Ring out the Old, Ring in the...Bacteria?

A friend and I have been worrying, lately. I mean really worrying. We're very flexible. We don't care what the topic is; we can feel anxious about anything. Luckily, we can be a reality check for each other. My friend can say, "That's a crazy worry, isn't it? That's not actually going to happen...?" And I can say, "Yes." She does the same for me.

During one such reality check, a few days ago, I found myself saying, "All the evidence I have points to things going well. But I have no definitive proof of that." Even in the midst of my anxiety, I realized how ridiculous those thoughts are. What we think of as "proof" is, in many cases, an interpretation. Not always, of course, but often enough, it's how we see the evidence as much as what it is. My friend suggested we try something: for the next two hours, we'd frame everything--every thought, every anxious worry, every hairball the cats threw up, anything that happened--positively. We  began by believing we could do that, no problem.

It worked. It worked so well, I decided to extend the two-hour trial period and make it a new year's resolution: practice optimism.

I started my practice with yogurt. I've wanted to try making yogurt at home for a long, long time, but occasional bouts of quasi-germaphobia cause me to forgo most home-fermentation projects. Leave milk unrefrigerated? For the express purpose of growing bacteria? What if mine grows the wrong kind of bacteria? What if it grows a special, deadly kind of bacteria, which nobody's warned yogurt-makers about because these bacteria are unique to my house and very new in the world (maybe they've only just begun mutating and multiplying on my counter tops)? And then I feed the deadly-bacteria yogurt to ten friends, and...

The positive outlook here is, of course, why would yogurt grow the wrong kind of bacteria when there is a time-tested procedure to make the right ones grow? Yogurt-making is easy. You scald some milk, let it cool to "just warm" (the technical term for 110-115*F), thoroughly mix in some already-made yogurt, and let the stuff incubate in a warm place for four to twelve hours. People do this every day, all over the world, no problem. Having mostly adopted this outlook, I decided to try making my own yogurt, if for no other reason that as a culinary form of my new year's resolution.

It worked. I admit, I'm still working with the thought that it's not going to kill me, but it's delicious. (I flavored the yogurt with fresh bay leaves.)

Since the word "yogurt" comes from a Turkish verb (meaning "to thicken"), I had to turn to Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major (Alla Turca). Here is Glenn Gould making the "Turkish March" sound much more march-like than usual.

But Mozart is good for optimism, too. He was profoundly optimistic, if I'm remembering his biography correctly. He--or his music--inspires "Mozart Optimism," the belief, clung to by parents, that listening to Mozart makes children smarter. I'm not a parent, but I did follow a version of this belief when I was in college. I listened to Mozart before each and every exam. Whether this practice made me smarter, I don't know, but it did do something to my mind. It calmed any anxiety I had, and made me feel positive that I'd do well on the exam. It was as much a kind of mental training as studying for the exam was, as much a practice of optimism as making yogurt is.

I have a lot of Mozart phrases in my head. (I took a lot of exams in college.) They're musical mantras I can call to mind when I need to focus, or to calm down. I believe they demonstrate the power of positive thinking, as well as the brilliance of Mozart.

I ate the homemade yogurt with a soup I made by sauteing a generous teaspoon of whole cumin seeds, two fresh bay leaves,  a small onion, diced, and three cloves of garlic, minced, in olive oil over low heat (covered) while I peeled a carrot and two beets, then cut them, and two potatoes, into roughly chickpea-sized dice. I added some sprouted chickpeas to the onion, garlic and spices--I had about a cup of sprouted chickpeas left over from another cooking project--dumped in about four cups of water, turned up the heat to medium and left the soup alone for ten minutes. Then I added the vegetables, a teaspoon of ground coriander, salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and cooked the soup for about another ten minutes. At that point, I added a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped.

This is a very flexible soup recipe that doesn't require any kind of ingredient-measuring. Even when I'm not training my mind to be more positive, I know it will always turn out well. It will for you, too--no problem! You can change the vegetables if there are others you like better, but I think the beets are important. Hot-pink soup does a lot for a positive outlook on gloomy winter days.