on the body

and a much easier vegetarian soup!

For many, January is the month of the body. A rejection of the machine that toiled for the last 365 days to carry them into the new year. A vision of a future shaped by self discipline and whatever language currently buries diet culture.

For poet Lucille Clifton, the body was always a topic worthy of observation. Her work revealed decades of feelings derived from life as both mother and child, experiences shared on race and gender and unshakeable memories from all four of those corners. So no matter your current relationship status with your body, Clifton’s image of her own will move you.

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

—Lucille Clifton (1936-2010), Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir 1969-1980

What I’ve observed in my own body is that when daylight savings time ends, my citrus switch flips. I find myself lacing meals with a rainbow of zest and pulp. Looking for ways to unlock the acid that burns away the corrosion of seasonal sadness. Couple that with with nostalgia for my years of bluster-free Florida winters and our house becomes a veritable citrus stand. A shrouding of the body and mind from dark, cold winters.

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Watch Clifton in this 1988 Library of Congress video where she discusses and reads some of her most famous poems including sorrow song (30:50), why some people be mad at me sometimes (34:20) and the shapeshifter poems (41:35).

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let this soup be the hand drawn sunshine in the corner of your winter

orange and broccoli soup

If you don’t have an emersion blender, this can also be done in a regular blender. Watch America’s Test Kitchen 1-minute video on How to Avoid a Blender Blunder Involving Hot Soup - for obvious reasons.

Adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook

what you need

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter ◾ 1 large sweet onion, chopped ◾ 4 cups vegetable stock ◾ 2 pounds carrots, chopped 2-inch chunks ◾ 1 cup fresh orange juice (6-8 navels) ◾ 1 pound broccoli florets ◾ 1/4 cup sunflower butter ◾ 1 tablespoon ground cumin ◾ 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

what to do

Get the onions going. Heat a large frying pan over medium-low heat. Chop onions. Add butter and onions to pan and cook on low for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally while preparing carrots and broccoli.

Once the onions are in, get the carrots going. Add vegetable stock and carrot chunks to a 3.5 quart pot. Bring to a boil and simmer on low for 12 - 15 minutes until a fork easily pierces the largest pieces of carrot.

While the carrots are boiling, zest one orange into a small bowl. Then juice the oranges until you have one cup.

Add broccoli florets to a shallow microwave safe dish. Add 1/4 cup water and cover loosely. Microwave for 90 - 120 seconds until steamed but still firm.

Now your ready to combine the soup. Turn off the heat to the carrots. To the pot of carrots add onions, sunflower butter, cumin, nutmeg, orange juice and zest. Blend with an emersion blender on high until puree forms.

Add soup to bowls and top with broccoli. Serve with nutty bread or focaccia.

Welcome back to The Dinner Conjurer, where you send in 5 recipes you’ve enjoyed, your name and current hometown. Then I work some haphazard magic to help lure new recipes into your cooking routine.

In Rockaway, Queens, Bailey and Peyton’s kitchen influences are in an open relationship with Korea and Northern California. Recently they’ve been cooking:

1. Teeokguk (rice cake soup) for brunch

2. Galbi-jjim (braised beef short ribs) for dinner

3. Kimchi pancake for a quick dinner

4. Bon Appetit’s Big Green Lentil Salad for lunch

5. Something like this NYT’s Pozole for dinner with as many varieties of chilis as Bailey can find 

This pairing of interests is ripe to join my new crusade to make tacos weekly. Try these sweet potato and black bean tacos with avocado-pepita dip using Maangchi’s geomeun-kongjorim (braised black beans). We did it last week. It was awesome. (Note: sweet potato cubes small enough for tacos do better at 375-400 than 425.)

For more borderless dishes to start the lunar new year, you might like Woks of Life’s tofu avocado salad, this brussels sprouts and kimchi slaw or Anthony Bourdain’s roasted cauliflower with sesame seeds which has been a hit several times around our table.

This section was inspired by The Biblioracle Recommends newsletter where you can get the same scene, but for books.

• Reading - How Trauma Became the Word of the Decade by Lexi Pandell (Vox)

• Listening - to sketchy. by Tune-Yards (2021) because Merrill Garbus is the only version of 2011 these three are ready to bring back from the SXSW grave.

la mer wrap watch resale market beware, 2022 Mia is coming for you

• Watching - The Power of the Dog by Jane Campion (2021) for anyone that likes a great movie with a tinny middle.

• Smelling - Fucking Fabulous by Tom Ford (2017) which is like draping a well worn leather jacket over the iris root in REPLICA’s Lazy Sunday Morning.