Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Moon of Making Fat

Late May moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We have moved into the lunar cycle known as the Moon of Making Fat in the Lakota (Sioux) calendar. I saw my first glimpse of this moon in the clear sky last night. Presently the moon is a tender, slender young sliver, but it will grow fatter and fatter until it is full on June 11 -- an event I will be celebrating here in the Bay Area with a Full Fatness Moon Feast.

Until now, I have been holding these feasts in the parish hall of my church in San Francisco, downstairs beneath the sanctuary. Church basements are famously auspicious places for beginnings. I've heard it said that the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement both were born in church basements; and so I'm proud that my idea for monthly gatherings featuring traditional foods, local ingredients, and ecological farmers were brought to life in similar surroundings.

The full moon feasts also provided an unexpected answer to a dilemma that had been perplexing me and my publishers. We were searching for a title for my first book, and having trouble finding something that would tie together food (the subject of the book) with the lunar calendar (the structure of the book) and a sense of history and abundance (the feeling of the book). Full Moon Feast proved to be the perfect name.

The full moon feasts have also proved to be the catalyst for bringing to fruition another idea that has been buzzing around in my bonnet for a few years -- a Community Supported Kitchen. This would be a place that would produce delicious foods based on nourishing culinary traditions and using ingredients from local farms and ranchers. It would be a place that would connect people to each other -- through shared meals and time spent helping in the kitchen. It would connect urban dwellers with the people who grow their food, and support them in their efforts to be good stewards of the land. It would also, ultimately, connect people back to the Earth herself, and help people remember that food is a gift -- something to be approached with respect, processed with care, and never taken for granted. It would be a place where food would be seen as much more than a commodity; where it could be celebrated and enjoyed as an essential element of daily life.

That place is about to be born. I have spent much of the past year working with four partners -- who are also friends -- to put together a business plan that we hope will be both sustainable and sustaining on every level -- financially, ecologically, spiritually, and energetically. We have leased a wonderful kitchen space in West Berkeley, and will be moving in on June 1 (that's Thursday!) to clean it and get it ready for production. The Full Fatness Moon Feast will be the first opportunity our community will have to break bread with us, to see the space and hear more about our plans.

We are calling our business Three Stone Hearth -- A Community Supported Kitchen. The business is named after a traditional form of kitchen used by peoples from around the world for many millennia. Since ancient times, human beings have created a simple and functional hearth by placing three large stones in a triangle pattern. A fire is then built in the center of the triangle, and either a cooking pot or a flat cooking stone is balanced on the stones for cooking. Some foods are also cooked directly in the fire. This classical hearth form is still used throughout much of the world today.

Among Mayan peoples, the three-stone hearth has sacred and cosmological meaning as well. In sacred stories dating back to ancient times, three hearthstones were placed in the center of the universe, and it was from this hearth that the God of Maize was born. To this day, this sacred place can be identified in the heavens. Three stars that are part of the constellation we call Orion are called "The Three Hearthstones" by Maya peoples today, and the nebula at their center is called "The Fire." The story of the placing of the three hearthstones is told in Mayan glyphs dating from the 8th Century CE at the archaeological site in Quiriguá, Guatemala.

In contemporary Mayan societies, the three stone hearth is still often the center of the household. In traditional homes, a Maya woman's first activity in the morning is to light the hearth. This is a practical act, but also a sacred one. The household's hearth is a spiritual center -- a place of connection between earthly daily life and the divine. It is a place of creation and transformation.

This aspect is not unique to the Maya -- in many traditional societies, the hearth is both a center of daily life and a place with spiritual meaning. Even in modern English, the word hearth is both a physical place for a cooking or heating fire, as well as a symbol for family, home, and community.

The three stone hearth is symbolic for our business as well. It is a reminder that cooking and food have been central to community life throughout human history, and that when we prepare food we are engaging in a fundamental, universal, and profoundly meaningful human activity.

It is my hope that the Community Supported Kitchen model will offer an answer to a number of needs I see in modern American society. We are greatly in need of truly nourishing foods that will support our health or help us heal. We need to build local economies and support local agriculture. We need to have more and more farmers making a decent living growing foods ecologically and humanely, and fewer under the yoke of agribusiness companies. Busy individuals and families sometimes need access to foods that are easy and quick to prepare, or ready-made. And we have a deep need to build community and share meaningful activities with one another.

If you would like to receive invitations to our feasts and receive more information about the CSK, please just send me an email and I will make sure we add you to the list. If you are already receiving the feast evites, then you are already on our list.

During the Tibetan New Year festival, ritual offerings are made to the masked figure of the Dekar, who sings the praises of the countryside's abundance. The village responds with dishes of food and the following words:

On the Fatness Moon, may your mouth be filled with the nourishing fats that the Earth so generously offers you. May we all feel a bit more calm and collected, knowing that the bountiful harvest of summer is just around the corner. May we know that we are in the midst of an amazing transformation in this country -- a sea change that may rival the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement in importance -- the transformation of our foodsystem. People in every state are waking up to the tragedy of industrial agriculture, and the dangers of being a fast food nation.

May each of us, in our own way, start the day by re-lighting the hearth: reviving community, reconnecting with the source of life, and finding and creating foods that nourish us at every level. That would be a wish fulfilled.

click to: book summary

Full Moon Feast Food and the Hunger for Connection by Jessica Prentice Full Moon Feast invites us to a table brimming with locally grown foods, radical wisdom, and communal nourishment.