Nourishing an Occupation 10: Occupy Thanksgiving!

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photo by Jeff Green

Thanksgiving 2011 was one of the most joyful days at Occupy Poughkeepsie so far and one of the most memorable Thanksgivings of my life. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I know the history of it is fraught with injustice and worse, but for me, what it has become is a day dedicated to gratitude. As Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice.”

Understanding that gratitude, a day of rest, and community outreach can all happen at the same time, the Occupy Poughkeepsie Moms & Dads got together to organize and host a community potluck and meal. We invited people by word of mouth, by making announcements at general assemblies and rallies, by posting it on the Occupy Poughkeepsie website and Facebook, and with a cardboard sign at the side of the road. As is the case in events like this, when the day arrived, we had no idea if anyone would come, if we'd have enough food, or if the weather would cooperate. At the end of the day, plenty of people came, we had more than enough food, and a beautiful sunny day.

When we arrived and started to set up, there was even a reporter there from YNN. He spent the day with us and enjoyed a plate of food. Click the picture below to watch his report:


As food arrived, we set it up on long tables. Volunteers, like Nikki & Russell (below), made sure that hot food stayed hot and cold food stayed cold by setting it up on wire frames with cans of sterno below.


We covered the tables with white paper and laid out crayons so that kids of all ages could decorate for us.


Lots of neighborhood kids joined us for dinner. After shooting hoops, their motto turned out to be 'Eat dessert first'. After they sampled the pies, some did actually try the mashed potatoes and I may have even seen one young boy try the green beans. We had enough food left over that some of the kids made up plates to take home to family members who weren't able to be in the park with us.


People brought turkey, Tofurkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, collard greens, green bean casserole, mushroom salad, green salad, cranberry salad, lasagna, macaroni & cheese, oh my! Marina brought her signature rice & peas and a small friend.


And then there was dessert. I made pumpkin bread pudding. We also had pumpkin pie, apple pie, apple cake, homemade chocolates, crumb cake, cheese cake, blueberry crumble, and even the kids couldn't eat it all.


We sat on the bleachers next to the basketball court and enjoyed our meal together. Our conversation turned to gratitude and we discussed what we are grateful for in our personal lives. Many of us talked about the Occupy movement as a focus of gratitude and change. For me, it is a celebration of the death of apathy. Cars drove by just a few feet away. Many beeped and waved, a few shouted 'Get a job' and one yelled 'Happy Thanksgiving, Hippies' in a not-nice way. None of that put a damper on our spirits.

photo by Jeff Green

After we had eaten our main course, a group of about 8 of us assembled a large tray of food - turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and pie - and walked down to the Poughkeepsie Police station. In gratitude that the relationship between police and occupiers has been very positive here in Poughkeepsie, unlike some other cities, and in solidarity with working people who are required to be on the job on holidays we shared our abundance with the police officers. One of the ways we aim to change society is to see one another as real people instead of as resources to exploit and to treat others as we'd like to be treated.

Nourishing an Occupation 9: the Quaker Bellydance Peace Team

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"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
-- Leonard Bernstein

So far, in this blog, I've talked about nourishment only in terms of food - but it's not the only way to nourish. Our bodies and spirits need to be nourished in other ways as well. This post is about nourishment in the form of dance and music - in other words in beauty and joy.

Occupy Poughkeepsie held a big rally and march, 'the People's Day' on Nov 12, 2011. Often, what motivates people to get off their sofas and onto the street is anger. That is useful as a first step but it's not sustainable and ultimately it doesn't build the kind of movement or society that we want to live in all the time. Joy and beauty are much better long-term responses to injustice. In most rallies, you have a mixture of both. As an activist and organizer, I feel that we can be deliberate about fostering one energy or the other. I choose to promote beauty.

One way of doing that is through music and dance. I'm a drummer and I've seen that when one introduces rhythm into a gathering - if it is done well and is not so overpowering that no one can hear themselves think - something happens. If one observes carefully, you can see a subtle shift in body language even in people who appear to not be paying attention.


