Escaping the Opinion Marketplace

With our refreshing family vacation at Harbin Hot Springs now over, I have a lot to contemplate. The interruption of the constant stream of internet opinions, takes, takes on takes, speechifying, and moralizing was so profound that its effects on my wellbeing were palpable. For the first time in a long time, I found some space to hear my own thoughts and, more importantly, to let them go, like puffy, airy clouds, making room for for sensations and feelings.

Perhaps unfortunately given my line of work, in the last few years I’ve experienced profound exhaustion resulting from the constant bombardment of takes, ideas, and invitations–sometimes quite coercive–to “be a part of the conversation.” I tried writing something about this a few months ago, which focused on the schoolmarmish, admonishing tone of so much of what is written these days by my milieu–academics, journalists, and other opinion people. But I don’t think I managed to capture how oppressive all of this is, how inauthentic.

In her book Our Word Is Our Bond, Marianne Constable analyzes the nature and operation of legal speech, arguing that law operates through the trappings of language. Much of legal education, accordingly, focuses on the minutiae of language and what it implies, constitutively, for the world of policy. I’m not a linguist, and surely this is not a particularly original take on this, but I’m getting the sense that performative, declarative speechifying has now become so commonplace it transcends the world of policy. Everyone is busy declaiming and declaring where they stand on various issues. It seems like the natural counterpart to Citizens United: First we argued that corporations were people, and now people are behaving like corporate PR departments, issuing statements, apologies, excoriations, and the rest. This is all playing out in a few arenas–Facebook, Twitter, Instagram as the main culprits–all of which I vowed to leave when I retire, but waiting another fifteen years to give myself some freedom is too punishing.

Since late March, I’ve been working hard on reclaiming my health, which suffered serious setbacks in the last four years and especially during the pandemic year. While working on the San Quentin case, documenting the COVID-19 disaster in prisons, and advocating on the media and in scholarship, I became seriously inflamed, suffered constant headaches and digestive upsets, put on an enormous amount of weight, ate and slept very poorly. I’m now convinced that I was very close to a heart attack. I can only imagine the deleterious effects this catastrophe had on the health people I talked to and collaborated with–people inside, people recently released with friends inside, family members and loved ones living with the stress of incarceration on the outside.

I’m happy to report I’ve now reversed, and improved, all the health problems I had. I lost 40 lbs and am on my way to losing 15 more and returning to my high school weight. I’m eating a whole-food, plant-based diet rich in vegetables and fruit and exercising daily. My resting heart rate is down from 82 to 57. All my other metrics have been reversed and are now optimal. After a long break from endurance sports, I completed a sprint triathlon last week, scoring a personal best. I continue to run, bike, and/or swim daily, supplementing with pilates and strength training. I am determined to retain my good health, because I know how awful it is to lose it.

One thing I realized at Harbin is that the focus on my family’s happiness and on my own health and wellbeing has a price. It means I haven’t pushed out as many chapters of #FESTER as I perhaps ought to have done (though you can find bits and pieces here, here, and here.) It means I haven’t been aggressively hustling for conferences and travel and vividly engaging with the current conversation on every topic as I would perhaps strive otherwise. A few days ago I gave an interview on the Cosby reversal on NPR and had to actually sit down and read the decision, because I hadn’t been religiously following the takes, let alone supplying takes myself. Given how well I’m feeling and how awful I felt before, I think this is a fair price to pay.

I am reminded of Patty Sun, Andrew Taslitz’s widow, and what she had to say after his untimely death. She wrote:

In the past four months I have kept seeing accolades to Andy’s amazing productivity—the 100+ articles, the zillions of case books, etc., and I have always told people that yes, he led a normal life, yes, he got plenty of sleep and yes, he even took plenty of naps.

But that’s not really true. His life was not normal, at least not to me, and it certainly wasn’t balanced. Yes, I know he genuinely loved his work and yes, I know he had a brilliant and unusual mind, and yes, I know he was cut down in his prime when he still had so much more to give. But all of that came with a price. Not the teaching or the mentoring, but all that scholarship.

