The moon was smiling a slender crescent-curved smile in the western sky yesterday evening as I sat outside at a rooftop bar with a friend. Five full days after the new moon and Chinese New Year, that moon was still looking new and fresh and fragile. Tonight, suddenly, the smile is much fuller, almost a half-moon. How does that happen, a slow-seeming gradual evolution becoming “suddenly” a quick change? Maybe I’m asking the same kind of questions as all those philosophical ones about when is one plus one plus one, etc stones no longer some stones but a pile? What’s the turning point amount at which a bunch of stones is a pile or heap?
Oops! How did I get here?
I meant to start out with that skinny smile-in-the-sky and move on. I wanted to talk about the luck of being here in Chiang Mai and being able to feel each day that I’m a beginner, always looking to understand the human and physical landscape. This state of not-knowing is a privilege. It enables me to ask questions without embarrassment, and to continually feel that lovely edge that happens when I’m challenged. Is it a kind of adrenaline pleasure? Is there dopamine secreted when we engage with the unknown and try to understand it? Must be something like that, surely, because I love that feeling of edge so much.
Today, this evening, we started a week of immersing in culture through food. We began by eating and talking, moved on to the market for looking and shopping and eating, and more shopping, and ended with eating back at the apartment, and lots more talking. A great start.
The good will of people who are curious about the world, who want to learn more about food and culture here in Northern Thailand, and are prepared to be challenged, is a lovely thing. It means that people come together and make something new, a temporary world of cross-connection and mutual appreciation. And it’s exhilarating to watch and be part of.
This week is also the time that the first galleys of my Burma book, PINCH OF TURMERIC, SQUEEZE OF LIME are due to arrive. Nothing like having all my most intense obligations happen at the same time! I’m told I can take two weeks with the galleys, and I’ll need all of that and more. But first, before I start worrying about corrections and amendments (for example, given the recent movement toward more political openness in Burma, the history section, happily, needs altering), I want to take a day or two to just enjoy the galleys. I want to hold onto my sense of wonder and pleasure that they exist, rather than leaping straight into practical tasks.
I’m sure they’ll be beautiful, too, for the sample early pages I saw three weeks ago were stunning.
Perhaps all this good stuff – the start of immersethrough with all its good energy, and the imminent arrival of a FedEx parcel of book galleys (oh, and getting a Burma visa for another trip there) – is what that moon has been smiling at. I like to think so…
Showing posts with label Burma's food culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Burma's food culture. Show all posts
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Sunday, April 17, 2011
NOODLING AROUND & LETTING IT HAPPEN
How many of these blogposts have I written while in transit or on the road? I wonder. This afternoon I'm in the Ottawa ariport, waiting for a Porter flight back to Toronto Island. Outside we've had wind and rain and hail for two days, in intermittent and overlapping cycles, not great weather for flying in a small plane, but oh well!
I was up here to speak to a meeting of the translators and Interpreters of Ontario. No, I wasn't talking about language, strictly speaking, not the way translators use it, with precision and under pressure. I was talking about the language of food, and food as an aspect of culture and a window into culture. I made them noodles with sesame sauce, and a little side salad of diced cucumber with ginger and chives and coriander leaves, a fresh little contrast to the chewy noodles and rich savoriness of the sesame dressing. Before they ate they engaged with the noodle dough, shaping it into long stretched strands and little orecchiette shapes, etc, just a few of the noodles described in Beyond the Great Wall. And then as a digestif I showed some images from that part of the world...a way of putting different ideas in people' minds for when they hear the word "China". It was a lot of fun.
I realised though that these kinds of talks with food and images are a whole lot easier when there's good backup and in this case I had great backup, from the organisers of the event, from the chef whose kitchen I was in at the Cordon Bleu (Yannick Anton, a lovely guy), and from my friend Cameron Stauch, a chef and traveller, who had worked a full shift at Government House before he came and helped with all the prep and plating and clean-up at my event. Thank-you Cameron!
We went out after, with a couple of translator friends Po and Ilse, to a restaurant called I think Navarre, on Murray Street. Nice place. Then I headed out to Dunrobin to stay with my old friend from high school, Lianne, who is also trying to getting a weekend immersethroughfood program going on Grand Manan Island (have a look at my website www.immersethrough.com on the Grand Manan page).
