217/365

exhausted by the burden of convenience.
all things instant. produced. packaged.
empty.
delivered right to your door.
made to order.
just add water.

image: (saffron with sugar granules for resistance
in a mortar and pestle. slowly.
tender attention to the familiar aroma.
letting it seep into the water,
then the boiling sugar syrup and rose water.)

image: (risen dough, punched down and floured.
like a baby’s thigh powdered and pliant.
rolled and boiled and baked.)

what use is another privileged bourgeois
poem in all this noise?
complaining about convenience of all things.

image: (a girl aged twelve walking barefoot
on hot red gravel, a thorny acacia in the distance,
a baby on her back and a yellow gerry can
on her head, filled with twenty gallons of dirty water.
kilometres to go yet, to reach home.)

exhausted by the burden of.

Poor Planning

The plan:
Leave school after one drink after the Leaver’s Farewell event. Try to get a quick run in, it has been two weeks since I last run, then go to Kaia’s skate class and cruise the ramps for an hour.

Reality:

Stayed till 4:30 had three glasses of wine, stopped at McDonald’s had a large fries with BBQ sauce, an apple pie and a coke. Kaia’s session was cancelled, so I came home groggy and full- ditched the run and played guitar for a while, cooked a meal for Kaia’s class party tomorrow, put the kids to bed and marked for the last three hours.

Two stories:
1. The cooking
2. The marking

1. Kaia came up to me a few days ago and said that she needed to take a savory dish for her class party and she didn’t want to take any American food because it was boring. She wanted to know if we could cook something from Iran. I am not sure where her sudden curiosity or interest in Persian food came from, but I was stoked to hear it. After dinner we went in the kitchen and cooked a dish that I am not even sure is Iranian, but my mom used to make it and I loved it. It’s a rice dish with grated carrots, raisins and cinnamon.

I had Iran on my mind today because I was chatting with Luke about a trip he is considering to Iran. I would love to go back again and explore some more. I have not been since 2004 and it was beautiful that time I went. Also the day got me thinking about culture and nationalistic pride. I don’t have much to say about it, just thinking.

2. You might rightfully be asking why the hell I was marking student work three days after grades have been entered in mid-june and a week before school ends. The easy answer poor planning. I had six classes worth of work come in after grades were turned-in.

Because we had a few large scale assessments during this term and we do mid-unit formative check-ins and we do enough conferencing to know where most kids are at any given time, I felt fine giving grades without this latest assessment. The trouble was that even after the kids realized that their work didn’t “count” for their grade, they just kept working and writing and improving. It was really something spectacular to see. They have known for days that this “assignment” would not be officially graded, but that did not stop them from continuing to improve their writing right up to the last week of school.

I felt I owed it to them to read their work and give them some kind of feedback and validation for their time and effort. And so, every night this week, I have been plugging away and tonight I went in for the long haul. This marking was the last huge thing before the year ends. Sure we have another week and I need to move classrooms, get my head around next year, and a million other things, but the official curricular work is done and dusted.

Come on summer. I can taste that California air and San Rafael is an arm’s length away.

Open The Sky

I’ve decided to move my Monday/Wednesday runs to Tuesday/Thursday. Exciting news right? I know you were dying for this information so you could carry on with your week. The change of the schedule was not the point of this introduction. The following scene in the kitchen around 6:00pm which was made possible by this timetable shift.


Start scene:


A father and daughter excitedly unpack the necessary ingredients to make dinner- frozen soy nuggets, pasta with tomato sauce, broccoli, and red pepper. The girl chooses the first song and in a effort to please the dad starts with Michael Jackson’s 1990’s classic Do you Remember.


Daughter- You like this song right? See. I used my song choice for you.


Father- Great choice.


He turns it up and there is a vibrant festive mood in the kitchen. It doesn’t feel like a routine tired Monday night. They are alone together and happy to be working on a shared task. The girl lights the stove and starts the water boiling. The father cuts up the broccoli and red peppers.


There is dancing. Alone and together.


The father thinks about how he should cook more often with her. Next she plays a One Direction song and as he watches her dance about the kitchen, the father is saddened and excited to see her so grown up. He remembers her as a baby and the nights he held her in her room listening to Jack Johnson sing Ben Harper songs. He remembers the overwhelming sense of joy she emanated as a baby when he smelled her hair and kissed her gently in the darkness. How her presence changed his life forever and allowed him to finally let go of so much anger and pain and just be himself. He owes the person he is to the person she has always been. And now, in this kitchen she looks like a young women. A tween. A teen. A confident queen.


