Taking Stock While Making Stock

It was a rude awakening. Living in Brooklyn, we ate takeout from a different restaurant every night. Then four years ago, we moved to a woodsy suburb in Ct. After a marathon december day we finally watched the taillights of the moving truck pull away, leaving us, for the first time, alone in our new home. I can't remember the exact details of that evening but it was probably me who said, "I'm wiped. Let's just order a pizza." We finally located a puny yellow pages, it was nowhere near the size of the brooklyn behemoth I was accustomed to, and found listings for a couple of local pizzerias.

"I'd like to place an order for delivery. . ." I started.

"Where do you live?"

Smiling at my husband, I spoke my brand new address into the telephone for the first time. A milestone!

"That's too far. We don't deliver out there."

Click.

I couldn't believe my ears. We repeated the experience a few more times as we ran through every pizzeria in the phone book. Panic began to set in. Had we moved to the hub of nowhere? Apparently, the brave new world had never heard of delivery. If we couldn't get a pizza delivered then what were the odds of ordering in Chinese? Indian? Thai? For the love of god, what were we going to EAT?

For the first few months we subsisted meagerly out of the freezer section at Trader Joe's but, ultimately, resistance was futile. I learned to cook. Not only did I learn to cook, I learned to love to cook. I became almost as enthusiastic about cooking as I am about yoga, which is saying a lot. In fact, I found my two loves shared a lot in common.

Today, finally, my schedule offers the quiet day at home I've been longing for. In my bathrobe, sipping morning tea, I putter between the counter and the fridge, pulling out the makings of stock. I'll often use the boxed stuff for a shortcut, it's not like I'm Martha-frigging-Stewart or anything, but when there's time, homemade is just so much better. Carrots, celery, onion. Anything lingering in the vegetable drawer. Woodsy stems and remnants of fresh herbs I've stashed in the freezer for just this purpose.

Vegetarians, here's your chance to avert your eyes.

Next, I add the bones, which I've also saved in the freezer. This is a yoga blog, so, I'm going to address this taboo, okay? I'm not a vegetarian. I spent nine years veg, which is a quarter of my life. Do the math, if you like. I spent a good portion of those nine years run down and sickly. Today, I feel so much better. I think it's entirely possible for some people to be happy and healthy vegetarians, and I commend them. It just wasn't possible for me. I'm generally reluctant to discuss my choices on this issue with students. Not because I'm ashamed, because I'm not ashamed of taking care of myself, and I do so without apology. I simply consider it to be a personal choice. I have full understanding that the seat of the teacher can be weighty and I don't want anyone to be confused between my choice and some imaginary "right choice." I don't think there's one right choice that can be indiscriminately applied.

I don't aspire to be anybody's role model. I do, however, aspire to make conscious choices about the food I eat. For what it's worth, I buy exclusively grass fed, organic free-range meat, often from a farm about an hour north, where the animals have hundreds of acres to roam freely. I've seen it with my own eyes. It works for me.

If you're vegetarian and come to my house for dinner, I will enthusiastically prepare for you the most delicious meat-free dish within my capability. If you invite me to your home for a meal, I will eat what you put down in front of me, without asking if it's organic, where it comes from, or whether it was gathered by the light of the full moon on the third thursday of the month. I think it's polite. Do I sound defensive? Maybe I am, a little. I've seen many conversations around this topic grow heated. I hope that if we disagree on this topic that we can do so without animosity.

Okay, back to the issue at hand. Put everything into the stockpot, cover with water and add just a little salt. Not too much, you can always add more later. Bring it to a boil, then immediately reduce the heat to a simmer. Skim anything off the top that looks unappealing. Walk away for at least 8 hours.

With the simmering pot perfuming the kitchen, the phrase "yoga kshema" runs through my mind. It appears as early as the Rg Veda, which is early indeed, and, in fact, is the very first recorded usage of the word 'yoga.' It means, "yoga cooks." It occurs to me how very much yoga is like making stock. Both endeavors are a process of distilling down to essence. Both require us to throw the metaphorical bones of our experience into the stockpot, to pare down to the marrow of our being, to be cooked in the transformative fire. In the yogic endeavor, you are not simply the ingredients in the pot, you're the pot, the fire and the chef, as well as the diner who ultimately sups the experience.

But, while a good stock is a thing of beauty in its own right, its true magic lies in its potency, right? It becomes the foundation of whatever you decide to do with it. What will you create? A risotto? A soup? A delicate sauce? A robust one? Ultimately, your stock, like your yoga, means to be expansive. You're limited only by your imagination and your skill in the kitchen, metaphorical or otherwise.

So often, yoga is viewed as the paring down to Self, with a capital S. And that's certainly a key feature of the yoga that I practice. I'd go so far as to say it's imperative. To touch the quintessential, I believe, we must cook in the fire of our own awareness and look deeply inward to the place where we're all, essentially, more similar than different. But to stop there would be reductive. So my aspiration is to touch the core, again and again, and then to expand ecstatically from that place. To create myself as imaginatively, as whimsically and fantastically, as possible. Look for this pulsation of distillation and proliferation in your asana practice, in meditation and in the joyful preparation of a meal. Look for it wherever you go and in your every endeavor.

And, whether you're serving it up on your mat or in the kitchen, don’t forget to have fun when you get cooking.

Comments

[Everyday Yogini]

I love the way you compare making stock to Yoga. Beautiful... I, too, made stock today and RELISH the days I have time to putter around the kitchen. ESPECIALLY since I added some meat back into my diet after feeling crummy being a vegetarian.

Sound familiar? :) Thank you for sharing. I think it's important for more people to make choices that work for their BODY and not just because a particular diet is the party line for a lifestyle.

Oh, and your vacation sounds lovely...