Quarter Year

Before meals the monks pray. They say, “This food is for my body, not for enjoyment.” I think it’s ok to enjoy while you’re eating, but if you shove someone aside so you can have your favorite food then that’s just not right.

The other day someone said, in all seriousness, “I’m just trying to survive.” Business was slow, and though their ‘survival’ was at stake, they were using their money to pay me to wash the windows of their large home. We have a funny concept of survival. Their life isn’t at stake, their lifestyle is. A lot of us confuse the two, and since lifestyle is an extension of identity, the idea of changing it is equated with some kind of death. But it’s not death, it’s pride or vanity that causes the pain.

Food abounds. What if we ate what we had, not what we sought? And what if that was satisfactory?

I see why the monks warn us about enjoying food: Some of us buy our favorite food – even if we’re supporting companies that harm people – because we’re addicted to our lifestyles. I don’t think happiness depends on what we eat, so that’s not an excuse. When we’re addicted to something, we make compromises to secure it.

We know very little about what’s in food and how it works in our bodies. Though we know about big things like carbs and protein and fat and fiber, there’re dozens, if not hundreds, of other ‘things’ that make up a pepper. These things – together I’m calling them ‘spirit’ – include anti-oxidants and other chemical compounds that we haven’t yet studied. We might not know their significance, but we do know we evolved eating veggies & animals complete with that spirit, and now we’re not.

Most food – even organic food – in most grocery stores comes from land where there’s only one crop in the ground. This practice is called monoculture. For example, peppers come from a farm where there are only peppers. This is cheaper because it means that the land can be worked by machine or at least in an assembly-line style. All the sun and water and fertilizer goes to the same crop, so they end up with huge, handsome peppers that are delicious to the eyes.

On the modern, industrial farm this means that the peppers keep pulling the same nutrients out of the soil. If the farm is going to keep producing peppers, the soil needs a boost from fertilizers. Large-scale farms will likely use man-made, industrial fertilizer, which supplies the nutrients that help peppers grow.

The fertilizer is good for making it grow, but is it good for making it whole? Probably not. Monoculture doesn’t exist in nature, in fact it’s unique in earth’s history to our modern age. Monoculture removes its peppers from the natural cycle of life, which is the source of spirit.

In the wild, a pepper lives among other plants, fights for resources, fights off bugs, eats decomposed vegetation that’s been pooped out by worms – the natural cycle of life. Plants evolved to live in close quarters with other plants of other species, so that’s how they’ll grow most healthily, that’s how they’ll develop spirit.

Our bodies evolved to eat foods that come from healthy soil (and water). Our bodies evolved to eat plants that live among other plants. We evolved to eat foods complete with spirit, so that’s how we’ll grow most healthily ourselves.

If farmers, to save money, make compromises on the health of their soil, we compromise our own health by buying their peppers.

This is why just eating vegetables isn’t good enough. This is why just eating organic isn’t good enough, this is why just eating local isn’t good enough. To eat healthily we need to eat from healthy land. What does this look like?

Healthy land lives. It has many different plants that take different nutrients from the soil and give other nutrients back. This is the basis of polyculture farming (or ideally, permaculture) – different plants help each other. Worms are another pillar of healthy land, turning dead vegetation into soil that’s rich in the nutrients that living plants love.

Womb-apples are prehistosexy.

So, what’s at stake? A lot of these ideas come directly from Michael Pollan. In his inspiring book, In Defense of Food, he makes a compelling argument that the diseases of civilization are the result of the modern industrial diet. These diseases include cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, varicose veins and hemorrhoids, and more. To me, the point is this: we know that we evolved eating foods that grew in a wild, natural context. Are we so arrogant that we think we can circumvent nature without compromising our health?

The best way to ensure that you’re eating from healthy soil is to eat what’s growing wild. The next best is to grow the food yourself. Failing that, go to a farmers’ market and buy from farmers who are small enough that they care about the quality of their soil and plants. If shopping at a grocery store, shop at a cooperative that has information on the farms from which it buys its produce.