So what was the price in the end? In the entire time we were married we only took a two-week vacation once, and just about every vacation we did take was wrapped around one of his conferences or presentations. The furthest he went on each of his two sabbaticals was his front bedroom, because he spent every single day on his manuscripts.

So in the end how do I feel about his productivity? Yes, he enjoyed it, but he also killed himself trying not to disappoint people or to break deadlines.

And as I sit here with the dogs on July 4th, I think was it really that important to add one more book review to his CV or to do one more tenure letter as a favor for someone he never met? I’m glad his peers all loved him for the reliable genius that he was, and I don’t know how he feels wherever he is now, but I am very, very bitter.

Yes, he was a great academic mentor and collaborator, but the price for all that frenzied output was me, and there’s a part of me that will never forgive him for it, because he died right after he promised to slow down and enjoy life itself more.”

I’m taking these words, and the testimony of my own lived experience with improved health, to heart. My bottom line is this: I would like to create a clearing in the dense forest of my life, away from all this chatter, and do as little as possible to clutter my world and yours with more superfluous, unoriginal speechifying. I want to post only what I consider essential and important, stay out of scurrying activity that is not, ultimately, that relevant, and “participate in the conversation” only on my own terms. This is not some glossy, precious wellness flummery. Stress is real, and it can kill you. I won’t have this chatter take me away from my family and from my own body.

This means prioritizing active time–swimming, running, biking, taking dancing, hiking–and time in nature, which I intend to do every day of my life from now on. It also means prioritizing my family over everything and everyone else.

This also means that something else has become important: If you, too, are feeling unwell, stressed, bloated, achy, weepy, exhausted, burnt out, and ready for change, and want to transform your life through a combination of plant-based foods, exercise, and mindfulness, please hit me up on email. I’m a certified mindfulness meditation teacher; I have tons of experience in endurance sports and have taught pilates and aerial fitness; and I have a certificate in plant-based nutrition. More importantly, I know what it is to feel less than your best and how it can rob you from a full participation in your life. Please don’t let this profession, even as you work on noble, important, pressing issues of our time, rob you of your time on Earth. I can help. Let’s talk.

The Good, the Fast and the Cheap in Plant-Based Nutrition

I’m halfway through my certification in plant-based nutrition through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and eCornell. Even though I knew a lot about nutrition, the certification has provided in-depth information about issues I was fairly muddy about, such as insulin resistance, the connection between nutrition and heart disease, and nutrition-related factors in cancer growth and remission. Our instructors, including T. Colin Campbell himself, his son Thomas Campbell, cardiologist Caldwell Esselstyn, doctors David Jenkins (developer of the glycemic index concept) and Michael Greger (of NutritionFacts.org), and some environmental and legal figures, all tout–and with good reason–a whole-foods, plant-based (WFPB) diet. They strongly recommend eschewing animal products, added oils, and processed food, and constructing one’s meals of vegetables, fruit, tubers (starchy vegetables), whole grains, and beans. They marshal considerable evidence to undermine the protein craze and counter the carbohydrate-maligning trend. It is interesting and eye opening, not least in the personal sense: as some of you know from Twitter, the pandemic stresses, exacerbated by the many hours I’ve spent (and continue to spend) on the COVID prison crisis, produced a dangerous dip in my health. Knowing what I know now about susceptibility to heart disease, I’m realizing that the amount of stress I was in, plus the pattern of stress eating I developed during the pandemic, put me at serious risk of a heart attack out of the blue, even with no apparent history of heart issues. For the last month and a half, I’ve been working on dramatic improvements to my lifestyle, including a longer and more varied daily meditation practice, a WFPB diet, and daily exercise (mostly in the form of walking.) I’m already seeing astonishing results and my scary health outcomes have dramatically reversed themselves.

