Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

Full Mead Moon

July moonlit kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is full! We have reached the apex of the lunar cycle known as the Mead Moon in the 16th Century English calendar. I KNOW that this is supposed to be a new moon newsletter, but when the new moon arrived, I could only think of it as The New Moon of Going Crazy.

I didn't mean going crazy in the sense of tragically losing one's grip on reality, nor in the sense of some kind of intentional ecstatic release (which might be consistent with the meaning of the Mead Moon!), but rather in the all-too-familiar, all-too-modern sense of going crazy trying to keep up with a to-do list that seems almost endless. With a brand new business getting up and running, a cell phone ringing in my purse, emails popping into my inbox every few minutes, and a book tour to pull together, I had the feeling that I was becoming my own worst nightmare: that too-busy American who could only dream of the time when she could graciously sit and chat with a spontaneous visitor, sipping slowly from a mug of tea or homemade mead!

So this is the first time in weeks that I have had a stretch of a few hours to sit down and write this belated letter. I really don't mean to complain. Everything I have committed myself to is a way of furthering the causes I am passionate about: local foods, sustainable agriculture, and the nourishing culinary traditions of the peoples of the world. I just know from experience that being this intensely busy cannot be sustained for very long, and I am grateful for moments of rest and recovery amidst the maelstrom.

At the moment, I am on the first leg of my "book tour" -- a glamorous name for an occupation that feels a bit more like "The Death of a Salesman" than "A Star is Born!" It is hard work to sell one's self and one's book day after day, to perfect strangers. It is difficult to stay connected to the big picture and the reasons why I wrote the book in the first place. I find myself falling into the existential angst of the door-to-door peddler. But there are certainly high points as well...

I spent three days in Seattle, reading at a great independent bookstore and doing cooking demos at two local farmers markets. I've gotten to see and taste for myself the abundance of summer berries that the Northwest is famous for -- an eye-popping bounty of blueberries, tayberries, raspberries, and blackberries that far exceeds Bay Area crops of these delicacies of summer. I haven't yet found gooseberries or other more obscure delights, but maybe I will.

I also spent a day and night on Whidbey Island, where I sold books at an outdoor market and then spoke to members of the local Weston Price chapter. What a gorgeous place Whidbey is! And so many people who are passionate about real food! I stayed and presented in an area named Honeymoon Bay -- a perfect location for a Mead Moon event.

Now I am en route to Portland, where I am excited for the first Full Moon Feast I have cooked in a city outside the Bay Area. The rest of the summer will be full of more travel, to the Midwest and then to the Northeast. You can see my list of confirmed events here: wisefoodways.com/events.

I still have some free spaces in my schedule, and if you have ideas for venues where I could read, demo, speak, or cook, as well as promote the book, I would love to hear them (click to send me an email)!

Traveling has meant that I had to leave in the middle of pulling together the first week's CSK box at my new business, Three Stone Hearth. But everything is going swimmingly in my absence, and it is very good for me to let go of some control and let the rest of the team work their magic. I can't believe how wonderful it is to be a part of such an amazing group of people, making such an exciting vision come to life. You can check out our steady progress at: threestonehearth.com.

The last project that I'm in the process of launching with another fabulous team of people is the brand-new Local Foods Wheel for the San Francisco Bay Area. This beautiful, full-color wheel is designed to show you what foods are available locally, both year-round and seasonally: localfoodswheel.com. We are officially releasing the wheel this moon, including a launch event at the Berkeley Farmers Market on July 22nd -- the last day of the Mead Moon. We'd love to see you there!

I must admit that I see more than a little irony in my life at the moment. I find myself decrying our society's lack of connection to the Earth at one minute, and then cursing the lack of a wireless connection at the next. I am forever singing the praises of locally-grown foods created in the context of relationship, but often catching a lunch on the run made by who-knows-who from ingredients grown who-knows-where. I criticize the addictive effect of the Standard American Diet, while feeling almost desperate for a cup of coffee. I laud a slow pace while living a fast one.

Oh well. I'm not the only one to experience such contradictions. It is impossible to lay the blame for the insanities of modern life on any one particular doorstep. It has something to do with living in a money-driven, corporation-heavy society. It certainly has to do with the American legacy of independence and progress as central values. It is inextricably linked to the relentless and rapid changes in communications technologies. And I'm sure it has its roots in the cultures of those Northern European peoples from whom the dominant culture in America is descended.

Such as the Norse, for example -- the most famous mead-makers and mead-drinkers of them all. I have been immersed in the world of fourteenth century Norway off and on for the past few months as I've been making my slow but sure way through the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy of books. Sigrid Undset won a Nobel prize for literature for her portrait of traditional life in the land of mead, meadows, and dairy-based homesteads -- set in a time when Wi-Fi was inconceivable. It is the portrait of a woman's life, but not a romantic one. Although I am fascinated by the details of the characters' agrarian existence, it is a story full of humanity and mistakes, regrets and love and loss. And lots of hard work. Undset often describes the daily labors of the farm, and Kristin going to bed in the evening filled with weariness.

Some people have asserted that the driven and anxious work ethic of Northern Europeans flows from the unforgiving, sometimes bitter cold landscape where their society developed. People who live in sunny climes -- the argument goes -- develop sunny dispositions and laid back attitudes. Perhaps there is a grain of truth to this, but I don't think it is more than a grain. Many other peoples whose cultures developed in cold and difficult climes -- the Saami, the Inuit, or the Tibetans, for example -- do not necessarily display a competitive, materialistic approach to life. There is a lot more going on than just cold weather and marginally arable soil.

It is not an easy riddle to unravel, and I'm not sure that I even want to try.

Instead, I find myself meditating on the word "mead" and feeling a sense of connectedness to those Norse ancestors. On the Mead Moon I am reaching back in memory to my own indigenous roots. Undset's writing captures a point in time when the Old Norse religion was being lost or rejected through the widespread adoption of Christianity, and it is edifying to get a taste of how this process played out among my own antecedents.

The fabulous writer Martín Prechtel exhorts each one of us to connect with our indigenous soul. What a good idea!

On the Mead Moon, may we each peer through the smog of our high-flying, fast-moving technologically-advanced lifestyles to glimpse the meadows and sip the mead and smell the goats where our indigenous souls dwell -- and invite them back into our hearts. Let's keep them nestled there, close by, to help us keep the worldly world we live in from driving us crazy.

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.