My children have developed old-man cullinary sensibilities. Probably a good thing.
Beets. Cabbage. Beans. Fish - rainbow trout, perch, bluegill. Bluegill from the dock. Fishing with the boys to cicada song and the steelsound of redwing blackbird calls.
Tonight I announced dinner: turkey sausage, beans, sauerkraut.
My younger boy yelled: "I want sauerkraut!!!! And sausage!!!"
We make our own sauerkraut from cabbages we grow in the garden (with just a little cheating from locally grown farmer's market cabbages).
This is important to me.
This is something from the ground. And from the air. And from time. Anaerobic. Historical.
We put food into a crock and rely on inherited undersanding and ambient processes to store our foods for days. Weeks. Months. Through the winter. Through a mamillian winter. The fruits of the summer. Stored energy. Sun in a Mason jar.
Look out into the world.
There's nothing so substantial as cabbage. So substantial as airborn yeast from bread. Vegetation. Nourishment. Kept.
Nothing supercedes the anaerobic process. After all. It gives us wine. It gives us beer. Cheese. Bread. It gives us sauerkraut. Processes that cannot be undone. Or vetoed.
The recipe is in the air. Found in the microscopic, not the macroscopic.
So small we breathe it. So small we never see it. Or hear it. Or smell it. So small and ambient it can't be limited. The recipe is in the small.