...2012

Last year at midnight I wished that 2012 would be a good year.  For me 2012 included:

• Four months in Mexico
• Four months in Blackfoot
• Four months in Warsaw

Taking in another gorgeous sunset in
Puerto Escondido 

During my four months in Mexico, I: 

• traveled to an ancient pyramid and saw altars where actual sacrifices were carried out
• swam in the Pacific Ocean just offshore the closest thing to Paradise that I may ever encounter
• instilled in my seventh graders an absolute love of Puddles the Duck
• ate salsas that truly tried to sear holes in my tongue and loved it
• laughed harder and drank more cerveza than ever before
• and lived like the Mayan prophesy was really going to come true

During my four months at home, I:

• reconnected with old friends from my past
• bonded with my amazing nieces and did my best to teach them a few bad habits
• and FINALLY conquered the Teton Pass and, to be blunt, made it my bitch during my last few weeks of work at Bindweed Farm

Me with Thing One

And with Thing Two

During my four months in Warsaw, I: 

Looking out at the Vistula River,
with the Old Town behind me

• walked through the most beautiful park I've ever encountered
• learned how to say "please" and "thank you" in my sixth (yes, sixth!) language (English, Irish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Polish.  I rock.)
• successfully spent four months with small children without serious injury to them or to myself
• and managed to add TWO more stamps to my passport with a trip to Worcester, England, and two looooooong layovers in Germany.

2012 was by far the most amazing year I've had thus far; so here's my New Year's Wish for 2013....

A Clipping from my Ex-Pat Diaries: Cooking

Sauteing red pepper and kiełbasa

As I’ve said here before, I love cooking.  I love the magic in the chemistry of cooking.  I love the fact that egg whites, when whipped long enough, will transform from a gooey, questionable substance into beautiful white meringues.  To me, that transformation, like the transformation of whipping cream from liquid to solid, is nothing short of magical.  I likewise love the magic created within the oven or the refrigerator.  A person can put gelatinous, unappealing goo into the oven, set the timer, and (after being tortured by delicious smells for however long) when the timer dings, amazing, solid deliciousness emerges.  The fridge is even better; a person can put a good meal into the fridge and when she pulls it out the next day, the magic of the fridge has transformed that good meal into a great meal.   It’s amazing and, to be entirely honest, a little bit miraculous.

When I cook at my mother’s house, food is miraculous because the number of ingredients and kitchen supplies she has allow me to easily make a flourless chocolate cake or the red sauce to end all sauces.  Being allowed to cook in my mother’s kitchen is like letting loose the kid in the proverbial candy shop—everything I need is there and at my disposal.  Cooking at my mother’s house is adventurous and fun.  When I cooked at my various apartments in Caldwell and Eugene, the food was miraculous because it was almost always for the first time.  I made Chocolate Gran Marnier cake for the first time in my post-college apartment, using nesting saucepans for my double boiler and a blender to give my egg whites soft peaks (not fun, I don’t recommend this method); I made crab cakes with a lemon burre blanc in my second grad school apartment, along with blackberry cobbler, blackberry buckle, and blackberry pancakes; and I made olive oil rosemary cake in my post-grad school apartment.  Cooking in these apartments was a sort of ongoing experiment, a flexing of my culinary wings as I flirted with techniques and styles.  The food was miraculous because it was new, daring, and done completely on my own.

When I cook while living abroad, the food is miraculous simply because it actually comes together.  When I lived in Mexico, cooking was complicated because we lived with a temperamental, leaky old gas stove and an exploded oven.  The stove leaked gas, making each lighting of the pilot light a flirtation with death (seriously, our kitchen often smelled like burnt hair because someone lit the pilot with a WHOOSH and lost their hand hair).  Once the flame was lit, cooking was another matter entirely; the stove only had two settings, barely on and boiling.  To try to achieve some sort of happy medium was basically impossible, so if a person wanted to avoid burning their food, constant vigilance was mandatory (and even then it wasn’t guaranteed). 

