• HOME
    • MY HERBAL ROOTS
    • HERBAL ROOTS
  • ME
    • ABOUT ME
    • CLASSES AND EVENTS
    • CALENDAR
    • SERVICES
    • MEDIA
    • CONNECT
  • SEASONS
    • ALL SEASONS
    • SPRING
    • SUMMER
    • FALL
    • WINTER
  • HERBS
    • ALL HERBS
    • ARUGULA
    • BASIL
    • BAY LEAF
    • CHERVIL
    • CHIVES
    • CHOCOLATE MINT
    • CILANTRO (CORRIANDER)
    • DILL
    • EDIBLE FLOWERS
    • EPAZOTE
    • GRAPEFRUIT MINT
    • HYSSOP
    • LAVENDER
    • LEMON BALM
    • LEMON GRASS
    • LEMON THYME
    • LEMON VERBENA
    • MARJORAM
    • OREGANO
    • ORANGE MINT
    • PARSLEY
    • PEPPERMINT
    • PINEAPPLE MINT
    • PINEAPPLE SAGE
    • PURSLANE
    • RED BASIL
    • ROSEMARY
    • SAGE
    • SAVORY
    • SORREL
    • SPEARMINT
    • SPECIALITY HERBS
    • TARRAGON
    • THAI BASIL
    • THYME
  • WANDERINGS
    • MAP
    • ASIA
    • AUSTRALIA
    • CANADA
    • CARRIBEAN
    • CENTRAL AMERICA
    • EUROPE
    • MEXICO
    • SOUTH AMERICA
    • USA
  • RECIPES
    • SEARCH
    • SEASONS
    • HERBS
    • PLACES
    • VIDEOS
    • BLOG POSTS
GET CONNECTED
  • HOME
    • MY HERBAL ROOTS
    • HERBAL ROOTS
  • ME
    • ABOUT ME
    • CLASSES AND EVENTS
    • CALENDAR
    • SERVICES
    • MEDIA
    • CONNECT
  • SEASONS
    • ALL SEASONS
    • SPRING
    • SUMMER
    • FALL
    • WINTER
  • HERBS
    • ALL HERBS
    • ARUGULA
    • BASIL
    • BAY LEAF
    • CHERVIL
    • CHIVES
    • CHOCOLATE MINT
    • CILANTRO (CORRIANDER)
    • DILL
    • EDIBLE FLOWERS
    • EPAZOTE
    • GRAPEFRUIT MINT
    • HYSSOP
    • LAVENDER
    • LEMON BALM
    • LEMON GRASS
    • LEMON THYME
    • LEMON VERBENA
    • MARJORAM
    • OREGANO
    • ORANGE MINT
    • PARSLEY
    • PEPPERMINT
    • PINEAPPLE MINT
    • PINEAPPLE SAGE
    • PURSLANE
    • RED BASIL
    • ROSEMARY
    • SAGE
    • SAVORY
    • SORREL
    • SPEARMINT
    • SPECIALITY HERBS
    • TARRAGON
    • THAI BASIL
    • THYME
  • WANDERINGS
    • MAP
    • ASIA
    • AUSTRALIA
    • CANADA
    • CARRIBEAN
    • CENTRAL AMERICA
    • EUROPE
    • MEXICO
    • SOUTH AMERICA
    • USA
  • RECIPES
    • SEARCH
    • SEASONS
    • HERBS
    • PLACES
    • VIDEOS
    • BLOG POSTS
Blog Posts Fall Marjoram Rosemary Sage USA

Making the Effort

November 25, 2021

Making the Effort

NOVEMBER 24th, 2021

Thanksgiving and the act of giving thanks, the acknowledgement that there is something to be grateful for, is something I think we could all do more often. Many Americans put forth great effort to make elaborate, or in the very least home-cooked, meals on Thanksgiving. This annual effort gives me faith in people and in love.

By nature, I think we know how to take care of each other, but somehow along the way we forget. Thanksgiving, I think, is our muscle memory of caring for each other in action. Even when it’s drenched in a gravy of guilt and obligation, most of us comply. When we don’t, it’s often because we are seriously disconnected from others, sometimes by choice.

My love language, of course, is food. Despite my hatred (yes, hatred) for roasted turkey, I partake in the annual feast time and time again with the same desire that most people have, for the connection. It hasn’t been the easiest holiday for me throughout my life. I was often one of those disconnected people, choosing to disconnect subconsciously by building up my walls of protection. Luckily for me, I’ve been trying to scale my own walls in an attempt to break out of my personal isolation. Mostly I’ve continued to grow in my ability to connect through my love of my family, friends and community. Since I was young, I knew that meant I had to show up at the table and beyond.

