Texture (Ladies' weekend and kale soba)

What we let unfold

Just past the summer solstice, seven women gathered in a rented house on Whidbey Island, slightly northwest of Seattle, to celebrate our 8-months-pregnant friend. The house faced Sunlight Beach, behind us a meadow of tall grass and wildflowers, pollen wild in the air. We all brought gifts, not from a registry but from our own experiences, intended to support our friend in her first few months postpartum.

The food we ate was pure texture. Many shapes of chips and crispy snacks, flavored powders like cheese and BBQ and jalapeño-pineapple sticking to our fingers as we crunched. Jelly beans imitating salsa and margarita and beef taco (the latter no one’s favorite). Improvised sugar-spice rims for glasses full of watermelon slush. An outing for oysters in their rough ruffled shells. 

The welcome dish of kale and soba I made for Friday’s arrival, okay to sit as ladies trickled in at different times, was a foil for the heat and a nourishing complement to all our snacking. The dish, a recipe from Bon Appétit, is one I’ve made before with another circle of women, with whom I’ve been gathering for 20 years each fall on Lake Wylie in South Carolina. This time, instead of serving warm, I made it in advance to serve at room temperature (with leftovers eaten cold straight out of the fridge). The kale, stripped of stems and torn into large pieces, is massaged with olive oil, salt, flaked unsweetened coconut, and nutritional yeast, roasted on sheet pans until crispy. The soba boils briefly, then drains and rinses and is added back to the bowl in which I mixed the kale. I tossed the toothy noodles with a little sauce – olive and sesame oil, tahini, soy sauce, honey, lime zest and juice, some hot pepper or in this case sriracha – and made extra sauce to mix in before serving. To maintain the texture while we traveled (and hiked around Deception Pass on our way to the house, the noodles patiently waiting in a borrowed cooler in the car), I piled the soba on the bottom of the dish, followed by the kale; the extra sauce in its own jar; and a bag of nasturtiums and violets to place on top.

I think about cooking as an antidote to the flatness of screens, its texture inescapable, grounding, embodied. Circles of women have their own texture. I say “women” here to speak of my own experience; I am certain this texture can happen in circles of people of any gender who share an intent, an energy of spontaneous collaboration and reciprocity and joy in each others’ presence. The texture of this group was as varied as any, each of us with our own journeys of fertility and motherhood. I felt held as news of the Supreme Court’s decision blasted our phones, my own journey of abortion by choice 20 years ago honored without judgment.

The texture of my life would not have unfolded as it has without that choice. I was 23, waitressing, miserable, with a loving partner who is now my husband and father to our son, but neither of us were ready to be parents then. My caring doctor reassured me, telling me her own story and referring me to a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic. I knew then that my access to abortion was a privilege not all women had or have, now restricted more drastically by a movement that seeks to punish and refuse rather than support and honor our lives and our power. I am hungry for a new culture, one that’s already gathering.

Recipe as feeling: Texture (Ladies’ weekend and kale soba)

Circle up. Set out snacks.

Honor the texture each of us brings.

Connect your circle to communities that bring their own textures.

Create new textures together: Exchange wisdom, support healing, coordinate action to feed the culture that wants to nourish us all.

Actual recipe

Soba Noodles with Crispy Kale, by Heidi Swanson (Bon Appétit, August 13, 2019)

Modifications I make are to increase the ratio of the other-sauce-ingredients to olive oil (so more lime, more soy sauce, etc.), and the edible flowers really worked well for added texture and color. Can be served hot, cold, or room temperature, and easily doubled or tripled to serve larger communities.