The shadbush, the shad and the gift economy

The shadbush is the local name for the serviceberry of Robin Wall Kimmerer's recent book, more like an extended essay.

She talks of the cooperative gift economy rather than the competitive capitalist one, and demonstrates how plants and animals cooperate with gifts to nourish everyone.

Locally,  the Delaware River used to be polluted, to the point that the shad vanished, because they're particular about the water they swim in. When shad are running is when the shadbush blooms. I'm not sure who had the name first. 

Then a lot of work went into cleaning up and restoring the river, to the point where we knew we had succeeded -- the shad started running again at shadbush time. The old Shad Festival returned, to celebrate the fish and the ecological success. 

This is the gift economy, where cooperation helps everyone. Most of us grow up with a scarcity mentality where we think we'll need to compete at every turn to get our needs met. But competition drives scarcity, while cooperation drives abundance.

I realize in reading her that everyone who gives excess items to friends, or uses  Freecycle, or makes useful items for people needing them, is participating in the gift economy. 

Likewise when we save water and use all the food we buy or grow, and upcycle clothes, it's all part of a gift economy, with the abundance mentality.  This is pretty much her theme, and well worth reading.

Speaking of food, I made the mapu tofu I'd been planning, at least I started on it.

Notice the newly opened can of chickpeas, vital ingredient 

Yes, black beans again! So I decided to go ahead and pretend they were chickpeas, since all the numerous other ingredients were out and measured. I'm missing a couple of them but there's enough going on that I don't mind.

And it came out just fine. The tofu is bland enough against the blow your head off heat of the liquid, and the black bean consistency is near enough to chickpeas as not to matter much to this diner.

 

Finished with chopped scallions.  This recipe makes three meals for me.

About finishing, I noticed I didn't have another container of kosher salt as I'd thought, then decided that instead of automatically ordering more, I'd use some of my other salts, pink, iodized, coarse sea, fine sea. 

I'm not wedded to salt for specific purposes, though kosher salt and olive oil are a great cleaner for cast iron pans without ruining the finish.  So I'll see how this goes. I have an abundance of salt, rather than a scarcity of one kind.

So that's Boud today, a little battered from recent events, but well fed and about to have a pot of tea and honey toast. It's all good.

Sometimes you're the little guy, sometimes you're the bear.