The roads were sheets of water and sand, dirty and disconecerting... Lucky I am comfortable navigating in Ottawa, for everything looked creepy and kind of sinister in the rain and wind. Maybe it was just my tiredness, after a morning flight on Porter and a day of seeing my Alzheimers-afflicted aunt (in a very good mood, which was great) and good friends who live out on the farm that used to belong to my mother. It WAS a long day, now I recount all that, but full and satisfying too.
It made me realise again though that the over-anticipation that I wrote about recently is much better when it's kept under control. This time I tried to ride out the day,moving from thing to thing, and leaving a wide margin so I was never at risk of running late, but otherwise not worrying about the next thing while engaged with the previous one. It was GREAT. I just need more practice at it. And as always, it was a huge treat to see friends and loved ones...every time could be the last, and every time must be savored, right?
Of course without the good luck of having Cameron to help with prep, I would have been much more pushed for time at my event. So perhaps I should have been more worried ahead of time. But what good would worrying have done in any case? It achieves nothing, it just makes you tired.
Bring on this new era, I say. Let me start living more and more in the now. Yes, I have to plan what recipe I need to test tomorrow, and think ahead to buy the necessary ingredients, but I don't have to think and rethink it all, just make a plan, write out a note, and then do it.
Tomorrow I'm going to try to make Burmese-style rotie (flatbreads) and on Tuesday a Rangoon-style pulau, with goat or chicken, not sure. Maybe there should also be a vegetarian one? These are the questions that come up!!
And after that it's back to text, the intro, the chapter openers, the stories...and the history at the back of the book. It's all going well, and it's exciting to be in the middle of it, thinking about Burma past and present and future, and stories and places and people. But I can't linger, I have to keep moving.
Send me clearheadedness for these next six weeks please, a some more luck too. I know I'm going into debt here in the luck department, but...!
POSTSCRIPT: My cousin Jen, always clearheaded, reminded me yesterday that NOT anticipating can leave me a little short sometimes. In this case she meant that I should have told the translators and interpreters about the immersethrough sessions I'm doing in Chiang Mai next winter. The translators are a group who know about cultural immersion and engaging with another culture. Of course I forgot to say anything about immerse and, another of course: I don't even have business cards for immersethrough. So, another to-do to add to my list. Thanks for the reminder, Jen.
I was up here to speak to a meeting of the translators and Interpreters of Ontario. No, I wasn't talking about language, strictly speaking, not the way translators use it, with precision and under pressure. I was talking about the language of food, and food as an aspect of culture and a window into culture. I made them noodles with sesame sauce, and a little side salad of diced cucumber with ginger and chives and coriander leaves, a fresh little contrast to the chewy noodles and rich savoriness of the sesame dressing. Before they ate they engaged with the noodle dough, shaping it into long stretched strands and little orecchiette shapes, etc, just a few of the noodles described in Beyond the Great Wall. And then as a digestif I showed some images from that part of the world...a way of putting different ideas in people' minds for when they hear the word "China". It was a lot of fun.
I realised though that these kinds of talks with food and images are a whole lot easier when there's good backup and in this case I had great backup, from the organisers of the event, from the chef whose kitchen I was in at the Cordon Bleu (Yannick Anton, a lovely guy), and from my friend Cameron Stauch, a chef and traveller, who had worked a full shift at Government House before he came and helped with all the prep and plating and clean-up at my event. Thank-you Cameron!
We went out after, with a couple of translator friends Po and Ilse, to a restaurant called I think Navarre, on Murray Street. Nice place. Then I headed out to Dunrobin to stay with my old friend from high school, Lianne, who is also trying to getting a weekend immersethroughfood program going on Grand Manan Island (have a look at my website www.immersethrough.com on the Grand Manan page).
The roads were sheets of water and sand, dirty and disconecerting... Lucky I am comfortable navigating in Ottawa, for everything looked creepy and kind of sinister in the rain and wind. Maybe it was just my tiredness, after a morning flight on Porter and a day of seeing my Alzheimers-afflicted aunt (in a very good mood, which was great) and good friends who live out on the farm that used to belong to my mother. It WAS a long day, now I recount all that, but full and satisfying too.
It made me realise again though that the over-anticipation that I wrote about recently is much better when it's kept under control. This time I tried to ride out the day,moving from thing to thing, and leaving a wide margin so I was never at risk of running late, but otherwise not worrying about the next thing while engaged with the previous one. It was GREAT. I just need more practice at it. And as always, it was a huge treat to see friends and loved ones...every time could be the last, and every time must be savored, right?
