Intentions, Seriously

I've been laid flat as a shadow by something flu-like. You can read about it on the '07 Tour Blog (I know you're dying to), where I think I've got one more post to write before I wrap it up over there. You can read my thoughts about blogging, too -- would love to hear what you think as well. Oh, and golly-days, I want to say thanks for subbing to One Pomegranate -- a whoosh of you flew in over the holidays -- it's a great Christmas present. So... where are your notebooks? Open 'em up. Let's talk about food. And weight. And intentions for 2008.

Okay, maybe not all three things at once. I will say though, that I have lost a total of 8.8 pounds since Thanksgiving in my quest to lose the half-a-billion pounds I put on this past three years on the road. Or was it six years? Yes. Six. How time flies. But the past three years have been especially fattening. One day I'm going to post about the weight thing. But right now, I'll just talk about food. I love food. Good food. I used to eat it sensibly. I do know how.

I have recovered sufficiently from the Black Death that claimed me the day after Christmas, to make a pot of vegetarian split-pea soup. That's red bell pepper you see in the pot, along with carrots, celery, onion, marjoram, s&p, garlic, and the splits. I had three red peppers left over from the stuffed peppers Hannah was going to make but didn't and they needed a quick home. So.


This luscious soup is simmering on my stove now, in my new 4-1/2 quart Calphalon saucepan. I coveted this pan (badly), and Santa brought it to me. Then I felt badly that Santa spent so much money on a SAUCEPAN (I'm a Value Village Girl, through and through); I even said, "Let's take it back," but then, next morning, I trundled to the kitchen and saw that pot sitting there, perky-like, on the stove, and I fell in love with it all over again. I can't help it. The pot stays.

Now it's simmering its first soup. I make killer soups. I will make biscuits next. I finally feel like eating again, after three days off food. This may account for my 1.2 pound weight loss at WW yesterday, despite my eating rampage through the delights of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I mean, who can live without eggnog at Christmas? Two eggnogs? Three?

Yesterday I dragged myself out of my sick bed (non-contagious, I hope, after 24 hours without fever), and into Weight Watchers, looking worse than death warmed over (cliche allowed). All the other weigh-ees took one look at me and Stood Back. I got weighed, I left. I'm a woman on a mission. Give me a year home (give or take a few meaningful gigs) and I'm gonna make something happen.

Back to food. I consumed approximately 75,462.5 calories on Christmas Day, eating many of the foods you see on recipe cards above. I got sick the next day, but it wasn't the food. It was some bug I picked up along the way, but I digress.

My new, lovely, sweetheart of a mother-in-law (I have a mother-in-law! May I call you Mom? I also have a sister!) gave me HER mother's Charleston Junior League Cookbook, published in 1950 -- I was so touched (and it's older than I am). It was full of receipts -- recipes -- on index cards, in her mother's handwriting -- a treasure. I want to make every recipe in this cookbook, especially the handwritten ones, but they all call for a cup of mayonnaise or two sticks of butter or cream of chicken soup. Of course. Still... just reading them makes me happy... and I WILL try some of them -- they are now part of my heritage, too.

I am intensely interested in food lately, after having spent literally years on the road eating unrecognizable food in strange restaurants, at pot lucks, in school cafeterias, vending machines, gas stations, and worse (don't ask), and seeing what people eat in different parts of the country (so interesting! Chicken and waffles! Shrimp and grits! And that's just a start...), how much or little they eat, and how important food is to our mental and emotional well-being. Just look at that cookbook stuffed with all those recipes torn from the newspaper, from backs of boxes, written on yellowing paper, saved. Food is a social tool. It's a celebration. It's a commiseration. It's everything! And I have eaten literally everything in this past several years on the road.

I used to be a vegetarian. I used to eat whole foods. Organic whole foods. I happily ate plants, grains, beans, fruits, nuts, and combined my proteins and got along just fine. Then came book publication and all the road travel that attended making a living as a suddenly-single parent, and there was no way to eat a sufficient supper at the 1,456 airports I've waited in, in the past six years, not to mention the "complimentary breakfasts" at the Hampton Inns of the world. (Have you ever, seriously, microwaved one of those egg concoctions in plastic wrap with a biscuit wrapped around it, with what passes for cheese in the middle? I have. Be clogged my arteries.)

