Food Porn

Dear Children Three,

No doubt you are at this very point in time enjoying the heat of PA while we are here enjoying the heat of the Gulf. And, in addition, we get beach sand and city dust, desert stones, a rainbow of smells, wadi cats and dogs, endless construction, humidity, ocean views, and lots and lots of white buildings. Not sure who has the better deal here, although I have my suspicions.

Oh and in the dorm where we are staying there is this periodic wailing noise that sounds like a teenaged girl has been cemented into the wall and regularly reminds us of her presence. I know, weird, right?

Aside from enjoying the outdoor charm and wondering about the screaming teen in the wall, we have been eating. A lot. At this rate, they will have to roll us off of the plane when we arrive home in a couple of weeks. Start reinforcing the second floor because nothing threatens structural integrity like a couple of summer-in-the-Gulf bellies.

Quite likely you three are sitting there salivating, dreading what I may post next. Buckle in because we have had three days of some serious yummy stuff. As a matter of fact, Wednesday was so decadent that we didn’t feel the need to eat on Thursday until 5 p.m.

 

Yes, yes. Uncharacteristic.

This may have been part of the problem--too much posh cheese and beverage. We picked the label out special for Silas.

 

Mangoes and charoot grown on a friend's farm here

Here we go… more select shots of food porn.

From the new bakery in town



Fresh fruit--or at least as fresh as you can do when most of the fruit is imported. This showed up when one of the teachers complained about, eh-hem, regularity

Living the dream, Silas--two kinds of rice twice a day

You all probably remember these two things--laban, which they serve in the cafeteria as a lunch time beverage--a little bit like salted buttermilk crossed with yogurt, remember? And below, Daddy's chocolate decadence cake, which he made for a brunch we went to--you would have been bored to tears with the six hours of talk about educational research. Aren't you glad you're in PA?

 

 

 

 

 

Love,

Yo Mama

 

 

 

 

Date me, Baby...It's Fast Breaking Time

The weirdest potluck that I have ever been to started like this:

We all gathered in a gigantic circle of the grassy lawn in front of the host’s home, cradling our dishes that we had brought. Then the introductions began, innocently enough at first:

“Hi, my name is Raven.”

“Hi, Raven.” (Yes, it felt a bit AA, but in fact it was just New England hippy).

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“To share with all of you tonight, I have brought a potato salad.”

Oh, that’s nice, I thought. I’d never been to a potluck where we identified our food before people started to eat it but it was New England. Here’s where it gets weird. “My salad contains potatoes, so if you’re allergic, don’t eat it. Oh, and it has mayonnaise which is soy-based, so if you have an intolerance, don’t eat it. And I put onions in it. And salt.”

My thought: people have potato allergies? And who DOESN'T know that potato salad has potatoes in it?

At Southern pot lucks we always just plunk our dishes on the long table with the crepe-papery covering in the social hall and maintain a quiet vigilance over whatever we’ve brought. It’s a matter of church lady pride to see your mac-n-burger casserole go first and then hear the Preacher call out, “Now who brought that mac-n-burger? That was delicious!” The anonymity is a sacred Southern ritual within the potluck itself.

But back to New England and on to the next person in the circle. “Hi, my name is Ocean Leaf Lovesalot.”

“Hi, Ocean Leaf Lovesalot.”

“I brought a roast chicken that I raised myself on organic, vegetarian feed, but if you are vegetarian, you should not eat it. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and garlic.”

From the crowd comes, “Now, Ocean Leaf, did you use ethically raised garlic this time?”

“Oh…oh…I’m sorry. The co-op was out. It's conventionally raised...”

"Oh darn. No chicken for me tonight."

And on we went around the circle with each person warning us of gluten, dairy, soy, sugar, seeds, garlic, spice, gelatin, honey, nuts, and non-vegetarian-compliant foods. I was half starved by the time we were allowed to eat, so I ate a bit of everything, but not before others went through the line, discussing their limitations as they went.

“I’m not eating gluten now. I really feel like I have so much more energy these days.”

“Oh, yes, I also am gluten free. And I have read about soy and its hormone level link so I have cut out soy. My moods feel so much more stable.”

