Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Hunger Moon

February moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! This late winter lunar cycle was called The Hunger Moon by many different peoples in many different languages, but always for the same reason. When you depend on the land where you live for food, and the land has been frozen for months already, you are likely to be hungry.

And if you happen to be hungry, you might want to check out a cooking class I am teaching at Mariquita Farm (near Santa Cruz) on Saturday that will focus on soups made from winter vegetables: click for more info. Please email the farm if you are interested in registering. Now back to the Hunger Moon...

European-American settlers in the New England area adopted the name as one of the full moon names used in the Old Farmer's Almanac. They adapted it from Native American calendars, particularly the ones used by the various Algonquin peoples who lived in the northeastern areas of what is now the United States, from New England to the Great Lakes.

Indigenous names for the moon would be as varied as the languages that they came from, but would often carry similar meanings. The Choctaw name for this moon is translated "Little Famine Moon" and a Cherokee name is the "Bony Moon" or the "Bone Moon" because it was said that there was so little food, people gnaw on bones and eat bone marrow soup to survive. All of these names lament the scarcity of food. In the days before refrigeration and wide-scale shipping of produce and staples, hunger often became a real threat by the end of a long winter. Both hunter-gatherer societies and farming peoples subsisted on very little after months of bitter cold.

For the agrarian peoples in the Northern Hemisphere such as the new European-American farmsteaders, fresh produce was unavailable when the fields were covered with snow and ice. Farmers worked hard to prepare for the season, and this final stretch of freezing weather tested their reserves. The root cellar of a well-prepared farmhouse might still hold some beets, potatoes, turnips, onions, winter squash and root vegetables. The barrel of dried beans wouldn't be quite empty yet. There would still be some smoked ham, salted pork, or corned beef. Fresh green vegetables would be nearly impossible to find, but a crock of sauerkraut might still be yielding. Wheat, rye, dried corn and other grains could be ground for baking into bread, or soaked for porridge, or cooked into pancakes and other quick meals.

Few of us in the U.S. today remember that kind of seasonal reality. If we lack sufficient food it is because we lack sufficient income. As long as we have the funds, we can get just about any kind of food whenever we want it. Food is no less readily available during the late winter Hunger Moon than it is during the late summer Harvest Moon when agricultural production is at its peak. We no longer experience the annual cycle of scarcity and abundance familiar to our ancestors.

Growing up in the land of plenty, long after the Great Depression and World War II rations were a thing of the past, I have never witnessed a time of widespread lack of food. Instead, all I saw around me as I was growing up was more, more, more. The many cereals on the shelf competed for my attention. A full fridge, a full freezer, a full pantry, full grocery stores, full candy machines, full cafeterias, a full bowl every morning and a full plate every night, day after day, month after month, year after year -- that's the America I grew up in. My trick-or-treat bag brimmed every Halloween and my stocking was stuffed every Christmas. We had candies galore at Easter and picnics on the Fourth of July. On our birthdays we got to choose what we wanted for dinner and it always appeared.

But during my adolescence I began to participate in and observe around me a strange phenomenon: people who had access to plenty of food but chose to be hungry. I and many of the young women around me became obsessive dieters, and some even became anorexic or bulimic. It took me a long time to break the cycle of deprivation and over-indulgence that began when I was a teenager -- a time when I alternated between feeling that a candy bar or other sweet would solve all my problems, and feeling that all I needed to solve all my problems was to stop eating and lose weight. I was on a classic pendulum swing with food, and I had a very hard time figuring out what a healthy medium might be.

The Excess Era mentality that I grew up around, along with the widespread adulteration of food with preservatives, chemicals, colors, flavors and textures that originated in a laboratory instead of a kitchen, made food feel like something that was tainted, something unclean, fake, and artificial. I reacted by trying to be a food purist. My daily lunch in high school consisted of a whole wheat pita bread filled with dry diced vegetables and sprouts. Even though it always left me feeling hungry and wanting something else, I thought eating that way would make me pure.