Avoid buying vegetables in industrial packaging. Avoid buying veggies from grocery stores like QFC or Safeway or Costco. If you’re in a pinch for time, go home and throw together a meal from what you already have at home, I’ll bet you didn’t even need to shop that day.

Again, the closer you are to your source – the fewer hands through which your money passes to get to the soil – the more sure you can be that the health of the pepper is not being compromised. And, in turn, you’ll be healthier and spiritier.

Three times a day you medicate yourself. Be efficient and discriminating.

Be overjoyed about wild crab.

1 – Use no electricity after sundown.
We found that we adjusted quickly to the rhythm of the day when we used candles for our light. The only exception we really made was when we had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as it’s kinda important to see what you’re peeing on. (It’s hard for me to enjoy the day’s rhythm when I see how sad it makes Azure to clean up my pee.) We’d also make an exception if we cooked on an electric stove.

No electricity means no phone, no computer, no tv, no recorded music, no light bulbs. Let the night close your eyes, let the sun open them.

2 – Stop paying attention to the news.
The primary function of the news is to reinforce cultural myths, one of which is that we have something to fear. The news is a distraction from what’s real. It is an unnecessary injection of fear and mistrust into lives that are – in reality – pretty darn peaceful almost all of the time. Have you noticed how peaceful your life is? Any news worth knowing will come from another person’s mouth. Forget the news, except maybe tomorrow’s weather.

3 – Decide what you’re going to eat tomorrow night based on what you have today.
Look in your garden and build your meal around the ripe veggies that are begging to be eaten. Use tonight’s leftovers (and trimmings) as tomorrow’s flavor. Take out of the freezer what you’ve been saving and give it 24 hours to think about what it can become. Make a slow meal your day-long theme, and include your loved ones in its preparation.

(OK, since everyone is going to ask, that last picture is “Cassoulet,” a traditional dish in southwest France, as prepared by Didier. Duck meat is salted all night, then the next morning it’s cooked in its own fat. In the mean time they’re cooking white beans with carrots, onions, sage, laurel, sausage, bacon and sea salt. Then serve with brown rice and place the duck on top. Voila!)

The free haul!

We came here expecting meals that were pasta-heavy, or maybe collages of whatever they could scrounge together. Lettuce sandwiches for dinner, that kind of thing. But the truth is that I don’t know if I’ve been around a family that eats better, in all senses of the word. The food is fresh and free from chemicals. It’s very local. It’s cooked slowly. It’s eaten with the whole family. It’s appreciated. It’s often nurtured from seed to table. It’s balanced. And it’s DELICIOUS. Last night we had a sheep’s heart that was roasted in pork fat with an herb & red wine sauce. Sides were mashed potatoes, fresh salad with dijon dressing, cauliflower with champagne-cheese sauce, bread and wine and cheese and a yogurt-honey dessert. Much of this was food she actually produced herself. The pork fat & bones were left over from the night before, when we had pork ribs cooked in that same casserole. That pork was cooked in the chicken drippings from the night before (which was cooked in the same casserole). And so on.

Mom (an awesome American ex-pat from Shelton, of all places) has something on the burner all day. Despite spending no money on food, there’s always plenty, so much that they give food away to some needy neighbors (this experience calls into question the meaning of “poor” – is it someone with little money or someone who lacks what they need?). During the day she and her 3-year-old daughter work in the garden, feed the chickens, cook, preserve fruits & veggies, forage. Her husband works 18 hours a week, a full load for teachers here (and they assume another 18 hours will be worked at home grading papers, etc). State health care covers 85% of the medical bills, while supplemental private insurance (which costs $65 a year for the family) covers the last 15%.