Of course without the good luck of having Cameron to help with prep, I would have been much more pushed for time at my event. So perhaps I should have been more worried ahead of time. But what good would worrying have done in any case? It achieves nothing, it just makes you tired.
Bring on this new era, I say. Let me start living more and more in the now. Yes, I have to plan what recipe I need to test tomorrow, and think ahead to buy the necessary ingredients, but I don't have to think and rethink it all, just make a plan, write out a note, and then do it.
Tomorrow I'm going to try to make Burmese-style rotie (flatbreads) and on Tuesday a Rangoon-style pulau, with goat or chicken, not sure. Maybe there should also be a vegetarian one? These are the questions that come up!!
And after that it's back to text, the intro, the chapter openers, the stories...and the history at the back of the book. It's all going well, and it's exciting to be in the middle of it, thinking about Burma past and present and future, and stories and places and people. But I can't linger, I have to keep moving.
Send me clearheadedness for these next six weeks please, a some more luck too. I know I'm going into debt here in the luck department, but...!
POSTSCRIPT: My cousin Jen, always clearheaded, reminded me yesterday that NOT anticipating can leave me a little short sometimes. In this case she meant that I should have told the translators and interpreters about the immersethrough sessions I'm doing in Chiang Mai next winter. The translators are a group who know about cultural immersion and engaging with another culture. Of course I forgot to say anything about immerse and, another of course: I don't even have business cards for immersethrough. So, another to-do to add to my list. Thanks for the reminder, Jen.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
POST-SOLSTICE FRAGMENTS
It's eight days since I walked back in the front door here in Toronto, to a warm house and Jeff and Dom and Tashi and Ian, as well as a young visitor from Germany named Vanessa. Vanessa was here for a visit, her first time in Canada, never imagining that she'd be here for the coldest snowiest December ever (or at least that's how it seems). When we drove her to the airport today, she said to us on parting that she'd be back only in the summer - "if there really IS summer here!" was her parting shot.
The sun IS coming back, we said feebly. Solstice is a time for hope, right?!?
The Burma proposal is coming together. It feels so important to be doing it, for many reasons. And in the course of doing research for the proposal, we've realised how right it is from a food point of view. Burma is such a crossroads, with influences from Thailand, Yunnan, and the Indian subcontinent on the various local cuisines. It's ideal for us, for we're pretty well-grounded in the surrounding culinary cultures. Burma is like the keystone, the place in the middle where our other books come together in a fascinating overlapping way. So I think we're going to be able to navigate happily in the colorful patchwork that is Burma's culinary heritage, and to celebrate its richness. I can't wait.
Meantime, since getting to Toronto we've had a rather heady bunch of encounters and emails and conversations, many of them because of Jane Kramer's piece in the New Yorker. Among them was a one-hour radio interview, a live phone-in, on NPR, that ranks as one of the two or three best and most satisfying radio interviews we've ever done, separately or together. We were on show called On Point, last Thursday, the 18th, for the show's second hour (11 to noon Eastern). It's out of Boston, and is available in pod-cast. The host, Tom, was so skilled, and so at ease in the larger Asian world (he worked as a journalist all over Asia for a long time), that the transitions and conversations felt effortless and beautifully connected. We all had fun, including the many callers. We're now going to make a habit of catching his broadcasts online. When radio is good, it is so wonderful...
Another recent fun event was the solstice party we went to on the 21st. We both love that feeling of swimming into a party where we know few of the guests. It's a little like a treasure hunt. This party was especially fun and engaging, with a great mix of people who were prepared to engage in fun conversation. We even got in some dancing!
And the weather? Well that's less hot - deep crunchy squeaky snow everywhere, and slush at the sides of the main streets. Yikes! Haven't had a white Christmas for awhile in Toronto, so I suppose we're overdue, but this year is a shocker.
Then in mid-January I'm due to head back over the pole to Chiang Mai. I'll miss Dom and Tashi and Ian, but I so love the immersion in language, the chance to embark on the unknown. And it's time to move to the next (less domestic) phase of life, to be out and about, with my eyes wide open. Our eight-day immersethrough food cooking class starts February 1, and then by mid-February I hope I am in Sittwe, on Burma's west coast, hanging around...
All suggestions welcome!
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