-year panic attack.

Luckily, I found a new anchor. On a train. In Australia. And reader, I married him. 1934126_27315433409_5243_n

And I ran away with him. To New Zealand.

Simon held me up when I broke. He pulled me away from the edge. He kept me safe. I know he was terrified, too. But he didn’t show it. Not to me.

He has supported all my various schemes to heal — through therapy, wall paper shredding, cooking, knitting, colouring books, a tattoo and an accordion.

And, oh, so much kale!

He saved my life.

But now, I know, it’s up to me to keep going. And growing. And I’m doing it without a plan or a rule book. I’m well off the map.

I’m tracking my adventure through this blog. And I’m playing my own, improvised sound track. Thanks to my remarkable music teacher, Katie, I’m learning that when it comes to music, and life, I don’t have to learn to walk before I can run.

This white girl can jam!

Listen to the Music

April 28, 2016April 28, 2016 / cziemke / Leave a comment

CCI28042016_2 I was born with music.

My Dad was a failed music major (he didn’t want to learn violin), and an accomplished amateur church organist. Some of my earliest memories are of listening to him play the ancient pump organ in the antebellum chapel in our backyard. Later, he adopted a reed organ from a deconsecrated Catholic Church and rebuilt it in our basement. When we moved to Georgia, the organ got the master bedroom. I grew up to a soundtrack of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues.

Dad playing the organ

There was classical music, but Dad also loved his German music (yes, complete with accordion). Heino was a particular favourite. Mom was partial to Gordon Lightfoot, especially “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which she must have played a million times.

My Uncle Chuck played piano, organ, and accordion — an instinct I seem to have inherited from him.

I grew up with the usual exposure to pop and rock, with a little country mixed in. I started playing clarinet when I was 11 and later added saxophone. I loved playing classical music, but yearned to play jazz. Dad reckoned if I ever ran away, he’d find me busking on Jackson Square in New Orleans. He’s probably right. In the end, I was either too shy, too lazy, or lacked the confidence to pursue a musical career. When I started university, I packed up the instruments. But over the years to come I explored a world of music.

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As a consumer of music my taste has always been eclectic. It is easiest to explain my musical taste by identifying the music I don’t like: ABBA. I’ve told Simon that if I am ever in a vegetative state and he has to decide whether to pull the plug, he should sit by my bedside and play ABBA. If I don’t immediately wake up and tell him to turn that sh*t off, I’m gone. There. Is. No. One. Home.

Please don’t troll me. I don’t think less of you because you love ABBA. My best friend loves ABBA. My husband at least likes ABBA. My dogs would probably love ABBA if I allowed it to be played in the house. Chickens, too.

You hate Brussels Sprouts? Well I love them. There’s no accounting for taste.

I especially love various kinds of soul music, by which I mean, music that expresses the deepest elements of a people’s history, spirituality, and identity. Cajun Zydeco. Appalachian Bluegrass. Portuguese Fado. Memphis Blues. Gypsy Swing. Kletzmer. Reggae. Ska. Dixieland Jazz. New Orleans Funk. Motown. Gospel. I haven’t had much experience with Hip Hop, except in Africa, but I surely do understand its power.

These Hip Hop musicians in Senegal founded the grassroots political movement “Y’en a mare” – enough is enough — that were pivotal in bringing democratic change to their country. Music has power!

In short, If it reaches into your heart, makes you want to dance, or weep, or praise the lord, I love it.

In the aftermath of my first dance with the black dog, in the early 1990s, my Video tapes of The Color Purple and Terminator II (the one where Linda Hamilton, playing Sarah Connor, goes all gansta on a psychiatric ward), and my Wynona, Willie Nelson, Francine Reed, Lyle Lovett, Gypsy Kings, R.E.M., and k. d. Lang CDs kept me going through many a dark night.

Eventually, the clouds lifted and for the next two decades or so, I collected more and more wonderful music to love from places like Bali, Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, and New Zealand. Maori music gives me goosebumps. The Maori musician I heard playing guitar and singing “Born on the Bayou” at the Riverbank Market on Easter Saturday made me stand still and say, out loud, like a prayer, “God, I love this country!” And then I put some coin in his guitar case.

Learning drumming in Sobo Bade, Senegal

Depression is a thief. And somewhere along the line, depression stole my music. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened. It probably came on in stages. My father died and I couldn’t bear to listen to Bach. Organ music sent me into gales of tears. Normal grief? Probably.

Then, sometime after Simon and I got married, I changed divisions at the company where I worked. My new office was in the SCIF — the Special and Compartmented Information Facility, basically, a safe in which highly classified materials, discussions, and people are housed out of the reach of prying electronic eyes. Being effectively locked in my office all day, with no windows (technically, there were windows, but we weren’t allowed to open the blinds), and no access to personal electronics, meaning no iPods and no music CDs, felt like a daily flashback to the psych ward. I was in a sustained panic attack for two years.