My ingredients with their complicated, often
unpronounceable Polish labels

My issues with equipment aside, however, cooking in Mexico wasn’t too terribly difficult because I could always find the necessary ingredients.  Although the ingredients were packaged in Spanish, either my knowledge of the language or its inherent similarity to English usually made grocery shopping relatively easy.  Also, because Mexico is a part of North America, a large majority of the products sold in stores bore a striking resemblance to their English/American counterparts.  This is not the case in Warsaw, however.  While some foods and ingredients share similar names to their English or Latin equivalents (my personal favorite is that bread for sandwiches and toasting is called “tost”), so many others simply do not.  When buying produce or easily recognizable products, like coffee or milk, the language barrier is easily overcome and actually provides an opportunity to learn.  When buying spices, however, the opportunity to learn is present, but it’s more of an after-the-fact type of experience as I learn that “pieprz ziołowy” does not mean “cumin” but in fact means “herbal pepper” and would appear to be some sort of spice mixture or rub for meats.  As often as possible, I try to rely on the picture on the label, though this isn’t the safest of methods.  When trying to make black bean quesadillas last month, I needed black beans; I scoured the bean shelf, located a can that had convincingly small, dark bean on the label and purchased said can with some confidence.  When I pried it open in my kitchen, I discovered that it wasn’t black beans at all, but red. 

My "Warsaw Edition Chili" simmering away

Cooking in Warsaw is miraculous because it’s something of a miracle that I am able to produce something out of the chaos created by language and circumstance.  To my surprise, the pieprz ziołowy has a pleasant scent like anise mixed with Middle Eastern spices, warm and tasty, and it added to the flavors of my soup quite nicely.  Similarly, when mixed with fresh lemon juice and garlic powder, the red beans worked as a fine substitute for black beans in my quesadillas.  Each time I attempt a familiar recipe, I rename it with the addendum of “the Warsaw edition” because so many of my old recipes call for ingredients I cannot find, like black beans. 

Tonight’s attempt is my Polish spin on my favorite vegetarian chili.  I have to admit here that while the Warsaw Edition Black Bean Quesadillas contain red beans instead of black, and therefore aren’t actually “black bean quesadillas,” they do bear a strong resemblance to the original recipe.  My “vegetarian chili,” however, does not.  To start out with, one of the primary ingredients of my vegetarian chili is tofu, an item I have yet to see in Poland.  So instead of tofu I cooked with kiełbasa, or Polish sausage, so I may have to alter the name more than just adding “the Warsaw edition.” 

At home this chili includes:

• Spices: garlic, cumin, chili powder, paprika, chipotle
• Vegetables: red peppers, mushrooms, avocado
• Tomatoes: two cans of whole, peeled tomatoes and a small can of tomato paste
• Black beans
• Tofu
• Freshly grated Tillamook cheese and a dollop of sour cream

In Warsaw, I couldn’t find cumin, paprika, or chipotle, so I’ve had to settle for garlic, chili powder, and pieprz ziołowy.  The store was sold out of mushrooms and I haven’t seen an avocado here for months, so I put in a red pepper, corn, and a “soup mix” that had onion, mushroom, broccoli, and potato.  At the store, I trusted the can label and bought what I thought were diced tomatoes; turns out it was a thick and chunky tomato sauce, so I put in two cans of thick and chunky tomato sauce with one small can of tomato paste.  This didn’t really hurt the chili, but it now has quite the thick consistency.  And, of course, I have no black beans or tofu, so I settled for red beans and kiełbasa.  While it bears only a passing resemblance to my favorite vegetarian chili, though, my “Warsaw Edition Chili” came out warm and delicious and just what I needed on this chilly night.  Like I said before: something of a miracle.

The finished product: a little thicker in consistency than its Eugene counterpart,
and definitely more carnivore in nature, but I can report most happily that my
"Warsaw Edition Chili" is a recipe to be repeated.

Musings on a Snow Day: the Warsaw Edition

Despite the title, I do not have plural musings to log here, but a singular musing to post for posterity. "A Musing on a Snow Day" just didn't have the right ring to it, and as I generally enjoy sequels, I take a particular delight in posting here my own sequel to my earlier musings. Also, pasting "The Warsaw Edition" to the end amuses me because it reminds me of a bad volume collection, like the Now That's What I Call Music franchise with its specially branded Christmas edition, oldies editions, and so on. They might as well just go in for the truth at this point and declare: “We're Absolute Crap at Titles, But Enjoy the Music.”  But I digress.

The view from my window at preschool

I struggle with titles. Titles are daunting. I once sat in a two-hour workshop on titles and their importance, and by the end, my title-anxiety had actually grown. A title should draw the reader in, informing her of the subject without dully stating the obvious. A title should be clever (or at least well-constructed) without being misleading. At some point during my thesis-writing, I actually had more title-anxiety than thesis-anxiety. In the end, though, I did what I've done here--I recycled and updated a previous title and called it good. So now that I've returned to my title--my musing--I shall proceed.

