THOUGHTS AS WE MARCH INTO MARCH

Here it is already March 1. Lots of birthdays around this time, including my lovely mother-in-law Ann (Feb 28) who died over twelve years ago, and my father Adrian (Feb 29) who died in 1969 at a too-young age. There are lots of still-alive people, close friends and some relatives too, to celebrate as well, but they should probably remain anonymous…a lovely collection.

The turn into March feels momentous every year, perhaps a little like the turn into September. It’s not yet the end of winter, but the promise is there, of springtime and renewal.

Of course I am writing all this with pictures of winter and spring in my mind’s eye that don’t at all match what I see out my window. For I’m in Chiang Mai, where it’s already hot, with a haze from stubble-burning greying the sky and thickening the air. On the other hand, this dry season blending into hot season is also, like winter, a kind of dead-plants time, that will end with the “spring” that early rains bring, greening the ground and the trees.

Meantime the first durians have appeared in the markets, a little stenchy in an inviting way, and mangoes and papayas are showing up too. Yum. Every season has its disadvantages and its compensations. I’m inclined to focus on the compensations, especially the seasonal foods, for they need to be appreciated while they’re available.

And I leave here on Tuesday, so my awareness of the glorious fruit that I’m about to miss is acute!

Toay I dropped by Akha Ama coffee for a cup of some of the best coffee anywhere (no, I know I’m not an expert, but I have to say it…) and there was Lee, the man who started it all. He’s Akha, young and loaded with creative imagination and energy, and some years ago he persuaded his family and his village to start growing coffee commercially. They’re doing very well. I can only imagine the strain and effort it took to persuade the village to embark on all this. After all, the Akha haven’t survived for centuries by being pushovers or flighty adopters of each new thing that comes along. Instead they have been tenacious survivors, brilliant and thoughtful agriculturalists with a rich material culture.

And now here they are growing world class coffee in Northern Thailand.

I wonder what this will all look like in five years…

I stopped in for coffee because I was in the area, having pedalled out to Niemenhamen soi 13 for a meeting at the best Friends Library. They are the sponsors and arrangers of my two BURMA book speaking events tomorrow. The afternoon session is small, at the Library (which has very little space). In the evening there will be more room – it’s at Documentary Arts Asia. Garrett of the Library and I met today to talk about room arrangements, food (he is doing most of the cooking, with help from friends), and the timing of the events.

It was hard for us to get focussed on those details, since we had so much else to talk about, mostly centred around the current crises in Burma – the war in Kachin State and the ongoing Rohingya situation in Rakhine (Arakan) – and the seeming failure of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to be effective or even speak out with any clarity, about either. There seems to be a problem, and perhaps it’s to be expected, that the qualities that made her strong and dynamic as a persecuted opposition leader in a kind of internal exile are not ideal for dealing with the complex realities of ongoing politics. A leader needs people who argue and disagree with her/him, and needs wide-ranging discussion. She also needs a team to deal with the day to day practical details, handlers of various kinds. But Saw Suu apparently refuses to have handlers. And a leader needs to develop sophistication and strength in a team, so other people can carry part of the load and develop necessary skills. This also seems not to be happening.

It is heart-breaking to see how let down by and mistrustful of Daw Suu the non-Bamar peoples of Burma have become. It weakens the country.

Of course there is often let-down after the first euphoria of success or freedom or election. But this is deep distrust and dismay. It makes all of us who worry about Burma feel great concern.

So if you are interested, I suggest that you read news from the Irrawaddy and from Mizzima. Both are independent papers, published outside Burma.

I hadn’t intended to write about all this. It is a subject people talk about amongst

themselves, but not out loud in public much, not yet.

Instead I had intended to write about the people I saw today at the Haw market in Chiang Mai: the older Shan woman who works at the soup place I like, who walks awkwardly on legs a bowed from malnutrition in her childhood and yet works non-stop; the young women of various kinds in their platform shoes teetering through the market; the Muslim woman by the gate with a wooden leg and a baby, waiting for alms from passers-by without asking or even looking up; the mountain-grown vegetables green and bursting with life; the many languages, most opaque to my ear, though I recognise northern Thai, Yunnanese, other Chinese, Shan, Burmese…  It’s a rich brew, every Friday morning, this market opposite the mosque. There are stories and stories, I am sure.

And like most things in life, all I can do is look inquiringly, try to tune in, and know that all I am seeing is the surfaces of things. For each of us has our own story and perspective, and how much of anyone else’s can we hope to understand?

LOOKING FORWARD TO NEW HORIZONS & BIDDING FAREWELL TO 2012

It’s been more than two weeks since I flew back from Southeast Asia to Toronto, and that same amount of time since I posted a blogpost. Disgraceful, you might well say. I enjoy writing here, thinking on the page, so to speak. So what is it that’s caused this lacuna? I ask myself.

There are the obvious reasons: jetlag and disorientation after the flights from Rangoon via Bangkok etc, and the busy-ness of seeing friends after a travel gap, with the added intensity and expectations that come during the Christmas season.

But it felt like there was more to it. I think I was more wrecked by the whirlwind of book tour than I was prepared to acknowledge. I’m not complaining, especially not after having had the chance to recharge in Chiang Mai, but somehow the deep tiredness, more emotional than physical, continued long after and left me empty of initiative for ideas. I displaced my energies into baking and cooking and seeing friends, but could never quite feel the deep juiciness that I love to feel when I sit down to write here.

And now at last that richer energy is back, as of two or three days ago. I rejoice.

On this last day of the year that marks a dozen years since 2000, that’s been a leap-year/election year and a year that for me was all about the BURMA book, I’m feeling mighty grateful to be alive and in good health, with projects to look forward to and friends to rejoice with.

The holidays have been multi-layered. In our house we don’t have any particular holiday ritual. The only rule is that no-one gets imposed upon, in fact basically the only rule is that there are no rules. It makes things very relaxed, somewhat shapeless, and very pleasurable. 

