Nearly midnight on this first day of June. As we approach the summer solstice the evening sky stays bright and lingers long, at least most days. But not today. It's been alternately drizzling and pouring all day, sometimes torrentially. Gusts of wind every once in a while swept the rain almost sideways. Umbrella corpses must be littering the sidewalks and entranceways all over the city.
I'm grateful to have had a full yesterday, including a long zippy outing on my bicycle last night, and a calm task-filled day today, with no need to brave the elements except to do small chores in the garden.
I've been sorting slides (yes, actual old-fashioned colour slides) all day, prompted by a need to find images to skan, so that I can show them to my Foods that Changed the World class this coming Tuesday and at the last class on June 19th. Instead of showing a few each week, I've decided to show a batch to illustrate some of the things we've been talking about in the last three weeks. That means I have shots of rice cultivation and harvest, bread ovens and flour mills (small hand-powered ones), old olive trees, oil mills (animal powered), and more. As I sort through the sheets of slides, it's a pleasure to be reminded that I have a real depth of food shots. I feel I'm getting reacquainted with them after a long time away.
I've been so immersed in Burma these last three years. Now it's time to re-engage with images and thoughts of other places, and with other themes and ideas. No, I'm not abandoning my interest in Burma, very much not. But I need to reconnect to the wider world too. How fortunate that I have the photographs, taken over the last decades, to remind me of the richness of the world, the extremes in which people live, and how much they can teach us.
As I look at flatbread-related images, for example, it makes me want to go and re-photograph in flatbread cultures, and also to extend my understanding. Dreams of travel to Iran start to surface, and to Egypt, and why not Algeria? I think to myself. It's too easy to stay comfortably inside the zone...the ideas and places that are familiar. The familiar is endlessly enriching, for sure.
But I have a hunger to be out being vulnerable, to be in not-knowing situations, where I have no automatic responses and instead have to figure things out moment by moment.
Perhaps this yearning is connected to my having been at my university reunion last weekend, reminded by the aging faces all around me of how long ago graduation was, and of how easy it is to settle into routines and forget about new challenges. I have to say it feels good to have the blood and imagination stirring. I've been so caught up in Burma deadlines and the urgencies of last-minute checks and edits, that I've not had my eyes raised to the horizon.
Perhaps it's this rainy day that's freed me to reflect and ponder more abstractly about what comes next.
Perhaps it's the wonderful supper and conversation I had with two dear friends last night, challenging and lively, to celebrate one birthday, and to mark how much better each of us is feeling and doing, compared to this time last year.
The yearly markers, whether they're the annual cycles of the garden and the trees (these last ten days have been a time of elm seeds scattered like pale flimsy coins all over the street and into the house on stray breezes, and of pale fallen chestnut blossoms like left-over tossed rice after a wedding, decorating the gutters at the edges of the sidestreets), or personal anniversaries such as celebratory dinners with friends, keep us in line and allow us to keep track of our lives and loves. And so I can say, as we head into June, and the green and fruitfulness (we hope) of summer, that life these days is looking and feeling very good and full of promise.
I hope you are feeling some of this kind of optimism and good energy. It makes each day shine more brightly, makes a rainy day feel like a gift rather than a let-down, gives meaning to the simplest things.
POSTSCRIPT REMINDER: The transit of Venus is happening this coming Tuesday, June 5. It's the last one for more than one hundred years...a sort of unimaginable length of time into the future. For people in Toronto and the east half of North America, it starts in the late afternoon. Here Venus starts to cross the sun's orb at 6.04 pm we're told. It will take more than three hours, which means the sun will have set before the transit is finished. In other parts of the world it will be visible finishing, at dawn (say in Southeast Asia). Have a look on Google for more info about times, and also the safety glasses you need to protect your eyes (just as with an eclipse of the sun). I'm going to rush up to Varsity stadium to see the first twenty minutes or so of the transit. And I'll be thinking of the wonder and amazement that skywatchers have felt over the centuries when they have chanced on a transit of Venus. (They happen about twice in a hundred years, we're told.) Now to hope for clear skies!
Showing posts with label aging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aging. Show all posts
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Friday, July 29, 2011
SELF-SUFFICIENCY NEAR TWO COASTS
The birds are tweeting and twittering in the forest that surrounds the clearing here where I sit. I'm in Maine, staying at a beautiful charming house outside Skowhegan. Barbara, the artist who is putting me up, along with some other visitors, makes engaging art, three dimensional painted hang-on-the-wall sculptures as well as paintings. Everywhere I look in the house there is beauty and engagement. And here outside, the woodpile is aromatic and the birds subdued but continously making themselves heard.
I'm here because of the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan. It's the fifth annual, a two day event at the Skowhegan Fairgrounds (site of the oldest coninuously operating ag fair in the USA, quite incredible). On Saturday there's a Bread Fair, when ovens are fired and bread and cheese etc etc is sold.
Yesterday, the first day, I went to a clay oven workshop. We worked all morning mixing clay and sand, making forms (working in loose teams of four or so; altogether the course made six ovens) of wet sand, packed domes. Then we built up clay-sand-mix walls around the sand form, finally enclosing it under a dome. I know I'm not being very clear, but if you find the book by the guy who taught the course, Stu Silverstein, you can learn all about it. The last steps were to cut a front hole, pull out all the sand of the form, then light a fire on the fire brick base. In a couple of hours the colour of the oven changes from damp grey to pale, dried out grey clay and hey presto! there's a working oven.