Which is why, I think, it is important to direct the WFPB message to vegans as well as animal product consumers. I’ve noticed that most of the advocacy and success stories focus on people who, prior to their conversion to a WFPB diet, ate what they refer to as SAD (the standard American diet), full of fats and animal products. A far less examined issue is the fact that one can eat very poorly on a vegan plan. The messaging is that a vegan diet is “good for you, the animals, and the planet”, but no meaningful distinctions are made between these goals. There are, of course, guidelines on how to choose among plant foods, but the message isn’t making it to the environmental and animal rights communities. In my years in animal activism I’ve encountered an enormous amount of disdain toward health food and almost a reverence for vegan convenience foods. Once, a friend and I brainstormed how to support a group of committed activists who were starting a new sanctuary farm. I suggested getting them a membership in a CSA that would deliver fresh produce to the farm every week. My friend replied with scorn, “they’re activists, not health freaks” and countered with a proposal to get them a subscription for a vegan snack box. Not a week goes by that I’m not invited to some vegan pop-up or other featuring almost exclusively vegan convenience foods.

The appeal of vegan convenience food has many commonalities with the appeal of animal-based convenience food. We now know a lot about hyperpalatability, namely, the appeal of foods rich in fat, sugar, and salt. To that, we should add some factors unique to the animal protection community: the drive to counter claims of nutritional deprivation made by animal consumers (e.g., “vegan food is no less tasty!”), to celebrate the emergence of more and more realistic animal food substitutes (e.g., “this is a game changer–there’s no reason not to be vegan now!”), the need to support vegan businesses by purchasing and consuming things like vegan snacks, donuts, and fake meats, and the potential to attract people who were daunted by the prospect of a big dietary change to the vegan cause. I know these are all very real thought processes among animal rights advocates because I’ve felt strongly pulled in this direction myself. I feel compelled to patronize small businesses producing delectable, if unhealthy, vegan treats because I want them to replace nonvegan treats–even though it would be far better for me not to consume them at all even in their vegan version. The temptation to listen to the moral voice within–that one is making a morally correct choice by eating vegan, regardless of the healthfulness of the vegan food actually consumed–can silence the important voice of the body communicating distress.

Alas, not all vegan foods are equally healthful, and in order to live longer and healthier lives (which, incidentally, would help us be more effective advocates for animal protection), we should care about our health beyond merely “eating vegan.” After this year, I am living proof that someone can indeed suffer considerable health consequences–an alarmingly high resting heart rate, low blood oxygenation, grogginess, exhaustion, irritability, bloating–on a wholly vegan diet when it is based in large part on convenience foods. And after the last month and a half, I am living proof that these outcomes–resting heart rate, blood pressure, digestive issues, energy, etc.–can be completely reversed by eating a WFPB diet, coupled with a mindfulness practice and exercise.

There is no doubt in my mind that the WFPB diet is crucial in fostering optimal health. The problem is time/money. Those of you who have heard me talk about a variety of subjects, ranging from bail reform to the death penalty, know how much I like to use the classic “contractor triangle”: good, fast, and cheap. When renovating or fixing up a home, a contractor will draw a triangle, put those three words in the corners, and tell the client, “pick two.” You can have fast and cheap, but it won’t be good; you can have good and cheap, but it won’t be fast; you can have good and fast, but it won’t be cheap.

The same applies to diets. You can eat fast and cheap vegan food, and there’s plenty of advice out there on how to do it, but you’ll end up eating a lot more tacos and french fries and much fewer salads than is good for you. You can eat good and fast vegan food, which can happen through the myriad food delivery and meal preparation services on the market such as Thistle and Purple Carrot, but it won’t be cheap. You can eat good and cheap vegan food, by buying produce and cooking your own meals; as blog readers know, that’s mostly what I do, but even when the meal itself is not elaborate or time consuming to prepare, it does require weekly planning of the family grocery trip and, often, batch cooking, and in that sense is not something you can spontaneously pull out of your sleeve on a regular basis. It is also precisely the sort of extra labor that will go out the window when one is stressed out and pressed for time, which is what happened, far too often, in the last year or so in my case.