Suddenly, music wasn’t soothing, it was searing. I quite literally couldn’t bear it. Looking back, I realise the black dog had been slowly, quietly, shadowing me just waiting for the opportunity to knock me over. We moved to New Zealand, my anxiety shot to previously unknown levels, I stopped sleeping and, eventually, my psyche crumbled under the pressure. Again, for the second time, I had to find a way to want to live.

But I didn’t, I couldn’t, turn to music. I had hundreds of CDs of music I love, and I couldn’t face them. It was as though sound, especially music, might make my head explode. Anhedonia — the inability to derive happiness from things you love — is a well known symptom of depression. But this was something else. It was as though the part of my brain that processed music had somehow been disconnected from my pleasure centres and grafted onto my fight or flight centres.

Of all the cruel things depression has ever inflicted on me, this was the worst. Even when I lost the ability to enjoy eating — and I did — I could, at least, get a positive sense of achievement by cooking for others. I find giving dinner parties is actually an excellent depression coping mechanism. Provided I could get myself to the grocery store (which wasn’t always easy because I had also developed a grocery store phobia), I knew I could chop, sauté, boil, and bake and beautiful food would ensue that my friends would happily come eat. I didn’t have to talk. They’d do the talking. I just had to provide the raw material — food, music — and a party would happen.

But no music? How do you heal in silence? I read loads of books. I worked with a wonderful, caring therapist. I took my crazy pills. I cooked. And eventually, I started this blog.

Then, one day while I was back in the states, I got it in my head that I would learn to play the accordion. The idea had been floating around in my head since I heard a local group, The Wellington Sea Shanty Society, on Radio NZ on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I could play the accordion. After all, the accordion isn’t really music, right? My friends keep telling me that. But I’ve always loved the accordion. I even enjoyed watching Lawrence Welk with my Grandparents! So I bought a used accordion on Trade-Me for about $300.00. It was waiting for me when I got home. And I went online to find an accordion teacher.

I’m not, and probably never will be, a great accordionist. But Katie is a great teacher. One day, no so long ago, she was explaining the Circle of Fifths, or maybe it was chord progressions, and something flashed in my head. It was . . . joy! Katie gave me my music back. I think I laughed out loud. I’m sure she thought I was crazy. But then, I am.

JOY! Music and joy! I have my music back! Our “box room” now looks like the Big One has hit, with CDs strewn all over the floor, sorted into piles that mean something only to me. I found myself wanting to share my music, with Katie, with Simon, with the chickens, with anyone who will listen.

Don’t be surprised if I run up to you one day, waving a CD, or my iPod, and saying “You have to listen to this music!”

And CJ loves it when I sing! I promise you, he’s the only one who will ever love to hear me sing. My music is giving him joy.

It is as though I have five years of backed up music clamouring to be let out. My accordion has turned out to have seasonal affective disorder and all the keys have gone sticky. So until I can get a newer, less temperamental one, I’m learning on a digital piano. I’ve ordered a music journal and music staff paper. I’m not talented, but I’m most certainly enthusiastic. I have been, to quote C.S. Lewis, surprised by joy.

A few days ago, I got Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry. Terry describes himself as “Alice Waters meets Melvin Van Peebles.” For each (marvellous) recipe, he includes a “suggested soundtrack” — a song or an album “to be enjoyed while cooking and eating.” He wants to “bring the culture back in agriculture.”

I’m down with that!

Music goes with food, and food goes with music. There is music I love to cook to, music I love to eat to. Music for warm summer picnics, and music for cold, windy Wellington winter nights. I want to tell you all about it!

I have my music back. I want to dance. I want to sing. I want to cook. I want to eat.

I want to listen to the music.

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A Gentleman in Full

April 18, 2016April 20, 2016 / cziemke / 2 Comments

This is Chris.

As you can tell from his impish smile, he was full of beans. And as you can tell from his bacon-wrapped Christmas turkey, he was no vegetarian. Still, Simon loved him, and so did I.

Even though he once told me my vegetarian pizzas looked like dog vomit.

Chris said exactly what he thought, exactly when he thought it.

And he seemed to own (at least) one of everything. When we were preparing the paddock for our Kune Kune pigs, he had a fence-wire-stretching-thingy. And a trailer to pick up the pig shelter kit from the shipping depot.

You see, Chris didn’t believe in delivery charges. So, every so often, Simon and Chris would head out of a Saturday to pick up some impossibly heavy and unwieldy thing or another and man-handle it up, or down, the stairs.

Chris believed in living life to the fullest. He rode a motorcycle to work in all kinds of Wellington weather. He drove his Porsche through New Zealand’s narrow, twisty turning roads, in clear defiance of the nation-wide 100 kph speed limit. When he found a Scotch Whiskey he liked, he bought a case. An excellent bubbly at an excellent price? Two cases! He owned more bottles of Limoncello than any other person I’ve ever known.

Were it not for Chris, I wouldn’t be here — as in, I wouldn’t be here in New Zealand. You see, it was Chris who made it possible for Simon to emigrate to New Zealand from the United Kingdom in 1998 to escape the ravages of a broken heart. They worked together, ate cheese toasties, did crossword puzzles, and played darts. And Simon’s heart healed.