Then there is the food from my books (I always make sure there are good cooks in my books, cooks with recipes like the ones you see here), food which I've eaten in many of the 4,267 schools I've visited in the past six years. I have slurped down 582 root beer floats and 16 gallons of sweet iced tea. I have eaten 148 tuna fish sandwiches, 11 plates of Vienna sausages and Ritz Crackers, 3 bowls of succotash, forty-eleven Comfort-Snowberger Brownies, a whole half of Mrs. Elling's Chicken and Potato Chip Casserole. Don't get me started on the mountain of Moon Pies (and, I'm sorry to say, I adore them). I've eaten foods I didn't even remember I'd put in my books, such as a loaf of prune bread (still warm), a quart of stewed tomatoes (I promise) and zucchini six ways to Sunday, mostly fried.

All numbers approximate.

Still and all, I am not complaining. I was delighted to go on tour with THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS this fall -- what great friends I made (what great food I ate!) -- and I remain touched by the ways teachers have combined math and science and social studies with a novel study and have made the land of Ruby Lavender, Comfort Snowberger, House Jackson, and even Joe and John Henry in FREEDOM SUMMER come alive for young readers.

Now... I'm laughing out loud as I type that because it comes on the heels of me saying next that my clothes don't fit anymore. Am I still touched? Yes, I am. In more ways than one. And I have had fun, lots of fun. However...

I weigh more than I've ever weighed in my life, and it's time to get off the road and eat sensibly, where I can control what's on my fork.

Time to gather vegetables. FRESH vegetables! Organic vegetables! Time to drink water, all day long. Sip tea. Time to break out the miso and tofu and tempeh, time to simmer beans on the back of the stove all morning and bake a cast-iron skillet full of cornbread made from coarsely-ground cornmeal. Time to steam the organic broccoli and grate a bit of fresh parmesan on the whole-wheat pasta and toss some sunflower seeds into the spinach salad. Time to get eat healthy -- healthily -- again.

That's an intention for 2008. What's one of your intentions for the new year? Put it in your notebook. Why is it important to you? What connotations does it conjure? What does it look like, this intention fulfilled? What does it smell like, sound like, taste like, feel like? What does it remind you of? What memory? Write me 500 words. Write short, one page, front and back or less. Do not meander, as I have done. ("Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!") No one need see it but you; it's for your notebook. Write it for you. You'll use it later. You'll see.

Then go read the Sunday New York Times appreciation of Peg Bracken, author of THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK, and one of my heroes. She died this year, but her recipes will always be here, her legacy to women in my mother's generation and beyond. Aside from her signature wisecracks (her recipe for "Hootenholler Whiskey Quick Bread" begins "1/4 cup bourbon, plus more for you"), she wrote that most of the recipes she traded with a group of women friends "were copied from batter-spattered file cards belonging to people who had copied them from other batter-spattered file cards, because a good recipe travels as far, and fast, as a good joke."

Exactly. Just look how far those Charleston Receipts have traveled. Almost as far as I have in the past six years.

Don't forget about that intention. 500 words. Write short and true. Begin with the word "Because...."

Happy Happy, Joy Joy!




Here is Elmo Hubert Lumpkin. He's the one on the right. He joined the family yesterday. We celebrated Christmas yesterday, since we were all together, and today we go in different directions... but not Elmo. Elmo came to stay.








We especially like his shoes.













We brought him inside so he could keep warm.











We dressed him up, too, in a brand-new apron a friend sent our way (thank you, Kate!).

This spring we'll put him outside and stick some pansies in his basket.

I'm sending lots of joy your way today. Stay safe. Play. Laugh. Love.

Singing The Season

Today is the winter solstice, as many bloggers are noting. When I was ten, I had never heard of the winter solstice... I wonder if it made its way into western thinking along with the new age movement in the '70s. At any rate, as a Methodist kid of southern, military, Methodist parents, living in largely WASPy Prince Georges County, Maryland (I know what you're thinking), just outside the District of Columbia in the mid-Sixties, what I knew of December was Christmas. And singing. I loved singing.

Down the street on Coolridge Road was a young woman who loved singing, too. I don't even remember her name -- I think she was in college, still living at home. I do remember how she organized the kids in the neighborhood each Christmas, how we'd have two practices at her house in front of her piano, and how we'd go out, on a pre-arranged night, and carol all over the neighborhood, freezing, giggling, singing, and how we were treated to something sweet and warm at each house. When we got to your house, you would pick the two songs we'd sing while your parents hovered in the doorway wrapped in jackets, beaming at you. They had been waiting for this moment.

Then we'd be ushered inside for cookies or cocoa (my house) or -- and this one we dreaded each year, because we were well-mannered and had to drink it -- tomato juice punch. Warm. In punch glasses. Gale Morris's mother served this each year, and each year we'd lobby Gale to get her mother to serve something else, but each year there it was again, tomato juice punch. Warm.

