I’ve just returned from 3 months of travel and, with only a quick shopping trip for milk (no TJ’s for 3 months!!), semi-purposely have limited groceries in the house. Living more simply, right. Then the cavalry came over the hill as my box of organic produce arrived from Farm Fresh to You. Getting a regular delivery of more or less, locally produced organic produce, forces me out of my same old food habits and more into the rhythm of eating in time with the local seasons. The box subscription also implements some actual commerce behind hopes for the Small is Beautiful economy that many of us would like to be part of.

The contents of this box are terrific! Just the right size carrots (not too big, not too small) with lush greens still on top (hmmm, can carrot greens be cooked?). The young slender leeks (the best kind IMO) and a bunch of dark strongly corrugated kale inspire me to make a soup. The bok choy. apples, and oranges can wait for another day.

So Googling away for a leek-kale soup recipe, up comes a Scottish (or is it Irish? no surprise there is argument on this point) recipe for Cailleach - basically a simple potato-leek soup fortified with ample garlic and stirred with a wooden spoon. This last ingredient, the wooden spoon, seems to be essential and as it is found in many a Cailleach recipe. Also common is the advice to consider one’s croning  when preparing Cailleach. Croning, it would seem, is the process of becoming an ancient and wise woman. Is croning, I wonder, something that a man can do? Well, as each of us has varying degrees of maleness and femaleness, I say sure. The female spirit in each of us can crone, even if the male part wants to pretend it ain’t happening. So croning sway, I looking more deeply at, natch, www.croning.org, whose author, in the way of many new age types, avoids issues of origin and so stays out of the perpetually heated what is Scottish vs. Irish nano-debate. Older and wiser. Good stuff, as long as it doesn’t come with slower and fearful, or, gawd, impotentcy.

And what/who is this Cailleach? Well, seems that she is/was a legendary giant Scottish/Irish god hag (OMG!) responsible for creating some of the more notable topography of Scotland and Ireland (Americans think Paul Bunyan with wrinkles & shaggy gray hair). Caillech also brings the frosty winter wind - oh no that frosty winter wind was what I was worried about! Then, looking a bit deeper, I find  this excellently written and seemingly well-researched page on both the Cailleach and a related phenom - The Corryvreckan Whirlpool!!! This quote from the page is awesome (literally):

The Gulf of Corryvreckan is over 300 feet deep but when the whirlpool is at full power the depth of the water is less than a hundred feet. The particular cause of this awesome power is a subterranean spike, called An Cailleach, off the coast of Scarba which causes the great Atlantic waves to form into a giant vortex and create the Corryvreckan whirlpool.

Well, this has to be seen, so looking on youTube, I find this interesting video of The Whirlpool. I just say interesting because, while there seems to be plenty of wave and water action, there doesn’t seem to be much of an actual whirlpool a swirling. Dang.

Nice journey this, from a box of organic veggies, to thoughts of soup, and thence to drafty hags and a giant vortex. Also, interesting how my previous foray into earthy vegetable recipes last January was also a Scottish affair - see last month’s Neeps and Tatties It Is post for more on that.

Now, where’s my wooden spoon? Ah ha ha ha ha (haggy laugh that).

 _____________Ron
"Not all who wander are lost." — J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I’m in Maine for a month of X-C sking at Jim’s homestead.