I awoke this morning to snow. My normally bustling neighborhood was hushed by the almost eerie quiet that falls on a city during snowfall and everything has taken on a sort of snow capped charm. It's the perfect setting for a scene: Christmas music playing softly in the background and a hot cocoa in hand as I gaze contemplatively out the window....

[at this point in my musing I had to pause for five hours to resume my day job as “Ciocia Jerica.” First I was an armless, legless Princess Leia battling "Not Good Yoda" and "Not Good Darth Vader" (though the second title seems redundant, my five year old companion felt it a necessary nome de guerre, so I obliged). After ten minutes of attack by the combined forces of evil, during which I died twice but put up a damn good fight both times, I helped coordinate the blocking for our Christmas play--no mean feat I assure you. I spent two hours rehearsing lines for said play, a Herculean task, teaching twenty ESL children ages 3-6 to recite their lines in English. I served lunch to sixteen rowdy children, played three quite successful rounds of the quiet game (it astonishes me that this game works, but thank the various gods above that it does), and spent entirely too much time sniffing five Disney Princess Lip Smacker chapsticks with an enthusiastic five year old. On a side note, adding glitter and a princess label does nothing to lessen the fact that said chapsticks smell like a foul combination of way, rotten fruit, and old lady vanilla musk perfume. And, to cap off my day, I spent several minutes straddling the worlds of vaudeville and burlesque as I chased an al-but-naked child around the classroom as she gleefully evaded me, my partner teacher, and her waiting pile of clothes. My days at preschool are anything but dull.

Making my icy trek home at the end of the day

When I started writing this several hours ago, Warsaw had a light powdered sugar dusting of snow falling, falling, falling. It is still falling, showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. I dislike snow. It's cold, and as it sets it makes my clothes, shoes, and hair wet and cold. Snow makes the roads icy and dangerous and it scares the hell out of me to be on the roads as either driver or passenger. My children love snow, however, creating snow angels or sculptures, eating it with frightening frequency, and pelting me with snowballs thrown with an astonishing accuracy. They love frolicking in snow while I, bundled in my hat, scarf, vest, coat, and boots stand off to the side doing my best imitation of an ice sculpture. The snow is pretty when it falls, but that is the most praise I can muster.

It is six and a half hours from the time I started writing with my singular musing. Six and a half hours of gently falling snow and six and a half hours of outrageous antics with children, all punctuated by what has become an odd stream of consciousness journaling of my day. The snowfall aside, this is actually a fairly typical day. I often start a thought early in the morning, and, returning to it sporadically throughout the day, find myself finally completing that thought eight hours later, when, exhausted, I leave preschool and make the daily trek home. It is tiring, at times overwhelming, and demanding on me physically, mentally, and emotionally, but it's usually worth it to receive one small, bone-crushing hug from a small, sweaty, stinky child.

But, again, I digress. When I started writing this morning, this was to be a short post accompanied by a picture--a crumb offering to satisfy my need to post something here every so often. But somewhere along the way, as I spent my day attempting to return to this thought, I encountered a truth that makes relevant all these musings (now a definite plural). I dislike the snow, but every morning when I wake up to impossible cold around me, my first instinct is to peer out the window to check for snow. I don't want snow; I feel that I should make that clear. I don't want snow, but as I am checking, I feel the same anticipation and suspense as I did when I was six, peeking out the window to spy any evidence of a snow day. Snow days as a child were the best: there was no school and if the snow was right, a person could make a snowman or an igloo or some other snow creation before, numb with the cold, retreating inside to the warmth of a fire and cocoa.  When there is no snow, as when I was six, I feel a small shock of disappointment before remembering that I dislike snow. As an adult, I don't make snowmen or igloos or other types of snow creations, nor do I generally get to enjoy a day free from school or work or obligation.  In short, there is no reason for me to routinely wake up and check expectantly for snow.  But in between storytime and yet another round of Star Wars battling, I realized that I go through this routine of anticipation and expectation each morning because I am still that young six year old who revels in all the magic and possibilities a snow day has to offer.

This is my life now: emoting and hanging out with fuzzy pink
dogs and Polish Tinkerbell. My six year old self loves it.