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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
ABOUT ME
About Me

Noted herb expert, culinary educator and recipe developer. Small business consultant traveling the globe in search of food and cultural knowledge, while working with small, local, organic, sustainable, and fairtrade farmers.

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LATEST POSTS
  • “Different” Chicken Congee
    December 31, 2022

    It’s New Year’s Eve Day, I’m in Miami, Florida where I have traveled with my pets for a little 45-day snowbirding experience (and possibly the subconscious desire to travel to the source and unravel some deep seeded and complicated emotions I have been carrying for far too long). It’s currently 80 degrees and I’m in my swimsuit outside by the pool near the beach with my pets. I have a sweet little menu prepared for a dinner tonight and was just lollygagging a bit when I got a text asking me for the recipe for that cold weather chicken congee I made during the recent artic chill. You remember, the congee recipe that I had labeled one of my best dishes. The one I was supposed to have posted the recipe for already, the one I keep getting asked for. Here you go. I’ll warn you, my congee recipe is a little different. But what do I know, I had never made congee before. But different is who I am and what I do and staying authentic to who I am is a constant goal, New Year or not.

  • Nissa’s Christmas Mole (& Tamales)
    December 20, 2022

    I make really good moles, and I don’t think it’s because of my connection to Latin America. Despite the fact that I learned a lot of my flavors in my travels there starting even before I traveled there at 10 years old. I think it’s because, as a cook, I embody what a mole really is: a melting pot of ideas and concepts that continuously evolves. It has no real recipe, no real beginning, and no real ending. I cook, like a mole is. My first mole was a Cherry & Duck Mole for a special Taco Party event at my old cooking school in Brooklyn. From there I went on to create such masterpieces as my Passion Fruit Pork Mole, which came to be while I lived in Ecuador where passion fruit practically dropped from the sky. That recipe is also where I came to use carrots as a source of natural sweetness and a thickening agent (moles generally use a myriad of ingredients as thickeners). I even make mole cocktails and once made a recipe for a Cherry Mole Manhattan. The mole-making process delivers immense pleasure for me and reminds me of the importance of openness in cooking. It reminds me that even in what most consider traditional and culturally specific there is diversity.

  • The Herbal Dry Brine
    November 13, 2022

    As you are probably aware, brining helps create a more succulent meat. I am a big fan of the dry brine when it comes to cooking a turkey or even a chicken. The dry brine is easier and less messy than wet, and it delivers moist meat and a crispy and flavorful skin, which I happen to be a fan of. Adding herbs and spices to a dry brine (salt) adds flavor, texture, and a joie de vivre by creating an aromatic and flavorful experience customized to your palate. The salt on the skin draws moisture from the turkey and then comingles with the herbs, spices and salt and gets re-absorbed back into the turkey, creating flavorful, succulent and juicy meat. The salt and air dries out the skin which allows it to become extra crispy when roasted, and the herbs and spices add extra flavor as they cook and get embedded into the chicken skin by means of chicken fat. If you are lucky enough to get a jar of my Chipotle Cranberry Mezcal Herbal Brine in time for Thanksgiving, you will need to know how to use it. And if you didn’t get one (which is likely because I made limited quantities this fall), you can still make one using the same formula.

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Crows garlic - a specifies of wild garlic. I bought some and planted with all the bulbs I bought, again not knowing it was edible. Im fairly happy and am making my first garden salt when these things go into full bloom, I suspect soon. They don’t necessarily bloom like you’d imagine I guess they look like little tight buds, which fascinates me. They spread like crazy too I guess and I’m totally not mad at that. 

The flowers come on these super tall wiry and strong center stalks. They are super wierd and super cool. Im in love. 

Leaves, stalks flowers all edible. More as more happens. 🌸💐🌿
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Lavender & Brown Sugar Ice Coffee
Makes 2 Coffees

This is a refreshing and easy to make ice coffee using your leftover coffee. The additional hint of lavender adds a touch of luxury and extravagance, yielding a pleasant afternoon pick me up.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon light brown sugar
a few lavender blossoms or 1 teaspoon lavender flowers (dried)
1 – ½  cups leftover coffee
½ cup half and half (better texture than milk!)
¼  teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups of ice

Directions

Muddle the brown sugar and lavender flowers together in a cocktail shaker for about 20-30 seconds. Add the coffee, half and half and vanilla. Fill with ice until the shaker is ¾ full and shake vigorously. Strain (double straining preferable) into a glass over ice. Garnish with a fresh lavender twig.