Direct action is about putting our bodies into the play of creating change in the world. That means being aware of our bodies and managing how they feel. In the face of threat or challenge, adrenaline floods our bloodstream and we experience a 'fight or flight' response that makes holding a discipline of non-violence more difficult. We ignore our bodies at our peril.


One way to help our bodies, minds, and spirits connect to our best intentions is through movement and dance. The Quaker Bellydance Peace Team is about doing that. My collaborator, dancer Donna Barret, and I are not a performance group. We are a participation group. Our goal is to invite others to play and dance with us and experience the movement of positive energy towards peace and justice.


On Saturday, Nov 12, we were scheduled right in the middle of a long lineup of speakers and performers. The overall tone was very positive and about building community and reinventing the institutions of our society as much as about tearing down the power structure of oppression. We began by inviting the crowd to join us in a moment of silence and then began slowly to drum and dance. As the tempo increase, Donna passed out some little tambourines and encouraged people to clap, shake, and dance. After a moment, a man sat down next to me with a saxophone and asked if he could join in.

He started to play, and right away, I heard a beautiful trumpet joining in from across the park. I searched with my eyes to find the source of the amazing trumpet counterpoint, and finally found a grey-haired man standing behind a cluster of people holding signs. In a moment, 2 clarinets, a trombone and a tuba joined in. As this spontaneous band improvised to an Egyptian rhythm, Donna encouraged more people to dance. Some members of a women's drum circle supported the rhythm on buckets and drums. Within minutes, the park was filled with dance and music


What amazed me the most, personally, is that Donna & I came with the intention of shifting angry, protest energy into defiant joy and ultimately, we weren't needed. The joy was already there and we simply added our small measure. We did, however, demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, Quakers are not 'just like the Amish'.

Nourishing an Occupation 7: Red Curry Pumpkin-Peanut Soup

Are you cooking for an Occupation? I'm looking for guest bloggers to write about their experiences of the Occupy movement and their food. Please contact me here (note: this link will take you to another website).

This autumn, I find myself in the very happy situation of having an abundance of pumpkins.  Pumpkins are one of my favorite foods and are a wonderful medium for creative cooking.  They are not just for jack-o-lanterns or pie, but are a great basis for both savory and sweet dishes.

This Sunday, I looked at my pile of pumpkins and started a free improvisation soup composition.  The result: a savory Red Curry Pumpkin Peanut soup that was heartily enjoyed by guests from Occupy Wall Street and Vassar College at the Occupy Poughkeepsie encampment.

This soup is packed with protein, fiber, flavor, and thermal inertia.  You might be a nerd if you try to convince someone to try a bowl of soup based on its thermal inertia, but those are exactly the words I heard come out of my mouth, standing on the dark streets of Poughkeepsie.  By that, I meant it 'holds its heat', once warm, it stays warm for a long time and will keep your body warm too.

For this soup, I started with 2 pumpkins of 2 different varieties.  One 'Long Island Cheese' which is shown cut open above with the seeds mostly cleaned out, has a dull pale outer skin and a deep orange flesh.  When you cut into one, you'll get an aroma like a sweet melon.  These pumpkins are as big as the jack-o-lantern pumpkins that most people don't eat, but they have a much more flavorful and dense flesh. 

The other pumpkin was a smaller 'sugar' or 'pie' pumpkin.  It has a deep orange outer skin and pale, but sweet flesh on the inside.

 

After scooping out the seeds (I'll toast them later for snacking), I laid them face-down in backing dishes, put a little water in the bottom of each dish and roasted them in the oven at 375F.  I tested after about 45 min.  They are done when you can insert a fork into them easily.  The large one took about an hour to be done.  They smell really good while they're baking. When they were done, I set them on the counter to cool.

 

While the pumpkins were roasting, I soaked 6 oz dried bean thread (a/k/a cellophane) noodles in hot water and rinsed and soaked 10 dried shiitake mushrooms in a separate vessel of hot water.  Dried shiitakes are one of the best ways I've found to provide that richness of flavor called umami into vegan food.