It was something akin to miraculous that this gathering had gotten off the ground at all because how do you throw a New England hippy party for a largely vegetarian crowd with a high incidence of Celiac’s disease that will not eat anything processed or containing sugar or dairy? Or that is unethically raised?

This all comes to mind because it is Ramadan. As I write this, we have just finished up the second week and are into the third. While I thought in the first week about getting arrested, in the second week I have thought a lot about food because, in spite of Ramadan being a fasting period, this month is still very much about food. But it is about what we eat, but it is also about when we eat and how.

Ramadan’s fast exists in part to encourage patience, purity and modesty. It also serves to heighten people’s awareness of the plight of the poor. By forgoing food and water from sun up to sun down, the feeling of desperate wondering about the timing of one’s next meal should trigger a feeling of empathy for those who go without every day. In that way, people will give more freely to charity in order to support those less fortunate while developing patience, purity, modesty, and a closer connection to God.

At least that’s what Nasser told me.

And yes, I have seen people giving to the poor in the streets, as well as free meals distributed in the evenings by mosques throughout Muscat, so it does work. But more interesting to me has been to watch how people eat at Ramadan.

Iftar, the evening meal that breaks your day’s fast, begins at 7:03 p.m. but in actuality, even if you are eating your iftar at a restaurant, it starts earlier. We attended iftar recently and found that it involved a lot of staring at plates of food between 6:40 and 7:03 p.m. Everyone arrived at the restaurant a good 30 minutes before the maghrib prayer call sounded in order to secure a table. A miniature table off to the side was loaded with dates, yoghurt drinks, juices, water, and fried tidbits like eggrolls and samosa.

Everyone took a small plate of these things and placed it at their seats. Then they all went back and loaded up plates of dinnery foods so as to be ready when the maghrib went—chicken, rice, mutton, dal and salads all featured heavily at all three iftars we attended. And nobody said anything about allergies or ethics. Imagine.

 After all drinks were arranged neatly and the dates were in the optimal position, everyone commenced with the sitting and staring portion of the evening, except for Tehva and the other under 10s. They all quietly snitched little pinches of food and sipped from the tops of their cups while asking frequently about the time.

And then the moment of release—the prayer call. With the first Allah akbar, everyone silently picked up a date and broke their fast. After a slug of yoghurt drink and an egg roll or two, many men got up to go pray, and then returned to the table to join their families in seriously breaking the fast, shoveling in the chow as quickly as possible in order to go back for more. And, for some, this was followed by more. And more. And more. And all the while, the eating was accompanied by happy chitchat and some serious gustatory appreciation.

The iftar lasts as long as people care to eat and then the good times begin, lasting until the pre-dawn meal, the suhoor, which is hearty and meant to carry you through the day until your next iftar.   

In this context, the dietary restrictions of that potluck of yore seem vapid and superficial. At Ramadan, everyone is so happy to break the fast and so prayerful as they proceed through the process of fast breaking that you can’t help but pick up a date and joyfully join in. To speak up at the serving table and question whether something has garlic or gluten or dairy would be to break the spirit of iftar. The whole idea, I think, is to have an enlarged sense of God’s bounty and the patience to wait to enjoy it.

And that is something to take to your next hippy potluck--a big dish of potato salad, a part of God's bounty, made with immense patience, and sprinkled with gratefulness and happiness just to be eating.

How to Eat in France

How to eat in France.

First, go way back in time and agree to host Couchsurfers who are older, well-established financially, and from Toulouse. Make sure one of them is from the Flemish area of France and insure that he despises sweets, much preferring good cheeses and wine to anything that even suggests that it contains added sugar.

Make sure the other is local and a mother herself who likes to make sure that people eat well on her watch. That point is key.

Then arrive at their home having eaten little other than the odd baguette, a smear of butter, a chunk of dried pork sausage, and Chevre. Or Brie.  Or whatever else looked good in the store. Sometimes the pick-a-cheese-any-cheese method of buying worked, but sometimes we needed a splash of wine to go with that cheese to make it go down with any gastronomic appreciation.

Now sit. 