It always feels magical and empowering to build a tool, and what more amazing tool than an oven built of earth? Lovely to work with unprocessed material (as opposed to manufactured bricks etc), which I've done only once before, when I made a large tandoor oven over nine days in Udaipur about eight years ago, and learned so much. There, in Udaipur, Sangana Bai's material was clay mixed with plenty of dried horse manure and then wetted with water. It was a coarser lumpy blend. For this oven we had sand and clay, so it was smooth rather than lumpy. But I imagine that the horse manure and straw with clay would also work for these domes. hmm A woman from Arizona who was a wonderfully engaged member of the team said that adobe there is made with straw or hay and clay, and I guess some sand too.
By the way the proportions are 1 part clay to 3 parts fine sand, or two parts sand if it's coarser. The trick is to add a minimal amount of water so that the mixture is stiff rather than soft. If it feels good in your hand it's too wet, is a good way of thinking about it.
This Skowhegan junket (eleven hours in the car from Toronto, sharing the driving and conversation with the wonderful Danwthebaker) is my second trip in a week. Here I'm almost at the east coast; the Atlantic is just an hour's drive or so away. And last week I was almost at the Pacific, well, close enough...
I flew to Kelowna (or as non-townies call it Kelownifornia) and drove north past cherry orchards dripping with fruit. At Vernon I turned east and came eventually to my cousins's gorgeous piece of land high on a green hillside. His house, newly built and still needing finishing touches, is beautiful, light and airy, and off-grid. And that's where my aunt, my long-dead mother's identical twin, is now living. Her ninetieth birthday is coming up, and what better place to see out her days than a green fastness, with horses (Icelandic ponies in fact) and dogs and hummingbirds etc all around?
I was so pleased to see her happy, mobile (after a broken hip and cracked pelvis in the last year) and now able to be on horseback, her preferred mode of travel.
There's a connection between the people in these two far-apart places. They tend to be self-sufficient, physically capable, and creative problem-solvers. They live far from the large population centres and from monied communities, and prefer it that way. But here in Skowhegan they are VERY far from prosperity. And that's why this Kneading Conference got started, as a way to try to revitalise farming here. It hasn't died out, but people are struggling. Now there's a grist mill about to reopen in town and a sense of bustle and purpose. There's also some very good baking happening. So as Skowhegan and northern Maine generally bootstraps its way into new patterns and increased viability and confidence, it makes those of us at the conference aware that food issues at the producing level: the farm and the small producer and processor, whether it's a baker, a cheese-maker, or whatever, are a good solid way to generate new life.
I'm hoping to come back here next year... and if you have a chance, do try to come. I've learned a lot, about bread and farming, and I've met some remarkable people. It's a rich opportunity to connect with a culture of self-sufficiency.
I'm here because of the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan. It's the fifth annual, a two day event at the Skowhegan Fairgrounds (site of the oldest coninuously operating ag fair in the USA, quite incredible). On Saturday there's a Bread Fair, when ovens are fired and bread and cheese etc etc is sold.
Yesterday, the first day, I went to a clay oven workshop. We worked all morning mixing clay and sand, making forms (working in loose teams of four or so; altogether the course made six ovens) of wet sand, packed domes. Then we built up clay-sand-mix walls around the sand form, finally enclosing it under a dome. I know I'm not being very clear, but if you find the book by the guy who taught the course, Stu Silverstein, you can learn all about it. The last steps were to cut a front hole, pull out all the sand of the form, then light a fire on the fire brick base. In a couple of hours the colour of the oven changes from damp grey to pale, dried out grey clay and hey presto! there's a working oven.
It always feels magical and empowering to build a tool, and what more amazing tool than an oven built of earth? Lovely to work with unprocessed material (as opposed to manufactured bricks etc), which I've done only once before, when I made a large tandoor oven over nine days in Udaipur about eight years ago, and learned so much. There, in Udaipur, Sangana Bai's material was clay mixed with plenty of dried horse manure and then wetted with water. It was a coarser lumpy blend. For this oven we had sand and clay, so it was smooth rather than lumpy. But I imagine that the horse manure and straw with clay would also work for these domes. hmm A woman from Arizona who was a wonderfully engaged member of the team said that adobe there is made with straw or hay and clay, and I guess some sand too.
By the way the proportions are 1 part clay to 3 parts fine sand, or two parts sand if it's coarser. The trick is to add a minimal amount of water so that the mixture is stiff rather than soft. If it feels good in your hand it's too wet, is a good way of thinking about it.
This Skowhegan junket (eleven hours in the car from Toronto, sharing the driving and conversation with the wonderful Danwthebaker) is my second trip in a week. Here I'm almost at the east coast; the Atlantic is just an hour's drive or so away. And last week I was almost at the Pacific, well, close enough...
I flew to Kelowna (or as non-townies call it Kelownifornia) and drove north past cherry orchards dripping with fruit. At Vernon I turned east and came eventually to my cousins's gorgeous piece of land high on a green hillside. His house, newly built and still needing finishing touches, is beautiful, light and airy, and off-grid. And that's where my aunt, my long-dead mother's identical twin, is now living. Her ninetieth birthday is coming up, and what better place to see out her days than a green fastness, with horses (Icelandic ponies in fact) and dogs and hummingbirds etc all around?