 

I chopped 1 large onion and 3 large cloves of garlic and sauteed them in hot oil in my largest soup pot.  When they were translucent, I added a couple quarts of water. a couple cups of split red lentils (masoor dal) and a little salt and brought to boil. I cooked this at a rolling boil until lentils disintegrated.  I decided to add the lentils for 2 reasons: first, to add protein to make the soup more nutritious; second to give the soup a smooth, thick texture (and thermal inertia).  Red lentils are about the same color as pumpkin and fairly neutral in flavor so they did not interfere with the overall aesthetic that was developing.

When the lentils were nearly disintegrated and the pumpkin cool enough to handle, I scooped the flesh out of the pumpkin with a large spoon and plopped it into the soup.  The lentils and pumpkin simmered together for a moment while I went upstairs to borrow my landlady's immersion blender.  Being very careful, not to burn myself with molten pumpkin and lentils, I blended until the contents of the whole pot were nice and smooth.

I drained and chopped the softened bean thread noodles....

and shiitake mushrooms, and threw them into the pot.

I seasoned the soup with several Tbs of Thai Kitchn brand red curry paste, about 1/2 cup of smooth peanut butter, a dash of salty ume plum vinegar. a generous dash of soy sauce (I would have used fish sauce but I was making this soup be vegan), a splash of cider vinegar to brighten the flavor, a large dollop of tamarind concentrate and a squirt of Sriracha sauce for a bit of heat.  I was dismayed to find my fresh ginger had given up the ghost in the fridge, so I used some dried ginger, but fresh would have been much better.  As you might guess, this was not a precise process.  I rummaged through the flavors in my spices and condiments and added a bit of this and that, tasting as I went along.  This is the fun part!  I recommend you try it and don't worry too much about conforming to any standard.  Just balance salty, sour, sweet, umami, hot, and bitter and keep going until it makes your mouth happy.

The flavor was nicely balanced and the texture was almost there.  The broth was smooth and rich on the tongue.  The mushrooms were nicely chewy and the noodles were fun, but it needed a bit of crunch.  I had a purple kohlrabi in the fridge from the last CSA pick up of the year.  Kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage/turnip.  It has the texture of a very crisp apple and a flavor like very sweet brocolli.

I cut the kohlrabi into matchsticks and used them as a crunchy garnish with color contrast.

Who says occupation dining can't be elegant?

Nourishing an Occupation 4: Eggplant Pasta (with SNOW!)

Are you cooking for an Occupation? I'm looking for guest bloggers to write about their experiences of the Occupy movement and their food. Please contact me here (note: this link will take you to another website)

It was snowing when I left home to deliver my latest concoction to the hardy souls at Occupy Poughkeepsie. On a very cold night like last night, it's essential to have good, hot food to keep the body warm and fueled.

I was in the park on Wed night for a meeting of Occupy Poughkeepsie Moms and Dads and while I was there, I discovered among the donated food: 6 large eggplants, 3 cans of garbanzo beans, a can of black olives, and many boxes of dried pasta. I can make something with that!

If you've read any of my other blog posts, you won't be surprised to learn that I started cooking by chopping up garlic and onions and sauteing them in oil in the bottom of a soup pot. In this case, I used a whole head of garlic. While that was cooking, I washed and cubed 4 of the eggplants.

I added 2 large cans of crushed tomatoes along with the eggplant, a pound of sliced mushrooms, some water and about 1 cup of tomato juice that I had in the 'fridge. I couldn't actually fit all the eggplant into the pot, so I let it simmer for a while and after it had cooked down a bit I added the rest of it.

I seasoned the sauce with dried Italian herb blend, dried oregano, dried basil, black pepper, soy sauce, a squirt of Sriracha sauce and just a touch of sugar. This simmered for most of the afternoon. At some point, I chopped up 2 sweet red peppers, and the can of olives and added them and 3 drained cans of garbanzo beans to the pot.

I cooked 3 lbs of pasta in boiling water in my largest soup pot. 3 boxes, 3 shapes: rotini, rotelle, & rigatoni. When it was al dente, I drained it and poured it into a large aluminum serving tray. I poured the eggplant sauce over the pasta and mixed it all together. As I was getting ready to load it and 2 cans of sterno into my car, I looked out the window and saw the first snow of the season!

Here's what the camp looked like when I arrived.