Sitting at the table in the garden is very important since the fragrance of the flowers blooming all around contribute to the enjoyment of the food. Lilacs are up at this time of year, and so are lavender. Irises have just finished and their dried husks lay wilting around the bright green fans. The cherry tree in the backyard has finished for the year as well, but that is okay since that means the melons are at their best—orange and fleshy and juicy.

Now that you are sitting, rip a chunk of bread and wonder that it is not yet another baguette. At first it is a sourdough sort of loaf. Then it is a loaf riddled with different seeds—poppy seeds and millet and sunflower. Then it is a heavy cereal loaf.

Don’t forget to smear that bread with a pâte—which literally means paste—and this one is literally a paste of duck liver and mushrooms. Make Tehva stop eating it all because without some serious parental controls she will not stop. You are also welcome to sample the blood pudding or the thinly sliced chorizo, but none of these chunks is too big and there are six other people enjoying this aperitif with you, so lentement!

Breathe. Don’t forget to breathe.

After a long linger over the aperitif, sit back and ready yourself for the local sausage that appears, grilled and seeping juices, in one small coil on a simple white plate. Have some bread. Take a section of the meat. Drink some more wine, but never too much in your glass in one go. It seems to be there just to make everything else taste nicer. 

And it works.

Now come to a casserole dish of curly buttered pasta topped with a generous layer of melted Emanthâl cheese. You will appreciate its simplicity, even after the children have tried to snake the brown, crispy cheese off of the top, and you will eat it with some more red wine from the vineyard near the city.

Now sit back and smile because you are starting to understand this style of eating that your fellow countrymen have glorified in diet magazines since you were younger. Wonder why it has never caught on in your own country, but then remember that nine days out of ten, dinner has to be a rushed affair in your home anyhow. And, realistically speaking, good bread and wine are too expensive to make it a feasible eating style.

Put this thought aside and be thankful that you are getting this experience here and now as the salad approaches. It is full of spring greens and artichoke hearts. Tehva has never seen an artichoke heart in her life, but rapidly goes from “I am not eating that” to “You can’t have any of those because they are mine”.

Think to yourself that that salad rocked your world and accept another splash of wine in your glass because that has to be the end of things…but no. 

The dates you dragged from the Middle East, along with one of those bright orange melons and a raft of cheese have just appeared on the table. There is no Brie, which makes you breathe a sigh of relief (but makes your boy child pout). There is, however, a Roquefort with a cauliflower bouquet, a small circle of Chevre, and a chunk of soft, two-toned cheese—one color on the outside ring with a lighter, creamier center.

The person from the Flemish area chooses another wine from his collection, a red something or other, and suggests having this with the Roquefort, which is like mouth fireworks.

Close your eyes and think, “Ah yes…this is how to eat in France”.

                                                                                                                   

I Don't Eat That

Silas has learned how to read labels and in that learning he has become, well, somewhat intolerable.

So we were starved creatures one day while we were in Virginia, having just finished an exhausting tramp through the local library. The cure is to get a snack, obviously. However, as quickly as I could put yummy snacks into the basket, Silas tore them out again.

"No, Mom, not this applesauce. I won't eat it."

"What? Okay. How bout some granola bars?"

"No."

"How about these nuts? Some juice? Crackers?"

"No, Mom. It all has high fructose corn syrup in it." He placed everything back on the shelf methodically but sternly, as if he were the newest Anti-Corn Syrup Enforcement unit. And finally, after nestling the last item--some lovely peaches in light syrup--back on the shelf, he gently sat down on the floor and buried his face in his hands. "I can't eat anything here!"

And he didn't. Somewhere along the way he blithely jumped onto the "I-don't-eat-high-fructose-corn-syrup" wagon and waved at us as it pulled away. I, however, was too busy doing something...something...who knows what. I never saw him make that jump until it was too late.

Our entire summer was spent with Silas sneakily reading labels and refusing the sweet stuff. At one point as he went whizzing down a gigantic hill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he yelled, "I don't like the United States for eating but I love it for the bike rides! Yahooooooooo!"