I was so pleased to see her happy, mobile (after a broken hip and cracked pelvis in the last year) and now able to be on horseback, her preferred mode of travel.
There's a connection between the people in these two far-apart places. They tend to be self-sufficient, physically capable, and creative problem-solvers. They live far from the large population centres and from monied communities, and prefer it that way. But here in Skowhegan they are VERY far from prosperity. And that's why this Kneading Conference got started, as a way to try to revitalise farming here. It hasn't died out, but people are struggling. Now there's a grist mill about to reopen in town and a sense of bustle and purpose. There's also some very good baking happening. So as Skowhegan and northern Maine generally bootstraps its way into new patterns and increased viability and confidence, it makes those of us at the conference aware that food issues at the producing level: the farm and the small producer and processor, whether it's a baker, a cheese-maker, or whatever, are a good solid way to generate new life.
I'm hoping to come back here next year... and if you have a chance, do try to come. I've learned a lot, about bread and farming, and I've met some remarkable people. It's a rich opportunity to connect with a culture of self-sufficiency.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
TRAVELS & IMMINENT DEPARTURES
Here it is nearly the end of February, and nearly the end of my time in Southeast Asia. I catch a plane Tuesday morning in Chiang Mai, change in Bangkok, then Hong Kong, and from there it’s over the pole to Toronto. Amazing.
This week was originally going to be a time to consolidate and reflect on what I learned in Burma on my last trip, to see friends, and generally to enjoy Chiang Mai. But a Toronto friend turned up, a friend with a long connection to Burma and pro-democracy-in-Burma advocacy, who had been refused a visa by the Burmese embassy in Bangkok. No fun. So I proposed that we try taking a little trip north to Kengtung, also known as Chiang Tung. It’s one of the old Tai city states, the capital of the Eastern Shan State, and lies directly north of Mae Sai and the so-called Golden Triangle area.
The thing is, even though it’s in Burma, the Burmese government treats it separately for the purposes of tourism. You can go in to that area by leaving your passport at the border and agreeing to take a “guide” with you. It feels restrictive, yes, but better than not going. There’s no cross-checking of information, so we made it in, no problem.
Kengtung the town is about four hours by car from the border. At the moment foreigners aren’t allowed to go any farther north; the next major town after Kengtung is Mengla, near the Yunnanese border, a town known for its wild-west casinos and drug smuggling, etc.
Kengtung is charming, set up in the mountians, surrounded by mountains and built on rolling hills around a manmade lake. The streets bend and undulate with the landscape, and everything is low-rise and human scale.
The people are mostly not Burman but predominantly either Shan (Tai Yai) or Tai Koen, speaking a language like the northern Tai spoken in Chiang Mai. There are also hill people, Akha and Lahu, living in town and in villages nearby. We had all kinds of encounters, in tea shops and at markets, as well as in temples and out on the street; we learned a lot and wallked a lot!
It felt like time travel to be there, as if we were in Thailand about forty years ago. There were motorcycles but few cars, and no electric lighting except by generators in individual houses, so the place was pretty dark and quiet by 9.30 every night. A small market by the guest house we stayed at came to life every morning at dawn and was finished before 9 am. Women there sold prepared foods as well as vegetables, including dishes I had never seen before. I was thrilled. And even better was that the women were very helpful, ready to explain how a partcular dish was made, or what a vegetable or herb was used for.
I loved the fresh rice noodles, called kao swe there (what in Thailand would be called guay tio). They’re eaten in a broth with blanched pea tendrils and a meat sauce, and lots of condiments, just as they are in northern Laos and in southern Yunnan. The regional cross-connections are thrilling. But in Kengtung there was also a kind of steamed rice crepe that was made using a noodle batter and flavourings. I can’t wait to try it at home, for it’s a delicious and inventive dish, a great addition to my Burma v=book, I’m thinking!
At the market the women gave me samples of everything to taste, from head cheese (wonderful) to silken tofu with ginger-sugar syrup to pickled greens to fermented bean paste (an essential and delicious flavouring, great for vegetarians). They were so generous.
These are people who live on very little, who make and grow their own food and their own luck, dare I say it. And they do it with warmth and grace. Once again, there’s that lesson of travel: travel teaches me a lot, and it’s not about the food as much as it is about the way people live day to day.
After a six hour bus ride back to the border and after paying off our guide, it was great to get our passports back and cross into Thailand. Getting back a full sense of autonomy, after being constrained by rules and checkpoints and a slight anxiety about transgressing unknown rules was a reminder that people living in Burma live with constraints much more binding and onerous than the ones we’d wilfully accepted when we’d chosen to travel to Kengtung.
....
There was a stack of letters in my inbox when I finally checked my mail once back in Chiang Mai (internet is slow to non-existant in Kengtung). Among them was a note from my cousin Psyche, a wonderful woman, telling me that our aunt, Wendy, my mother’s identical twin sister, who lives in British Columbia, had fallen and broken her pelvis. She has a ninetieth birthday coming up in August, but there’s a strong feeling in the family that she won’t live that long.
Last spring she broke her hip when the horse she was grooming moved over and she lost her balance and fell. In other words, she’s been very much a going concern until recently. The hip healed fine and she moved back into her house in the summer.
When I spoke to her in January, before leaving to come here, she sounded clear, a little frailer, but with energy and decisiveness still, and of course an uncanny echo of my mother, who died over thirty years ago. I’ve had a slightly difficult time with that since my mother died, getting reminded of my loss, of who is gone and who survived.