After spending a couple weeks with Claude and Margarite on the olive farm, where they’re stingy with everything from heat to water to food, it was a shock to come somewhere where they’re even cheaper with the money but are so much more generous with everything else. We were invited to have all the homemade jam we want (including sour cherry and rose petal jam, orange-watermelon jam, fig chutney, etc), pickled veggies and salads from the garden. In fact she invited us to eat anything we find here – it all comes back to her somehow. We’re staying in their house for free, in exchange for what’s been very little work. They don’t just believe in abundance, they live the abundance.

Preserves!

Riana carried the chicken back to the house and gave Azure a lesson on cleaning it – feathers, guts and so on.

We were going to redo the dishes after this, but you know, it was lunch time and we were all tired from the events of th day… whatareyagonnado?

In the meantime, Benji and I followed the dog back to another neighborhood then lost the scent. Riana later tracked him down and the owners gave her 40 Euros and a bottle of champagne in apology, a nice gesture in my opinion. They could have been jerks about it. Apparently the guy (a Brit) goes for walks with his dog off the leash, then his dog disappears for an hour. The guy returns home assuming the dog will behave himself, but he’s suspected in some earlier chicken murders as well. Now they know.

Tonight we had coq au vin.

The borscht was unbelievably good, I got the recipe. We never made the schmaltz, apparently an old Jewish dish of cooked chicken or goose fat, apples and onions (probably with some spices), cooled and blended then spread on bread like mayo. The pumpkin pie was made from scratch. On Saturday it says, “Fish Guts” – the fish guy comes to town and Riana collects the guts for the chickens.

Krabi also has a fairly large night market in relation to its size, which was right across the street from our hotel, so each night we would go and get some cheap treats, banana pancakes, fresh squeezed juices, fried dough pieces with coconut jam and of course phad thai. On our third night, we heard loud music playing outside our room and went out to find an enormous weekend night market. It had a stage and many clothing stalls in addition to the food vendors, so we walked around to look at everything before we sat down to eat. There were more options at the weekend market, so we got papaya salad and stir fried vegetables. Also, there were cute outdoor bars that served fruity cocktails by the glass or jug. A jug cost 99 baht, or $3. A great deal if you are ever in Krabi on Fri-Sun.

Nasi Campur

Nasi Campur stand

Then we go over to the Ice stand. I get the Es Buah (ice fruit) and Mike gets the Es Apokat (ice avocado). This consists of cut up pieces of whatever you ordered with shaved ice and condensed milk on top. Once you have eaten the fruit and ice, you drink the sweet milk until the bowl is completely dry. It might be my favorite desert, especially when my mouth is burning from the sambal. ($.30 each)

Es Buah

Es Apokat

We could be done after that, and most nights we are. Some nights I like to go to the sticky rice stall and get some sweet rice for the morning. It makes a good supplement to whatever free breakfast we get from the hotel. Before we found out about the Es Buah, I used to get the rice treats for desert. There are all sorts of rice products and some tapioca pieces at the stand too. When you have made your choices, they sprinkle shaved coconut and chocolate on your selection. ($.20)

Waiting for the rice treats

Adding the final chocolate.
Sometimes Mike wants a Bakso (meatball soup) or Soto Ayem (chicken soup) after dinner. I don’t think he needs this, but he says he does, so we’ll sit down and he’ll load it up with too much sambal and start sweating. He doesn’t think a meal is complete if his mouth isn’t burning afterward. They put cabbage and rice noodles in the bottom, then pour in the broth, top it with chicken and egg. The sauces are on the table to make it as spicy or sweet as you like it. ($.50)

Round 2 at the Nasi Campur stand

Things you can expect from the Gianyar market and others like it.

1. People will serve the food with their hands. They will not use a single utensil to transfer it from its bowl to your plate.

2. There will be flies and other bugs around. They will be on the food. This is unavoidable.

3. At no point will the food have been refrigerated during its journey to your mouth, including meat.

4. There will be dogs and kids running around.

5. The food will be authentic. It will be spicy and delicious.

6. You will know #5 is true because you will be the only white person there. On only one occasion did we see another white couple. They were with a guide and they did not eat any of the food, not even the es buah!