So now we have returned to Oman, where finding much of anything that contains high fructose corn syrup is a challenge, and the boy is like a starved dog outside of a sausage factory. He sucks the air up in great greedy gulps, dissecting the odors that are all around us. "Oooo...I can smell curry. Oh, is that adobo? Mmmmm...I smell someone cooking rotis."

The air is thick right now with the heat and humidity of the end of summer, but the ocean breezes are starting to give us an occasional cooling puff and carry the smell of food far from the place it is cooked. This morning, in the quiet just after fajr...the dawn prayer...I was wrapped in a blanket of ocean air and then the breeze shifted and I was surrounded by the aromas of what smelled like Filipino food--garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, coconut oil. If Silas had been out with me, he would have left a trail of drool back to the house.

And it smelled like breakfast. But not the kind with corn syrup in it, for that would make the boy child cry.

Would You Like Something Special for Dinner This Week?

The refrigerator that the university kindly gave us is the size of a large cooler. Yes, from the outside it looks like it would hold more than a gallon of milk, a handful of produce, and a selection of Indian pickles; in reality, it holds just that, but only if you put your foot on the door and really shove the thing closed after packing it full. When our grocery supplies dwindle, however, the thing begins to look like a yawning cavern, and that it is how it looks now as I type this.

Tony stepped up this evening and generously volunteered his time and energy to run to our friendly neighborhood hypermarket. "I am taking dinner requests," he announced. "This will be your one and only opportunity to dictate what you would like for dinner during the coming week. No requests will be entertained after this date."

All three kids stared at him with such dopey intensity that I expected strings of drool to swing simultaneously from their lips and connect near the floor, to complete that final jarring drop to the tiles together. "Anything special you would like?"

"Ummmm, no," and then all three scattered to the winds. This no, of course, was a complete and total lie because the minute Tony returns from the hypermarket, Silas will be pulling himself about the house moaning about our steady diet of parentally selected food, and Tehva and Tian will be seeking dietary solace with the neighbors.

Silas quite possibly will contain his dissatisfaction until tomorrow, when the neighbors begin their daily round of cooking in their "dirty kitchen". In Oman, if you are really swanky-swank, you will have two kitchens. One inside your house, where you cook yummysweet things like cakes and tea, and one outside your house where you cook yummy but stinky things like fish and onions.

We, being just one step above peasants, have only one kitchen, but the people around us all have dirty kitchens, open to the outside through generous vents and gaping windows; in Silas's opinion, those kitchens exist simply to torment him. Beginning around 10:30 a.m. and continuing until late into the night, the cooks in the dirty kitchens are cookin' dirty and he can identify every dish. "Oh, Mommy, the neighbors are cooking fried fish and chippatis. Are we having fried fish and chippatis tonight?"

"No."

Silas sounds genuinely baffled by this and asks in his best quizzical little boy voice, "Mommy, why not?"

"Because you didn't ask for those when we made the shopping list last week. Will you remember to mention it next time we make a shopping list?"

"Yes." Note the drool back there at the beginning.

Silas, having befriended so few little boys here, is really getting the short end of the stick as he cannot quickly and conveniently escape to other little boys' houses when he has a Disgusting Dinner Emergency.

Tian and Tehva, on the other hand, have befriended several little girls who all have dirty kitchens and yummy stinky smells drifting from their gardens at all hours of the day. Their parents employ Filippinas and Sri Lankans and Indians, all of who are seemingly masters at curries and soups that vent steam so thick and spicy that it seems you could linger outside their gates and eat those mouth-watering puffs. The house maids also are very good at preparing "child-friendly snacks" like french fries and chicken nuggets for poor American children who are obviously starved at the hands of their callous parents.

Tony returned from the store with the usual disgusting staples--fresh dates, milk, tea, feta cheese, rice and pasta, olives, olive oil, fish, lentils, a fat bag full of soft fresh flat bread, fresh produce, and 2 kilograms of creamy full fat yoghurt. Tomorrow all three children will crowd into the kitchen to take stock of the offerings for the week and walk out again disgusted. Tehva will go begging door to door for bags of chips and sodas--and come home well-supplied. Silas will belly ache around the house, like an overbred poodle turning its nose up at its daily ration of dog chow. And Tian will complain only to happily eat what is on offer anyhow.

