a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Be Curious

    CuriosityEWhen I first brewed a cup of Yogi Tea’s Egyptian Licorice tea, I wondered how it could be so sweet. There was no sugar listed on the ingredients, just licorice root, cinnamon bark, orange peel, ginger root, cardamom seed, black pepper, clove bud, natural and organic flavors, and essential oils.

    Curious as to what could be making it so sweet, I purchased some licorice root because I knew what all the other ingredients tasted like. I ground it up and made a tea with it Wow! So that’s why the Egyptian Licorice tea was so sweet. I was even more curious.

    I grew up where there was no licorice candy. The first time I had it as a child, my reaction was, “This is icky. People eat this?” It put me off from touching licorice for a long time, but grinding licorice root and tasting it made me explore this interesting root. It is glycyrrhizin in licorice which makes it so sweet. Glycyrrhizin is 50 times sweeter than sugar, and explains why licorice in Chinese is 甘草 which translates to sweet-甘 and grass-草.

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    I’m having a lot of fun making teas with licorice root. A bit of mint, some allspice, cloves, slivers of garlic, ground with licorice root is today’s tea. Fresh tea every day. Why not? I grind coffee every morning, why not tea?

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    Licorice has a long history of being used by peoples around the world as a medicinal herb. There are dangers in consuming too much of it, so be curious and read up on it before using it.

  • From Beautiful Flowers

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    From beautiful flowers come beautiful beans. From beautiful beans come delicious, heart warming meals. I received this text from someone who purchased some of the white flower beans I grew this summer:

    I just wanted to share this pic of our first pot of your white flower beans. We made crockpot baked beans and OMG, these are delish!!! Thanks for growing.

    Thank you for buying them, and letting me know you enjoyed them. From beautiful flowers come happiness.

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    My husband and I were discussing how to describe the taste of the beans recently after eating bowls of them. They are different than other beans. He described them as tasting a bit like little potatoes, and they do.

  • Autumn Glow

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    Autumn glow is special. Autumn leaves intensify the brilliance of the sun. Whenever the sun pops out between the rain clouds, it’s time to put on my boots and go for a walk. I’ve got to be outdoors to see the trumpeter swans flying toward the sun on an early autumn morning.

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  • Give Us This Day

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    Every day I appreciate how generous nature is. You don’t have to give nature much of a garden to supply you with more food than you can ever eat. After eating more radishes than you can stomach, you get to play around and see what happens when you don’t pick a radish when it’s ready. Here’s a radish past its prime, and yet it’s more beautiful than ever.

    Nature’s generosity reminds me of the part of the Lord’s Prayer which says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” I smiled when I thought about that phrasing: give us. It’s not, give us our daily bread in exchange for eight hours of hard labor, or give us our daily bread if we agree to take a drug test, or promise not to misbehave. It’s just: give us, the way nature works: give, give, give.

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  • It Only Happens Once a Year

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    It only happens once a year, that magical first day of frost. A clear cold night and this morning the grass, fallen leaves, toadstools, and vegetables were fringed with frost. First frost happens only once a year, which means it should be a holiday, right? Reason to close the schools, shutter the businesses, shut down the freeways, and give everyone the day off to live?

    Everyone is working too hard these days. There really are no days off left anymore. Even on Thanksgiving the stores are open and the serfs are forced to toil past midnight to appease the 0.001%. How does that make anyone happy? How did we end up in this feudal system again, the masses working for a handful of lords and ladies? Wasn’t the French Revolution supposed to free the masses? No one is allowed to live anymore, which is why we need a system of spontaneous holidays. First frost could be one of them. No one would know when they are coming. There would be a special Department of Firsts in every county. On momentous occasions like First Frost, First Snow, First Cherry Blossom, and so on, the Department of Firsts would declare a Momentous Holiday. All stores, banks, businesses would be shut, schools let out, and to make sure people took the holiday and lived instead of working, the freeways and airports would all be closed. At least a few days a year, the freeways need to be off limits. No one should be allowed to drive. Everyone should be perfectly still and spend at least ten minutes, five at least, and enjoy an earth with no sound except that of the first frost growing on the fallen leaves.

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