Soup is Good Food January 31, 2008

After a grueling day in a week that has felt so so so so long, I realized I have neglected my happy little home on the internet.Where to begin?  Well frankly, the more I move about the more good things I hear in the community for this other endeavor I am working on.  

That said, ugh, I wish I had known how busy I was going to get a year ago, I so would have planned better.  But this blog is not about bitching, this blog is about believing…(don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, don’t stop ….)

 

However after twelve hours at the office with other endeavor minutes thrown in, I came home hungry and without much food in the house.  So it was a great relief and irony that I had a chance to sit down and be inspired. 

 

O perhaps it takes me so little to be inspired but when you think about it, what are we going to do about all this rain?  I mean, ugh, it sucks, so why not succumb to it by cozying up to it and making a little soup. 

 

For those of us who find great joy in the kitchen, soup is a great resource to have up your sleeve.  It’s relatively easy especially when you have a top notch blender or adequate food processor at the ready, o I hope you didn’t think I was talking about cracking open a can of the Campbell’s.  I am simply appropriating their tag line. 

 

So if you’re shut in and reading this blog, a few seasonal vegetables and one tasty blue cheese will be about all you need to have filling, decadent but deceptively healthy looking soup.  I must give props to an ex boyfriend who helped create this recipe.  It’s a good thing we are still close friends or cooking would be a bittersweet experience.  I totally digress of course to bring you to:

 

Blue Broccoli Soup

 

2 cups of vegetable stock

 

1 onion chopped

 

1 smaller russet potato (or whichever potato you have around)

 

4 cloves garlic chopped

 

1 head of broccoli chopped

 

1 cup chop blue/Roquefort/stilton cheese

 

*Place chopped vegetables in a pot and bring to a boil, reduce heat until fork slides through potato.

 

*Then pour contents in pot into blender.

 

*Blend thoroughly, stopping to pour in blue cheese.

            -you may wish to pour in garlic powder if you want more of garlic kick!

 

Mmmm, mmm, mmm, pure loveliness as the strong flavors of garlic, bleu cheese and broccoli settle into your mouth. 

Now another variation is to utilize cauliflower instead of broccoli.  And then yet another variation is to make both but pour the cauliflower into a bowl and then place about 1-3 teaspoons of the broccoli soup in the middle of the bowl.  Try this at your next dinner party. Trust me, people will think you’ve got Martha Stewart chained to your stove in the kitchen.  I don’t know why but it just looks fantastic.

 

And that’s where I must claim total props as that was my gift to my ex.  He may have had the adventurous food spirit but I was the one who knew how to package it.  Isn’t that how things are supposed to work out though, even if they end in a way we had not intended?  Everyone gains something positive from one another.  

Now how is that soup?   

 

It’s official January 24, 2008

“So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father’s words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.” Martin Luther King III

 

And so thinking that John Edwards would stay above the pandering proved uh, wrongo as I received a letter saying Martin Luther King III sent Edwards a letter saying essentially keep going, your just like my daddy, keep going it helps Hillary whom I’m not saying I’m supporting but I ain’t endorsing you fo sho. 

 

Okay I’m being cycnically but that’s what you get and that’s not what this blog is about but I’m checking emails after a red eye and well, there you go!

 

Onward and upward!

King, Obama, Clinton, LBJ? January 22, 2008

I have to say as someone who has been an Edwards supporter, I wade into this topic with some thoughts with out a real passion for either candidate.  That said, Rev. Jim Wallis did have something to say on the matter and I think he said it much better than I could. It’s from last week but the solace that a 3 day weekend provides is the opportunity to catch up email and other readings.   Yes, there were certainly other vital things (like the Lower Bottoms Neighborhood Association Voter Registration drive) that I could have done but with the exception of a one year old’s birthday party on Sunday and the beyond packed Angela Davis speech at the Taylor Methodist church yesterday put on by the Attitidunal Healing Center, I was inside for much of the three days reading and when it became too difficult to read off the computer, it was reading the Oakland City General Plan and when that became too difficult, because it’s the Oakland City General Plan, it was off to Starbucks.  Hence why my 3 of 3 posts over a 3 day weekend did not culminate yesterday or even today but one more is on it’s way.  Until then, Jim Wallis should keep you busy.

MLK, the Holiday weekend January 19, 2008

The first of three posts.  In his 1959 Sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after-effects of choosing nonviolence over violence: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.” In the same sermon, he contrasted violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”  

Let the Children Lead Us January 15, 2008

In spite of the Awfulness, our community has rallied behind our youth.I especially applaud the teacher who refers to the injured young man as her kid , even though she taught him last year.  I totally get her, once they are in your lives, they are your kids and they matter to you as if they were your own. The Bake sale will take place at Crocker tomorrow at around 2.  I have back to back meetings so be sure to buy an extra cookie for me, would ya?  

Brown Sugar January 15, 2008

In my aim to highlight the positive, I can’t but help but shine a light on West Oakland’s newest business, as in, open today, Brown Sugar Kitchen.  Saturday was my second chance to hang out with the chef/owner.  My first was completely random as I saw a party going on late one week night as I was driving by and decided to pop my head in.  I do these things because I always expect everything will turn out well. In this case I was right and I was welcomed like an old friend and sent home with the fixins.