She does this weird Spanish dance with eyes low and fingers snapping imaginary castanets.


Father- Where did you learn that dance?


Daughter- I don’t know. It just felt right.


She smiles coyly and the father realizes that this phase in her childhood is rapidly changing. She is still his little girl, but he realizes that he needs to talk with her more and spend time exploring ideas with her and less time hyper-parenting and setting up boundaries. They listen to The Who and Kelly Clarkson. Singing out loud…Since you’ve been gone and teenage wasteland.


Parenting is about creating a childhood the adult version of your children want to revisit. It is about planting experiences that will blossom into memories. Sometimes, the simplest seeds, like making dinner with music and dancing, will grow into the mightiest trees.


…


Marin bought the girls some plain notebooks today and Skye turned hers into a book of poems. She said that they are learning about poetry in school and she is ready to be a poet. Another big thank you Gillian. After scrawling the word powems on the cover, she proceeded to crank out a few quick rhymes: Skunk on Trunk. Dog on a Log. Cat on A Bat. I’m a Flower Look At Me and Ice Cream Ice Cream, Quick Quick. She spent the next few minutes reading her verse to her dolls.


It was a thing of beauty. A moment of poetry.


…


Getting back in the swing of things at school was not easy today. My body and mind are still floating under the sun in Tioman. I wish there was a way we could teach in the wilderness all year and come back to campus once a year to…..well, I don’t know what we would do, but I wish we could teach kids in nature more often than we do.


There are so many things that need to get done in the next few weeks (22 school days) but I am pretending that it will all happen without too much anxiety and stress on my part. I know that I should start to panic and get things done, starting tonight. But it is Monday, I just got back from a trip and Game of Thrones is not going to watch itself. So tonight will not be the night I start my mentor comments or give some feedback on a formative assessment I sent out last week. It will happen this week, it has to, probably tomorrow night, but tonight is begging for a slow transition from island life.


…


Played a lot of guitar after school today. Working up a batch of songs I will be playing in a few weeks. I’ll be opening for Scott Macdonald at the Little Island Brewing Company. Details forthcoming and needless to say I am a bit nervous. I haven’t performed in a while and there is a chance there could be a decent crowd from school. I am excited about this batch of tunes. Eclectic and diverse for sure and they feel good to play.


I’m reading some books about The Big Lebowski given to me by Katie Day and they are keeping my attention, but I am on the hunt for some “rock-my-world” fiction for the summer. Any suggestions would be welcome. I cannot wait for the Joshua Mohr memoir. Anything else out there that I should get my hands on?


…


electricity
tore open the sky tonight.
everything’s a buzz

Sweet Potato Ice Cream

My mind is a buzz with ice cream flavors! Having already had some success with mint, I wanted to try something a bit more exotic. I had this idea of this pumpkin pie idea, but pumpkin is hard to find here in Indonesia, so I decided to go with sweet potato instead. I also wanted candied pecans for texture, but couldn't find those either. Let's walk through the process, look at some pictures, and discuss what worked and what didn't.

First problem was that the Japanese sweet potatoes I found were not as orange or as sweet as I would have liked. They had more of a potato flavor and I was worried that my ice cream would taste more like french fries and less like a sweet pie. I thought I would simply sweeten them with some maple syrup, so I carried on and began boiling the bad boys up!

Looking a bit more rosy, but the flavor was still not there.

I peeled them, whisked my yolks and prepared my custard.

I am learning more about custard. There is a trick to making it creamy and it involves a steady warm heat so the eggs don't cook or curdle, but turn into a creamy custard. There is a lot of stirring involved.

I mixed in the potatoes and the custard and into the ice cream maker it all went. I also added some syrup for sweetness, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a bit of fresh ginger. Even a tiny bit was too much and nearly cut all the sweetness I had created.

Finally, I still needed some crunch so I caramelized some sugar candy like my grandmother used to make and sprinkled it on top.

All in all it is not bad, but not as creamy as my previous my batch. I am pretty sure this has to do with the denisty of the potatoes. It is also pretty hardy. A whole bowl feels a bit like having a meal, so this might be best on a slice of apple pie or something. I would be interested in trying this again with really sweet orange potatoes next time. Not bad for my first time and it will be yummy to eat, but not as good as the mint.

I want to try a nut based flavor next. I am thinking pistachio or almond, but I have no idea what that entails. I also found some rose water and as soon as I can afford some Saffron, I can make some Persian ice cream which is delicious.

Do you have any flavor ideas?