And all three will resolve, "Next week I am going to tell Daddy to buy..." and drool, dopey and stunned once again, when we make the weekly list.

Being Hosted

We opened sheets of newspaper and lay them overlapping to cover Mr. Achir's carpet. He apologized profusely as we did so, not about eating at a table made of newspaper but about us having to endure his housekeeper's cooking for this impromptu meal. "My wife is not here to cook for the children tonight and the housekeeper's cooking? Well, I don't know."

I had watched the housekeeper earlier dig balls of dough from a steel bowl and roll chippatis, an Indian flatbread. She had looked competent enough to me, simultaneously drizzling ghee (clarified butter) around the dough as it bubbled and rose in the cast iron skillet, monitoring the pressure of the ghosh (mutton curry), and setting up a pot of rice.

Mr. Achir bustled back and forth from the kitchen with bottles of water and big bowls of fluffy white rice. Then he followed with a bowl of ghosh, thick with brown gravy, and a heaping bowl of sauteed and spiced and shredded cabbage. Finally he set a smaller bowl down on the newspapers and, full of pride, announced, "My wife made that one. Green chile curry. It is a little spicy so maybe it is not fit for the children. Come let's eat!" I could make out some small green chiles and peanuts swimming in a dangerous looking red sauce, topped with more of the melted ghee.

We filled the dishes for the children while Achir chastised us for being so stingy with the size of our servings. He piled buttery chippati after chippati on our plates. His own children began to eat, left hands tucked neatly in their laps, right hands fully engaged in the art of mixing rice with sauces and gravies.

Tian dantily ate from her spoon, but Tehva stopped short. "Chinja is eating with his hands." The only thing missing from her observation was an, "Oooooooo! He's in trouble!" but her tone definitely suggested that she was expecting a spanking to follow shortly for seven-year-old Chinja.

As Tehva watched Chinja's deft one-handed eating, she dropped her spoon. Truth be told, the dishes looked even more delicious as Chinja mixed and pinched, and then neatly shoveled his food into his mouth. "Can I do that, too?" And before I could even respond Tehva was mixing and shoveling, too.

Silas silently eyed Tehva, Chinja, and Chinja's sister, Ruksana, and then put aside his fork. "Mom, I'm going to use my hands," he stage whispered, as if preparing to dive off of a cliff or wrestle a crocodile. If it is possible for a seven-year-old boy to look awkward eating with his fingers, Silas fulfilled that possibility. He gradually doubled himself over, all the while shoveling rice into his mouth, until his chest rest solidly on his criss-crossed legs. Then he folded tighter, his face just a few inches off his plate. Finally he decided to lay on his stomach and close that precarious inch between his plate and his mouth. Bad manners? Probably.

We wiped up the last of the gravy with the chippatis only to have Achir throw more chippatis at us. "No, no," I protested. "You're making me fat!" As fast as I could eat those buttery flatbreads I was finding more food on my plate. Then I remembered. Stop eating--leave things uneaten. As painful as it was to American sensibilities, I took a bit of mutton and a bit of cabbage, played with it, and let it be. No more chippatis came flying in my direction.

As we walked out the door later in the evening, the kids were astonished. "Wow! That was the best day ever and we didn't even know them at the start!" It was true. All three kids had been there since early afternoon and had been entertained, fed, entertained, fed, entertained and fed again. "The only thing better than lunch was dinner! That was amazing! And we had such a good time! We did they do that for us? In the United States that would never happen!"

I tried to explain cultural differences to Tian and Silas. I tried to explain the concept of karma and how some believe that good deeds come back to revisit those who lay a path of kindness. I talked and talked but in the end they set their own conclusions.

They decided that Mr. Achir and his family are good people and no longer strangers to us. And boy can they lay out a mean dinner spread.

Human nature leads us to make generalizations--sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. and I let them generalize away on this one. This is what they now believe--people from India are so nice--that equals out to more than 1/5 of the world's population being full of kindness!

What a nice mindset to have achieved in the course of just two meals and an afternoon of play.