We'd belt out "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and trundle to the next house, our collective breath surrounding us in a cloud of fog, and we'd begin again. I looked forward to this night as much as I looked forward to Christmas Eve. Then, one fall, this woman's younger brother died after being hit in the temple with a baseball. She didn't issue the invitation to come to practice, so we didn't go. We didn't carol that year. We never carolled again in that neighborhood. And then I moved to Charleston, South Carolina with my memories of Christmases carolling through the dark and cold and cocoa and warm tomato juice with my neighborhood friends.

I grew up and I grew jaded about Christmas. But sometimes I hear carolers, or I smell the cold December night air, or I am handed a tomato juice punch, warm, and I remember those years when I looked forward to the simple pleasure of singing with my friends, led by a young woman who loved singing with us through the dark.

EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS is the title of one of my novels. We are all little birds, that's what I meant to say in that book. We all have songs to sing. Those songs -- and by songs I mean our stories -- buoy us, nurture us, explain to us, define us in time and place, and carry us through the cold, dark night. Merry Everything, even Christmas, especially song. And, most especially... stories.

Snow in Atlanta!

Okay. Get ready.
We've got snow in Atlanta. Here it is. Hannah and I committed shopping yesterday at IKEA. Then we had to visit the new gigantic Target at Atlantic Station, right next to the IKEA. Then we remembered that they're making snow at Atlantic Station, every night at 7:30 and 9pm during the holidays.


We hot-footed it over to the gigantic tree -- look how small Hannah is -- so we could catch the snow.

Now, we've been in trouble already, here in Atlanta, over snowmaking plans at my beloved Stone Mountain. So I wondered how the folks at Atlantic Station -- the new, hip, "in" place to live and shop (I could never live here -- not nearly hip enough... I can barely qualify to shop here) -- are justifying their snow making.

What we found: the tree isn't real and neither is the snow. It's foam. So when it started snowing, we didn't get snowed on. We got foamed. For three whole minutes. And THRONGS of Atlantans came with their babies and strollers and cameras to take photographs of their kids in the snow.

We giggled and took photographs of each other, just like everyone else did. It DID look like we were inside a snowstorm and it WAS fun to be foamed. But where does this foam come from? We have a water shortage here in Atlanta, nay, a drought, a major drought. We've all been saving water like crazy. It's all we talk about in polite conversation with strangers. How are we justifying making snow?

We turned into investigative reporters for you. Here's what we found. Okay... but where DOES the water come from? Dunno. Couldn't find the answer online either. Maybe I'm not supposed to be able to find it. Maybe I'm not an investigative reporter.

At any rate, we had fun, had supper at Doc Green's, came home, and collapsed. I'm still recovering from the road, and I crave frequent naps. And egg nog. Think I'll have a nap and an egg nog right now. Not in that order.

Here's my Christmas tree in a little corner of my candle-lighted living room -- it can't compare with the one at Atlantic Station, but I love it just the same. (Actually, I have the tree downstairs this year, with all the ornaments from years past hanging on it haphazardly -- I just sit there in the dark with the twinkling lights and stare and remember -- do you do that?)

Over at the The '07 Tour Blog, I've wrapped up what I learned about my week teaching at Canterbury Woods Elementary School. If you've come here to One Pomegranate, I hope you'll consider subscribing so I don't lose you when I stop posting at the Tour Blog. So far, almost half of you have done that -- I don't know who you are, I just see numbers of subscribers, but I've heard from bunches of you on email, and I so appreciate your kind comments and thoughts -- thank you so much. I want to create something that feels useful and meaningful here -- a real conversation. Whatever that means. We'll figure it out together.

Things won't change -- same stuffs that I chronicled at the tour blog will happen here at One Pomegranate -- it's just that I had this hair-brained, inspired, cockamamie idea that I wanted THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS tour and the travel year to have a definitive beginning and end to it and to have its own home. It will always be there for you to come back to when you want to, when I want to. We'll just go forward right here, at One Pomegranate.

After my egg nog. And my nap.

Growing in Spirit

I'm having a good time. Three of my four children are "home" at the moment. Zach and Hannah live in Atlanta, and Jason is visiting. We're catching up on movies and eating out and reminiscing, we're climbing Stone Mountain, going to the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coke (I have issues with the World of Coke, but now is not the time), and who knows what goes on after I go to bed at night. They are "out." Well, that's not entirely true.