The way I see it, there are two interrelated, but distinguishable, challenges in making a WFPB diet accessible to a wider swath of people: the economic battle to make good, healthy food accessible and banish food deserts, and the educational battle to persuade people that plant-based eating is good for them and teach them how to cook and eat vegetables. Both of these concerns apply to vegans as much as to meat eaters, and perhaps even more so, because vegans who are weary of making their own food are celebrating a bounty of new substitutes. I think the health benefits are worth it, but I’m also well aware that folks facing real financial hardship, balancing jobs and families, and taking into account different dietary preferences at home on top of everything else are having a rough time and might not have the bandwidth to prioritize their health the way they would if, say, a private WFPB chef were cooking for them.

This is why I think that the problem of nutrition deficiencies will not fully resolve itself until we make big strides toward more economic equity and less servitude to workplaces. More life-work balance is crucial to give people the space to care for their family’s nutrition the way they should. Education about the benefits of the WFPB diet must come coupled with easy and convenient access to reasonably priced produce. Since moving to the U.S., it has always driven me nuts to see that packaged foods here are often less expensive than fresh produce–the pyramid is inverted in Israel, and it shows. At my certification course, experienced food lawyer Michele Simon (a UC Hastings grad!) explained the political pressures from the meat and dairy lobbies and talked about the need to lobby harder for vegan foods (she’s walking her talk with the Plant Based Food Association). I wish there was more lobbying on behalf of fruit and vegetables, which are truly the cornerstone of health. If I sound a bit evangelical about this, it is because the transformation in my health has been magical, and all there was to it was vegetables, fruit, and walking. If you can move yourself in that direction, I can’t recommend a better investment in yourself; and we should continue to collectively move society in that direction, so that it is easier for individuals to make better choices.

Fonio

The other day I very much enjoyed watching two marvelous animated films on Criterion Channel: Kirikou and the Sorceress and Kirikou and the Men and Women. Both films are magical, artistic, deep creations, and I found them engaging and captivating. They involve a tiny boy, Kirikou, and his courageous fight against a sorceress and her fetishes on behalf of his people–even as said people are not always as gracious about his efforts as they should be. Highly recommended!

I mention this because, at some point in the second film, one of the village women comes to stay at Kirikou’s house. Kirikou’s mother invites her in, saying:

This caught my attention. Fonio? What is it? I had never heard of it, so my eyes were glued to the screen to see what it would look like. And here it was:

This looked exactly like something I would very much enjoy eating, so I quickly looked it up. Fonio turns out to be a West African grain, gluten-free and rich in protein and nutrients. It cooks very quickly and can be used similarly to quinoa, couscous, or rice. A restaurateur in Harlem wants to uplift Fonio and make it an exciting new grain option for Western palates, noting that, by contrast to quinoa (where the Western demand removed it from Andean tables), Fonio had been rejected as a food staple for quite a while in West Africa on behalf of Western options.

This is quite sad, because fonio is not only healthy, but delicious! I ordered a bag on Amazon; it’s quite economical, as in cooking it expands considerably. The fonio-to-water cooking ratio is 1:2, and you can add a teaspoon of oil and a little bit of salt (though it’s not really necessary, in our experience.) It comes out fluffy, kind of like couscous or quinoa, and has a very flavorful, nutty taste. I can see serving it with a variety of vegetable stews and learning more about West African cuisine. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Savory Green Quiches

In my continuing quest to introduce a high volume of greens into my breakfasts, I came up with a variation on the kuku sabzi theme: little quiches baked in a muffin pan. The ingredients are malleable and fungible, and you can basically do whatever you like with this, as long as you keep the ratio of flour to milk stable. You should feel free to pack as many greens and spices as you can. The thing loses some of its flavor in baking, kind of like bean-based meatballs, so you can really add as much flavor as you like. The more kala namak salt you put in, the eggier it will feel.