By the time I got to Poughkeepsie, it was a wet snow, mixed with rain. Let me tell you, it was cold down there! I was glad I was able to keep the food warm with the sterno because as people arrived they really needed something warm in their bellies.


It's a great feeling to give a hungry, cold person a steaming hot plate of food.

Nourishing an Occupation 3: Vegetable Soup

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This episode of 'Nourishing an Occupation' is about using the ingredients on hand to make something delicious and nutritious. One night when I was visiting Occupy Poughkeepsie, I noticed that someone had donated a bunch of fresh vegetables - potatoes, carrots, celery, zucchini, peppers, and cabbage. These are wonderful, vitamin-rich foods, but the encampment isn't really set up to cook and I couldn't picture anyone munching on a raw cabbage or potato. I know it can be done, I just didn't see it happening. So I offered to take them home and turn them into soup. I say take them 'home' but I actually didn't make this soup at home. I was staying with Friends Val & Bob Suter for a couple of days so it was their kitchen I messed up with my chopping and concocting and their spice stash I raided for flavors.

As usual, I started by chopping several large cloves of garlic and 2 large onions and sauteing them in olive oil in my largest soup pot. When it was translucent, I added 8 carrots with their skin on and 4 stalks of celery. After they had cooked a bit, I added a large can of whole tomatoes and a large can of diced tomatoes. I broke up the whole tomatoes with my paddle. I added a fews cans full of water to the pot. While it was heating up, I kept chopping vegetables and throwing them in:

6 potatoes, skin on
1 large rutabaga, peeled
1 large green pepper
3 zucchini squash
1 medium head of cabbage.

There were so many vegetables, I had to add more water to the pot.

While this simmered, I seasoned the broth with 2 cubes of 'Not-Chick'n Bouillon', soy sauce, red pepper flakes, black pepper, and a seasoning blend from Adam's Market that the Suter's had in their cupboard that seemed to be a cross between Abodo and Old Bay.

This was so much soup that even after taking it down to Occupy Poughkeepsie and feeding everyone on site, I still had half of it left. On the next day, Saturday, a big rally and march were planned and a lot of extra people were expected. I decided to take the leftover soup home, add to it, and bring it back for lunch.

The next morning, I put the soup back on the stove and added more carrots and celery. These are the veggies I had left. I added more water and more seasoning.

I took the soup back down a little before noon and started serving it up. It was a beautiful day and lots of people showed up to take part in the rally. Most of them were surprised to be offered a hot bowl of soup - but radical hospitality is as big a part of the message of the movement as any slogan on a sign. The only picture I got of the camp that morning is before people started showing up; after they arrived, I was busy playing improvised music with my friend Noah.

While I was talking to others who attended the march and the later General Assembly, I found other people who had been bringing food or who wanted to start bringing food. We decided to get together and coordinate our efforts so that we all wouldn't bring food on the same night and that every night the full-time occupiers would have a hot, nutritious home-cooked meal.

We call ourselves 'Occupy Poughkeepsie Moms & Dads' even though most of us are not parents of the full-time occupiers. We care about the goals of the movement and would rather support it by providing food and comfort than by sleeping in the park. Since we took this photo, the group has grown to 14 people and we've provided hot meals every night for 2 weeks. We've also taken on providing blankets and insulation, having a list of nurses on-call for medical questions, and are working on getting flu shots for any occupier who wants one.

Nourishing an Occupation 2: Sesame Noodles

Are you cooking for an Occupation? I'm looking for guest bloggers to write about their experiences of the Occupy movement and their food. Please contact me here (note: this link will take you to another website)

In this episode of Nourishing an Occupation, I show you how to feed 34 people a delicious, nutritious vegan meal for about $14. The occupiers at Occupy Poughkeepsie, along with visitors and hungry kids from the neighborhood all dug in and enjoyed these Sesame noodles.

With this dish, I started by making a sauce. In a large sauce pan, I heated a bit of oil and added several tablespoons each minced garlic and ginger. After about a minute, I added about 1.5 cup of smooth peanut butter, 1/2 cup of water, 1/3 cups of soy sauce, 1/4 cup vinegar and an extremely generous squirt of Sriracha sauce and sesame oil and stirred it well so it would melt. I tasted this and adjusted the ingredients, adding a bit more of this or that until I had a sauce that was nutty, a bit tart, a bit salty, and with a bite of heat. I let it warm and simmer on the stove.