Were it not for Chris, Simon wouldn’t have been on the Indian Pacific Railway from Sydney on July 5th, 2008.

July 2008

Were Simon not on that train, we wouldn’t have met. Had we not met, I would have continued to go on ever more bizarre internet dates until I went totally mad and started collecting cats. Which would have made my dogs most unhappy.

I first met Chris a few days before Simon and I got married in Hawaii in 2009. He was Simon’s best man. They turned up together after a nine hour Air New Zealand flight during which, I’ve no doubt, they were the life of the party. By the time Simon made his way through immigration as a new migrant on a fiancé visa, Chris had charmed everyone in Customs.

Over the coming three days, we three went to Wal-Mart, where Simon bought his wedding clothes (which I am certain made my Dad smile, wherever he was) and Chris bought discount electronics. We went to the outlet mall, where Chris bought running shoes for his step son, Logan. CCI18042016 The cardboard cutout of Logan’s left foot was a prominent feature throughout the festivities. And we went to the Saturday flea market at the University of Hawaii football stadium parking lot, where Simon sunburnt his feet to a crisp.

Oh, and we got a marriage license, which, for the record, looks just like President Obama’s birth certificate.

Chris hit it off immediately with my Goddaughter and bridesmaid, Alex, who sneezed all over him (and pretty much everyone else) during the ceremony. CCI18042016_3 He was a dapper Best Man in his linen suit, Panama Hat, Hawaiian shirt, and dress shoes. The celebrant wore a turtle print sarong and a t-shirt with krishna on it. The groom wore shorts and bare feet — it was a beach wedding, after all.

When I came to New Zealand as a potential job candidate, in 2012, he picked me up at the airport and drove me to the top of Mt. Victoria, and showed me the beach where Ma’a Nonu sometimes worked out, which pretty much sealed the deal. And he woke up at 4 am to get me to the airport for my 6 am flight back to Sydney, and home. Service above and beyond the call.

It was Chris who introduced me to the Lower Hutt Saturday morning Riverbank Market, in all its vegetable glory. Chris was at the airport when Simon and I arrived in Wellington from the United States, stinky and travel weary, with our duffle bags full of what we thought we would need to survive until the shipping container with our worldly goods arrived. The next morning, he shepherded us, jet-lagged and bleary eyed, to the market. I thought I was hallucinating. It was the first week of August, the deepest Southern Hemisphere winter, yet the market was replete with freshness — leeks, silver beet, lots of lovely brassicas, and those New Zealand standbys, kumara and pumpkin. And these weren’t just leeks — they were leeks the size of baseball bats. And daikons the size of cricket bats. And handmade noodles, and food trucks. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I was right about the heaven part.

Were it not for Chris, there would be no Kale Whisperer.

Over the coming months, Chris would pick me up every Saturday morning and we would go to the Market together, leaving himself to sleep in and get the kettle ready for our return. Chris introduced me to the Tofu and Chinese Noodle Man, and the Thai Herb Lady, and the best free range eggs in the market, and the French Bread and Stinky Cheese Man. Some weeks, we would visit the Mad Butcher or Pack ‘n Save — places I rarely have occasion to enter. Then back to chez nous for a cuppa.

Then, one Saturday, Chris seemed not his chipper, sassy self. He didn’t rise to the bait when I ribbed him about the half-dressed Barbie doll in his Land Rover. He’d been sleeping badly. He thought he had gastroenteritis. Then he thought he had become diabetic.

Then he had a scan.

There was a mass.

Then surgery and chemotherapy.

That was two years ago.

He faced the end of his life with his usual charm, humour, dignity, and generosity of spirit. Even when we knew he was in pain, he could laugh. And make others laugh. He faced cancer head-on and fought it with everything he had. In short, he succeeded in doing what we all hope to do: he remained Chris, in full, right to the end.

He adored his girls.

He wore a beaded bracelet that read: Fuck Cancer.

I agree.

Tomorrow, we will farewell Chris.

Today, I am unspeakably grateful to have known him.

CCI18042016_2

Smoked Tomato Bisque with Roasted Corn and Zucchini: A Forty Day Invention Test, Episode One

February 16, 2016February 16, 2016 / cziemke / Leave a comment

I love smoke. I’m not advocating smoking. Don’t do it.Cigarette smoke is nasty. But, I have to confess an appreciation for the fragrance of good pipe tobacco or a fine cigar. My Uncle Chuck, though, smoked tobacco that smelled wonderful. A whiff of lovely pipe tobacco still makes my heart squeeze and I think of him. And miss him. The smell of a wood fire always smells like winter, and home. Here in New Zealand, lots of households still supplement their heating systems and hot water with wood-burning fireplaces. At the first cold snap, the air smells like hardwood smoke.