But now the last trace of that reminder, that echo, may vanish before I have a chance to see her again. I don’t want her to suffer endlessly, so it’s selfish for me to want her to recover from this. She’s been in her own house until now, thanks to support from her son who lives nearby, and from friends. But even if she recovers it seems as if she won’t be able to live on her own...
And what will that be like for her, living in a facility of some kind? Not what she wants. Not what any of us wants.
None of these questions are easy, none of these situations lend themselves to comfortable solutions. And the descent into less-than-autonomous living conditions lies ahead for most of us. What to do?
Perhaps my aunt will be able to let herself go. On the other hand there’s a toughness in her, a toughness inherited from both her parents, my grandparents, so I wouldn’t put money on her just lying back and letting go. Maybe instead she’ll manage to will herself to be gone...
I’ll keep you posted.
This week was originally going to be a time to consolidate and reflect on what I learned in Burma on my last trip, to see friends, and generally to enjoy Chiang Mai. But a Toronto friend turned up, a friend with a long connection to Burma and pro-democracy-in-Burma advocacy, who had been refused a visa by the Burmese embassy in Bangkok. No fun. So I proposed that we try taking a little trip north to Kengtung, also known as Chiang Tung. It’s one of the old Tai city states, the capital of the Eastern Shan State, and lies directly north of Mae Sai and the so-called Golden Triangle area.
The thing is, even though it’s in Burma, the Burmese government treats it separately for the purposes of tourism. You can go in to that area by leaving your passport at the border and agreeing to take a “guide” with you. It feels restrictive, yes, but better than not going. There’s no cross-checking of information, so we made it in, no problem.
Kengtung the town is about four hours by car from the border. At the moment foreigners aren’t allowed to go any farther north; the next major town after Kengtung is Mengla, near the Yunnanese border, a town known for its wild-west casinos and drug smuggling, etc.
Kengtung is charming, set up in the mountians, surrounded by mountains and built on rolling hills around a manmade lake. The streets bend and undulate with the landscape, and everything is low-rise and human scale.
The people are mostly not Burman but predominantly either Shan (Tai Yai) or Tai Koen, speaking a language like the northern Tai spoken in Chiang Mai. There are also hill people, Akha and Lahu, living in town and in villages nearby. We had all kinds of encounters, in tea shops and at markets, as well as in temples and out on the street; we learned a lot and wallked a lot!
It felt like time travel to be there, as if we were in Thailand about forty years ago. There were motorcycles but few cars, and no electric lighting except by generators in individual houses, so the place was pretty dark and quiet by 9.30 every night. A small market by the guest house we stayed at came to life every morning at dawn and was finished before 9 am. Women there sold prepared foods as well as vegetables, including dishes I had never seen before. I was thrilled. And even better was that the women were very helpful, ready to explain how a partcular dish was made, or what a vegetable or herb was used for.
I loved the fresh rice noodles, called kao swe there (what in Thailand would be called guay tio). They’re eaten in a broth with blanched pea tendrils and a meat sauce, and lots of condiments, just as they are in northern Laos and in southern Yunnan. The regional cross-connections are thrilling. But in Kengtung there was also a kind of steamed rice crepe that was made using a noodle batter and flavourings. I can’t wait to try it at home, for it’s a delicious and inventive dish, a great addition to my Burma v=book, I’m thinking!
At the market the women gave me samples of everything to taste, from head cheese (wonderful) to silken tofu with ginger-sugar syrup to pickled greens to fermented bean paste (an essential and delicious flavouring, great for vegetarians). They were so generous.
These are people who live on very little, who make and grow their own food and their own luck, dare I say it. And they do it with warmth and grace. Once again, there’s that lesson of travel: travel teaches me a lot, and it’s not about the food as much as it is about the way people live day to day.
After a six hour bus ride back to the border and after paying off our guide, it was great to get our passports back and cross into Thailand. Getting back a full sense of autonomy, after being constrained by rules and checkpoints and a slight anxiety about transgressing unknown rules was a reminder that people living in Burma live with constraints much more binding and onerous than the ones we’d wilfully accepted when we’d chosen to travel to Kengtung.
....
There was a stack of letters in my inbox when I finally checked my mail once back in Chiang Mai (internet is slow to non-existant in Kengtung). Among them was a note from my cousin Psyche, a wonderful woman, telling me that our aunt, Wendy, my mother’s identical twin sister, who lives in British Columbia, had fallen and broken her pelvis. She has a ninetieth birthday coming up in August, but there’s a strong feeling in the family that she won’t live that long.
Last spring she broke her hip when the horse she was grooming moved over and she lost her balance and fell. In other words, she’s been very much a going concern until recently. The hip healed fine and she moved back into her house in the summer.
When I spoke to her in January, before leaving to come here, she sounded clear, a little frailer, but with energy and decisiveness still, and of course an uncanny echo of my mother, who died over thirty years ago. I’ve had a slightly difficult time with that since my mother died, getting reminded of my loss, of who is gone and who survived.
But now the last trace of that reminder, that echo, may vanish before I have a chance to see her again. I don’t want her to suffer endlessly, so it’s selfish for me to want her to recover from this. She’s been in her own house until now, thanks to support from her son who lives nearby, and from friends. But even if she recovers it seems as if she won’t be able to live on her own...