How we show up for others is one of the truest testaments to love. In the last 5 years I have spent a great deal of time thinking about and feeling love. I not only had to reconcile the many aspects of love after losing it, both with my father’s passing and my partner walking out. By examining it more closely I learned a lot about how to get more of it, how to grow it, and how to show up for it so I could get and give more of it. I now recognize it as something I want front-and-center in my life. Part of understanding what it’s really like to lose love is what creates the potential to notice its existence and be better at nourishing it.

I have a great deal of genuine love in my life these days. Like most love, it’s complex but it’s real and it’s mine because of my efforts and the efforts of those who choose to love me.

Making the effort to love is where we find connectedness, strength, and safety. Through this connectedness love circulates.  All good things like love, peace, joy, good food and happyNiss start with making the effort, something I believe most Americans can relate to today as most embark on making their Thanksgiving meal to share with others.

Family and interpersonal drama, the kind that often goes hand-in-hand with Thanksgiving, seems to simply be part of the spectrum of personalities and energies bumping against each other as they move on their paths. Although it can feel deeply uncomfortable and anxiety-riddled, maybe bumping up against others, right there in that collision, is where we make the most progress in our personal and collective growth. Maybe that moment is where we need to pause and take a breath, observe, feel and listen. No matter how gigantic or tiny each of these collisions are, I think they can be an opportunity to grow more open and create more room for love instead of shutting off from it. Showing up for each other makes the world a better place. It’s true on Thanksgiving or just any old Wednesday.

I used to think my family was so simple. None of us stressed out about the holidays much. You came here, went there, or you didn’t. There wasn’t much drama or pressure around it. I should have questioned the ease of it or maybe understood that families are made of waves, much like the ocean. Today I think my family was just taught to avoid things that required too much vulnerability. We didn’t like taking the risk of knocking up against each other understanding that, despite our bond in our bizarre childhood story, we were all drastically different people. Did we really want to know that? Especially the opinionated bunch we are.

Avoiders by nature avoid taking a clear look at themselves. They look around instead. Our lack of a solid effort to do holidays together didn’t serve us as we grew into our adult selves and our own families. We didn’t get closer like we could have. Like we should have.

Don’t get me wrong; we are a tight knit group that will protect each other ‘til the bitter end. But our mostly masculine roots closed us off from our sensitive soft sides. I think each one of us wishes we were more connected to this. I know I could have had deeper, more meaningful connections sooner in life without those walls I built to protect myself.

The truth is, I don’t know what to do about it except that I know an effort must be made if I want more closeness, with my brothers and beyond. Sometimes the effort is not received well by the other party which makes it hard and scary. Maybe the other party is not ready; maybe their perception is different. I don’t think it matters. I think the effort, like love, doesn’t need to be reciprocal for it to be effective. But that’s hard, too. We humans are often a selfish bunch.

I am mindful of how hard making the effort can be, but I really try anyway these days. I’m equally cognizant that we make the effort with greater ease for some than others. In-between those two lines exist the complexities that make each of us who we are. The hard and soft spots that can confuse and deter others. There are plenty of variables like trust, familiarity, and values that make the process easier or harder. But, like the gravy I have finally perfected this Thanksgiving, enough failures and eventually you may just get it right.

I’ve always been pretty good about showing up for others. I’m not bragging. I feel partly it’s just the luck of my astrological chart and that I landed the role as the only girl in a family of all brothers in a society that makes anyone with a vagina the one who should be nurturing.

Some would call me the matriarch of my family; I haven’t accepted that label. I’ve done my part and I think we all have. Mostly I feel like I did what I had to do when the occasion called for it. I think I learned to understand the needs of others as a young girl, caring for the many animals I had that loved me unconditionally. I saw how much showing up for them benefitted them, and I always did for my brothers as well. I have a keen attention to the details of what’s needed for survival and thriving, on a micro and macro level.

Balance is key. I still feel like I’m standing alone in my efforts to show up for those I love, often wondering where the obvious people in my life are when I need them. I’m trying harder these days to shift my attention to those that show up for me and let go of expectations for those that don’t. I’m not perfect by any means. I just want to be better at showing up for others with a truly open heart of non-judgment.

I show up a lot for others with my food leading the way. One might argue I hide behind my food. Another might argue the food is the superhero costume that gives me the strength to be vulnerable with others. It’s probably both. We humans are highly complex creatures.

Being generous with our natural talents is showing up for others. It is an incredible method of sharing our authentic love. Whatever we can we give of ourselves… our time, skills, listening, a text, an email, a hug… is showing up, and we all need to do more of it. We all have the time.

This Blue Eye, MO, Thanksgiving is a bittersweet one for me. Bitter in that my brother won’t be at my table for reasons that are confusing to me. Sweet in that four of my fourteen nieces and nephews will be at my table, as will Jenny, the mother of three of them. Each one of us is acutely aware of the healing power showing up for each other has, despite the complexities within and outside us.

