Vegan Street Corn & Mary’s Fish Camp

Last week on my blog I shared the recipe for Yam Filled Tacos, and touched on the idea of letting ourselves evolve in all aspects of life. Thinking about that, I remembered the first time I ate at Mary’s Fish Camp in West Village NYC, where we experienced a whole new way of eating corn.

I grew up, like I’m sure most of you did eating corn,

shucked, boiled and smeared with a ton of butter. I’m salivating just writing this. In recent years, we’ve just grilled and eaten plain, pretty darn good too, actually simply perfect. Enter ‘Street Corn’.

You know,

how when you walk into a place and you just know, you’re in for a good time; that’s Mary’s. We were there for lunch and it was packed. The menu was chalked up on a blackboard. I ordered Shrimp Tacos, and was asked, “if I wanted a side of corn.” “Sure.” I said, and Anni leaned over and said, “We’ll all have the corn!” I was obsessing over the Grilled Gulf Shrimp Tacos, and didn’t give the corn much thought, because just the month before, we’d been in Alaska, where we ate our first ever fish tacos. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven over my son-in-law’s Casey’s ling-cod, caught earlier in the day; grilled, and served in tortillas, with chopped cabbage and his homemade sauce. So, I was surprised when the waitress brought over a huge bowl of corn looking not like the simple corn I’d eaten all my life.

Regarding Rick’s diagnosis; he’s getting all the information he can by consulting different doctors; who all seem to have different opinions. Today, he’ll have a video conference with a radiologist oncologist, and then scheduled for a bone scan next week. If he ends up doing surgery, the first it can be done is six weeks from the day of his biopsy; the middle of July. He has time to make a well informed decision. One thing the MRI showed was his pelvis and lymph nodes were clear of any cancer, so it’s highly unlikely it has spread to his bones. Fingers crossed. When Rick was diagnosed, my brother Greg wrote this poem for him. I’d like to share it with you.

It is The Thing Itself

The tree roots exposed 

Along the trail

The stone emerging 

From the earth

The bird call

A thread of memories 

The sun’s warmth

It’s the thing itself

Every step 

These feet have stepped 

Since learning how to walk

To Now

The thing itself

By Greg Dunham

(Friends since freshman year PE Class. )

And I’m happy to report, all the tools which helped me so much with the grief of losing my brother Andrew, (earlier blog, A Cup of Tea) have become the bulwark of getting me through this; by giving me the power to surrender what I have no control of, and the ability to stay in the now.

I just finished reading the scholarly work, Why Religion? written by Elaine Pagels. Pagels is the Professor of Religion at Princeton University, awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years. She experienced a loss we can’t imagine; her six year old son died in her arms of pulmonary heart disease, followed by losing her precious husband who fell off of a cliff while hiking a year later. I didn’t want to indulge, but as I read and drank in each brilliant page, I was filled with an inexplicable sense of wonder.

On the very last page, the very last sentence, she included an ancient Jewish prayer which resonated in a deep and profound way; I experienced a total shift from abject fear; to feeling the beauty of a moment free of worry and uncertainty. (isn’t all life uncertain)

So I leave you with this beautiful thought;

“Blessed art Thou, Lord God of the Universe, that you have brought us alive to see this day.”