1 package (approx. 200g) baby spinach

6 big kale leaves

4 broccolini stems

2 tbsp chopped onion

3 garlic cloves

1/2 cup garbanzo/besan flour

1/2 cup Oatly Barista or other unsweetened plant milk

4 tbsp nutritional yeast

3 heaping tbsp Aglio Olio spice mix, or any similar seasoning

1 tbsp OMG, or similar seasoning

1 heaping tbsp kala namak

3 tbsp vegan parmesan, or a mix of ground nuts, hemp seeds, and nutritional yeast

Chop up the leaves a bit and put in food processor; process into tiny bits. Add all other ingredients except the vegan parmesan and process to a chunky texture. Spoon into muffin pan (you’ll have enough mixture for approximately 6 holes.) Sprinkle a little parmesan or nut mix on each quiche and press lightly with your fingers. Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 mins, or until a pick or fork comes out dry.

Veggie Sushi

I was going to write a post about the latest Plata hearing, vaccines, and the sad stories that the Davis Vanguard has been uncovering (great journalistic job, guys!) but my heart is heavy, so we rallied our spirits by having family sushi-making night. I only wish we could share the tray with everyone we are in communication with, including families, currently incarcerated folks, formerly incarcerated folks, frontline health workers… after all ***this*** (insert expansive hand motion here) is over, perhaps we can all get together as a community for a potluck?

In the meantime, I’m extending all of you an invitation to our upcoming symposium about mass incarceration and the COVID-19 crisis. Attendance is free, but you do have to register to participate. And hey, we give MCLE credits!

Re the sushi: it’s pretty easy if you have the right ingredients on hand. Here’s what I use:

  • 2 cups Sukoyaka Genmai (the best gently milled brown rice, which the wonderful Tanaka Sensei introduced our family to)
  • 4 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tbsp vegan furikake (we have some but you can make your own)
  • 1 cucumber
  • 1 carrot
  • 3-inch cube of butternut squash
  • 1 avocado
  • 1/4 block of Hodo Soy tofu
  • 1 package nori sheets
  • sushi rolling mats
  • saran wrap

Cook rice in instant pot or rice cooker. Get out of cooker, let cool to room temperature, then mix with mirin and furikake.

While rice is cooking, slice vegetables into very thin matchsticks. The butternut squash can be cut thinly and then baked until soft.

Place a bowl with tap water near the rice, veg, and sushi mat. Cover the sushi mat with a piece of saran wrap, then put a nori sheet on top. Moisten you hands in the water bowl; take a few big spoonfuls of rice and layer them, patting them down on the nori (1/4-inch thickness) and leaving about 2 inches at the end. Then, toward the beginning, place the vegetable sticks of your choice.

There are lots of tutorials on how to roll sushi–anyone will do. The lesson I learned was not to overfill. Use some water on a fingertip to seal.

Take your best knife, moisten it with tap water, and resolutely slice up the roll into little maki sushi (each about an inch long.) Sprinkle furikake or black sesame if desired. Enjoy!

Kuku Sabzi

In my continuing mission to introduce more greens into my breakfasts (previous attempts included lots of smoothie bowls) I came up with a wonderful solution that can be made ahead and provide convenient, protein- and nutrient-rich breakfasts for the whole week. Kuku Sabzi is a Persian dish of dense greens and herbs bound with egg. My version substitutes the egg with chickpea flour, plant milk, and olive oil, and incorporates lots of herbs and spices. You can make lots of variations, depending on the greens you have on hand. This version uses Stonehouse spice mixes, which I find incredibly useful.

Ingredients:

  • 8 big collard leaves
  • 8 big kale leaves
  • 100g or so of spinach or baby spinach
  • 1/2 cup parsley
  • 1/2 cup cilantro
  • 1/2 cup chickpea flour
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened plant milk
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 heaping tbsp OMG (or your own combination of onion powder, garlic powder, and salt)
  • 1 heaping tbsp Aglio Olio (or your own Italian seasoning)

Process:

First, remove the stems from the collards and kale and tear into pieces. Place all the greens and herbs in your food processor and chop into tiny pieces–you may need to do this in batches.