I think we will be a grateful bunch, indeed.

This year’s Thanksgiving menu is rather simple. I know that sounds like an oxymoron for me, but truly it is. I typically use lots of herbs and spices and ingredients in my food, but I like things that don’t require much work that have great reward. Don’t let the cookery world fool you into thinking lots of ingredients mean complex. That’s just a spacing issue on their pages.

This year I opted to do even less work so I can spend more time with Kianna, who is flying all the way from California to spend time with me.

Here is a taste of how I’m showing up.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, may your table be filled with good ORGANIC food and may you be surrounded by people who you feel love for as complex as that may be.

Love,

Nissa!

Blog Posts Fall Marjoram Rosemary Sage USA

Making the Effort

November 25, 2021
November 25, 2021
Herbal Roots - Main Site
ABOUT ME
GET CONNECTED
RECENT POSTS
  • New Year’s Soul Fire Menu
    December 30, 2021

    From an early age, I desired to embrace life to the fullest regardless of the loneliness of such a path. I have spent most of my life traveling. That is when I am happiest and at my most humble and learning. Through my work in agriculture, famers have invited me into their homes and kitchens. Here I discovered the deep connecting power of food, culture, and community. Here I learned my love of cooking. I have witnessed how food ignites and excites and connects humans all over the world. I discovered the same in myself.

  • Soul Fire & Feeling Fully
    December 29, 2021

    2022 will be the year I focus on what and who sets my soul on fire. While I have almost always approached life this way, these days the older and wiser me has a much deeper connection to what that actually means. There has always only been one path to get here, to this position of soul fire clarity: by allowing myself to feel the fullness of things deeply, which is not often a comfortable task. My world, the world that I saw from an early age has always been a large one. My path has always been one that seeks, explores, travels and shares.

  • Falling Back Into Myself
    November 4, 2021

    Fall is not my favorite season. It’s full of mystery, significant change and its sense of loss tends to rile and agitate me. So, as we descend into fall, I always feel trepidation and fear in my blood. As a human being, the fear of the unknown is omnipresent. Habitually I have always tried to control that which is unrevealed, to fight my way through what I don’t know. Lately I wonder if I should stop fighting it and just fall back into myself, hold on and let it pass through me? Letting that which is mysterious reveal itself, in its own time, as nature intended. I think this is what autumn is about. It feels natural. I think human beings, like wild deer know when to be still and when to move. Humans, I think, mostly must learn to listen better, to hear what’s happening inside us.

SEARCH BY SEASON




POPULAR TAGS
Blog Posts
USA
Spring
Rosemary
Winter
Edible Flowers
Fall
Parsley
Mint
Sage
Summer
Basil
Chives
Connect
Thyme
Tarragon
Uncategorized
Cilantro (Corriander)
Oregano
Lavender
Asia
Europe
Odds & Ends Using Up Herbs
Herbal Nibbles
Categories
Tips & Tricks
Bay Leaf
Arugula
Herbs
Places
Mexico
Dill
Lemon Thyme
Speciality Herbs
Marjoram
Herbal Crafts
Pineapple Sage
Cocktails, Mocktails, Bitters & Mixers
Sweet Things
Herbed Pastas, Grains and Legumes
Meat, Poultry and Fish
Salads, Dressings & Vinaigrettes
Savory
Seasons
Hyssop

FOLLOW HERBAL ROOTS ON INSTAGRAM

View
Open
My birthday will never end!! (As long as I have the herb salt!)

Nissa’s Italian Birthday Herb Salt

Making my favorite vegetable tonight - #artichokes - Italian style (kind of)

Braising them in lemon, #italian #vermouth and the herb salt - finishing them on the grill and serving them with a garlicky #mint #aioli - a steak with more birthday salt and fresh lemon zest grilled over fresh #rosemary in the hot coals
View
Open
That #rhubarb #strawberry #geranium maceration i made days back for the pie??! still haven't made the pie (🤷‍♀️) but have been drinking the nectar of the maceration in #mocktails & #cocktails 

This refreshing little number is with gin and sake and fizzy water and a little lime- delicious on this hot night.

I also put sake in my tomato butter sauce im making with tomatoes past their prime - we shall see,  ideas sometimes work well, mine usually do.
View
Open
Early summer (2022h #herbalsalts are coming soon, ideas are percolating
View
Open
Strawberry Rose  Geranium leaves. A little goes a long way. Adding it to a rhubarb maceration that will  be mixed with strawberries for a pie.
View
Open
Strawberry Pink Peppercorn Rhubarb Gin Cooler with Lemon Verbena
View
Open
Grapefruit Honey Red Chlii Glazed Grilled Scallop Salad 

Garden Greens and Herbs

Fennel Fronds, Mint, Chives, Parlay (scallops marinated with lavender and tarragon) 

Avocadoes and grapefruit segments 

Grapefruit Tarragon Floral Salt
View
Open
I made this for dinner tonight. One of my favorite light- comfort meals. Fresh tomato butter sauce  and minty beef dumplings with  tangy yogurt. Yum. Yum. Yum. 