This year we ate a huge meal with friends, family-style, on Chrstmas evening, beginning with PEI oysters and some extraordinary shrimp, moving on to a Berkshire pork rib roast with brilliant crackling, as well as several Burmese salads (the grapefruit salad was especially delish with the pork), and then following up with a choice of sweets that included mince tarts and pumpkin pie, as well as home-made chestnut ice cream. Are you having indigestion reading this list? I am.  

And all week we’ve been snacking on various biscotti, made from my recipes in HomeBaking. Cooking was part of my way of dealing with patchy tiredness from jetlag. I made jars of mincemeat a week ago, using homemade candied peel, suet, currants, sultanas, chopped apple, lemon and orange zest and juice, and a good splash of brandy. Some went into the mince tarts, some has gone as presents, but I have to confess that there’s one open jar in the fridge that I dip into every once in a while - with a clean spoon, I swear - to take a lovely rich and intense mouthful. It’s like an over-the-top version of the classic scoop-a-finger-into-the-peanut butter jar, and to me way more tempting and delicious.

So it is that most of us emerge into 2013 having to loosen our belts and opt for those less-fitted garments that allow us to breath easily. The wonderful sereendipitous ski that I had in the city a few days ago, up ravines etc, after our huge snowfall last Wednesday-Thursday, was not enough to work off all this indulgence, nor was the fabulous dancing we all did last night. 

But so what? It’s not worth worrying about weight and tight clothing. Life is too short to focus on such trivial “first world problems”. I prefer to turn my imagination to wider less me-centred horizons, those which beckon endlessly, and remind me that the world is an infinitely fascinating place, where people of all kinds face intractable problems and conflicts and try to do so with courage and dignity. 

So I’ll close with a wish. Sorry if it seems preachy or pretentious, for it’s heartfelt: May this coming year bring more justice and more peace: more negotiation and less conflict, more respect and less arrogance, to us all.

TAKING A PAUSE TO RENEW...

Here it is the third week in November (my apologies for being dilatory; it's twelve days since I last wrote here) and we’re still in the season of mists and sunshine, a slippage of weather that makes it feel like late October. But the days are short: here in Toronto we have less than nine and a half hours of daylight right now.

And so I am leaving, for a few short weeks, to Southeast Asia, where it’s starting to be winter, but of a different kind. Daytime temperatures are around 30 Centigrade (about 84 F) and can be higher - Chiang Mai’s forecast is in the mid-thirties for some reason, highly unusual for this time of year - and in the night it drops to the low twenties or so. As I was packing, a rather approximate activity compared to my careful abstemious packing for my book tour trips, I was reminded of summer, for light-weight cotton skirts, pants, tops, all folded down into nothing. I am checking one bag, a lumpy backpack, so there’s lots of leeway for the “why not this too?” kind of packing. I added a couple of sweaters, then took one back out. No need for overkill! I’ve got a shawl for layering and emergency shelter, socks for the plane, and books. Nothing more needed.

Except perhaps the key card that lets me into the lobby of the apartment building in Chiang Mai. hmm... Somehow it’s gone missing. I’ve got the keys to my apartment, but not the card. I’m hoping that someone is around when I get to Chiang Mai, late on Wednesday evening (with the time change and date line, I’m losing most of November 21), to let me in. And then I hope to veg out for a few days. 

Jetlag is like the flu: it’s important to get naps in, drink fluids, have books to read, and to remember that any thinking I think I’m doing is in fact unreliable and muddied.

So don’t expect much from me here, or on Facebook etc, for the next few days. I’ll try to get restored quickly, by eating fresh fruit, going for khao tom (pork rice soup) at my favorite street stall (I wrote about it in Lucky Peach in their third issue), and walking a lot. A friend said to me recently that what I need after the sometimes exhilarating intensities of book tour with the BURMA book is days to be bored...That “boredom” is a kind of fruitful emptiness that leaves space for new thoughts and ideas. Right now it feels like an enticing prospect.

I’ve loved being out and about with the BURMA book. I’ve met so many interesting people, been asked intelligent unusual questions, had great conversations. But now it’s time to retrench, consolidate, pull in my horns and recharge.

I can’t think of a better place to do that than Chiang Mai. I’m so grateful to have it as a “bolt hole”. And to have friends there who will keep me on track, call me on things, engage in discussions, challenge me....

Bring it on!

And happy thanksgiving to all who celebrate it this week. I hope you are in good company, eating interesting things, kicking back from your regular routines and responsibilities, and feeling grateful for all that you have.

POSTSCRIPT: How amazing to read about Obama’s trip to Burma this week. His speech at the University in Rangoon was terrific, cautioning about all that there is still do to, but also congratulating the government and people for the recent changes in the country. Here’s the link: http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20121119162947827#.UKqnAjvC018.facebook Who would have thought a year ago that he’d be coming to Burma for a visit and then going on to Cambodia to give Hun Sen a piece of his mind, holding up Burma as an example of progressive movement toward democracy? Astonishing! 

MOVING INTO THE LIGHT - THOUGHTS FROM VANCOUVER

Dawn is just breaking in a clear sky, beautiful colour and light emerging to the east. I’m feeling especially lucky that the sky is clear, for I’m in Vancouver, where November is often overcast, rainy, and generally a gloomy time outdoors. Yes, there is the ocean, there are mountains, the grass is green, but usually the clouds hide all sight of mountain spectacle and the dim light and short days tend to lower people’s spirits.

And so instead I’m heading into two full days of good weather, and specatacular Vancouver views. It’s a great last stop for this intense and busy book tour I’ve been on since September 21. I’ll be doing some media each day and then in the evening I’ll be at Barbara Jo’s Books for Cooks, always a pleasure.