A mini Kale Whisperer with Uncle Chuck and his sweet-smelling pipe, circa 1958

I had a wood-burning fireplace in the basement of my house on Mt. Airey lane, but the chimney was three stories high (it was a row house) and didn’t pull very well. Every time I lit a fire, the house filled up with smoke, setting off all the smoke alarms, even the one the top floor — turns out the interior of the house pulled better than the chimney! I also discovered that wood smoke in large amounts gives me migraines. So the WBFP was replaced with a less evocative, but healthier gas fireplace.

Not only do I love the smell of smoke, I love the flavour of smoke. Smoked salmon, smoked cheese . . . smoked anything, really. Smoke is a boon to vegetarians. It is one of the ways to impart a rich, umami flavour to vegetables. I use smoke often in my cooking. I have a Camerons stovetop smoker that my Auntie Janice gave me for Christmas years ago. If you don’t have an outdoor smoker or a stovetop smoker, though, there are lots of videos on You Tube that show you how to improvise one.

Whichever method you use, it is well worth adding smoking to your vegetarian cooking repertoire. In my first invention test, smoke lifted tomato soup to a new level.

Smoked Tomato Bisque with Roasted Corn and Zucchini

I started out with a kilo or so of tomatoes, half Roma sauce tomatoes (which they call “low acid” tomatoes here in New Zealand) and half regular old slicing tomatoes. The first step was to smoke the Romas. I smoke the Romas because they are meatier and seem to soak up the smoke better. I just sliced them in half, lengthwise, put them in the smoker, drizzled them with a little olive oil and tucked five cloves of garlic in amongst the tomatoes. The garlic smokes nicely and comes out sweet, not at all “garlicky”. These smoked over applewood chips for about half and hour and came out looking like this:

In the interest of not overpowering all the other flavours with smoke, I roasted the slicing tomatoes, along with the kernels from two large ears of sweetcorn.

If you don’t have a stovetop smoker and can’t be bothered to improvise one, you can approximate the deliciousness by adding a teaspoon or so of liquid smoke. Then, you will roast all the tomatoes with the garlic.

Cut the raw kernels off the sweet corn. Don’t worry about getting every last little bit, because you are going to make a broth with the corn cobs. Just break the cobs in half and plunk them into a saucepan, add a little salt and sugar (which enhances the corniness of the corn, but is optional if you are really concerned about added sugar), cover with water and boil those puppies for twenty minutes or so. You can give the cooked cobs to your chickens. We have learned the hard way, however, NOT to give them to your dogs, no matter how much they promise not to yack them all up on your carpet!

Line the baking sheet with foil so you can catch all the sweet roasting juices. Drizzle the tomatoes and corn with some olive oil and smoosh everything around to coat the veggies, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and roast in a 425F (220C) oven for 15 minutes, stir things around a bit and roast for 10-15 minutes more till it looks like this:

The smoked and roasted tomatoes will slip right out of their skin. If you are sensitive to tomato seeds, you can also deglop them. I don’t mind the seeds, but I do like to remove the woody bit of the core that is right next to the stem. It’s not very nice. Put the tomato innards into a medium soup pot in which you have sweated two large chopped shallots or a small chopped onion with a Tablespoon of olive oil, along with the smoked garlic, a few kernels of the roasted corn, and the corn cob broth and simmer over low heat for a while. I like to keep it long and low, say 45 minutes, to really let the flavours combine.

While the tomatoes and broth are simmering, clean a couple of medium zucchini and halve them lengthwise. Remove about 2/3 of the roasted corn from the baking sheet. Smoosh the zucchini halves around in the oil and baking juices, put them cut side down on the sheet along with the rest of the corn kernels. Roast them in the same 425/220 oven for about 10 minutes, flip the zucchini over and roast for another 10-15 minutes, until the zucchini has started to brown. The corn kernels should be brown and crunchy. Cut the zucchini into chunks and set aside with the roasted (but not the crunchy) corn.

Let the tomatoes cool a bit, add a handful of chopped herbs (basil, parsley, tarragon, mint, or dill — whatever you like) then puree everything in a blender, or in the pot with an immersion blender. If you want a creamier soup, you can add 1/4 cup or so of half-and-half or milk. To make a vegan soup, just throw a handful of the roasted corn in when you blend the soup to thicken it a bit.

Now, add the zucchini and the rest of the roasted corn and reheat everything gently (especially if you have added dairy). Stir in a Tablespoon or so of lemon or lime juice or white wine vinegar and garnish each bowl with some of the crispy roasted corn and some more fresh herbs — I used basil.

This is not your mother’s Campbells tomato soup, but it is just as yummy with a grilled cheese sandwich.

Ingredients:

This makes four main course servings, unless you’ve invited Simon over for dinner. Then it makes three. If you want more soup, just start with more tomatoes, zucchini, and corn.

