Time, And Turkey Stock

It takes time to live in a way that feels good. I was pondering this as I turned off the crock pot this morning.  The beginnings of turkey and wild rice soup bubbled inside.  Overnight the turkey carcass from Christmas dinner simmered along with our last carrots from the garden, chunks of celery and big slabs of onions transforming into the kind of rich stock you can only get from making it yourself. It takes time.

Time can be tricky in this modern world. Seems it’s all about speeding breakneck through nearly every aspect of work and home life so we can hurry up and get to _______.  The answer varies. In my life all this hurrying to get to the “good stuff” has caused me to miss a lot of good stuff.

Yesterday I heard a podcast about a study done on seminary students. One group was given the lesson of the good samaritan to prepare into a sermon. On the way to deliver the finished sermon students were presented with an actual person in need of help. Would the time spent studying the lesson have an effect? Not so much. Turns out whether the students stopped to help correlated instead to how much time they felt they had before the sermon was to start. Under time pressure, they walked right by a chance to live the wisdom they were about to preach. Ouch.

Cooking from scratch was something I’d never taken the time to do till the last few years. It’s taught me a lot already. You figure out right away those deep complex flavors that come from Grandma’s or your favorite chef’s kitchen don’t come quick. Luckily, when you don’t start cooking till your mid-40’s the kitchen is an unexplored wonderland. Emerging with a delicious plate of anything seems like magic.

Ok, you are wondering how I made it to middle age with cooking skills more appropriate for a camping trip than the kitchen. It’s been my life blessing (skill?) to live among and befriend excellent cooks. My skill is I’m a very appreciative eater and am happy to wash dishes. Sixteen years ago I met and later married a poet who also happens to be the best cook I know. But that is another story (and the best of my life) so I’ll stick to this morning’s soup here.

The turkey had relaxed down to a loose net of bones and clinging slivers of meat. Along with that heap of messy bits. You know the ones. (Vegetarians, please stick with me through this part.) Once it all cooled I started to divvy it all up. It’s messy, so I put on nurse gloves.

It was quite an operation this turkey divvying. I had time to think back on a Zen retreat I attended years ago. Though we sat in classic sitting meditation for hours a day, there were other hours of assigned work. The work was partly in exchange for lodging at the art school.  We were instructed to do our jobs (mine was carpet cleaning) as a meditation, attempting to be fully present, noticing everything, not lost in thought. Right! I had a lot of long thoughts about carpet and a myriad of other topics.  The real workhorse of the instruction was to gently bring the mind back to the task whenever it galloped the usual paths to the barn.  I tried full attention on the turkey carcass, which became pretty fascinating. I’ll spare you the details, but it became quite enjoyable.

Bones go into to the bag labeled Tree Food. I’ll bury these at the base of one of the newly planted trees. I confess, often the Tree Food bags end up in the freezer for a few days (ok, weeks) while I get around to digging the hole. The bones-in-the-freezer part drives Mendy a little nuts but after sixteen years with a farmer/beekeeeper she is acclimated to finding all sorts of weird stuff in the freezer. Anyway, gifting the trees with all that wonderful calcium is so satisfying. The trees love it and show it in the growing season. It takes some extra time but feels so good.

Veggies and soft bits land in the bowl to be divided among the anxiously waiting dogs. Soup meat goes to the tupperware bowl to be combined with the leftover meat we carved at Christmas. After all this, there was hardly anything left for the trash can. Which felt wonderful as I don’t always have, or take, the time to do all this.  It felt like respect for this turkey whose life would now feed many other beings.

Washing up the various bowls and crockpot in the quiet kitchen, I felt happy, productive, resonant with my soon-to-be soup as well as with our animals, trees and the beloved friends the soup would feed.

Which is when I realized that having enough time in my life—making enough time in my life— to cook turkey stock sometimes, without hurrying—is important. That time allowed me a helping of meditation practice I often put off, a taste of reflection I often let slip by as well as an ample bowl of joy.  There wasn’t anything I wanted to rush off to do instead of this. It was plenty.

Happy New Year 2015 dear readers.

love, Leigh