It’s been a long time, perhaps five years? maybe even six? since I was last in Vancouver. I’m staying with my good friend Cassandra, whom I met in law school many years ago. She’s thriving, and has, with her partner Doug, so transformed her house in Kitsilano that I wasn’t sure I’d come to the right place. Apart from all the other changes of colour and arrangement, the most striking thing is the lighting. It’s wonderful, beautifully judged, and each room feels just right. I’ve been lying in bed (early waking because of jet lag) thinking about how very unsatisfactory the lighting in my Toronto house is, and wondering how to set about improving it.

For one thing, I need to move into the new fluorescent bulbs, which means finding those with a good colour balance, one that feels comfortable to me. And I also need to figure out fixtures and light placement. My house has lots of gloomy patches somehow, or at least it feels that way in retrospect now that I’m in this very pleasingly lit environment.

Of course I’ve known for a long while that my lighting needed seeing to. But I’ve been avoiding taking it on. This house in Vancouver is like a wake-up call.  I’ve learned from Doug and Cassandra that inexpensive attractive light fixtures and fluorescent bulbs do exist; that’s what they have. It all means much better lighting with less eletricity use.

I feel like I’ve been living in the dark ages, clinging to my antiquated big old halogens and old-style light bulbs too, guzzlers of energy. I’ve been wary of fluorescent lighting, mostly because I think of fluorescent lighting as harsh and cold, very unappealing and glaring.  

Frankly though, it’s just another example of my fear of change and my somewhat mindless clinging onto what I am familiar with. I was reminded of this pattern of behaviour when Doug and I were talking last night about digital photography. (He’s a very fine photographer, who worked in the fashion industry for years.) He reminded me of how frightened I was of digital photography, before I switched from film (slides) to digital four years ago. His question was “can you even remember what it feels like to shoot film?” And the answer is “not really, no”.

There I was for a number of years digging my toes in, resisting digital and clinging to slide film, thinking nothing could match its fineness and clarity. I was wrong, for digital images have now surpassed film in all kinds of ways. Beyond that of course there’s the ability to tweak them, to transform them, and there’s also the wonderful ease when I’m travelling of not having to lug around bundles of film, and of being able to check exposure etc as I go along, rather than getting home with fears about what disasters I’ll discover once the slides are processed. And disasters there were, from scratches (a small piece of grit can get in the back of the camera) to light metre malfunctions, to problems with film processing (I lost a whole trip’s worth of Vietnam slides because of processing errors, for example).

And so here I am now after four years of digital, finally comfortable with it, and luxuriating in its flexibility. The photos in the Burma book were all shot with my digital camera in the last four years, and they’re a testament to the new technology.

I need to remind myself of this, or have a good friend remind me. For this tendency to avoid moving into the new, to instead cling to the known and familiar, isn’t very useful. I see friends with smart phones, and am still resisting; and of course, there’s that ill-lit house of mine... Time to shed more light on things!

POSTSCRIPT: The latest news is that President Obama will be visiting Burma sometime this month, as part of his trip to Southeast Asia. Great news. Here's hoping he can press for resolution of constitutional and ethnic conflict issues, for example those in Kachin State, the simmering and volatile Rohingya/Rakhine problem, and more. He's not superman, but he does have considerable authority...

BOOK TOURING AS THE DAYS GET SHORTER

I’m sitting in San Francisco Airport waiting for my flight to Seattle, a good place to contemplate this wonderful first six days of book tour. The Bay area is so conscious of Asia, and people are very open to new ideas. And so there was a huge turnout at Omnivore Books for my talk, and at the Asia Society dinner cooked by Alex Ong, and great reception generally at all events and in conversations.

But what struck me this trip, apart from the lovely early autumn light in San Francisco and the beauty of the drive over the Golden Gate, was how many conversations I’ve had with strangers. I’m not talking of interactions at events. I mean those chats at a lunch counter or a sushi bar, or wherever. I chatted with a woman from Brazil the other night at Sakara a simple and good sushi bar; and last night at the same place with a young guy from Melbourne. Everyone’s story is interesting at some level, and my head is filled!

On Tuesday late morning I went to the SFMOMA, a spectacular building, and after time with their permanent collection on the second floor (the vast black and white tile floor by an artist whose name I forget was mesmerising, and lots more), and with the Cindy Sherman show, I headed up to the roof garden. 

It was bright and sunny up there; a cold Italian lemonade from the bar hit the spot. There were sculptures in the glassed area and out (a colourful Calder, a Louise Bourgeois that looks like a nest of gigantic metal spiders, etc), but the most astonishing “sculpture" was the kinetic one above our heads. The tall building next door was being retrofitted, with a tall crane, and elevators sliding up and down outside, everything in severe geometries, except the sway of the crane wire. It was mesmerising, all of it.

Several other people were gazing up, an attractive stylish tall guy with a camera taking shots occasionally, and a woman sitting on a bench near me. And so we fell into conversation. It turned out that both were artists: he teaches drawing and photography in Oakland, and she is a sculptor based in London. I felt very pedestrian in comparison! And the conversation was warming and engaged, a lovely moment between strangers.

And what a place this is: 

Earlier in the week I made a trip to Santa Rosa to tape an hour long radio interview with Steve Garner and John Ash, a real pleasure.  And then on the drive back down 101 into the City I had one of those magical times: retro vinyl on Sirius radio (by happenstance) and airy white fog drifting in from the ocean. The combo made the roller coaster ride down to the Golden Gate and onto the bridge both hallucinatory and breath-taking. Who needs drugs? I found myself musing, think of the California scene in the late sixties that I missed entirely. The bay was blue, filmed over with faint mist, the bridge was like a giant's sculpture, mysterious and powerful, and oh so graceful looking from afar.

Once on the bridge I could see the huge curves of red-panted suspension steel arcing upward until they disappeared into the white mist, like some engineer's idea of heaven or rapture. Truly awe-inspiring.