Hannah is finishing up the semester at Oglethorpe -- she's pulling doubles between the duties of school and the pull of family/home right now. Zach, my DJ son, who lives two miles from us, is working at a local restaurant, but manages to scoop up his brother for late night... something. Drum and bass, for one thing. I'm trying to learn more about the origins of hip-hop and drum & bass and more, so I can have a conversation about it with Zach. Zach's into the beat. Jim, my husband, is into the melody, the harmonics, the instruments, the live musicians, as he is a jazz musician. So it's an interesting mix of musical stuff we have going in our house these days.

Over at the Book Tour Blog, I'm writing about the teaching of writing in elementary schools. Soon you'll be reading those sorts of posts here, too, as I phase out the Tour Blog and continue the conversation here at One Pomegranate. Lots of stories to tell. Lots of learning to do. I learned so much in November when I taught personal narrative writing at Canterbury Woods Elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia. I'm still processing it.

Cookies aren't being baked, decorating lags behind, the tree isn't up yet, but that's okay. We're basking in one another's company, and that's the finest gift of the season.

What are you doing these days, as you speed toward the holidays and the end of the year? Are you writing? I know some writers who are busy at their desks, producing the next novel, the next essay, the next draft... I stand in awe. It's hard for me to focus on more than one happening at a time, always has been. I need to put all my energies toward family, or home, or the work-in-progress, or the move, or survival, or whatever is the most pressing notion at hand.

Right now, it's the notion of family gathered together. So the writing is waiting for my full attention, which it will have, soon. And I will go back to it with a full heart, richer for having given my full attentions to the folks who are inhabiting my mind and heart and home these days.

Time to throw another log on the fire, wash up last night's dishes, and get dressed for whatever the day brings. I think it's an act of courage to get up every morning. We never know what lies ahead. So maybe it's an act of faith as well.

I'm reading a lot about Bobby Kennedy right now. More about this soon -- but I want to leave you with something he said over and over again as he walked through the projects in Bedford-Stuyvesant, or the hollers of Appalachia, the streets of Watts, the halls of Congress: "We can do better."

I think about that with my teaching, my mothering, my writing, my learning, my living. It's not that I think I'm doing so badly these days in knowing how to live on the planet. It's that I know I can do better. And in that doing better, I grow as a human being. I become more than I am right now. That's what I want to do this holiday season. Grow. Become. Be.

Here's a poem I love by Cavafy. "Half the House" is the title:

He who hopes to grow in spirit
will have to transcend obedience and respect.
He will hold to some laws
but he will mostly violate
both law and custom, and go beyond
the established, inadequate norm.
Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.
He will not be afraid of the destructive act:
half the house will have to come down.
This way he will grow virtuously into wisdom.

I Got Married Today....

...36 years ago. In 1971, I was 18. My husband was 17. We were going to have a baby. That baby is 35 years old today. Her name is Alisa. Today she has babies of her own. She was precious to me then; she is precious to me now. The difference in my love for her then and my love for her now: Then I was scared to death. Now I am... what? Older, calmer, saner, wiser?

Today I am resolute, that's what I am. But I was resolute then, too. I just knew nothing, nothing about marriage, about being a mother, about being an adult! I was resolute in my love for my daughter, even before I met her. I remain resolute in my love for her today.


I'm learning how to talk about this time in my young life. I'm learning that, as harrowing as it sometimes was, there was so much beauty in those years. I'm learning how to tell my stories with as much truth as I can muster. The more I tell my stories, the more truth I discover and reveal. There is an AA saying I love: "We're only as sick as our secrets." I can hear my mother's response now: "They aren't secrets; they're just nobody else's business!" and perhaps she would be right. My mother was circumspect, and a product of her generation. A product of the American South as well. As am I.

But I came of age in the Sixties, when rules were broken and taboos were split wide open at the seams. I was split wide open, too. I tried desperately to Band-aid my life together. For years I was defined -- and judged -- by my statistics: Unwed mother, teenage bride and mother, battered wife, two children by the time I was 21, divorced at 22, disowned daughter, homeless person, working mother, twice-married woman... the list goes on. And on.

Somewhere long-about 40, I started to understand that I had stories to tell and that telling those stories would save me. Other people's courage to tell their stories was what helped me see that mine had value, that my life held within it the seeds to be of good use to someone else, to my children, and to myself.

That's when I got serious about writing for children. I wanted to remember the child I had been, the child who had wanted to be loved, to belong, to be safe; the child who wanted to matter. In my fiction, all my characters want to matter. They are all faced with choices to make. Those choices define their lives.

Thirty-six years ago on this day, I had no clue about the path my life was about to take. I had no way to know. I hardly knew the boy I married. I had few skills to grapple with what lay ahead, and little support. But I learned. And, as I learned, I got better at being a parent, a friend, a partner, a writer, a human being.

