Jaki Jean & Jean & Jenny

The other night, as I sautéed onions & green pepper in olive oil & red pepper flakes, I thought about where I first tasted the recipe on the menu for the evening.

And how it has changed over the years.

Sometimes I use ground beef, sometimes I use ground turkey.  I have been known to use a soy based ground look alike.  Sometimes it is a green bell pepper, sometimes a green & a red & sometimes I add half a jalapeno pepper.

The other night, I roasted garlic, a new permutation for this recipe.  I am amazed & blown away by the way roasted garlic enhances everything I cook.

Some nights, I use a jar of my homemade tomato sauce, but the other night I used two cans of fire roasted tomatoes once the onions & peppers were soft. 

Some nights, I add only two cans of red kidney beans – other nights I add kidney beans I have cooked from scratch or I mix white & red beans.

These days, I always harvest herbs from my garden because somehow, I feel the result is uniquely my own.

But the recipe is not my own. 

I remember it from a long day ago, a family vacation to California, a vacation that included a visit to my cousin Jenny & her first husband (please forgive me, all ones Zeis).

I remember standing in Jenny’s kitchen while my mother Jean & Jenny talked as Jenny cooked.   

Jenny made a chili of ground beef, onion, green bell pepper, tomatoes, maybe a can of tomato paste (although that may be me projecting into my own permutations of the recipe) & canned kidney beans.

I remember Jenny added spices, but it has been too many years, too many permutations, to identify them. 

In my memory, Jenny served the chili with a salad & warm sour dough bread & the adults drank red wine.

If that memory is different, Jenny, please don’t tell me.

Because all these years, I have served that dish, in all its permutations, with a salad & warm sour dough bread & red wine.

A comfort food.  A comfort memory.

Years after that California trip, during a difficult moment in my teenage life, someone asked me to identify my comfort food.  I tried to describe it & instead cooked it.  A chili of ground beef & onions & peppers & tomatoes & spices served with warm sour dough bread & red wine.

The other night, I reminded Jean about where I got the recipe we have used all these years since that trip to California.

Today, thinking about it, I realize that watching Jean & Jenny interact in Jenny’s kitchen that evening was part of the road that led me to want to cook.

Years after that trip, years after leaving home & getting married & getting unmarried, I found myself in kitchens watching other women cook & interact.

And I knew, I knew I wanted to be a part of that interaction.

Only now, do I realize that it was just not about cooking.

I don’t know what Jean & Jenny talked about that evening in Jenny’s kitchen.  But I did memorize the moment.

And I am still recreating it, every time I recreate that chili.

The recipe & the moment.

Jenny, I also remember the ride in the Corvette.

Jaki Jean, Zynga & Vaginal Discomfort

So this evening, as I was playing Words With Friends, a Zynga ad popped up & asked me if vaginal discomfort was on my mind.

Seriously?

As if I would discuss that with Zynga at any time, much less during a particularly ruthless battle of WWF.

Then my friend Drake, the father of three beautiful young women, brother of my best friend from the second grade, posted this:

Suddenly, Zynga, all things vaginal were on my mind.

The battle to control women by controlling their bodies began a very long day ago.

Long before the current debates, most often presented in Congresses across the nation by men & women who have no clear agenda to present, no path toward progress, no plan for protecting their constituents.  When all else fails, follow tradition.

As Patriarchal cultures have done since the dawn of recorded history, when all else fails, when you don’t have a plan or a solution to offer, or a logical explanation for behavior, blame the woman.

Shift the focus from the economy, from the war, from healthcare reform, from Medicare fraud, from education, from hungry children & the mentally ill & those maimed & wounded by drugs & poverty & ignorance.  From genetically engineered food & global warming & too many drivers concentrating on their phone conversations & corrupt corporate climates.

Focus on the woman, the (fe)male.   Specifically on the female body.

Apparently, He Who Controls the Female Body, controls the world.

And the vote.

 

All else will fall into place. 

Once women realize that our role is to support & provide a vessel for the reproduction of our species (preferably the male of the species); that education causes us to think too much; that our purpose is to serve the will of 49% of the species; that rape is just a matter of perception & we can shut down our bodies to prevent a pregnancy; that in case our bodies fail us & a pregnancy results from a perceived rape, it is a blessing; that abortion is wrong because male fetuses masturbate . . .

As soon as women realize that men understand & know our bodies so much more intimately than we know ourselves, order will be restored to the Republic.

I just don’t fucking think so, boys.

Should the government find me to be a threat to national security, or linked to a threat to national security, I have no problem with the NSA or any government agency monitoring my cell phone, the land line in our home, my email, my bookmarks on Chrome, the books I check out of the Sugar Land library, the things I order online, my grocery store purchases, my charitable contributions, my political affiliation.

But don’t even get close to messing with my vagina or my vulva or my clitoris or my cervix or my inner & outer labia or my womb or my ovaries or my fallopian tubes.  

Or how I might choose to use or not use them.  How I have chosen to use or not use them.

I draw the line on government interference at my vagina.

When legislatures begin to examine the reproductive capacity of phallus bearers, to pass legislation to regulate & control a man’s choice to conceive or not to conceive, my line will remain drawn.  But I promise to laugh.  

So Zynga, it seems vaginal discomfort is indeed on my mind.

Just not quite the discomfort your sponsor was advertising.