***

I wrote the preceding paragraphs a few days ago. Since then I’ve had a remarkable visit to Book Larder in Seattle, and to the kitchen of the Modernist Cuisine people (astonishing and strange, and very hospitable explaining everything to me); a flight to Toronto; a lightning train trip to Kingston to speak at the Authors’ Festival (and have a really pleasurable lunch with friends); an over five hours marathon Nuit Blanche last night in Toronto; and now here it is Sunday evening and I’m packing to head out tomorrow morning on tour: this week to NYC and Miami.

Wild schedule, and fun, as long as I remember to draw breath and pause occasionally. I tend to want to forge ahead and engage with every interesting person I meet. There are a lot of fascinating people out there. But sometimes this greed for new stories and connections is foolish and needs to be reined in. I need to pace myself. That’s what I say to myself when I remember.

Tomorrow night Sara Jenkins is cooking from the BURMA book at her restaurant Porsena, celebrated for its Tuscan and other rural Italian food. She’s looking forward to it, and so am I. A lot of friends are planning to come, people whom I haven’t seen for awhile. And there is a dinner with Les Dames d’Escoffier on Tuesday; a small talk at the Rubin Museum at Himalayan Happy Hour (where food from BURMA will be served) on Wednesday night; and an appearance at the library in Greenwich CT on Thursday night to give a photo talk.

This is a blogpost full of lists. Sorry! But somehow the tour feels like a succession of things/events/dates. The only thing to do is separate them with semi-colons!

Next day I fly to Miami to speak at a bookstore in Coral Gables. I’m excited, never having been to Florida before. I’m packing October clothes for NYC and a few light cottons for Miami. And I’m hoping to eat Cuban food there and see some of the Art deco buildings.

Yes, book tour turns me into a tourist, when I get a moment, gawking at the new, trying to make sense of it.

Next weekend it’s already Canadian Thanksgiving (first Monday in October). But the days are still warm, the leaves barely started turning, the eggplants in my garden sweet and ready and still making more babies. (I made a pasta sauce with them today, so delicious.)  

But the light is slanting and the wind cool, and we all know what comes next...

SEPTEMBER BEGINNINGS

After complaining last week that I was not at all ready for summer to end, I feel very grateful for the continuing beautiful warm weather we've had. Tuesday as children headed back to school we had torrential rain (no other word starts to describe the downpours that arrived off and on all day) and I felt my limbs heavy from the wet, and a queasy feeling in my gut, the shadow or echo of years of nervous anticipations of the first day of classes.

Now that's done, and the first difficult week of adjusting to the new school rhythm is over.

Meantime at the university campus just up the street the frosh have been cavorting and following orders...It's always a little disturbing to see large groups of young people obediently trooping after a person with a bull-horn, and doing as they're bid. Last weekend it was the engineers, painted purple and wearing yellow hard hats. This week it's been Arts students in T-shirts singing silly songs and shouting things.

I see the young ones in the bank too, without the protection of the crowd. Then they look like their true selves, unsure, very young, and finding their way, opening a first bank account for example. Soon enough they'll settle into jaded cool, studying, knowing their way around, able to read the urban signals about clothing and caste and group at a single glance.

But for now I'm loving the naivete of the frosh, all wet behind the ears and trying not to show it, even if it comes with group behaviour.

Some good news this week, in no particular order: more lovely pods on the okra plants, and more ripe tomatoes; yesterday a lovely guy named Tyler, widely travelled all over, but whom I know from Burma, dropped by and gave me useful advice about the Burma tour I'm taking in this coming February (details soon on immersethrough.com); news that the copies of BURMA: Rivers of Flavor have now reached the warehouse; confirmed venue for a book launch party at Supermarket in Kensington Market on October 15; nice anticipatory reviews of the book in various blogs (there are links to them on my Facebook fan page; and a very interesting film today at the Toronto Film festival, called Ship of Thesus, or something like that, set in India and beautifully shot.

Also today had a visit from Lejen, who lives in Toronto and Beijing. She brought over some treats and  took away with her a huge melon to try, one from my neighbour's vine. Every year the vine comes vigorously over the fence and spreads all over my garden. And every year there are large rounded stripey green fruits hanging from it. This year I donated one to Lejen. She made inquiries in Chinatown and reports that it's a Shark's fin Melon, cucurbita ficifolia is the Latin name. The seeds are especially prized, according to Wikipedia. If I learn more I'll pass it on.

Next Tuesday I head out to Seattle to go to the Kneading Conference West, at Mt Vernon. I can't wait. I'm carrying out a load of Evelyn's Crackers for my friend Dawn. And that means I need to abandon my usual goal of no checked luggage (the crackers have to be hand-carried). Ah well...

SPRINGING FORWARD, WITH OPTIMISM

Where to start? There’s so much to write about at this full and optimistic time of year. The honour guard of cherry trees by the University of Toronto main library was in fullest glorious white bloom last weekend and this week. “It looks like popcorn” said E, who is six. Well yes, sort of. And also like impossible snow. The other day I rode my bicycle down the path between the trees, reaching up to touch the tender blossoms as I glided by, as if in some kind of hallucination. Quite fantastic.

Meantime the other trees are in flower, the kind of unobtrusive not-cherry-blossom flowers that many deciduous trees have, noticeable for the bright green life in them, with maybe a touch of dark red, rather than for their profusion or dreaminess. The chestnuts (horse chestnuts) on my street and in various places in the university have fat blobs on their branches that are slowly cracking open to show the green leaves inside, all sticky and ready to unfurl. What a process. And every year it’s the same, and yet at the same time every year it’s different, this gradual arrival of new life and greenness.

