MAPS FOR LIVING & ENGAGING WITH THE WORLD

The bright sun on this Monday morning makes a lovely start to the week. And the world outside is extra-brilliant because of all the fresh snow still coating all surfaces. The deep cold temperatures we’ve had felt all the more brutal because the ground was bare, but now with the snow winter feels less harsh somehow.

As a friend said to me on Sunday morning, under grey skies, with the snow making soft edges everywhere, “We love this. Not in April we don’t, but in December and January, we love it.”

Yes and I am happy to be here for the whole of December for once, able to head out on my cross-country skis yesterday in the fresh snow. No, I didn’t drive out of the city, I walked to the end of my street then skied around in the university grounds and the neighbouring park, beautiful with huge old trees.

We can’t have it all, no matter how much we fantasize about the possibility. I can’t be in Chiang Mai or Burma, seeing friends and enjoying sunshine, bare arms, and fresh local greens, and also be here in the slanting northern light and crisp air of snowy Toronto. Luckily I don’t generally yearn for where I am not. I mean, homesickness or wishing to be warm when cold, or cool when overheated, are not afflictions I suffer from. When I’m traveling I’m not fighting myself, usually, however lonely or uncomfortable a particular situation or trip might be. And that makes it all much easier.

The whole of life is a trip, from one point of view. And then the questions becomes, how comfortable or engaged are we in the place we find ourselves? Do we yearn for something else? It’s an interesting way to conceptualise our daily and yearly choices, don’t you think? After all, a certain itchiness and awareness of the wider horizon is necessary if we are to understand the choices we have in life, and the possibilities for being creative, or doing useful work, or whatever, that are out there. We need to know about them in order to make decisions, in order to push ourselves outside our comfort zone too. Yet at the same time we surely live better if we make ourselves comfortable and accepting of our current situation, whatever it is. That way we can make the best of it rather than pining and moaning about what we don’t have.

There’s a tension here between ambition and harmonious daily living…a tension that we navigate at each stage of life.

For as we move through life, sometimes on auto-pilot (as when we are surviving and trying to do our best raising young children), sometimes more consciously making choices and striving outward (as young people and then perhaps again once the kids are launched), we’re charting our own geographies, map-making, annotating the map of time and place with our personal experiences and hopes.

Cartography was one of my favourite subjects when I was an undergraduate majoring in Geography. It’s technical, and was a required course that many students disliked. I loved the questions of psychology and perception that underlay cartographic decisions. How to make this border stand out and that one be less important? What makes a map or any mapping of information clear, and what makes it a struggle to decipher?

Those questions have become more generally relevant as we have moved into this digital and e-universe. We can see charts and graphs and other information-mapping posted by newspapers, magazines, and bloggers. For example the Economist, a useful mag whose politics I don’t usually agree with, posts great charts and graphs, comparing countries, usually, but on the basis of infant mortality, or literacy, or diversity or whatever. I find that charting and graphic comparison informative and enticing, a helpful underpinning to words and commentary, and often a corrective too.

This post started with snow and ideas about having to be in one place at a time. Yes, and at the same time we can be many places at once in our imaginations and thoughts. Those charts help us picture and compare places far away from us, and from each other. They allow us to attend to other places and situations in the world intellectually or emotionally, while staying physically in one place.

In my case for now that means wearing warm pants over long-johns, with two layers of sweater plus a scarf on top, to stay warm as I work in my office. And let’s not forget the extra socks!

As I’ve worked here and done household chores too, in my mind’s eye I have travelled many places already this morning, from the refugee camps and ruined threatened cities of Syria, where temperatures are at a record low and people lack basic bread, as well as security and heating (see this recent report by Lyse Doucet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25397140 ); to tropical Rangoon where my friend Ma Thanegi’s newly issued Burma cookbook has just won a World Gourmand award; to Sikkim, where a new Twitter follower @Cafe_Fiction lives and works; to Burundi where the always interesting blogger DianaBuja now lives: http://dianabuja.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/antibiotics-bed-rest-and-friends-standard-for-recovery-in-central-africa/ .