I have poor light at night in my MO kitchen so posting a photo from my old good light kitchen in Bolinas. 

Google my herbal@roots Turkish manti for the recipe (and surely a story)
View
Open
Parsley is in season. Parsley is fun. Be creative with it. 

Carrot Cake ink in bio. / also Nissa’s Fresh Mint Harissa is in the same post.
View
Open
Spicy 🌶 Grilled Shrimp Thai Fried (Egg) Rice and Yuzu & MO Red Bud Pickled Cucumbers 

Fresh Herbs used: Vietnamese Coriander, Cilantro, Thai Basil, Lemon Basil, Chives, VietnameseMint
View
Open
Heirloom Tomato Salad with Turkestan Oregano
View
Open
Turkestan Oregano
View
Open
So, this seasons garden (im closer  to my little MO herb farm and culinary fairyland) has a lot of unusual stuff. I’m not quite ready to give the tour, but I will soon. 

For now I embark a few recipes using some of the new plants- tiny snippets. It’s been hot so things are growing well. 

I have quite a few interesting varietals of oregano this year. I like Greek oregano but that’s not the kind that is sold in grocery stores much anymore because it doesn’t travel and hold up well. So of course most the big herb producers are using hi-bred varietals that can last and are also way too potent and camphor-y for me. It makes me think I don’t like oregano - these new varietals will prove otherwise. 

This  discovery-  these weird little oregano varietals (I have about 8) is exciting. 

Tonight I’m making a simple tomato salad and using my Turkestan Oregano. 

It’s a super pretty green with  dark purple under leaf. It’s native to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. 

It’s flavor is more mild. It’s peppery and has a softer pungency than Greek or Italian oreganos. 

Apparently (I cannot wait!) it has beautiful deep pink and purple flowers that are much bigger than all the other oreganos. 

 I’m like puppy I’m so excited.
LATEST TWEETS
Twitter
@MyHerbalRoots
Follow Us
Read all about Nissa's Middle Eastern herbal wanderings, in her new blog post My Herbaceous Istanbul!… https://t.co/5WdPk1H1U9
Over a year ago
- @MyHerbalRoots
Find out whose behind My Herbal Roots? https://t.co/HayqctqYld
Over a year ago
- @MyHerbalRoots
There are some great recipes in this one plus the basic facts on salt and pepper. https://t.co/x0n4VlrJ9P
Over a year ago
- @MyHerbalRoots
LATEST POSTS
  • December 30, 2021
    New Year’s Soul Fire Menu
  • December 29, 2021
    Soul Fire & Feeling Fully
  • November 4, 2021
    Falling Back Into Myself
View
Open
Green (Garden) Harissa (Spicy 🔥)

Toasted cumin, corriander, black pepper, caraway, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and herbs (cilantro, parsley, Moroccan mint, Syrian oregano, chives and carrot tops) #recipe for @myherbalroots
View
Open
This pink Lambrusco is amazing!

Fresh garden herbs and greens will turn into a Green Harissa - that will be drizzled over a lemon, cumin and mint dusted and grilled bone in pork chop / the harissa will also get mixed into yogurt and tossed together with steamed baby potatoes- a deliciously simple  trick/recipe I leaned in Tunisia
View
Open
I woke up this morning and spent two hours watering my garden by hand. 

But now we (me and Sapa)sit and do mango work watching the storm - thunder, lightening, wind, rain - it’s so serious and aggressive. It’s a super serious storm and Im  feeling awe This is a great storm house - inca is currently in his upstairs thunder room shaking
View
Open
If you invite me to your #BBQ I’ll bring @crespoorganic #mangoes 🥭, mango pickle relish and @myherbalroots #strawberry #rhubarb #lemonverbena #gin - or something like that. 

My work is my life and my life is my work. That’s what passion is!
  • HOME
  • ABOUT ME
  • GET IN TOUCH
@2019 Ger-Nis Culinary & Herb Center

HERBAL ROOTS

ABOUT

TEAM

MEDIA

CONNECT

MY HERBAL ROOTS

NISSA

EVENTS

CLASSES

SERVICES

VIDEOS

SHOP

RECIPES

HERBS

SEASONS

WANDERINGS

..

HOT OFF THE PRESS

THE HERB BLURBS

Making the Effort | My Herbal Roots