I’ve been eating dandelion greens and garlic chive shoots and garlic shoots for weeks now. And yet it seems a little backward this spring, for we’re having a lot of clear sharp days with a nip in the air, March days, while in March we had soft warm April-May weather. The gardens are confused and so are the gardeners. Do we plant now and risk hard frost? Do we plant later and find ourselves late? hmm

Late is what I didn’t want to be this week, and I managed it. I’m talking about the second galleys (designed pages) for the BURMA book. I was due to send at least half of them back to New York on Monday, and the rest today and hurrah! I did. Now there will be small tweaks and adjustments, but things are almost there. So exciting.

To mark that feeling of donenness, I had planned to make a Kachin beef recipe from the book for supper. But before I got started a friend and neighbour dropped by with a bottle of red wine. It’s a treat to have people drop by, an unscheduled treat of the best kind. I felt like I’d re-emerged from a rabbit hole or a deep sea voyage or something as we chatted and sipped, and I got started cooking supper.

The Kachin beef is delicious and unusual: cubes of beef are simmered in very little water until cooked through and tender, then put in a large mortar with a pounded flavour paste of toasted Sichuan peppercorns, ginger, garlic, dried red chiles, and salt, oh, and lots of Vietnamese coriander leaves, and pounded until imbued with the paste and broken down into tender fragments. It sounds odd, perhaps, but it’s delicious, like an almost-pemmican I suppose, and even more so the next day. I’m glad we have some leftovers.

The other supper pleasure was black sticky rice cooked plain in water until tender. Its chewiness and gleaming blackness were a treat, a nice complement to tender cooked beans, “bird egg” lima beans from the Amish at Hope Farms, with chunks of sweet potato added to them, a little red wine, and a touch of olive oil and soy sauce. And we had salad, with skillet cake to follow. Not bad for a weeknight! With the real cold in the air this evening, a warming wintery meal was just what we needed.

What’s next? Well taxes of course. They’re not due until the end of April in Canada, but I have an appointment with the accountant on Monday, and so by then I need to have everything organised and totalled and sorted. I figure I’ve got another five hours work to do.

It does seem unfair and silly that each of us goes through this each year. Most of us are very unqualified to sort and sift financial stuff, receipts and vouchers and T-whatever slips. We’re not experts at this, just fumbling amateurs who every year have to go through the process. It’s kind of like, as a kid when you had to do certain chores every day or every week. I thought I’d get to grow out of those trapping situations. Instead they morphed into tests and term papers (my kid Tashi just pulled an all-nighter for one) and eventually into the adult version that’s called “doing your taxes”.

It’s a rigged game and I’m the patsy, that’s how it feels!

If this is all there is to complain about though, we’re lucky. And the sun is shining (perhaps too much – we could do with some rain, lots of it) the birds active.

Easter and Passover happened last weekend for everyone, except those in the Orthodox tradition, whose Easter is this weekend. I made a short visit to Grey County a week ago. The post-equinox full moon, the moon that sets Easter clocks in motion, lit the forest like floodlights, making sharp tree-shadow stripes. The “Moon Shadow” song wouldn’t leave my head as I walked along an undulating path to my sleeping quarters, keeping my knees loose to help with balance, all depth perception lost in the stripiness of white white light and black black shadows. Wild and lovely and haunting.

In Burma and Thailand the seasons turn right now too. It’s time for the big new year celebrations: Thingyan in Burmese, Song Kran in Thai. They fall in mid-April as the hot season is pressing down and they are an anticipation of the renewing monsoon rains that are going to come (and usually there’s a scattered shower here and there in early April). People throw water, just as they do at the similar festival in India called Holi. It’s a wet unpredictable somewhat crazy time to be out and about. And it marks the start of the new agricultural year, the time to till and plant.

And so far away around the globe we are on parallel tracks, we’re at equivalent points in our yearly cycle. Renewal here is marked by the return of warmth and sun; renewal in Southeast Asia comes with the monsoon rains that bring new life and fertility to the fields.

Bring it on!

LATE MARCH THOUGHTS OF FUTURE PROJECTS & HOPES

Late again with an update. My apologies. Blame it on spring, the equinox, nu-roz (Persian new year; I made sabzi pulao for friends, and lots of green veg, as well as grilled chicken and grilled pork), a lot to get done... Anyway, here I am at last. This last week was my aunt Pen's 90th birthday (March 22); she has dementia, so any love or wishes are kind of without weight for her. Still even those with dementia can surely feel the warmth in the air, the singing of the birds, the feeling of optimism in the air....

Now we're back in some cold weather, crisp and bracing. It's just enough to make us grateful for the warmth that's promised in the next few days. In the back yard the earth got warmed last week, the rye I'd planted as a cover crop, and the clover, are both flourishingly green. So is the flat-leafed parsley that made it through the winter, and the garlic chives, already thrusting up their flat blades.

I had some of the chives, and the parsley, as well as some young dandelion, chopped into the pan a couple of days ago, flavouring some olive oil . The occasion was the visit of Lillian from Grey County. Just before leaving she'd checked her mushroom logs and, astonishingly, there was an early flush of shiitakes. This is a full month earlier than ever before. So she brought some down, moist and full of promise in a brown paper bag. I chopped them coarsely, tossed them in on top of the greens, and then once they'd softened and given off a little moisture, in went four whisked fresh orange-yolked large eggs from a farmer not far away. What a feast. We ate slowly, contemplatively, looking at the promising dark soil in the back yard and getting caught up on each other's news and thoughts and imaginings.

Now I feel that spring really has arrived.

On Saturday afternoon the biting cold wind was a good excuse to head into the warmth and watch a movie, not just any movie, but the brilliant Wim Wenders doc PINA. It’s in 3-D, and if you haven’t seen it, well, keep an eye open and grab a chance when you get it. The film is about the dance of Pina Bausch, a legendary choreographer and dancer, who died just before the film was made, and about the dancers in her company. I’ve now seen it twice (the first time was in January) and would happily go again. Thrilling is the best word for it.