And what will that be like for her, living in a facility of some kind? Not what she wants. Not what any of us wants.
None of these questions are easy, none of these situations lend themselves to comfortable solutions. And the descent into less-than-autonomous living conditions lies ahead for most of us. What to do?
Perhaps my aunt will be able to let herself go. On the other hand there’s a toughness in her, a toughness inherited from both her parents, my grandparents, so I wouldn’t put money on her just lying back and letting go. Maybe instead she’ll manage to will herself to be gone...
I’ll keep you posted.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
SIMPLE TECHNIQUES AND SIMPLE PLEASURES
It's late on a muggy Tuesday evening. No not muggy: Muggy is too negative a word for the soft warm air that bathes me as I sit here in Toronto writing. It's a word used by people who find this summer heat too aggressive and hard to live in. Winter cold is so chilling, and lowering to the spirits, at least by late February, that it seems unwise and in fact deeply ungrateful to complain about life-giving summer heat. Ah here she goes preaching again! you'll say.
Let's start again and say that it's a warm tropical-feeling evening here in Toronto!
Had another lovely time in Grey County last weekend, celebrating two seventy-fifth birthdays, one of a bookseller friend, and the other, on the same day, and at the same party, the birth of Penguin, the publisher. There was a Penguin motif at the birthday party and much pleasure and good conversation. And after, as I drove to a friend's place to overnight in peace and silence, there was time to reflect on the passage of time, on things taken for granted (publishing houses, long life) until they become fragile or threatened. As always, "in the moment" living is what we need, for sure. Enjoy the 75 year (or 25 year or 90 year...) marker, and try not to think too much about the number of years we do or do not have left.
Who knows? after all. So there's no point worrying about it, as I wrote last week. I am still working on cultivating a "so what?" looseness about eventualities. It sure has lightened my load, and added to the general happiness in my world.
And meantime I have begun to tweet. It's a wild world of haiku-like bursts, compressed thoughts, an anti-logorrhoea (sp?) tool! ( Prolixity is easier to spell...) A friend says it has led her to interesting information and people, quick connectedness with a large world.
On the subject of long and short: Longer distances beckon when I run in the morning these days. I'm loving it, but trying not to be too tempted into more kilometres. After all, I don't want to end up with knee or hip problems, and too much wear can sure lead there. On the other hand, what am I saving myself for?
It's the same balancing with money I think: Save it for a possibly long life? but who knows when it might get cut short? So why not enjoy the moment and worry about the money when the time comes, rather than ahead of time. it's an age-old issue and balancing act. The trick, the important thing, is not to get stressed about it. Just enjoy whatever decisions you make and live with them.
A friend said the other day 'Our job is to enjoy life, to be creative when we can, and otherwise to take good care of people and the earth and things generally.' It's not a bad basic code, don't you think?
Meantime, we need to eat, and the last few days have been fun: Had some amazing peach pie made by a friend up north, summer in a mouthful. I think it was a Crisco crust, but light and not soggy, the peaches perfect.
Last night, still on the yellow fruit theme, I used bright yellow tart plums to make a relish-chutney- salad. I would like to put it in the Burma book (saying clearly that I haven't eaten it there), for it's in the groove or style of the flavour palate, with minced shallots, some fish sauce and chiles, shallot oil used to heat and pop some mustard seed (a south Asian touch that gives a toasted depth) and... chopped mint or coriander leaves and salt. In any case it was great with grilled flat-iron steak, my new favorite cut. And on the grill went eggplants (long Asian ones) and shallots and garlic, for a mild, non-chile'd nam prik makeua. It was so smoky and flavorful, just way more than the sum of its parts.
Chile-garlic sauce, my favorite condiment from the Burma kitchen, with soaked dried red chiles, raw garlic, rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and fish sauce, as always had an important place on the table. I've doubled the recipe for the book, for why make a small quantity when it's getting eaten so quickly??
This evening I made an improvised salad of cooked chopped sweet potato, all beautiful colour and tender texture, tossed with cold cooked rice and fresh pea tendrils (the fine kind) and lots of minced herbs whisked into an olive oil vinaigrette. The mint and basil were from the garden, punchy and fresh. I should have put it in a purple bowl, to set off the glamorous orange of the sweet potato. It was a great pairing with grilled fresh sausages (pork with fennel seed and chiles) from Sanagan's (and again more of that chile-garlic sauce, yum!).
My charcoal grilling is getting very confident, at last. I'm working to use as little charcoal as possible. In Southeast Asia people are so skilled and economical with charcoal. It is another of those learn-it-over-a-long-time life-skills that I am happy to work on.
Simple IS good!
Let's start again and say that it's a warm tropical-feeling evening here in Toronto!
Had another lovely time in Grey County last weekend, celebrating two seventy-fifth birthdays, one of a bookseller friend, and the other, on the same day, and at the same party, the birth of Penguin, the publisher. There was a Penguin motif at the birthday party and much pleasure and good conversation. And after, as I drove to a friend's place to overnight in peace and silence, there was time to reflect on the passage of time, on things taken for granted (publishing houses, long life) until they become fragile or threatened. As always, "in the moment" living is what we need, for sure. Enjoy the 75 year (or 25 year or 90 year...) marker, and try not to think too much about the number of years we do or do not have left.
Who knows? after all. So there's no point worrying about it, as I wrote last week. I am still working on cultivating a "so what?" looseness about eventualities. It sure has lightened my load, and added to the general happiness in my world.