I’ve also gone the other way this morning, travelling internally into memory and imagination, after reading a piece from Lapham’s quarterly about the art of dying, centred around one story but raising issues that affect us all: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/the-art-of-dying.php .

The statistic cited there, that seven out of ten Americans would prefer to die at home but in fact that instead that same proportion die in hospital with tubes and sterility, should make us think hard about how we approach end-of-life issues, not just for ourselves but for others. My father and mother died young, (at 48 and 56 respectively) but they at least had the privilege of dying in their own bed, with a loved one right there and no medical intervention causing extra suffering. How do we manage this for ourselves? How do we respond to the needs of others?

….

There’s life too, as well as death and cold, in this month of December. Yes, the sun will return and the days get longer. And whether pagan or Christian or Hindu or Moslem or Jewish or unbelieving, we all rejoice at the return of the light and the promise of new life.

Meantime we eat. European tradition in this season includes rich festive fare, reminders of summer in winter. That’s at least how I think of candied peel and dried fruits like currants and raisins and apricots. I made peel a few days ago (a mix of lemon, grapefruit, and orange of several kinds) and then used some of it in the four large loaves of stollen that I took out of the oven late last night. (I followed my recipe in HomeBaking, except that I used mostly Red Fife, together with some white spelt flour, rather than all purpose; much better flavour and liveliness I think.)

It looks like a lot of food, but once I start thinking about the people I’d like to give some to, I realise I need to make another batch. Soon.

There’s another mental map: the people I want to make treats for….

A SENSE OF PROMISE AS NEW HORIZONS BECKON

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!

NEW LIFE, AUTUMN PLEASURES, AND FRESH PASTURES

I've been warmed all week by the memory, strongly physical as well as emotional, of holding a fabulously fresh baby for a long time the other evening. I was and am so grateful to her tolerant parents, who smiled indulgently as we all hung around their kitchen getting supper ready, admiring the baby, eating and drinking, admiring the baby... you get the idea.

She was awake and almost wide-eyed when I got to their house. Her father handed her over to me, and a few minutes of walking and swaying and music later, she'd sacked out. Those little puffy breaths, her tummy going pop-pop gently against me, were such a time-travel-like reminder of when my kids were infants. And it was also of course a reconnection with the miracle of babies.

These days we assume that a healthy baby will survive infancy; I can't imagine having children in an era of no birth control and high infant mortality. I know that I tried not to get too attached to my in utero children because there was a real risk that I wouldn't be able to carry them to viability. I was completely unsuccessful at trying to stay distanced! I can't imagine what it would be like to have a baby, tender and helpless and lovely, and to have to brace against the likelihood that she or he would not survive to the age of five.

Why, you may ask, can I not just rejoice in this lovely baby who has come into the lives of a network of friends here, without going to dire other scenarios? I don't know, except that it always feels important to look at both sides of life, the dire in the midst of happiness, the joyful or optimistic in the midst of pain.

This week life has been full of positives, not just the baby, but also the seven nice young people we billetted, all of them from Cornell, who were in Toronto to participate in a huge debating tournament hosted by Hart House at U of T. I like the idea of a full house and also of improvising day to day. So when Tashi said about a week ago, "Oh, I said we could billet seven or eight debaters; I hope that's OK" I was really pleased. "Don't worry about a thing," he said. "I have it under control." And in fact he did. It was entertaining to come down on tiptoe on Saturday and Sunday morning to a ground floor well furnished with recumbent sleeping guys, slip on running shoes and a jacket and head out for my small morning run. By the time I got back each day they were up and getting slowly into gear. They left the place looking remarkably orderly, with bedding stacked and folded. Now there's just a little laundry to see to!

And while they were here the weather started to warm and brighten, thank heavens. Even so, the nights are cold, so today I turned the oven to 450 and roasted a batch of beautiful red bell peppers we got from the farmers' market a week ago. Ed told me to oil them and salt them (he said pepper too, but I didn't) and so that's what I did, standing them on their heads on a rack over a roasting pan. Now they're cut into wide strips and some are in a jar in olive oil in the frig. The rest? Well I should have made a second jar, but instead they're here in a shallow bowl on the counter, out to be eaten at whim. I had a few strips with my bean soup tonight, along with some crumbled unpasteurised extra-old cheddar from Quebec. Yum.

