Free Feeding the Hungry Ghost by Ellen Kanner

between April and June, or else we’re out of luck for another year. It can happen in your own spring and well beyond, too, even when you’re older and supposedly wiser. Desire makes happy suckers of us all and makes us blossom into creations both beautiful and vulnerable.
    You deserve flowers. They belong in your life. And in your diet. Orange blossom, lavender, jasmine, and rose are a few with terrific culinary applications, adding their haunting fragrance to food and drinks, along with a whisper of other lands and definite healthful properties. If this sounds weird, let’s start with a superbasic herbal concoction, what the French call a tisane, or infusion — a cup of lavender tea.
    Lavender Tea
    Lavender infusion is pale but has a surprisingly bracing flavor. It’s just a wee bit soapy tasting. That means it’s cleansing. Good. It’ll wash those old negative feelings right out of you. Breathe. Feel the tea work its magic. Let it soothe you; let it heal your heart.
    Makes a generous pot, serving 1 to 4
    2 teaspoons lavender buds *
    Put on a kettle of water and bring to a boil.
    Fill a tea infuser with lavender buds; put the infuser in a teapot.
    Pour in the boiling water. Let steep for about 3 minutes.
    You may pour it into a mug, but it would be happiest — and so would you — if you served it in your grandmother’s china teacup, the one with all the flowers on it.

    You’ve probably eaten other flowers, the flowering parts of plants, without causing a scene, without even realizing it. Chili pepper, without which I would not care to live, qualifies. So do goji berries, the superfruit of the moment, as well as peas, cucumbers, and many of your nightshade vegetables, including peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. If only David, my late father-in-law, had known eggplant is a sex organ, he might have been more inclined to eat it.
    Down and Dirty Rice
    What makes traditional New Orleans dirty rice dirty is the addition of what James Joyce described in Ulysses as “the inner organs of beasts and fowl” — gizzards. Um, no thanks. Chopped eggplant — the flowering, sexual part of the plant — takes the place of organ meat in this supersatisfying veggie version. It’s nice on one of those surprisingly chilly spring nights. The dish is not too spicy but you can make it that way. That’s what Tabasco sauce is for. It’s made from Louisiana’s Tabasco chili, which is also a flowering vegetable.
    Serves 6 to 8
    5 cups Stone Soup (see page 84 ) or other vegetable broth or water
    1½ cups rice (white is traditional, brown is more healthful)
    1 bay leaf
    1 tablespoon olive oil
    6 cloves garlic, chopped
    1 large onion, chopped
    1 medium eggplant, chopped
    2 stalks celery, chopped
    1 green bell pepper, chopped
    2 tomatoes, chopped, or one 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
    2 teaspoons sweet paprika
    1 handful fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
    Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
    Juice of 1 lemon
    1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
    1 cup cooked edamame (optional)
    In a large pot, bring 3 cups of the broth to a boil over high heat. Add the rice and bay leaf. Stir gently, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender, about 30 minutes for white rice, 40 minutes for brown rice. Remove the bay leaf and set the rice aside. (The rice can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a day or two; bring to room temperature before proceeding with the recipe.)
    In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, onion, and eggplant. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about 5 minutes. Add the celery, green bell pepper, tomatoes, paprika, and thyme. Continue cooking, giving the vegetables a stir now and again, until they are tender and gilded with oil and spices, 5 to 8 minutes. Stir in the cooked rice and the remaining 2 cups broth.
    Reduce the heat to medium and cook until all the liquid is absorbed yet the mixture