It’s cross posted at Novometro, the website that everybody in Oakland is reading.

I’m an optimist January 11, 2008

but also a realist as well. So when the SF Chronicle came calling I said this. 

in requiem January 8, 2008

 

When Death Comes

       by Mary Oliver

When its over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. 

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.

 

 I learned that Steven Jimenez died in a simply worded email from Peggy Moore that said just that.

I’m not sure how the phone came to my ear and the ring to the receiver but there I was leaving her a frantic call me message.  Is this some kind of sick joke I thought? I mean the man was 52 and had you told me he was in his 40s I would have believed you.   It just didn’t make any sense.

A month ago he stood inches, not feet, inches from where I sit now, engaged in passionate political discourse with Kathy & Ritchie in this very spot and looking up with some of my spinach artichoke dip on bread in his hand saying “hey you’re a pretty good cook man” and then continuing his dialogue.  I knew he was a man of the world, engaged in a number of activities beyond our Rainbow Chamber to include the Jack London District Association, the Alameda County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Portabello Homeowner’s Association, in addition to being the managing partner of his law firm’s Oakland office.  

But wow.  That was just a part of who he was.  He was involved in so, so, so much that as someone who can hardly keep my head above water with my few activities, I am in awe.  

The speakers, thankfully noted his kids.  He always began a conversation with a “I was talking to my son, he’s…” or “well I was just talking to my daughter and…”  He was divorced from their mother and living about 100 miles from them and gay and super busy and I can’t assume his relationship with them but damn, I find it hard enough to be present on the phone for my round the country family, whom I cherish, and my boyfriend but this guy knew so much about what was going on in their lives.  And the church, the church was filled with people of all ethnicities.  It was beautiful.  And his best friend from the 9th grade is the Mayor of Antioch spoke with tears and truth, the founder of his firm spoke, on behalf of the Bar of the State of California another law partner spoke, the Chief of Staff from Senator Torlakson spoke while introducing the resolution about how she too knew him and his passionate advocacy and our own Peggy from Oakland spoke.  

In addition to the Mayor’s proclamation, she spoke about him being her “homie”, her “dawg” and that they talked every day and how they were going to take over the world.  It was very authentic, heartfelt.  It was very Oaklandish and I was proud.

Steven’s loss leaves Peggy & I and a disparate few to take up the mantle of the Rainbow Chamber.  Myself, I am unprepared and overwhelmed.  I am aware though, that I am the right path, at least with my life.

It is a path blazed by Steve Jimenez. When it ended he was wedded to amazement.  

He did not simply visit this world.

 

Wrapping our Wings Around Him January 7, 2008

 

“Take a look at this story about my kid,” I said as I tossed him page F3 from today’s Style Section. 

 

“Your kid?” my favorite San Antonian asked. 

 

“Yeah, Yeah, they’re all my kids” I replied. 

 

“This rapper from Oakland? What are you doing with rappers?” he asked incredulously just as he had when this childless adult said “my kid.” 

 

“Read the story,” I said. And you know the whole thing makes me beam just as a proud parent would beam.  I mean more than seeing my own mug on TV or picture in the paper, I really was so proud to see this young man blossom and get some recognition as well as re-styling.  I mean its never one thing in changing someone’s life and its never one person that makes it happen.  It really does take a village to raise a child and when your a kid of six being raised by a single parent in Oakland the prospects of “the village” getting involved haven’t looked that great. 

 

So D.Nok is doing it. And along the way, this kid who was a really rough youngster when he walked in the door, has had “wings wrapped around him, found a community that was a bit more dependable than his “pardners” on the street and really has grown into someone we can be proud of.   In addition to winning awards at NARAS, which is beyond phenomenal, I mean these are the people that produce the Grammys, you realize, D.Nok is now working at Juvenile Hall teaching other kids like him, where he was, about music in Juvenile Hall .He is taking his life’s example back juvenile hall so that kids learn new ways of living, new skills and make connections to real programs they re-enter society.

 

 This is a HUGE step because all too often young people from juvvie recycle back into “the system” because nothing on the inside has prepared them for a better way on the outside and so all they know, as shown to them by those on the street, is a way back into jail.  And in the process someone else has gotten ripped off/punkd/hurt/assaulted/killed.  If we can get these services to youth before they leave and D.Nok, not I, not Nancy Nadel, not Mayor Dellums, is doing it, then we can make great headway in losing these kids to being perpetrators or victims in the homicide statistics.

 

Additionally, D.Nok is an intern at CovRecords teaching other kids who haven’t gone that juvvie route and are filling their afternoon with something positive like making a CD of their own to hold as a point of pride. And leading the Village that wraps their wings around D.Nok, is Galen who hides in the background of it all but is really the leader in saving young lives from the street and helping the roll onto something quite larger, something like a makeover by Macy’s and acknowledgement by the National Recording Arts and Sciences Academy and a major piece in the Sunday Style section of the SF Chronicle.  Yeah, its work like this that makes it easy to get out of bed every day and provides the sustenance in knowing that you are part of a village that is changing lives one Oakland kid at a time.

 

Resolutions January 7, 2008

In the same vein as my resolutions, this post  sounds like another example of a good idea.