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Lightly oil a shallow, rectangular baking dish (I use this 9”x12” one, but anything will do) and line with parchment (don’t forget the parchment–this will pay off dividends at the end.)

Next, place all the chopped greens in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the chickpea flour, plant milk, olive oil, and spices, into an eggy-textured mixture. Transfer the mixture into the bowl with the greens and mix well with your hands, until the mixture binds the greens together. Then, transfer the lot into the baking dish. Using damp hands, push the mixture into the bottom of the dish, until it is very dense and covers the whole dish. Flatten the top.

Bake for about 45 mins, or until the kuku has solidified. Remove from oven, lift using the parchment, and gently place on a cooling rack. After it cools a bit, you can cut it into squares, triangles, or any other shape, and store in the fridge. This is delicious when eaten cold, straight from the fridge, or dipped into this fabulous dressing.

Vegan Sabih

Sabih, the sensational eggplant/egg/tahini/amba sandwich, is a mainstay in Israel, and there’s even a place that serves it in Oakland. It’s easy to make at home whenever you like if you have the main ingredients on hand. Here’s a vegan version:

  • 2 pitot (we make our own sourdough pitot, recipe some other time)
  • 1 eggplant
  • 4-5 cloves garlic
  • salt
  • 1/2 package firm or medium-firm tofu
  • 1 tsp kala namak salt
  • 1 tbsp chickpea flour
  • 1 tbsp plant milk
  • 1/2 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp amba powder
  • 2 tbsp raw tahini
  • juice from 2 lemons
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, green onions, parsley, thinly sliced

Heat up the oven to 400 Fahrenheit. Slice the eggplant into 1/2-inch rounds. Place on silicone baking sheet and top with minced garlic and salt.

Slice the tofu into very thin slices. Make a mixture out of the kala namak, chickpea flour, plant milk, and turmeric. Coat each tofu slice in the mixture on both sides. Place on silicone baking sheet alongside the eggplant. Bake for about 20 minutes.

While the eggplant and tofu are baking, mix the amba powder with some boiling water to make a bit of amba. Mix the tahini with lemon juice and garlic to make a bit of tahini. Slice all veg and herbs thinly.

Halve the pitot and toast them (if you like). Smear tahini and amba inside each pocket. Pack the pita full of tofu, eggplant, and vegetables. Serve alongside a nice salad with some mint tea.

Vegan Sourdough Mincemeat Babka

In case you are looking for more ways to grow as sourdough bakers, I highly recommend this fantastic cake. My mom used to buy cakes like this, leavened with commercial yeast and stuffed with chocolate and cinnamon, and serve me a slice for breakfast with tea; those were very tasty, but this one is so much better.

The prep time is long, but most of it is the bacteria working for you (including an overnight stay in the fridge), so it’s not particularly labor intensive, and the cutting and braiding process is a fun skill to acquire. I veganized and modified Maurizio’s excellent recipe in the following ways:

  • Substitute oat milk for milk (same amounts);
  • Substitute oat butter (Miyoko’s) for the butter (same amounts);
  • Substitute Hampton Creek’s Just Egg for the egg (including the egg wash! easy to do, as Maurizio gives the egg amount by weight)
  • Substitute brown sugar for the caster sugar in the cake;
  • substitute agave syrup for the caster sugar in the simple syrup (I did a 1:1 substitution);
  • use mincemeat for the filling (many jars are made with vegan suet substitutes).

For people making this for the first time, do not be dismayed if the dough is very sticky (a function of the butter and the Just Egg.) After the night stay in the fridge it will be far more workable. Lightly flour your bench before rolling it out. Also, I don’t have a pullman pan, but I baked this very successfully in a silicone loaf pan, and it popped out just fine.