And meantime I have begun to tweet. It's a wild world of haiku-like bursts, compressed thoughts, an anti-logorrhoea (sp?) tool! ( Prolixity is easier to spell...) A friend says it has led her to interesting information and people, quick connectedness with a large world.
On the subject of long and short: Longer distances beckon when I run in the morning these days. I'm loving it, but trying not to be too tempted into more kilometres. After all, I don't want to end up with knee or hip problems, and too much wear can sure lead there. On the other hand, what am I saving myself for?
It's the same balancing with money I think: Save it for a possibly long life? but who knows when it might get cut short? So why not enjoy the moment and worry about the money when the time comes, rather than ahead of time. it's an age-old issue and balancing act. The trick, the important thing, is not to get stressed about it. Just enjoy whatever decisions you make and live with them.
A friend said the other day 'Our job is to enjoy life, to be creative when we can, and otherwise to take good care of people and the earth and things generally.' It's not a bad basic code, don't you think?
Meantime, we need to eat, and the last few days have been fun: Had some amazing peach pie made by a friend up north, summer in a mouthful. I think it was a Crisco crust, but light and not soggy, the peaches perfect.
Last night, still on the yellow fruit theme, I used bright yellow tart plums to make a relish-chutney- salad. I would like to put it in the Burma book (saying clearly that I haven't eaten it there), for it's in the groove or style of the flavour palate, with minced shallots, some fish sauce and chiles, shallot oil used to heat and pop some mustard seed (a south Asian touch that gives a toasted depth) and... chopped mint or coriander leaves and salt. In any case it was great with grilled flat-iron steak, my new favorite cut. And on the grill went eggplants (long Asian ones) and shallots and garlic, for a mild, non-chile'd nam prik makeua. It was so smoky and flavorful, just way more than the sum of its parts.
Chile-garlic sauce, my favorite condiment from the Burma kitchen, with soaked dried red chiles, raw garlic, rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and fish sauce, as always had an important place on the table. I've doubled the recipe for the book, for why make a small quantity when it's getting eaten so quickly??
This evening I made an improvised salad of cooked chopped sweet potato, all beautiful colour and tender texture, tossed with cold cooked rice and fresh pea tendrils (the fine kind) and lots of minced herbs whisked into an olive oil vinaigrette. The mint and basil were from the garden, punchy and fresh. I should have put it in a purple bowl, to set off the glamorous orange of the sweet potato. It was a great pairing with grilled fresh sausages (pork with fennel seed and chiles) from Sanagan's (and again more of that chile-garlic sauce, yum!).
My charcoal grilling is getting very confident, at last. I'm working to use as little charcoal as possible. In Southeast Asia people are so skilled and economical with charcoal. It is another of those learn-it-over-a-long-time life-skills that I am happy to work on.
Simple IS good!
Monday, April 5, 2010
SPREADING OUR WINGS AND PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES
The last few days, the long elastic time that is the four-day Easter weekend, have passed in a hazy daze, or a daze-y haze, because we've been in sun and warmth. it's been like a blessing from the universe to have such an intense fore-taste of summer warmth. And here in Toronto, where we had really no summer and no warmth last year, it's even more of a welcome balm to the body and the soul.
So now the lamb is all eaten, the Russians at the Orthodox church on my street have had their Saturday midnight procession, complete with singing and icons and people walking with candles (and others talking in the soft night air on their cell-phones), the children have found their Easter eggs... What's next?
It's a time for celebrating spring and new life here in the northern Hemisphere. In the more tropical air of Thailand and Laos and the Shan States of Burma, it's about to be new year, Song Kran as it's called in Thailand. The holiday comes in mid-April, in the hottest of hot season, and is often marked by an early pre-monsoon season rain. Soon after, with the rains proper, rice planting/transplanting begins and the earth transforms into lush and brilliant green paradise. The grey skies overhead and the indirect lighting that results (the big lightbox in the sky, as some photographers think of it gratefully) give everything a rounded three-dimensional look and bring out the richness of saturated colours everywhere...
But here we don't have such a clear demarcation... instead as the snow melts and warmth reurns, the changes are subtle at first - the buds swell on the trees - then burst out and declare themselves. Just up from me the bare branches of a neighbour's plum tree are dotted with small white flower buds; the huge maple that fills the sky to the west of my bedroom has fattened leaf buds; and out front the crabapple tree and the Japanese lilac both have greens leaves just springing out, visible only from close to.
It must have been surging spring energy that made me long to make a more ambitious run/jog/trot on Easter Sunday morning. So off I went north through the Annex and then up the steps past Casa Loma (it's on the steep hill that marks the geological location of the old edge of Lake Ontario's predecessor body of water). I walked some but mostly trit-trotted along, feeling very good. I haven't run up there since long ago, before I quite jogging about seven years ago, thinking that it was giving me aches and pains. I discovered a little later, when I started belly dance classes with the fabulous Roula Said, that those aches and pains were caused by my ignorance of how I should stretch my hamstrings and quads and all those other tight back-of-the-leg muscles, as well as my hip flexors. So in the last year or two I've begun heading out for short easy morning runs. What a pleasure they are.
Now this new woman that I've become through belly dance (VERY gradually!) knows how to stay stretched and feels no pain or stiffness from my little jogs. And that's what gave me the confidence to try a longer trot. Today I felt fine, as I took my usual unambitious little morning trip through the university to celebrate the start of the day.