If you don’t have lavender growing in your garden, no problem, you can buy dried culinary lavender flowers. I love Curio Spice Company @curiospice  for all things spice related, and they have amazing lavender flowers from Oregon. Which I use in the winter when my garden is dormant.
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I’m so happy to have Jasmine in my life again I can’t wait till my plants grow bigger and produce lots more blooms. I love using them in cocktails.
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I’m a big pineapple, sage fan not only does it attract pollinators and hummingbirds with it’s vibrant fuchsia flowers, but it tastes heavenly, beautiful, herbaceous pineapple essence -one of my favorite everyday uses is in a ham and cheese omelette. It’s so delicious in a ham and cheese omelette.
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Garden leaves salad …. #happyNiss 

My garden to be clear 🤣💃‼️
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My pink dianthus, that I planted last year, are finally blooming this year. Their bright, magenta and hot pink flowers, mingled perfectly with a new. Recipe I’ve been working on (Actually and old {everybody’s favorite} winter recipe Cranberry Pear Coffee Cake ) I’ve been making a spring version using strawberries and Rhubarb - what you’re looking as is the crumble part (it goes inside and on top of the cake because of course) I make the crumble part of the recipe  super easy to make and I think more delicious because the flavors are melted into the butter - spreading around the flavor@more before it’s cooked. I put the dianthus in after the crumble is fully mixed - they taste like close and nutmeg so they will be perfect (and beautiful) in this Rhubarb, Strawberry and Blueberry Pink Dianthus Cardamon Rose Coffee Cake. - I don’t care that my titles are too long / the information in a title is key. 

Recipe soon- im working on a #mango version as well for summer. That one with verbena.
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This is #joy 

Herbs!
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Did you know the probes petals are edible? They taste like of mild strawberry and peach with a tinge of cloves essence. They are delicious in salads, syrups (cocktails and kick tails) and baked goods and im going to grow tuen for sure. This one I stole from my neighbors yard.
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Lavender Butter Almond Toffee Ice Cream (made with dried lavender flowers)
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I needed some hot stuff this evening so I made a spicy shrimp, squid ink pasta puntanesca kind of thing. 

This is what happens when you have a well stocked pantry and are out of fresh food. The only fresh was some old garlic and the herbs from my garden (mint, oregano and parsley) chili peppers and shrimp were frozen. 

15 minute meal!
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I make a good chicken schnitzel anyone who’s tried it knows that -the secret obviously is the triple threat of #herbalforeplay - herbs in the flour mixture (along with spices), herbs in the egg mixture (along with mustard), herbs in the breadcrumb mixture (along with lots of cracked pepper).

But this impromptu black, chickpea, broccoli salad that I made last night is amazing 

It’s got roasted, broccoli, black, chickpeas, some carrots, a lemon, a garlic vinaigrette and dates, feta lemon zest and sumac - the main herb i used is anise hyssop and the licorice essence mixed with the chickpeas, dates and broccoli- holy wow!
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For me. Celebrating #cincodemayo is about #celebrating the spirit of the #Mexican 🇲🇽 people- here’s a quick history lesson on the holiday and my famous #crespoorganickitchen #margarita #recipe #featuring one of my better ideas—- #mangopit #margaritamix 

And of course a beautiful Nissa #HerbSalt - Diablo Chili Colantro Margarita Salt #salud

For the longer and more in depth hostory lesson head to my #Mangoblog #UnderTheMangoTree and read my post History & Histeria of Cinco De Mayo. 

Link in story
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Instagram post 17996034169808686
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Grab some @crespoorganic dried #ataulfo #mangoes
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Sorry mango people for the delay in my communication but olof and ivin found one of thosenozark barracudas (black snake) and I had to go get scared. 

The good snake was released in the woods and unharmed.
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I’ve had this idea percolating for a while and if you know me, you know that my head is always percolating ideas and then boom randomly I execute it tonight I felt like eating a cookie and even though I’m so busy I took a moment to try a new recipe idea using dried mangoes and pistachios in shortbread cookies holy shit was it fantastic I made a few plain short breads because I didn’t want to miss out on a good cookie experience and I wasn’t sure if the other anyhow I’m gonna continue working on the recipe for mango flavor is amazing in it the way they bake into the butter incredible. You’re gonna love it.

@tedlasso_official  will love these. Maybe I can meet up with @jason_sudeikis in Kansas City and trade shortbread for KC recommendations?
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LATEST POSTS
  • December 31, 2022
    “Different” Chicken Congee
  • December 20, 2022
    Nissa’s Christmas Mole (& Tamales)
  • November 13, 2022
    The Herbal Dry Brine
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Making the Effort | My Herbal Roots