Image

The result was fantastic. You can hardly detect sourness from the sourdough, but the texture is so rewarding. The brioche texture is fluffy and rich, the filling sweet and spicy, and the slices are gorgeous. Happy 2021 to all!

Grilled Eggplants Stuffed with Impossible Meat and Pomegranate

For today’s Christmas Eve brunch, we made a version of Oz Telem’s new recipe. I think ours benefits from the fact that the eggplants were grilled, and from some little tweaks to the recipe. Because I grew up not far from where Jesus spent his childhood, I imagine he had lots of fresh grilled vegetables (not eggplant, though) but he and his family probably ate lots of fish rather than vegan meats. We used Impossible meat, but you could use Beyond Beef as well.

Ingredients

  • Two medium-sized lightweight eggplants
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 1/2 onion, chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 tsp baharat
  • 1/2 package Impossible/Beyond ground
  • 1 tbsp pine nuts
  • 1 large pomegranate
  • parsley for garnish

process

Fire up the grill. Gently peel the eggplants in a zebra pattern – removing lengthwise stripes of peel, but keeping some stripes on, so that the eggplant retains its shape. Place on the grill and grill for about 15 mins, taking care to char on all sides.

While the eggplant is grilling, cut the pomegranate in half; juice one half and extract the seeds from the other half (save those for later). Heat up the olive oil in a pan. Add the onions and cook until translucent. After 2-3 minutes, add the garlic and pine nuts. Cook for about 30 seconds. Then, add the Impossible/Beyond, the pomegranate juice, and the baharat. Sauté until the ground feels cooked and the spices are incorporated throughout (about 4-5 mins.)

Make a slit in each eggplant and stuff each one with half of the Impossible/Beyond mixture (it’ll be easy to fill, because the insides of the eggplant should be already fairly mushy.) Cook for another 10 mins or so on the grill, until the flavors incorporate. Sprinkle pomegranate seeds and parsley on top and serve with tchina (“tahini”) and other grilled vegetables. Happy Holidays!

The blog has been an effort to integrate works of compassion from three areas of my life–compassionate work, compassionate mindfulness, and compassionate cooking–so I hope the occasional recipe/mindfulness practice is not too surprising to the many folks reading here because of the COVID-19 crisis in prisons. We are thinking of those of you behind bars, and of those of you missing your incarcerated loved ones, and we hope you will soon get to cook and break bread together on the outside.

Hōjicha Latte

Let’s take a wee break from all criminal justice/civil rights aspects of this annus horribilis to discuss one of the upshots: given the closure of cafés, which are my favorite places to work, I’ve developed home barista skills. Usually I drink a matcha latte every day, but I’m out of matcha powder–and imagine my joy when I discovered that it is possible to make lattes from hōjicha! Hōjicha is a Japanese green tea, which obtains its distinctive flavor through roasting in a porcelain pot over charcoal (most other Japanese teas are steamed.) The tea is fired at a high temperature, altering the leaf color tints from green to reddish brown. One of the wonderful attributes of hōjicha is that it has almost no caffeine, which means I can happily drink a couple of these a day and serve this to my preschooler.

Simply grinding tea leaves does not make powder that is usable in lattes; matcha powder can be used in this way because of its distinctive processing. Thankfully, the good folks over at Stonemill Matcha sell hōjicha powder. To make this at home, you’ll need a tall glass, a little cup, a matcha whisk (chasen) and an ordinary kitchen whisk.

Pour about 1 cup of Oatly (or any plant milk, but if you have Oatly, why drink anything else?) into the tall glass and add a few ice cubes. Place the kitchen whisk in the glass and spin fast back and forth until you have a nice layer of foam on top. In the little cup, place a teaspoon of hōjicha powder. Add about 3-4 tbsp boiling water. Whisk with matcha whisk until a bit foamy. Carefully pour the hōjicha into the milk glass, which will create the layers you see in the picture. Enjoy!