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He told me all about the semitraditional postpartum treatment mother and child were undergoing at the hands of a woman he’d hired to cook and care for them. In Chinese culture this confinement period, sometimes known as “doing the month,” is usually managed by the grandparents, but as both sets live out of town, he had to advertise for help. I say the treatment is partly traditional, because Cindy isn’t forgoing showering, laughing, and rising from the birth bed like she might back in China. But she is staying indoors for about a month, and she’s on a special diet which includes, among other things, a lot of soup.
Have you been to a live poultry store? For those who don’t hunt or have access to their own animals or abattoirs but want to experience what Michael Ruhlman recommends as “one of five things you should eat before you die . . . the meat of a freshly slaughtered animal, preferably having witnessed the slaughter,” your local live poultry shop is the place to go. It won’t smell good, it won’t be pretty, but there you can meet your meat while it’s still breathing, look it in the eye, and take measure of your omnivorousness. And what you take home is as fresh as it gets. My first experience in one of these places involved two cute little white rabbits who definitely didn’t want to be stew and were violently vocal about it. It was sufficiently traumatizing for me to back away for a time and brood. I like to think I’d have been more stealthy had I done the deed myself.
4 quarts water
fistful of seeded dried dates