So. It's my anniversary of sorts. I've lived through a short, tumultuous marriage, a long, challenging one, and now, here comes a sweet, generous-hearted union. I created a new anniversary date this past July 30 when I married Jim. We first met in high school, in Charleston, South Carolina. Jim has never married. That was his choice. "I waited for you," he likes to say. He is off playing piano tonight -- holiday music -- for folks who are making merry this season.

Each choice is so precious. All choices lead home. Some routes are more circuitous than others. I am 54 years old. I am home. And I am glad.

Breakfast at Home

I'm off the road. I can control what I eat, when I sleep, how I move, where I go, and how I get there. Bliss. I might even break out the Christmas decorations today. I'm rested enough. I think.

Time to pull back into myself, after so much outward action. Time to regulate... everything. In a good way. Here is my at-home breakfast, most mornings.

Yogurt/Fruit/Nut Concoction
All measurements approximate

Into a humble and lovely soup bowl dispense:

3/4 c. plain low-fat yogurt (Stoneyfield Farms)
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. protein powder

stir

add 1/2 banana, sliced (or a sincere ripe pear)

Next, listen to your taste buds. Add a liberal sprinkling of:
dried cranberries
sunflower seeds
walnuts
or whatever you've got on hand. Sometimes I use sliced almonds instead of walnuts or golden raisins instead of cranberries. You choose.

Sit in front of crackling fire and enjoy with hot coffee. You've given yourself a protein boost for the day, and you've coated your intestinal tract with great bacteria. All's well with the world. I send you forth to conquer something. Your fears, maybe?

I'll join you in that quest.

We Like Beets

We like beets, yes we do. We like winter vegetables -- squashes of all kinds, beets, turnips, potatoes, onions, and one red apple.

So I baked them all together this afternoon. This recipe is adapted from one I saw my friend Jackie Martin put together in Iowa last month. Jackie used beets, hubbard squash, turnips, potatoes and onions. I didn't have turnips, and I used red instead of white potatoes, but otherwise the root vegetables are the same.

Here's how I began:


I added an apple to the mix.


I coated my favorite metal pan with good olive oil and cut up everything and added it to the pan.

Then I realized the pan was too small. Jackie used a cookie sheet sort of affair, low sides, all vegetables in one layer so they can all brown evenly.






So I got out a bigger pan, a glass Pyrex pan, but it was clear that I needed still more room.











So I got out my biggest pan, the one I make the granola in, and started over yet again:

Baked Root Vegetables
adapted from watching Jackie Martin at work

Choose whatever root vegetables strike your fancy:
fresh beets
fresh turnips
fresh hubbard squash
fresh red and/or white potatoes
plump, juicy onions

one red apple is a good choice as well (I used a gala)

Cut everything into bite-sized chunks (large bites). No need to peel.

Put into baking pan and try not to pile too deep (I always pile too deep, but it's okay), as you want everything to have that crispy-outside baked appeal.

Drizzle some outstanding olive oil onto your vegetables... into this olive you will have added:

salt
pepper
a bit of red pepper if you are adventurous
lots of good garlic (I used garlic powder; it's fine)

Stir to coat your vegetables.

Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour and a half, stirring every 20 mins. or so. How golden! How delicious! How filling!

Jackie's root vegetables had a drier taste than mine, sort of like a perfect baked potato is dry and flaky, but crispy on the outside. She also peeled her squash and beets. I did not. I like the fiber.

My vegetables were more steamy, I'm sure because they were piled on top of one another more, instead of in one layer in the pan. S'okay. They were great on day one, and still succulent the next day when I heated them on top of the stove in a Revere Ware pot and took them to a friend's house as my contribution to a lasagne dinner. Just the colors of this dish say soooooothe yourself, come be home.

And it's so easy to make. Serve with warm, crusty bread (you can see the bread I chose, above), buttered or not. We had some angel hair pasta on the side with feta cheese and diced tomatoes. Not enough protein in this meal, I think. I'll work on it. I did drink a glass of milk. I was full.

Testing, Testing

Hannah is home for the evening and studying for a paper on the Prague Spring. Jim is sleeping after two gigs today, one at a country club and one at Calloway Gardens. I puttered most of this second day home, staying in front of the fire, reading and catching up on email. I cleaned the kitchen. Made hamburgers for me 'n Hannah. First hamburger I had eaten in literally years. Listened to Christmas music while I hung my outside lights -- a peace sign (white lights on a hula hoop frame).

Jason arrives in four days. Zach has a new job at Thrive, a downtown restaurant. Testing, testing. Finding my voice. Always, finding my voice.