I am going on and on about this, because it's time to talk seriously about age and aging and about how with luck we can stay mobile and healthy for a lot longer, by being smart about how we use ourselves, our minds and bodies, and by pushing ourselves, too.
That thought reminds me that at midweek I heard a prayer read out, a prayer written by Sir Francis Drake. I must go and find the text, for it is remarkable, and it resonated with me. It asks that we be stretched, that our horizons be set wide, that we not sit comfortably content with what we have but continue to push ourselves and extend the boundaries of our lives. At least that is the meaning I heard!
I felt I'd been reminded of an important truth, one that feels especially on target at this time of new life springing forth into the sunshine and the light... Let's spread our wings wide wide and embark!
And a footnote about food:
We're still eating root vegetables here; it will be awhile before we have a wide choice of local vegetables. Even asparagus is another month-plus away. I am looking forward to bitter greens such as dandelions. For now we are limited to sprouts (recent discoveries at Wychwood market include cabbage and dandelion sprouts), and also the first of fresh tender salad greens. (As you know, for me a fresh farm egg in some form (fried or poached, generally) always plays an important role in all this greens-eating.)
Faced with the root vegetables, the other day I made a green Thai curry (using packaged green curry paste and canned coconut milk, I admit) with slices and chunks of sweet potato, white potato, celery root, and thick-stemmed mushroom. In the usual way, I heated the curry paste in a little oil and coconut milk to cook it, then added the veggies, but not the mushrooms, and stirred so they were coated with flavour. Some water and more coconut milk gave enough liquid to simmer things for ten minutes. Then I left it all sitting on the stove off the heat while I ran errands. I like a pause, to give flavours a chance to blend. Later I tossed in the mushrooms, a crushed stick of lemongrass, and the usual lime leaves, and then near the end, some Thai basil, and I seasoned it with fish sauce. I like to extend the liquid with quite a lot of water, so there's a smoothness from the coconut milk, but it's not thick and heavy.
It was a delish combo over rice, and made great leftovers the next day, reheated. But on the day I made it, it tasted better to to me at room temperature than it did hot from the stove. Why is that? Not every dish responds that way. All ideas welcome!
This evening there was more Thai on the menu, at least improvised thai-ish food: I made a soupy combo of sliced pork and sliced fried tofu and chopped long beans, all cooked in a flavour base of minced lemongrass and ginger and pulverized garlic, and seasoned with dao jiao, smashed fermented soy beans, a great pantry staple. The combo went over guay tio, wide fresh rice noodles quickly seared in the wok, so it became a version of guay tio ladna. Thai in Toronto in the springtime... a treat for us all!
So now the lamb is all eaten, the Russians at the Orthodox church on my street have had their Saturday midnight procession, complete with singing and icons and people walking with candles (and others talking in the soft night air on their cell-phones), the children have found their Easter eggs... What's next?
It's a time for celebrating spring and new life here in the northern Hemisphere. In the more tropical air of Thailand and Laos and the Shan States of Burma, it's about to be new year, Song Kran as it's called in Thailand. The holiday comes in mid-April, in the hottest of hot season, and is often marked by an early pre-monsoon season rain. Soon after, with the rains proper, rice planting/transplanting begins and the earth transforms into lush and brilliant green paradise. The grey skies overhead and the indirect lighting that results (the big lightbox in the sky, as some photographers think of it gratefully) give everything a rounded three-dimensional look and bring out the richness of saturated colours everywhere...
But here we don't have such a clear demarcation... instead as the snow melts and warmth reurns, the changes are subtle at first - the buds swell on the trees - then burst out and declare themselves. Just up from me the bare branches of a neighbour's plum tree are dotted with small white flower buds; the huge maple that fills the sky to the west of my bedroom has fattened leaf buds; and out front the crabapple tree and the Japanese lilac both have greens leaves just springing out, visible only from close to.
It must have been surging spring energy that made me long to make a more ambitious run/jog/trot on Easter Sunday morning. So off I went north through the Annex and then up the steps past Casa Loma (it's on the steep hill that marks the geological location of the old edge of Lake Ontario's predecessor body of water). I walked some but mostly trit-trotted along, feeling very good. I haven't run up there since long ago, before I quite jogging about seven years ago, thinking that it was giving me aches and pains. I discovered a little later, when I started belly dance classes with the fabulous Roula Said, that those aches and pains were caused by my ignorance of how I should stretch my hamstrings and quads and all those other tight back-of-the-leg muscles, as well as my hip flexors. So in the last year or two I've begun heading out for short easy morning runs. What a pleasure they are.
Now this new woman that I've become through belly dance (VERY gradually!) knows how to stay stretched and feels no pain or stiffness from my little jogs. And that's what gave me the confidence to try a longer trot. Today I felt fine, as I took my usual unambitious little morning trip through the university to celebrate the start of the day.
I am going on and on about this, because it's time to talk seriously about age and aging and about how with luck we can stay mobile and healthy for a lot longer, by being smart about how we use ourselves, our minds and bodies, and by pushing ourselves, too.
That thought reminds me that at midweek I heard a prayer read out, a prayer written by Sir Francis Drake. I must go and find the text, for it is remarkable, and it resonated with me. It asks that we be stretched, that our horizons be set wide, that we not sit comfortably content with what we have but continue to push ourselves and extend the boundaries of our lives. At least that is the meaning I heard!