I filled my largest soup pot 2/3 full with water to boil and cooked 3 lbs of linguini. Cooking that much pasta at once is tricky because if your pot isn't big enough it will stick together. If you don't have a giant pot, cook in 2 or 3 batches. As soon as the pasta was al dente, I drained it and immediately rinsed it well with cold water.

While the sauce was simmering and the pasta cooking, I chopped up a large napa cabbage, 3 sweet red peppers, and a bunch of arugula and put them raw, into a large foil serving dish. I chopped a bunch of green onions and put half of them in with the other veggies. I chopped up a bunch of cilantro and set that aside with the remaining green onions for a topping.

I cut up 2 lbs of firm tofu into small cubes and stirred them into the peanut sauce, then let the sauce cool a bit.

I put the pasta into the big foil dish with the vegetables, and using my clean hands, mixed everything together. Then I poured the cooled sauce over everything and mixed it through thoroughly. I topped the dish with chopped green onions, cilantro and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds.

This was a big hit with the occupiers and the neighborhood kids who stopped by the park couldn't get enough.

Nourishing an Occupation 1: Red Lentil and Brown Rice

Author's note: After several months of hiatus, I've been inspired to return to the Ministry of Soup, by a leading to help nurture and nourish the full-time occupiers of Occupy Poughkeepsie.

Are you cooking for an Occupation? I'm looking for guest bloggers to write about their experiences of the Occupy movement and their food. Please contact me here (note: this link will take you to another website)

Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement took Zuccotti Park on Sept 17, I had been watching and reading and trying to understand the movement. As a life-long activist, I have been discouraged by apathy for a long time. To find a group of people so inspired by the justness of their cause as to be willing to sleep outside and risk arrest and police brutality captured my imagination. As October rolled around, the movement began to spread and I learned of a small group trying to get started in Poughkeepsie, near where I live. I made connection with the group through email, but something held me back from attending the first march on October 15. I think I was uneasy and needed to meet the people involved and get a feel for their commitment to non-violence before taking to the streets.

On Sunday, the 16th, I learned that Occupy Poughkeepsie did not intend to be just a simple march through downtown, but was set up as a full-time encampment. As I left my Quaker meeting after our monthly potluck, the weather was turning grey, damp and chilly. A message came through on my Blackberry. We're in the park, we need food and water. I knew immediately that it was time for the Ministry of Soup to spring into action.

Fortunately, I had just been shopping at Krishna Indian Grocery so I had a good supply of dried lentils, which cook faster than other legumes. I decided to make a modified red lentil dal to warm and nourish the folks in the park.

I started by chopping 2 large onions and 3 cloves of garlic. I heated some oil in my biggest soup pot and then sauted the onions and garlic. When they were translucent, I added 1 large can of whole tomatoes, which I broke up roughly with my cooking paddle, and a large can of diced tomatoes. I threw in about 1 lbs of red lentils and 2 cups of brown rice and added enough water to cover it all by a couple of inches. I cooked it over medium heat.

As the soup cooked, it thickened and I added more water to keep it at a nice consistency for a hearty soup. I seasoned it with garam masala, black pepper, salt, tumeric, and uwe plum vinegar.

While it was piping hot, I took the whole pot out to my car and drove it to Hulme park in Poughkeepsie. Since I didn't know what kind of supplies they had, I stopped at the store for bowls, spoons and supplemented the whole mess with a large bag of day old bagels and a giant jar of peanut better.

When I arrived at the park, I discovered that the occupiers had been subsisting on pizza for 2 days - not very nutritious or financially sustainable. Some were a little reluctant to try the strange soup at first, but after a couple of guys tried it and exclaimed that it was delicious, so even the 'picky eaters' were diving in.

I was received with graciousness and gratitude and stayed for the General Assembly where I found tremendous caring and earnestness. I came down to the park to fill and warm stomachs. I left with a warm heart.