Waiting til it comes around on the guitar....

Do you recognise the line from Alice's Restaurant?
(Are you THAT old! wink)
He is singing his song in a storytelling way, chatting in between singing bits and, near the end of the song, as it comes up for the chorus he says 'I just have to wait until it comes around on the guitar'.

I think of this so often with my health going up and down in waves. If I want to do something, I often have to wait patiently until a time when my health is in the right place to attempt it. It can be very frustrating, but the best way is to think of my life as an Arlo Guthrie song, travelling along in a storytelling way and waiting until  the right moment comes around on the guitar.

This is the state I am in with my YamDaisy project. Pretty well EVERYTHING is waiting on me updating the website, and it will take a fair amount of mental effort and sustained work.... and I just have to wait until it comes around on the guitar!

In the meantime.....

I am eating a lot of miso soup! That's why there is a picture of it at the top!
I went to the Friends of the Earth shop because they have large containers of beautiful fresh miso and I can fill up my jar with the soft, rich wonderful stuff. The darkest one is my favourite at the moment!

I cook my vegies in water or stock and then use Madhur Jaffrey's hint to put the miso into a small strainer with the bottom in the soup (now off the heat). I use my soup spoon to work the miso into the liquid through the strainer. This allows me to check that I have the strength right more easily, and also mkes the mixing in smoother. It is so easy and delicious, and healthy too!

You can see the bowl in the photo is full of veggies, but sometimes I make it with no veggies at all, or with an elegant few. And then there are additions like noodles and chicken.

It was my New Year's Resolution to eat more miso soup, and I am so glad I am doing it! (While I am waiting to get on to that website of mine!)

Here's a link to Alice's Restaurant on youtube just in case you are wondering what on Earth I am talking about! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8DtpdXZi0M

Cheers everyone!

On my way to Imam Bayildi

I was inspired to try Imam Bayildi again by these small, perfect eggplants at the geengrocers last week.

Imam Bayildi is a dish I have known forever. It is a classic Middle Eastern dish, a classic vegetarian dish. I have copied it out of books so often the recipe I have in my notebook is one I melded from three different sources.

But it has been a while since I tried to make it.
The reason? I have never made a good one.
Edible? Yes.
Delicious? A dish so wonderful it is in a million recipe collections? A dish so good that the Imam fainted?
Not mine.

I have just realised that I might never have tasted anyone else's version of this dish!  Could it be that other people have the same problem as me? My attempts always tasted boring. Always tasted like eggplant cooked with onion and a bit of tomato.

Then I read the recipe from Theodore Kyriakou who concentrated on heaps of olive oil (something I tended to cut down on, rather than beef up!) and long unctious cooking of onions, and then another long roasting of the eggplant.

I did try his recipe a couple of years ago but still didn't make anything marvellous...
But look, the most perfect little eggplants, just the right size to be fried all over! Time to try again. And this time I would concentrate on the long roasting ~ I have learnt how much eggplant likes such treatment!

I didn't worry about the recipe this time, I just had 'long slow cooking' and 'plenty of olive oil' in my head. I chopped up the onion and set it to fry long and gently with a bit of garlic added. And turned my attention to the eggplants. I was so worried about not cooking them well enough that I cut them in half ~ probably not necessary. I peeled them in stripes and let them brown on each side, one side in the frying pan and the other side under the grill.
Then I added a whole tin of diced tomatoes to the onion (overkill, none of my recipes ask for that much tomato!) and when I had the eggplants done I popped them into the baking dish with onion/tomato under and on top. 40 minutes in the oven with foil covering, and then 10 more minutes with the foil off.

Delicious!
I am not quite sure that I can call this Imam Bayildi, but I know I am on the right track. I've got the foundation right, so next time I will follow the recipe (one, or a combination) with confidence and let you know the results.
But in the meantime.... Any tips anyone ~ to help me on the way to a classic dish?

The YamDaisy Cafe Dragon

This dragon picture describes just how I am feeling about my YamDaisy project at the moment.
The different dragons fighting, dancing, some hardly visible, but one standing out strongly!

It is a common problem, but still really hard, to have a good idea and not have the resources: health, money, networks... to get it into practice.
I am an ideas person and even on my worst days can have six impossible ideas before breakfast! But my impossible ideas have got better and better, and this one, the YamDaisy Cafe idea, is one that just should be possible.

It is the idea that could most simply and sustainably solve the most problems, and improve the most lives, of all the good ideas I have ever had.

But here I am with the worst health, the least money and the fewest resources I have ever had in my life. What to do?

My current aim is to get it into as complete an argument as I can, in as engaging a form as I can, on my website and then see if I can invite people to consider it for their community, or other endeavours, that have the YamDaisy aim of providing delicious healthy food in a sustainable way to everyone who needs it.

But even the work of sorting ideas and finding the right words and images and the right presentation style is hard work and my health has been in a down swing for a few weeks, so the project feels like my knitting, sitting patiently in my workbasket for years, waiting for me to get back to it.

While I always knew I might never get the project off the ground, my heart hadn't quite believed me. But I was giving my heart a good talking to over the last month. That is.... until the feisty black dragon jumped out again.

I only need to hear them talk on the TV or radio, or see an article in the newspaper, about worsening food statistics, the awful health of people who can't feed themselves properly, the different attempts of people to address the issue.... and that heart of mine jumps up again saying 'Listen to my idea!'

So here it is at the top of my priorities again, hoping for a health upswing to come quickly!

Cheers dragons! Keep moving! My heart believes.

 And who knows, I might even be able to do some knitting again too!


PS The dragons come from a beautiful book 'Chinese Textiles' by Verity Wilson.