The Moon

Did you get a chance to see the moon the past few nights? I hope you did.

Monday evening it surprised me, rising up from behind Capitol Hill all round and orange as I was riding my bike across the blue Fremont Bridge. A Harvest Moon.

Tuesday I saw it out the open door, hanging low over the green trees of the Aboretum, impossibly round and bright.

Tonight I made a point to be at the Fremont Bridge again at sunset, but it was overcast and the moon did not appear. This is why you’re getting photos of tonight’s sunset on Elliott Bay instead (not a bad trade off, really).

It almost makes me feel as if I dreamt the whole thing. The moon is like that, the silvery bringer of dreams.



I love the moon always, but I love it most in the fall. I remember riding the ferry home from my job in San Francisco one evening, the first fall I spent back in California after ten years away. As I walked off the boat, I looked back and saw a thin edge of luminous light slide out from behind the East Bay hills. It was the full harvest moon, so large and gold it looked surreal.

I was transfixed. I could not turn away, could not continue on home. I walked along the waterfront in Sausalito, staring at this glowing orb. I ducked into the Italian deli that was trying to close for the night and coaxed a hot chocolate out of the men who worked there. Then I sat at one of their café tables, drinking in the view of the moon reflected in the waters of the bay, until they apologetically told me they needed to fold the chairs and tables up and put them away. Afterwards I wandered along the water, drunk on chocolate and moonlight.

You may think me ridiculously silly, but I think the world would be better if we all stopped for a few minutes, once a month, to watch the full moon rise.



The moon means something special to me—something I tried to put into words in an essay I wrote seven years ago. While the writer in me cringes at what I now see as a young and awkward attempt, there is part of my heart on that page. It’s about life and growing and trying to learn—and the passage of time, which is what the moon marks for us anyway.

It definitely marks time, hopefully it also marks growth.

I don’t keep a journal. I know as a writer this may be odd; it’s something I occasionally regret (I wish I had a more detailed record of my years overseas). I do buy journal books, however, and I write a few entries before abandoning them. Mostly they make me self-conscious, it’s not a type of writing I enjoy.

But this week I opened one of those journals. There were nine entries—the first from 2004, the last from 2007. But hidden among those sparse few entries that stretched over a three year period was this short excerpt, from the last week of February, 2005:

"The apple trees are just barely beginning to bloom in the garden here, the cherry blossoms will be next. Spring in San Francisco. I wonder how many I’ve had here, how many I have left, and where they might take me. I wonder where I might take myself, if I have the courage to do so—the courage to truly live my life. I think it could be beautiful. "

That’s what I wish for you on this moon-drunk night—what I wish for us all:
A beautiful life, and the courage to live it.



ZUCCHINI NOODLES

What does this dish have to do with the moon? Not much—nothing, in fact, except that I’ve been eating it more often that I’d like to admit lately. It’s something I came up with during my raw food experiment, in an attempt to recreate the couscous dish I am addicted to. Cooked couscous was out of the question, of course, and I wondered if that same combination of ponzu and toasted sesame oil and Sriracha sauce would work on vegetables.



Any proper raw foodist would scoff at this recipe, because neither ponzu nor toasted sesame oil nor Sriracha sauce are technically raw ingredients. You can get cold pressed sesame oil (though it is less flavorful than the toasted version), and you could mock up a raw ponzu sauce using Nama Shoyu (raw foods acceptable soy sauce) and lemon juice. You’d be out of luck with the Sriracha sauce, however, though I am sure you could make a raw chili sauce or infused chili oil that would do the job.

But taking a mandoline to a zucchini and calling them noodles, that’s definitely raw food culture. And actually, they’re pretty good. They’re not noodles, of course, but the dish is yummy and healthful and super easy to make (a bonus when you have big deadlines hanging over your head). At least for me, it’s rather addictive.



And if you have a garden full of huge zucchini, as many people do this time of year, here's another way to get rid of them. But probably not the big, dry, seedy ones. I think those are good only for zucchini bread.

Can someone please make this and tell me if it really is good, or if I seem to have lost my marbles somewhere along the way. I am rather moon-drunk these days.

2 cups zucchini cut into spaghetti-sized strips using a mandoline
2 tsp ponzu sauce (Eden is the best brand but hard to find, stockpile it if you can)
1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil, or cold pressed, if you prefer
A few drops of Sriracha sauce, or other chili sauce of choice (can even use Tabasco in a pinch) to taste

Optional toppings (choose one): sesame seeds; sheets of nori seaweed cut into strips; nutritional yeast flakes (for vegetarians wanting to get their vitamin B).

Toss the zucchini in the ponzu, sesame oil, and hot sauce. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired. Add toppings of choice. Mix. Eat.

Would you think less of me if I told you I can eat a whole bowl of this for lunch and be happy?