1 1/2 kilos (or a little over 2 pounds) of ripe tomatoes, a mix of Romas and slicing tomatoes is nice

2 large shallots or 1 smallish onion

4 cloves of garlic, peeled but not chopped

2 large ears of sweet corn

2 medium zucchini

2 limes, 1 lemon, or white wine vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

Fresh herbs of your choice (basil, tarragon, mint, dill, parsley)

kosher or sea salt and black pepper to taste

Liquid Smoke (optional)

A Forty Day Invention Test

February 9, 2016February 10, 2016 / cziemke / 1 Comment

When I was a kid, my fellow Episcopalian and Catholic pals and I spent weeks thinking about what we would give up for Lent. I tended to lean toward such noble sacrifices as Brussels Sprouts — which as far as I remember my Mother never, ever cooked — or liver and onions– which my Dad loved meaning we had it about once a week. I tried very hard to score an invitation to eat at a friend’s house on those days. I remember being in awe of my best friend, Jeannie, the year she gave up watching TV.

The Porter Wagoner Show was a Saturday night staple at our house

It featured a noticeably less well-endowed Dolly Parton

I don’t honestly know whether she stuck with it for the whole 40 days, but I do remember her sitting with her back to the set on our regular Saturday Porter Wagner and hot dogs nights. My usual fall back was chocolate, which was sort of a sacrifice — I do like chocolate — but as we seldom had chocolate in the house, not much of one.

As I got older, the whole ritual of giving something up for Lent fell by the wayside. I guess this was because, once we moved to Georgia, most of my friends were Baptists and Methodists for whom Lent didn’t really seem much of an issue, although Easter certainly was.

Once I became an adult, I again embraced the notion of a Lenten discipline, Most years, I 21-days-to-form-a-new-habit-lori-welbourne decided to take up something — meditation, daily prayer, volunteering, swimming — in the hope that what started as a seasonal discipline would become a habit. It worked the year I challenged myself to go to the gym every day. I initially took up yoga as a Lenten discipline. That stuck too, for a while.

For several years, I gave up meat for Lent. This is, of course, a time-honoured Lenten discipline. The whole idea of Fat Tuesday or Pancake Day had to do with using up all your indulgent foods — butter, cream, eggs, bacon — in preparation for the lean, disciplined days of fasting that lay ahead.

For me, the Lenten meat fast would end with the Easter Vigil — the Saturday night service that begins in the dark (at least until Congress moved Daylight Savings Time, meaning it didn’t get dark at Easter until 8pm or so) with a cantor and Old Testament lessons and ends with with bright lights and festive music, representing Jesus’ resurrection. It is my absolutely favourite service of the entire year — far surpassing Christmas. One year, we were encouraged to make animal sounds during the Noah’s Ark story, rattle our keys during the reading of Ezekiel 37:1-14 — the Valley of the Dry Bones — and ring bells or toot horns during Psalm 98 — Sing to the Lord a New Song.

No, I don’t eat meat anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it.

After the Easter Vigil, I would head straight to Five Guys Burgers and Fries for a gloriously greasy bacon cheeseburger with the works and a bog of their miraculously delicious fries then head home to eat it accompanied by a bottle of bubbly. Now that’s breaking a fast!

One year, I gave up wine. I’ll never make that mistake again.

Ditto: coffee.

moby Another year, I pledged to read Moby Dick, my lifelong literary bête noir. The. Most. Boring. Novel. Ever. Written. I failed. I’d rather spend forty days wearing a hair shirt. Note to l’Académie française: I’ll give up my circonflexe when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. If for no other reason, because without it, my spell checker keeps changing bête to bets or beets. je suis circonflex

My friend Mary earned my everlasting admiration the year she gave up baking bread for Lent. When we were preparing to move to New Zealand and it came time to find a foster mother for my beloved sourdough starter, I reckoned that someone who loved baking so much that she would give it up for Lent would treat my sourdough baby with all the love it deserved.

God and I had a parting of the ways some years ago. I am now what I call a philosophical Christian, with some Judaism, Buddhism, and Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster mixed in. While I no longer believe in an afterlife or a loving God, I still believe that Jesus’ teaching — the stuff he actually said — is as good a guide for living a decent and rewarding life as any other. Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Care for the sick. Embrace outsiders. Keep only what you need and share the rest with those who have less than you. Judge not lest ye be judged. This is all good. Are you listening, Donald Trump?

This Lent, a year after my soul fell to pieces, I am once again embracing the value of a discipline for restoring mindfulness and spiritual resilience. For most of the last year, just getting out of bed was an exercise in discipline. It would be disingenuous for me to give up meat — that is already gone. Chocolate? Not enough of a sacrifice. Wine? lent Too much of a sacrifice. As much as I admire Mary, giving up baking would rob me of one of my most important emotional outlets. Simon and the boys might appreciate my giving up the accordion, but I wouldn’t want to lose my place with my lovely accordion teacher, Katie. The Kale Whisperer can’t give up Kale.

So, what’s a girl to do?

After long deliberation and utterly without consulting my devoted partner, I have decided to give up cookbooks for Lent. Not only will I not buy any new ones, I won’t use them. For the next forty days, I will be a totally improvisational cook. Because this is my discipline and I’m making the rules, I will leave myself three exceptions. I’ll allow myself to use Karen Page’s The Vegetarian Flavor Bible [see “The Seventh Cookbook of Christmas”], to ensure I check before pairing radishes and chocolate. I’ll also allow one all purpose book to look up basic recipes, like choux pastry, that I don’t carry around in my head. For this, I’ll use Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I’ll also use cookbooks for any pickling and preserving I do because I don’t want to kill anyone. Starting at sunrise on Ash Wednesday until sundown Easter Saturday, all other cookbooks will remain closed.