Top Chef

There is no reason why I should like Top Chef. There is actually every reason why I should hate it. The nauseating product placement, the orchestrated and unnecessary competitiveness, the hyper-tense melodrama, and yes the weird gongs and terrible music, but alas none of these aspects make a damn of difference because I love this show. I mean love, couldn't be more entertained. I never want it to end, love!

Late to the game, my wife and I started to download the series from season four and have been on a steady diet of episodes for a few weeks. Every night after the kids are in bed and the rest of our lives are in order, we snuggle up on the couch and watch a bunch of strangers talk about food. It gets us excited. We discuss the merits of each Cheftesitant (Lame I know, don’t judge me), talk about various cooking vocabulary, (Did you know that Sous Vide means to cook something slowly in a bag?) and of course we drool over the amazing art form that is fine dining.

As a college student, I worked in several fine-dining restaurants in my twenties (One restaurant was Aquavit in NYC. I was surprised to see Marcus Samuelsson as a guest judge, as I remember him expediting food one night when I was working.) As a former waiter I have a soft spot for the restaurant world. I pride myself in starting as a busboy and working my way up the food chain. (Pun intended) I learned about wine and flavor and things like Radicchio. In some sick way, I still miss my restaurant days. I have always enjoyed eating out and food culture. I was never a professional, but I enjoyed understanding food and giving my diner's a pleasant experience. My wife says, I am a terrible person to go out with because I am the guy wondering why our drink orders haven't been taken yet or why there are stains on our silverware.

Watching Top Chef has awakened something in me. I am making my own ice cream and pasta and really thinking about food in a whole new way. Yes, it is cheesy and dramatic, but it is also very entertaining, funny, and mouth watering. If you haven’t watched this show and you like food, you are missing out. I joke with my wife that I am in love with Padama and that she is my new TV wife, and I must admit that I have a bit of a man crush on Tom Caliiclhio. I have said too much. Looking forward to starting season eight tonight. Yes all-stars! Do you watch it too? Who was your favorite? What stories do you have to share about food?

Interaction with Dough

You can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she interacts with dough. Just watch a man as he pounds and dances with a ball of flour and egg and you can read right into his soul. You can watch insecurities morph into frustrations only to magnify into neurosis. Let that dough remain unyielding for long enough and a man may go mad. Or he may tenderly and firmly knead the dough, pull it, stretch it, find its (his) limits.

I decided to make fresh pasta today. I need a meditative practice. I need a new hobby. I need to see myself with dough, in dough, through dough? I need to tend to my anxiety and assuage my patience. I need to do something with all my soul. I need to not multi-task and work with deliberation. I need to cook.



One of the easiest Zen tenets is to act with awareness and determination. Be here now and be into what you are doing. Take the simplest task and give yourself to it fully. When I say easiest, of course I mean easiest to understand, but nothing in Zen is easy. One can want to make fresh pasta with his four year old daughter during spring break, but to actually make it happen takes a lot more_____________?

I am not sure what it takes, but I do know that when you find a simple task like making food, and you bring love to it, and surround yourself with music and sunlight, and you talk to your growing child about what you are doing, and you talk and knead, and roll and need each other, beautiful things happen. 

This is all there really is. This is the happiness so many people find elusive. A man and his child standing in the kitchen making lunch...

More pictures here

Happiness

Your love is better than ice cream
Better than anything else that I’ve tried
And your love is better than ice cream
Everyone here knows how to fight

Sarah McLachlan

I have a little more to add to this Daily Shoot assignment. Last night, I spent a little over an hour making fresh mint ice cream from scratch, and this simple act of creation made me very happy. My mind was swirling with cool mediative thoughts on simplicity and freshness. Rather than try to recapture them all now, I will open the flood gates and let spill some of the ideas that I remember:

We have forgotten how simple creation can be. Fast and easy has overtaken slow and deliberate. We allow others to make everything for us because they have made it appear to be difficult and while they have promised to make our lives easier,  really they have only made our lives more shallow.

Flavor comes from the earth. All of it. Everything else is processed chemicals. Everything tastes better homemade. To say we don't have time means to make time for other things. Food is important. I enjoy stirring cream. I like the smell of fresh mint. This is meditation. I am learning right now. I can feel the tingle. Learning how to make a custard. Learning how to infuse flavor, learning how to slow down and breathe. These are the lesson we should be teaching in school. 

I hope sharing this experience will connect me to like-minded people and/or inspire others. I like it all by myself here with the spinning iced cream. What flavors are next: Saffron, rosewater, pumpkin, peach? Tomorrow night I will make fresh raviolis. Something inside me is alive and growing. I will nurture it with the love I put in this food...

Here are some images from my Saturday night.