I felt I'd been reminded of an important truth, one that feels especially on target at this time of new life springing forth into the sunshine and the light... Let's spread our wings wide wide and embark!
And a footnote about food:
We're still eating root vegetables here; it will be awhile before we have a wide choice of local vegetables. Even asparagus is another month-plus away. I am looking forward to bitter greens such as dandelions. For now we are limited to sprouts (recent discoveries at Wychwood market include cabbage and dandelion sprouts), and also the first of fresh tender salad greens. (As you know, for me a fresh farm egg in some form (fried or poached, generally) always plays an important role in all this greens-eating.)
Faced with the root vegetables, the other day I made a green Thai curry (using packaged green curry paste and canned coconut milk, I admit) with slices and chunks of sweet potato, white potato, celery root, and thick-stemmed mushroom. In the usual way, I heated the curry paste in a little oil and coconut milk to cook it, then added the veggies, but not the mushrooms, and stirred so they were coated with flavour. Some water and more coconut milk gave enough liquid to simmer things for ten minutes. Then I left it all sitting on the stove off the heat while I ran errands. I like a pause, to give flavours a chance to blend. Later I tossed in the mushrooms, a crushed stick of lemongrass, and the usual lime leaves, and then near the end, some Thai basil, and I seasoned it with fish sauce. I like to extend the liquid with quite a lot of water, so there's a smoothness from the coconut milk, but it's not thick and heavy.
It was a delish combo over rice, and made great leftovers the next day, reheated. But on the day I made it, it tasted better to to me at room temperature than it did hot from the stove. Why is that? Not every dish responds that way. All ideas welcome!
This evening there was more Thai on the menu, at least improvised thai-ish food: I made a soupy combo of sliced pork and sliced fried tofu and chopped long beans, all cooked in a flavour base of minced lemongrass and ginger and pulverized garlic, and seasoned with dao jiao, smashed fermented soy beans, a great pantry staple. The combo went over guay tio, wide fresh rice noodles quickly seared in the wok, so it became a version of guay tio ladna. Thai in Toronto in the springtime... a treat for us all!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
SWIMMING IN THE RIVER OF TIME
I feel I've been far away, but in fact I've just made a four day car trip to Ottawa, my home-town, with Dom and Tashi. The drive is less than five hours, but was transporting.
It's mid-July, my birthday time, and I love to mark it somehow, so that later I can think, ah, yes, THAT year I was doing such-and-such... (So as I said to Dom, twenty-two years ago, I was pregnant with you and walking up the pass that is part of the circumambulation of Mount Kailas, in western Tibet, and here you are tall and grown and hopefully undamaged by those early in utero exertions!)
This year we slept in a friend's cabin on a hill above the Gatineau River, on a chilly night (but we had sleeping bags and quilts and were comfy). On my birthday morning I could get up early and walk down through the trees to the gleaming wide river, slip off my sweater and sarong, and step into the water. I was bare, but warm with the remnants of sleep. The river was warmer than the cold morning air, so it was soft and welcoming, slippery smooth on my skin.
I love swimming in the Gatineau. It flows south into the Ottawa River at Ottawa, and its water carries some suspended clay in it, making it almost silky to the touch. Any place that we spend our childhood has magical connections for us I think, and for me the Gatineau sure has those. There's a before-thought kind of familiarity and welcome to all of it: the feel of the water as I first sink into it, the subtle cool scent of the air over the water, the slight ooze of the river bottom as I push off to start swimming out toward the far shore.
I don't actually swim across the river, and have rarely done so. It's very wide. When I was a kid we would occasionally swim across, but only if accompanied by an adult in a rowboat, for safety, and always it seemed so far and such a marathon. I think I'm in better shape, and also am a more confident (though not a more elegant!) swimmer, so the crossing looks less daunting to me now. But I don't do it. Instead I swim out then luxuriate and float and paddle and swim a little more and let myself just BE there. Heaven.
Once back out, that birthday morning a few days ago, I wrapped myself in a towel, slipped the sweater on top, and walked over on the path to my cousin's dock. Under it the water makes a lapping sound as little wavelets reach the rocks and shore. I lay there in the sun, getting slowly warmed and feeling connected to and almost inside all the times I've been in that place, listening to that water.
But of course the water I heard before, all those other times, is somewhere else on the planet or in the air now, and the dock I lay on as a child has been replaced by a fresh dock with fresh planks. As always there's that lesson about life, which can seem the same, and feels the same but not the same, feels continuous but also renewed and altered over time.
So as the river flows by, we step into it at the same spot, but into different water, and we too are different, not the same person who stepped in yesterday, or ten years ago, or fifty (fifty!!) years ago. But inside I feel like the same person; I'm still me, aren't I?
These are birthday thoughts, or thoughts for the new year, when we ponder life and time and change...
And so it felt entirely right that on that trip to Ottawa, apart from the pleasure of swimming, and of seeing old friends, and of having travelling time with Dom and Tashi, I also had a visit with my aunt. She is eighty-seven now, lives in a present that is ephemeral to her, and with the past just a vague impression, so conversations are tangential and like those inside a dream state. She now looks very like her father, my grandfather, as he did in his late eighties, especially the way her mouth shapes words as she speaks. It's a precious glimpse of the past. I found myself in tears almost, touched by that family connection, and, once again, by the intertwining in life of continuity and change.
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