Note that I am giving up cookbooks, not necessarily recipes. In addition to improvising my own recipes using whatever seasonal ingredients are available, I will, on occasion, revisit some of the old recipes I inherited from my mother, Aunties, Grandma, and Tante Ida. I hope, in so doing, I will stretch my kitchen creativity as well as knitting my cooking more tightly to my new home.

I pledge to include ingredients that are new to me: Maori yams, feijoas, Asian greens. Maybe even these things. weird fruit

My hope is that at the end of this exercise, I will have a greater appreciation for living in tune with the seasons, greater culinary creativity, and a better food blog.

I’ll share the successes. When there are failures — as there are bound to be — I’ll share those, too. I promise, though, that I’ll only consult the ones I have on paper. Consulting the internet; that would be cheating. I am setting off on a forty day Master Chef Invention test. The Pantry is open.

invention test

Living from the Downside Up

February 2, 2016February 2, 2016 / cziemke / 3 Comments

One year ago today I broke.

For months, on the nights that I slept at all, I had been waking in the wee hours in full blown panic attacks. Simon and I had moved to New Zealand almost a year and half earlier, and we had been in our house for a year, but I still felt untethered and completely, catastrophically alone. I spent whole days curled up like a fist. Even on good days, I was trapped in the wrong end of the telescope. There were days I couldn’t feel my arms. Days when everything tasted like sand and I couldn’t swallow. Days when my pulse roared in my ears like the surf. I wanted to cease to exist. I wanted to have never existed.

One Sunday night, I started to cry and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. My mind had shattered.

Simon intervened. I can’t imagine how frightened he must have been. He insisted I request a compassionate leave from my job and seek professional help.

I had committed to participate in a bilateral engagement with a delegation from Vietnam the next day. I rallied my reptile brain and managed to get through the meeting without humiliating myself or my hosts. Then I walked away from my career to mend and, I hoped, find a way to want to stay alive.

The past year has been an extraordinary journey to the centre of myself. With Simon’s support and the help of my excellent doctors, I have healed. I have moved beyond fear and loss to reclaim my life. I have stopped striving to become the person I thought I should want to be and am, finally, discovering and nurturing the person I am.

I got my first tattoo.

I am learning to play the accordion.

I have chickens.

And, one Saturday morning at the Riverbank Farmers’ Market in Lower Hutt, I became the Kale Whisperer.

This wasn’t my first crackup. I’ve lived with the black dog on my shoulder most of my life. The first time I clearly remember being depressed was when I was 10, during our first year in Georgia. The first time I remember coming completely apart was in my second year at University. I was a crazy intense student. I was working two jobs, maintaining a 4.0, not sleeping, and living on Dr. Pepper and Milky Way bars. I passed out in Botany class. I got myself to the end of the Semester and spent spring break in bed. In a tight little ball.

A dozen or so years later, it happened again. I had finished my Ph.D. and was a few years into my career as a defence analyst. I’d been battling a prolonged period of depression, self-harming, and a relapse into the bulimia I developed while ending my first marriage. Since University, I had been wrestling with what I thought might be a call to become an Episcopal priest. As a defence analyst, I felt like a fraud. Everyone knew more than I did. More to the point, they all seemed way more interested in the ins-and-outs of the Pentagon than I would ever be. So, I had taken the step of starting the gruelling process of discernment of a call to ordination.

My discernment hit a brick wall that threatened not just my faith but my survival. My escape route into seminary was gone. I was like the mythic hero who rode his horse into a valley that grew ever narrower until, at the end, he couldn’t go forward, he couldn’t go backward, and he couldn’t get off his horse. I was broken and I hadn’t the slightest idea how to begin to get mended. So I took pills. Lots of them. My best friend, Susan, found me just in time. To my everlasting amazement and gratitude, she remains my best friend to this day. I’m Godmother to her beautiful daughter.

For the next two years, I was in and out of hospitals until I finally connected with a sensible therapist who helped me get all the odds and ends back into the closet and set me on a more-or-less steady course. I found a comfortable and challenging professional niche. I bought a house. I was determined to learn to like myself. I started to learn French. I was, at last, on an even keel.

Mom and Dad shortly after their marriage in 1949

Then my world shattered again. My father, the one steady anchor in my life, my hero, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. My mother was agoraphobic and wouldn’t leave the house. Neither of them would even talk about moving. In a desperate attempt to keep them in their home, every other week for the next two years, I drove to Georgia and spent three days cleaning my parents’ house and filling their freezer with delicious and nutritious food. It was the one way I could still show them how very much I loved them. It worked for a while. And then it didn’t. My Dad died in October 2007 after a short but nightmarish illness, for which I blamed myself.