The Hopi have called this late winter moon, which falls around February, the "Purification Moon." It is interesting that the word February comes from the Latin phrase Februarius mensis, meaning the month of Februa. Februa was a Roman festival of purification that was celebrated every February 15, and so February was the month (moon) of februa (purification) -- an uncanny similarity to the Hopi. In the Christian calendar, the period of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which falls in the beginning of February, and lasts for 40 days leading up to Easter. Lent is also a time of purification, of fasting, and of prayer. It is a time of intentional, conscious hunger. This year Ash Wednesday is right at the beginning of the Hunger Moon -- February 9. This also happens to be the beginning of the Chinese New Year, which is always well observed here in San Francisco. I am going to take the time to go to church and be marked with the cross of ashes -- a reminder of my mortality, and of the fact that even though I am imperfect, I am loved.

I for one can't help but wonder how different my teenage years would have been if I had lived in a culture in which fasting, hunger, or purification were ritualized, were part of an annual cycle. Would I have spent years depriving myself of nourishment if there had been a Hunger Moon or Purification Moon in my calendar? Or if I had grown up in a time when my community observed the period of Lent through a practice of repentance and prayer? Or if my village held a purification festival at the end of winter?

And what if these practices were not about punishment, but about acknowledgment? Scarcity can be ritualized as a way of accepting it without actually suffering it. It can be seen as part of a cyclical whole, a new moon's darkness to the full moon's light.

Or what if I had simply grown up in a time when food was seasonal? When there was, in each year, a time of abundance and a time of scarcity? When food was not just there in packages on the supermarket shelf all year round? What if I had grown up watching the planting, watering, and harvesting of crops, the threshing and winnowing of grains and beans, the drying of corn, and the careful calculations involved in making sure there would be enough food to last until springtime? Would I have inflicted unnecessary hunger on myself, privately and painfully, if hunger had been honored and ritualized in my culture, and food considered precious and holy?

Beginning to eat seasonally has greatly helped me to find that golden mean between indulgence and deprivation when it comes to food -- that sense of right relation that had been so elusive during my teenage years. Eating from the farmers market provides me with both a sense of abundance and of built-in limitation. I am no longer tortured by the artificial bounty of the supermarket. I go to the farmers market, see what is in season, and eat from that authentic, local, ecological base. During the late winter hunger moon, I make pots of cream of parsnip soup, or beet borscht, and delight in the old-fashioned root vegetables of my foremothers' root cellars, enriched with butter and crème fraiche from cows that graze on green pastures, just like they did in my ancestors' time. I am so grateful for the sense of balance I have finally found -- the feeling that there is enough, but not too much.

I wish for all of us that deep sense of right relation this Hunger Moon -- of being fed, but not being stuffed. May you find both satisfaction and purification this Hunger Moon. May you feel deep gratitude for whatever is in your bowl -- bone marrow broth, earthy root vegetable puree, and or a simple porridge. I offer below my recipe for borscht -- that's what's in my bowl tonight.

Beet Borscht

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
• 1 onion or large leek, sliced or chopped small
• 1/2 teaspoon (or more, to taste) caraway seeds (optional)
• 1 carrot, sliced thinly
• 1 stalk celery or 1 parsley root, sliced thinly
• 1 small can diced tomatoes, tomato puree, or 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
• 1/2 head cabbage, shredded
• 1 bunch red beets, peeled and sliced thinly
• Filtered water or beef stock
• 1 bay leaf and a few parsley stems, tied in a bundle with string
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Red wine vinegar (or beet kvass) to taste, optional
• Crème fraiche, sour cream, or yogurt for garnish
• Fresh dill, chives, or scallions for garnish (optional)

Procedure:

1. Heat the butter or oil in a medium-sized soup pot. Add the leeks or onions with the caraway seeds, then add the celery, carrots, and cabbage one by one and sauté until soft.
2. Add the tomatoes, puree, or paste and heat through.
3. Add the beets and filtered water (or stock) to cover the vegetables by about an inch.
4. Add the bay leaf and parsley stems and bring the pot to a boil.
5. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until all is soft.
6. Turn off the heat and remove the bay leaf bundle.
7. Add a big pinch of salt and a grind of pepper to the pot. Taste the soup and adjust the seasonings by adding salt, pepper, or a few drops of vinegar, to taste.
8. Serve in a shallow bowl with a dollop of crème fraiche, sour cream, or yogurt and a sprinkling of fresh dill, chives or scallions if desired.

Notes:

Borscht is great served with a dark, whole grain bread -- especially one with rye in it, spread thick with butter. A salad of crisp lettuce with hard cooked eggs is also a great accompaniment.

Serves 4