Oregano

There's joy in buying potted herbs, to nurture now and smell and taste and let warm you during the long winter!

I love to put oregano in everything—fresh among salad greens or in lamb and feta tacos, or on a shrimp pizza with whole-wheat crust; dried in posole, pasta sauces, soups.


Here is a small section from my creative nonfiction piece, "Oregano," published in Tin House in Winter 2004:

Oregano, a good-sized, sprawling, montane territory, is neighbored on the west by the old kingdom of Nutmeg (Ground), mild and neutral as Switzerland, and on the east by the red sands of the two Paprikas:  Sweet Hungarian and Hot Hungarian.  Far to the north  lie the upstart countries of Roast Chicken Spices and Chili, Crushed Red.  To the south are the waters of the kitchen sink, that come and go in an irregular pattern of tides (usually highest at night, a couple of hours after dark, and capped with white foam).

    Oregano is fertile but dry, friable.  Its soil is high in lime.  It has a seacoast, islands:  an entire archipelago, really.  And mountains, above all.  Mountains with high, Icarian monasteries, forgotten aeries, where translations of old texts are still made painstakingly by hand.  Mountains with abandoned ski-lifts and blue hives thrumming with honeybees—on the scree of which the gods are said to have been born.

    Oregano is Greek, mostly, as they say Macedonia is, though the Turks have fought over it and there are scattered pockets of Mexican settlers in the milder regions, who can be seen sitting in their doorways towards evening in the late spring watching a swaybacked white mare in a pasture across the rutted road.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Origanum