Now the week has started; I should be doing taxes, but have been preparing my talk for the IACP (Int Assoc of Culinary Professionals), where I am giving two small sessions on food and travel. Should be fun. It’s always interesting to hear where people are coming from, what their questions and issues are. My job is to talk, but also to listen; I guess that’s a pretty obvious thing to say, but still very true and important to remember.

My kid Dom says people don’t remember much from talks (or lectures, he says, and he’s doing a PhD, so has some ground for knowing). He says the important thing is to have a basic message or theme that you can keep coming back to…the stories and examples are then embroideries and illustrations, all supporting the basic message. hmm I had thought to show slides (old language for images via power point). There may not be the necessary equipment, and in one way I’d be happy with no images. They can be a distraction when we’re there to talk about ideas.

On the other hand, I love to give people fresh windows for imagining the world, and photographs of daily life in other places are a great way to do that.

It’s in the lap of the gods, the image question. I’m ready for either scenario.

And I’m looking forward to seeing people I haven’t had time with for a long time, all of them coming to NYC for the conference itself and also to take advantage of the gathering of food people from all over.

And on the subject of food, I’ve just finished Empires of Food, by Fraser and Rimaz (published by Counterpoint Press in 2010). It takes a line through history that focusses on the food limits that various empires and societies have hit, and that we are heading for in our turn. The cycle is roughly that a food innovation leads to higher production, population growth etc, but eventually the society hits a ceiling, and then things fall apart or crumble. The first example is Mesopotamia, and it moves forward from there, often gracefully and in interesting ways. But it’s not a dreary march through bad news, it’s somehow fresh and undoctrinaire. Highly recommended.

It’s useful grist for my mill, that these days needs to be grinding through food history (with help also from Charles Mann’s 1493 and other books, and from blogs such as Rachel Laudan’s) to produce six two hour classes in May-June. I’m teaching a course called Foods that Changed the World at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto. Here's the link. I’ve heard that the students at these courses are an interesting and varied group, so I’m looking forward to it all. I’m hoping to be able to do some tastings with the class. If you know anyone who might be interested, do let them know about the course.

Meantime the BURMA book gets closer and closer. There's a blad that's been designed, (stands for book layout and design, a kind of booklet that gives a feel for the look and content of the book) and the book itself will soon be in second galleys, hurrah! I'll have them sometime next week probably, to correct, and also to annotate with, for example, captions for the photos. And then before the end of April it wings off to the printer.

This project may be close to done, but of course life in Burma continues to unfold in all its complexity. The by-elections are taking place this coming Sunday, April 1, and after that presumably Aung San Suu Kyi will have a seat in parliament. I feel so committed to the place, after these three years of work and paying close attention. It's been extreme immersion, and I am reluctant to step out of it, want to continue my engagement with Burma and the geopolitics as well as the food and culture.

Now we all hope that recent progress continues in establishing real rights and freedoms for the people of Burma and negotiating real settlements with the Karen and Kachin and Mon and Chin and Wa and Shan, etc. It needs to happen. There needs to be a new Panglong-type agreement, to make real and strong the idea that Aung San Suu Kyi's father worked toward and achieved just before his death, of a consensual federation of Burma. Fifty years ago that ideal fell with the coup, in March 1962. Let's hope this really is a new era.

FIngers crossed. And happy spring everyone...

MAGICAL MOON TIMES

The moon has fattened, but I wanted to check timing so I’ve just come from looking up the full moon calendar for 2012. There’s still another day plus to go: the moon is full in this (Toronto) time zone sometime after 4 in the morning on March 8. Now that date means International Women’s Day to me and to many. But the fact of its being a full moon day this year gives it extra heft and radiance. In Thailand it’s a special buddha day called Magha Puja in the original Pali, a day for honouring the Buddha. This year the holiday is on March 7; banks will be closed and there will be special candlelit processions at the wats/temples.

I started thinking about the timing of the full moon a couple of days ago when I went out in the early night and found the moon hanging high and bright in the sky and surrounded by a wide perfect pale circle of light. Yes, sometimes there’s a nimbus around a full-ish moon. But this was quite different, for the circle had a wide radius, and looked like a perfect line of white light bordering, encircling, the top of the sky’s dome.

All I could think of was that a slight mist in the air could have created enough water molecules to give a reflective surface for moon rays to bounce off. The steadiness of the circle was extra-strange because there was a strong north wind blowing little torn scattered cloud fragments south at a great rate. And so, though I (and Dom came up to look too, and was equally amazed, so I knew I wasn’t hallucinating) searched around for a practical explanation, I was left with just a lovely feeling of wonder and amazement.

That’s as it should be with these rare events, don’t you think? And in this modern era of scientific explanations, how lucky to stumble on the unknown and the seemingly miraculous. To be visited by a sense of wonder after childhood is one of the great blessings or treats that we can experience I think.

And speaking of light and light effects, I have just been going through the photos I made on my last trip to Burma, including some of the wild light effects at Shwedagon. I wrote here last time of the fairy lights around temple edges. Well seeing them on the screen was a reminder of just how fantastic the effects are, especially right after sunset.

I’m going to take another small (about a hundred images) batch of photos with me in JPEG format, on a stick, when I head to NYCity on Thursday. (Included in them, apart from Shwedagon and streetscenes etc, are shots from Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech in Myitkyina, with the excited crowd; so great.) I’ll be spending time at Artisan looking at the latest version of the book and trying to help with photo allocation.

There’s a tricky balancing act required: large photos are lovely, but with just those, the book can feel lumpy and stiff; on the other hand too many shots can make a book feel messy and jumbled. I’m hoping we can have photos that run large and also some smaller drop-ins to give rhythm and life at unexpected moments. Susan Baldaresini has done a brilliant job of designing the recipe pages: they are so elegant and clear, truly cook- and reader- friendly. They’ll be imitated for sure once the book comes out. I can’t wait to see all this.

