My first attempt at cooking in the raw

"Cooking in the raw" sounds like something they do at a nudist camp. (It kinda cracks me up that "nudist camp" will now be a searchable phrase on my blog, but I assure you I was fully clothed.)

I made a raw blueberry-strawberry cream pie this weekend. I have no photos, but I can tell you that it was delicious and even quite attractive. The "cream" part was made from ground soaked cashews blended with ground dates, honey, vanilla, lemon juice and zest and some coconut oil. I may be leaving something out there; I don't have the recipe with me. I'll have to post exactly what I did, but I took the recipe from Renee Loux's excellent book on raw cooking (oxymoron?) Living Cuisine: The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods.

The raw food diet isn't something I'm interested in adopting exclusively, but I find it interesting (not least because you can make pies and other desserts that are delicious and actually good for you. I had a piece as a morning snack today, and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty - all that good protein and fresh fruit and antioxidants.)

We also (finally) bought a dehydrator. I'd planned on an Excalibur, but they're just more money than I wanted to spend on something that (let's face it) might be a temporary obsession. So I bought this $60 version instead. We used it a lot this weekend, and I'm really quite pleased. I'll be making Renee's pecan sandies this week using the dehydrator.

(Yes, yes, I know. After 4 months of radio silence I'm suddenly back and talking about nudist camps. How often will I be here? Well, we'll see. The plan is to be pretty consistent, but that's always been the plan.)

Milk Toast Musings

Funny how one things leads to another, especially when it comes to internet research. I was reading a blog featuring a recipe from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book. Being a breakfast devotee, I naturally went to Amazon to check out this promising-sounding item. I was flipping through the online preview when I came across a recipe for milk toast. Unfortunately, the recipe continued onto a page not included in the preview, but the name itself suggested a dish my mother used to make with stale bread when I was little.

I don't recall her calling it milk toast (though she may have), but her recipe consisted of soaking the stale bread in milk, toasting it in the oven and sprinkling it with cinnamon sugar, and that certainly sounds like it should be called milk toast.

So I Googled it. In addition to several recipes and pictures of milky, cinnamon-y, toasty goodness, I came across the word milquetoast, a word I'd encountered before but had forgotten about. It's a noun meaning a meek, timid person, and it's based on a cartoon character named Caspar Milquetoast in H.T. Webster's series "The Timid Soul" that began in the 1920s and continued in various forms until the 1950s. Webster took the name for his character from the fact that milk toast is fairly bland in flavor.

But I liked it. And, from my mother's point of view, I imagine it was cheap, simple to make and provided a use for stale bread rather than wasting it. We didn't waste food when I was growing up.

Thanks to that blog and the addictive nature of online information gathering, I have now found a new cookbook to lust after, recalled a pleasant childhood memory, learned a bit of useless etymological trivia, rediscovered a purpose for stale bread, and figured out what I'm having for breakfast this weekend. All in less than 30 minutes.

Hope is always the most important.

Without that, we got nothin'.

I was walking to lunch in Annapolis today when I passed a couple on the street. We did one of those things where we both moved to get out of the others' way but ended up getting in the way again so I laughed and said "Excuse me." My smile prompted the woman to stop and tell me their story. They came to Annapolis from a rural county in Maryland to look for work. They're temporarily homeless, their child is living with one of their parents, and they're having a hard time finding jobs.

They're also, I gathered, having a hard time finding people who are friendly and patient enough to listen to what they have to say.

They offered me their names and contact information and said they'd be happy to do any yard work that I might have available. I walked with them to an ATM and gave them $40. (She hugged me.) I don't really have any yard work for them to do, but I wasn't about to walk away from those people without giving them something.

I used to purposely walk through the streets of D.C. when I lived and worked there (and Boston when I was a regular visitor) with money in my pocket so I could give it to people who asked for it. I've given money to many street people shortly after watching the person in front of me tell them haughtily to get a job. I still vividly remember the woman on C St. SE who I stopped and spoke to as I was walking to the metro after seeing a play at the Folger one night. And the man near the Verizon Center who took my hand and held it when all I'd given him was $5. And the man in Mobile, Alabama, who I met on my way to go hang out at a bar with some friends.

I've heard lots of people mouth off many reasons why they refuse to give money to homeless people on the street. Maybe they're right (I don't think they are), but the fact is none of those people have a clear understanding of the poverty problem in this country. I don't really either. It's not entirely our fault. We've all been brainwashed in this into this Horatio Alger-esque, "land of opportunity" belief that anyone who isn't successful in this country has only themselves to blame.

That's crap. And, in the economic downturn we've been experiencing in the last few years, a lot of people who formerly used to believe that are discovering that hard work, determination and courage do not always bring well-earned food and shelter and that it takes a lot more courage to be jobless and homeless and still keep trying every day.

Here's my philosophy on giving money to homeless people: I don't have much else to offer. I don't have hiring power, beyond working in my own yard and most of that I do myself on a regular enough basis that I just don't need the help. I have more than I need, and I've never known true poverty. I don't know what kind of desperation, humility and courage it takes to walk up to a stranger and ask for money. I may be facing a lapse in pay next week if the Tea Party Republicans in Congress continue to screw the country in their own childish attempt to get their way, but I'm not facing it with the kind of fear that some people must be feeling right now.

And I would rather be taken for a naive, gullible fool than a cruel one. So I give what I have, and I hope that it buys food and not alcohol.

I believe these people were genuinely in a rut and needed someone to show them some kindness. $40 won't really do a whole lot in the long run, but if nothing else, maybe it will give them some hope that not everyone out there is self-centered, ignorant and cynical. Enough hope to keep trying for another day, which may be all it takes.

I've been thinking about this all day, though, and I'd really like to offer more practical, "teach a man to fish" sort of help to these people (as opposed to the single "fish" that I gave them this afternoon.) I have a way to contact them. Anybody have any suggestions?