I got through all the turmoil of those four or so years because I had to. I accepted the support and generosity of friends who helped look after Mom and Dad when I couldn’t. Paul came over from the UK to help me sort through the house and move Dad to Virginia. Kline and Carolyn opened their home to me. Carolyn fed me to near bursting and took me to Target at dawn on the day of Dad’s Memorial Service to buy funeral clothes because USAir lost my suitcase and all I had to wear was bluejeans. Elsie shuttled Dad to his neurology

The noble Maxwell in his retirement

appointments and took him to the lunch buffet at the Peking Restaurant. Nash drove Dad and his beloved cockapoo, Maxwell, to the dog park. Nash and France adopted Max after Dad died and gave him the pampered retirement he deserved. I took anti-depressants to calm my anxiety. Mom’s best friend, Margaret, and the ladies of St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church arranged two memorial services and two receptions to farewell my parents. What they say about Southern Hospitality? It’s all true.

When I finally brought Mum to Virginia, she had lost the will to live. I could tell she was staying alive for me. Because she knew if she died, I’d be alone.

Honor Guard for Cpl. Earl F. Ziemke, USMC, at his interment at Arlington National Cemetery, 31 October 2007

On a professional trip to Australia in 2008, I met a handsome chap from New Zealand on a cross-country train journey. The rest, as they say, is history. Mum met Simon when he came to Virginia over Christmas. She relaxed. I would be safe, and happy. When she was diagnosed with lymphoma, she was ready to let go and passed much more peacefully than my Dad, in May 2009. Two weeks later, Simon got his fiancé visa. We got married in Hawaii in July. Three years later, we decided to move to New Zealand.

When I broke a year ago, I survived by leaning on Simon, seeing doctors, stripping wallpaper, and cooking.

As I began to feel better, I contemplated both my past and my future. For years, as my defence career got ever more frustrating, I toyed with the idea of a new career. Gourmet dog cookies, perhaps? A personal chef? A food and travel writer? New Zealand’s next Master Chef? A pizza blogger?

A pizza blogger! In an effort to do something to get the rest of my life started, I started thinking about creating a vegetarian pizza blog.

My young cousin, William, came to spend a few months with us in his break between graduating High School and going off to University. So, for the first time since we had moved here in 2012, I also started exploring New Zealand. William and I traveled all over this beautiful country — Dunedin, Stewart Island, Fiordland, Napier, Rotorua, Christchurch, Hokitika. We ate seafood chowder in the far South and went to a Maori hangi in the geothermal North. As I fell in love with my new home, I also started to learn, slowly, how to live with myself.

William eating the most delicious vegan dumplings ever at the Christchurch container mall

And I continued to cook, trying new things I’d never had time to explore when I was working and traveling all the time. My vegetarian food universe expanded well beyond pizza. I tried to invent vegetarian versions favourite comfort foods. For me, cooking became an exercise in mindfulness. A way to calm my anxious monkey mind. A way to connect my American roots to my new life in New Zealand.

Today, one year later, I am — dare I say it? — happy. Most of the time. I expect I will always feel the presence of the black dog. I will probably always get sad at Christmas. I expect to take anti-depressants for the rest of my days. But, through it all, I will cook.

The biggest challenge for me has been to learn to live in the moment. I cannot change the past, and the best way to ensure a good future is to have a good present. My new routine of going to the Saturday Farmers’ Market to buy whatever produce is in-season and beautiful, creating seasonal pizzas, nurturing a weekly batch of sourdough bread, and cooking food that is absolutely the best I can make it today has healed me. It has grounded me to my New Zealand home. It has also brought me back in touch with my long-ago roots in different family rituals in different and far away places.

Now my scars are honestly come by, from a blazing hot pizza oven or careless use of the mandolin slicer. They tell stories of pizza and coleslaw; of bread loaves and pickles; of kiwi pies and vegetable calzones; of turning hot corn tortillas with fingers instead of tongs.

And in sharing those stories, I will explore life from my new perspective and continue to heal.

Home

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015 / cziemke / 1 Comment

New Zealand is my new home. I felt at home here almost from the start. Kiwis get my sense of humor in ways that my fellow Americans never did. Simon and I can live 20 minutes from the center of the nation’s capital and keep pigs, alpacas, and (coming soon), chickens. Work-life balance is a real thing here, not just an aspiration. It is possible to drive from our home in the hills to the beach in 20 minutes or less. Almost nobody here goes back to work on January 2^nd. New Zealand is closed in January. The January “blahs” that used to knock me sideways every year just aren’t a thing.

There has been much to learn: driving on the “wrong” side; the metric system; Kiwi English; spelling; that horizontal rain makes umbrellas pretty much pointless; that July isn’t summer, and January isn’t winter; that there are 18 hours of daylight on Christmas and 8 hours of daylight on the 4^th of July; the rules of cricket; that the number 10 is pronounced “tin” while 7 is pronounced “seevin.” Footy games are “matches”, the field is the “pitch”, and it takes rugby players roughly 80 minutes to play an 80-minute match. And there are no TV time-outs, special teams, shoulder pads or helmets. So you’d better have your beer and chips ready before play starts.