And then the second galleys will come roaring to me in about three weeks, and will need to get dealt with and sent back within a week. That’s the scary part, the moment when there is no more chance to catch and correct errors or tweak things. It’s kind of like finally diving out of the plane on a sky-dive I imagine, nauseating, and then suddenly exhilarating because you’re floating free.

I want to talk about a delish quick supper improv from this evening. There are three things that Tashi loves, but his brother doesn’t: sweet potato, celeriac, and bacon. This evening, Dom being out, I chopped some bacon, heated it then poured off a lot of the fat, then added a pinch of turmeric and chopped celery root and chopped sweet potato. After a little frying, I added some cumin, and some powdered cloves, then water to just cover. With the lid on, it all simmered and cooked together for fifteen minutes. I added some leftover cooked rice. It absorbed the extra liquid and the whole thing was like a pulao. It needed a squeeze or more of lime juice to balance the sweet. And it was rich, for sure.

The bacon-root veg “pulao” was a good pairing with simple masur dal with cauliflower (added to the spices - nigella, fenugreek, mustard seed - and oil that tempered the dal, and then cooked to tender in the dal). A drizzle of chile oil on top of each serving, and more lime juice too, gave a last brightening kick.

It’s freezing cold outside, so there are no fresh herbs in the garden; it would have been extra-delish with some fresh coriander leaves or chopped mint on top.

Spring is only two weeks away – can’t wait.

FULL MOON, RED MOON, FULL DAYS

The other day, up on a hill overlooking Thaton and the Burma border, in northern Thailand, I watched the moon rise, the full moon in all its huge brilliance, coming up to light the valley and the hills. The sun was setting in the west at the same time, leaving a warm glow in the sky. How magical, heart-stopping even, to catch these moments. But then there was another: the next night, just after sunset, and with the sky still bright, there was the moon rising, still huge, but this time a deep red. Unbelievable.

It's the dust and haze from burming off rice stubble, I guess, that gives that kind of colour. But at the time rational thoughts flee, and all I could do was be amazed and thrilled. Eventually the red shifted into a deep orange, so that the fat moon felt more moonlike, though still exceptionally beautiful and "look-at-me". How lucky to be sitting out at Fern's farm, on her platform, newly built, which gives a view of the hills and overlooks her lychee trees. On hot days there's always a breeze up there, and at night the stars feel closer. Of course on a full moon night the brazen moon eclipses all the stars...

The next day we were up at a Lahu village west of Fang checking out a home-stay and other options offered by the Phumanee Hotel. It was so interesting to climb up and up (in a truck, not on foot, I confess) through bamboo jungle and a forest of tall trees to the Lahu villages on Thailand's second-highest mountain. They offer trekking and food and home-stay. Google Phumanee Hotel and you'll find them.

But after all that height and air, back we drove to Chiang Mai, with me at the wheel, and the exhilaration and edge of driving on the left rather than the right hand side of the road. No accidents not even any near misses though. I am always happy to hand back a rental car, damage-free, after a trip like that.

After two and a half days with no internet, I felt lighter and freer. It was a bit of a come-down to check mail and see all that faced, me; it felt like a high wall of obligations. But among the incoming mail this week is a note on FB that links to a place namimg the top twenty travel blogs. It's here. On the list isthe lively and out there Jodi Ettenberg of legalnomads, and also there is the remarkable team of Robyn Eckhardt and David Hagerman, with the blog EatingAsia. They write about travel entertainingly and with intelligence; they also write with depth and passion about food and traditions. Bravo all of you.

On the list was a blog I hadn't come across (I don't cruise around much and don't look for blog-type reading usually). But this one has a special tone and focus, so I want to flag it for you. It's called stories of conflict and love and here's the link. Have a look.

Today rather than getting out early on my rented one-speed bike, as I had planned on this quiet Sunday, I ended up taking an early (before 7 am) look at the Burma book galleys and getting sucked into them headlong...so that not only did I not get a bike ride in, I didn't even leave the apartment until after 6 pm. In between I was immersed in editing and reading and retyping and so on... And now I'm done, for this round at least. Tomorrow I photocopy all of it, as back-up, and then figure out how to get it to Fed-Ex (the office is way out on the edge of town).

I feel so freed up. Now there's time to chat with friends, to pack, to think about Burma (where I head on Thursday), to just loosen up. I got an early start on all that earlier this evening. I met friends for a massage at the Sunday Market. It's a treat to sit in the open air watching the very varied and idiosyncratic crowds, while having a massage (I had a feet and leg massage, so it was really easy to watch the goings-on. I had one hour of massage and I feel all the better for it.

One of the additions and amendments to the galleys was to do with Shan tea-leaf salad. Now I understand how it can work with both pickled tea-leaves and dried tea-leaves. I've even tried it with fresh-picked leaves. I know this is obsessive behaviour, playig around with fresh tea-leaves, but how great to have the chance to check things out fully.

An early Happy Valentines day to you all... I feel we should just start thinking of it as "heart day"

SUMMER DAYS WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY

There's a distant intermittent roar in the air: yes, you guessed it, the Formula One race or Indy something-or-other is here in Toronto. Yucko! An article in the paper the other day quoted one driver talking about the unpleasant smell and taste of the guck on his face as he drives. But he has chosen to put himself there. We, on the other hand, who live in the city, on this humid day get to breathe in the awful smell of exhaust and burning tires etc, and hear the noise, and we did NOT choose this, nor get any balancing benefit.

There, now I've ranted, we can move on to more interesting and pleasant topics.

Early this morning I bicycled over to a friend's house, via a stop at Woodlot to pick up fresh wood-fired-oven-baked bread. My friend has just closed on her house, and doesn't move in for a few days. Until then it's like a freshly born baby: its structure is visible, not covered over by furniture (or baby softness) so that it's easy for this couple of days to imagine what it will develop into. We talked about wall colours and furniture and the garden possibilities. It was such a pleasure, and I was happy to have arrived with fresh bread and a few other things as house-warming markers of welcome.