The bean soup is a harbinger of winter menus in this house: lima beans and some navy's too if you have them (I didn't today) cooked in lots of water with a minced onion and some bay leaves, until completely tender. it takes a long time, but the creamy texture is worth the wait. I added some cubed potato and carrot fried in olive oil in a hot skillet , once the beans were close to done. They cooked to tender in the soup. A dash of red wine is a good idea, or cider vinegar, and also a generous dollop of soy sauce, then salt to finish. The last of the fresh herbs are a welcome addition, but you can do without. And bean soup is one of those great dishes that tastes even better the next day...

And finally, another autumn food note: Ten days ago Lillian and Jon gave us a basket of Courtlands from their apple tree out back. They were small, crisp, and intensely flavoured. I cut up the ones that we hadn't eaten a week later, leaving on the peel but cutting out the core and any spots, then cooked them with a little sugar and a dash of water. I suppose I started with about a quart and a half of chopped apple. It cooked down to a dense pink mass, splashed with the intenser red of peel. Then what to do? Why not use it as a tart filling?

The crust was improvised from a scant quarter pound of butter worked into a generous cup or more of whole wheat pastry flour, a pinch of salt, and about a quarter cup of sugar, then moistened with one egg and nothing more. I pressed the pastry into a nine-inch square pan, pressing the sides more than half an inch up the pan walls, and had a little pastry left over. I prebaked the shell under a piece of parchment weighted with lima beans (beans have so many uses! I use and re-use the same ones, and the parchment paper too) at 450 for about 8 minutes, then added the thick apple mass (not all of it fit) and topped it with a drizzle of honey, some turbinado sugar, and the crumbs of pastry dough that were left over. I baked it at 400 for perhaps 10 minutes then 350 for another five or so.

Those Courtland apples are so wonderful. It tastes as if I'd added a little lemon, there's such a complexity of flavour. But there's nothing extra, no cinnmon or lemon or other tricks, just mother nature's fall bounty. Hard not to wish that this season went on for longer!

But time moves on and soon I'll be heading off to the Worlds of Flavor conference at Greystone, in the Napa valley. It's a huge affair, each year dealing with the foods of other places and cultures under a different umbrella or theme. This year it's streetfoods and comfort foods. There will be cooks and chefs from India and Southeast Asia and Tunisia and other Mediterranean culinary cultures, as well as the Americas. And as always the conference will be a chance to catch up with people I haven't seen for awhile and to meet others I have heard of but never met. One such is Christine Manfield, from Australia, a very creative and admired chef, traveller, and cookbook author. We're scheduled to be on two different panels together. I'm looking forward to it all.

I've been sorting through images of streetfoods in various places, preparing to show them at the conference. They're mostly in slides, so once I pick them out, I'll scan them and pull together a show in digital format. This is still new technology to me, so I'm slow at it. And the decision-making is always painful: "this one or that one? How to get a balance? etc" At the same time I love the immersion in the images, a chance to travel in my imagination to places and times far away.

And from California I AM going to travel far away: I'm headed straight to Chiang Mai to catch up with friends and to do some early preparations for this January's immersethrough food session. For more information about the tour, please go to www.immersethrough.com. I'm also hoping to get a couple of weeks in Burma before I fly back home in mid-December.

All of this means that between now and November 11, when I leave here, the days seem very full, and the to-do list in my notebook is growing, not shrinking. But I had a kind of "aha!" today as I was jogging slowly down Philosopher's Walk: it's time I stopped thinking of obligations as urgent, as if dreadful things will happen if I don't get them done. Instead I need to just enjoy working through the to-do list, rather than feeling anxious or pressured by it.

Is this change of attitude possible? We'll see! I can just say that as I thought about all this I had a glimpse of how relaxing and productive a less amped-up approach could be, and it looked wonderful.