New Zealand is my home. For me, though, the notion of home is bit slippery. You see, I have many “homes” in places where I’ve never actually lived. In addition to my actual homes (Virginia, Georgia and Wisconsin, New Zealand), I get homesick for, inter alia: New Orleans, Edinburgh, Paris, the Masai Mara, and Antarctica. In pondering how this is possible, I’ve come to understand for me, “home” is about memorable experiences and the people with whom I shared them.

And I remember those experiences in terms of food.

I discovered my love for jazz and zydeco over coffee and biegnets with my parents at the Café du Monde. My friend Anita and I kicked off a long-weekend sharing our love of art with glasses of red wine and the best omelets ever for breakfast (well, an early lunch) at a sidewalk café on the Rive Gauche after an all-night flight to Paris. My two chosen sisters – Susan and Elizabeth – and I ate great piles of mussels and chips (but not haggis) after exploring ruined castles in Scotland, and drank gallons of vino verde in the hot, dusty Alentejo in Portugal. I ate delicious grilled langoustines in Bali while my venerable Elder Sister, Katy, fed her grilled fish to the street cats. Simon and I drank gorgeous Argentine and Chilean wines while watching the penguins and icebergs in Antarctica. And I reveled in quaffing Tusker beers with my fellow campers after a hard day tracking wildlife with my intrepid Masai guide, Josh, at Freeman Safaris in Kenya.

In fact, sharing memorable meals is, for me, the way I end up expanding my chosen family. Conversations and experiences can create acquaintances, but for me, breaking bread creates family. And family is home.

Taste is my most evocative sense. Music is a distant second. Christmas isn’t Christmas until I’ve had one of Auntie Janice’s nutmeg logs and a slice of my mother’s stöllen. Passion fruit (a key ingredient in New Orleans’ famous hurricane cocktail and also popular in New Zealand) makes me hear Dixieland jazz and zydeco. My cheese and nut loaf evokes Thanksgiving dinner with Pete, Anita, Mike and Mary Beth, even in New Zealand in July. Peaches take me take me back to the battered old formica kitchen table at my grandparents’ farm where Tanta comforted me with peach küchen after a run-in with the wasps in the outdoor privvy. Every time I eat oatmeal, I hear Grandpa Saltenberger saying: “If you don’t eat your oatmeal, you won’t grow hair on your chest.” Somehow, that arugment worked for him: I ate the oatmeal. It never occurred to me, at 7, that I might not want hair on my chest.

Not all the memories are happy. I was eating baklava the moment my appendix ruptured, and I still can’t face the stuff. When I was about 6, I ate whipped cream until I was sick (they warned me), and it still gives me pause. At about the same age, I went to the fridge and took a big slug out of what I thought was ice water. It was martinis. Please, never order me a martini! And tuna casserole will forever take me back to the hours and days I spent by my father’s bedside when he was dying in hospice.

Dad’s winter greenhouse, circa 1969.

With absolutely no disrespect to my loving and all-around-wonderful mother, my Dad was (and remains, eight years after his death) the center of my universe. He was a World War II veteran, a brilliant scholar, and a venerated teacher. But in his heart of hearts, he was a farmer. Not a gardener – he had no truck with roses or posies. That was my mother’s realm. He grew food. Every summer we drowned in bell peppers (capiscums), green beans, snap peas, shelly beans, okra, eggplants, radishes, spinach, and lettuces. He even grew summer squash (courgettes) – crooknecks and zucchini – even though he hated it, because he knew I loved it. Half of the back yard was covered in raspberries – because Mom loved them. His fig tree was legendary – it was the fig tree equivalent of the loaves and fishes. It fed the ten thousand hungry southerners with figs. And with my mom’s famous fig pizzas. Yum.

But what I most associate with my father and, hence, with love and family, is tomatoes: his huge, ugly, sweet, juicy heirloom tomatoes. When I moved away from home, he would pick them green, wrap them in newspaper, and ship them to me. One bite of a vine-ripened tomato, warm from the sun, transports me right back to summertime Saturday afternoons, when we three sat down with a couple of big, fat tomatoes, a jar of mayo, salt, pepper, and a loaf of squishy white bread – no lettuce, no bacon – and ate tomato sandwich after tomato sandwich, washed down with unsweetened grape Kool-Aid. I’m sure, when I die, my last thought of my father will be those tomato sandwiches.

I only know how to tell my story, and my family’s story, through food. Family, love, life, and home are all embodied, for me, in food: in the making of it and the sharing of it. In this blog, I will share what I have learned about living and cooking as a vegetarian, and living and cooking as a vegetarian in New Zealand. I will also share my stories: the ones I remember from my past homes and the ones I am making here in my new home. Some are funny, others are sad. All are, for me, full of the kind of meaning that makes ordinary food a meal, makes meals into memories, and makes memories into home.

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Smoked Tomato Bisque with Roasted Corn and Zucchini

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