Yesterday Dom and Tashi and I drove to Niagara, just upstream of the falls, to a family reunion party. What a huge day it was. There were about forty Duguid cousins and family members, aged six months to eighty-three. We had ten hours to talk to one another, share stories, get caught up on news. We swam in the Niagara River, ate fabulously, and just breathed in the feeling of connection. Some cousins are committed christians, others of us are not, but that doesn't stop us feeling connected and familiar to one another. The whole event, with the nearly two hour drive at each end left us feeling exhilarated and exhausted all at once. I can only imagine how tired my cousin and her family were who had done all the organising and work of planning and setting up. Thank-you everyone!

And now it's time to bear down on the Burma book editing. I've done a little re-organising, and have written a few explanatory pieces that need to go in. Now I have to sit down with the printed pages and read through, cleaning out any deadwood and keeping an eye open for inelegant phrases, unnecessary longueurs, all of which need to be pruned or firmly beaten into shape. Once I've marked up the pages, I can transfer the edits onto the computer and then, hopefully have a cleaned up ms that can be printed out and sent off to Ann Bramson. I give myself a week for this, well maybe eight days. I'll report back.

Meantime on the photo front it looks as if Richard Jung will be doing some studio shooting for the book. I am thrilled and grateful. He is so good at what he does, all with natural light. And I love the process of figuring out which dishes to put on the shot-list. But first to the edits!

Last week we did a little more retesting: a simple chicken curry that's a classic in central Burma, and then deletable Shan meatballs, both beef ones and pork ones. They're killingly good. I want to suggest that people can also make them as sliders, small patties, on the grill or in the pan.

The great thing about having salad greens and garlic and chiles and herbs in the garden is that every meal, from breakfast on, has a fresh edge and bright flavour. Soon we'll have tomatoes too. I can't wait.

TIME FOR PLANTING & OTHER OPTIMISMS

Writing here feels like playing hookey! I should be editing the Burma book, since I'm in the last ten days before I submit the manuscript. Well I've been doing a lot of that book-work, so it's time for a break.

Procrastination and avoidance are such interesting phenomena. How we justify them, or just fail to admit what we're doing, is a whole study in human behaviour! I have managed several great breaks in the last few days, each time telling myself that I need to clear my head. That may well be true, but I'm not sure that taking a whole day off was necessary!

I'm talking about Sunday, when Dawn-the-baker and I drove out of town at 7.30 in the morning under a grey and overcast sky, headed for Grey County, but not directly. First we had to go to Listowel to pick up some maple syrup; Dawn uses it in the granola that she makes as part of the Evelyn's Crackers line of locally made crackers and shortbread etc. And just south of Listowel are the Hoovers, who make organic syrup.

What??!? you say, how could maple syrup NOT be organic? The answer is that it depends on how the equipment is cleaned. The Hoovers use no chemical agents, just the sap itself, to clean the pans and pipes. It's an amazing operation, using sap from the trees in their bush, and wood from that bush to cook the sap. Talk about sustainable and local!

Because it was Sunday, on our way between Waterloo and Listowel on small country roads we passed Mennonites, old order Mennonites in their black horse carts, driving to Sunday service. In one yard there were over forty carts, drawn by one horse or a matched pair. The fields were such an intense green under the overcast sky, and the carts shone black against the green, the men clean-shaven in black hats, the married women all in black with a bonnet, and only the girls wearing a little colour, perhaps some purple or intense blue. We felt lucky to be out and about in Mennonite Country with eyes to see its loveliness, and time to admire it.

From Listowel we headed north to Grey County, via Ayton and Neustadt, and eventually to the small town of Elmwood. The STC, Saugeen Trading Community, which I've written about before, was having its spring Market Day. It's a chance for members to buy and sell, for trading community credit or federal dollars, or a mixture, and to catch up on news. I came away filled with news and warmed by friendship. More tangible loot included a ceramic bowl, a pair of gently worn yellow pants, some rhubarb, and a load of plants/starts: tomato and basil and chile peppers.

It really is time to plant now that the warm weather has come (as of yesterday). All the starts I bought (including some cumin plants from a small nursery) are now in the ground except the tomatoes. I came across lots of fat worms as I dug today, very encouraging. The tomato plants will go in bags of soil (to avoid the blight in my garden), perhaps tomorrow, when I take yet another break from the Burma bookwork!

And in the neighbourhood as I go for my morning run the chestnut trees are in full magnificent bloom, the irises are coming out, and the city's cyclists have now all got their bicycles on the road it seems. What a great sight, people in business clothing pedalling to work instead of driving in a car. The university of Toronto is now in full Convocation/Graduation swing, with lawns all mowed and a huge tent set up opposite Convocation Hall. Today there was a lovely crowd of happy parents and graduates out on the green grass looking delighted, and a straggle of academics in red and black and all kinds of coloured robes and hoods making thier way back to their offices from the ceremony.

I was on my bicycle threading my way through them, for I was headed to a Women's Culinary Network event late this afternoon. It was a potluck. I took some incredible wide flat crackers made by Dawn-the-baker, beautiful eight by eleven inch flats, and to go with them, a big block of old cheddar, and a jar of freshly-invented "chutney". The crackers were a hit, and the chutney and cheese too. Here's the chutney story: I had some stewed rhubarb, slightly sweet, made from the fruit I'd bought in Grey County. So I heated olive oil, added mustard seed and fennel and a little turmeric, and some dried red chiles, then tossed in chopped dandelion greens and garlic chives from the back garden. Once they'd wilted with a little salt, I added the rhubarb and cooked it all down a little. The combination of bitter and sweet and tart with some chile heat too was great, essence of springtime in one easy mouthful!