Ari has a buah-hati, a sweetheart, he knows he wants to marry, but he doesn’t want to propose until his wanderlust has run its course. He says his girlfriend has low self-esteem when it comes to simple things, so he tells her to practice confidence in the mirror. Each nuclear family is called a “kaka” and this family compound includes four kakas. When Ari marries his buah-hati they’ll start the family’s fifth kaka in the unfinished house where we ate. The house, when all is said and done, will cost about $8000 to build from foundation to roof tiles.

While Ari’s sisters cooked, their many young children ran around or stopped to stare at us as, landing in the lap of Ari’s father, a 71-year-old Bapak (the title of all older men here, and the honorific you use when addressing them directly).

Though there are no family names, Ari adopted de Madia (the French, “from,” combined with the Indonesian, “the middle”) to indicate his philosophy – he doesn’t want to be too rich, nor too poor, just hanging out doing his thing in the middle. It’s also a reference to this village being “madia” of Munduk, which refers to the wider collection of villages in the area.

Ari prepared the herbs that flavor the soup: tumeric, a strong red onion, lemongrass, garlic and candlenut (which I’ve never heard of). At one point they ground fresh sambal on a dark mortor, with the setup beforehand being a single chili, a pinch of salt and some shrimp paste reposing right in the middle of the stone platter. Just gorgeous. Then a sister ground the ingredients and added them to the soup.

When dinner was ready we walked the compound’s paths to Ari’s new construction, the shell of a house that was just finished enough to protect us from rain during the outdoor dinner. We sat on the concrete floor at a low table. There was no door, just an opening, and where there would be windows was just a frame looking out on a tree, behind which the valley extended.

Dinner started with vegetable soup that tasted just like the soup from Julia’s on 65th. There was white rice, fried potatoes and sweet chili corn fritters that stuck to our teeth. Dessert was taro cake, a gooey, sweet paste that’s topped with coconut. Ari mixed arak (palm liquor) with lime & honey, which he warned was really strong, but I found it weak compared to the drinks I mix myself at home. He poured the cocktail into shot glasses (his Japanese sake set) and we sipped them after the meal. We drank water from a bottle.

Later in the night there was a lightning storm that, through the unfinished window, lit the sky behind Ari as he spoke. I managed to catch a shot of him lighting a cigarette, face illuminated by the flame. Over thunder, Ari translated our conversation with his uncle and Bapak. It was pretty damn magical, yet another night I couldn’t have imagined had I not experienced it firsthand. It justifies traveling.

More on Ari’s uncle & bapak tomorrow.

I hailed a cab to the train station and we immediately hit gridlock and it looked like I’d miss the train. Instead of stressing about it, I resigned myself to waiting in the station foyer for the next departure – I regretted having taken such a long walk up the side streets in the morning. But surprise! we got to the station in plenty of time. The best approach to the ordeal would have been harboring neither expectation nor regret, but just sitting in the cab watching.

On the train a young man sat across from me and stared out the window – his feet were very dirty, his hair hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, and he was unhealthily thin. He had a damaged blue backpack that was very simple, and through a tear a checkered blanket poked out. He was one of the city’s very poor. He looked at me and we smiled at each other. I realized that if I had chosen to be stoic, you know, to show I wasn’t taking their culture for granted, I would have robbed us both of a nice fleeting moment.

A man selling boiled peanuts walked by and I indicated I wanted a bag. He quoted me 20 Baht (60 cents) and a fellow seller threw him a look. I paid it, but I knew the price should have been 5 Baht. In years past I would have been upset getting cheated like that – “it’s the principle of the thing!” – but not so much anymore. First of all, I kinda consider it equalizing the monetary imbalance between our world and their world, like a tax on those who have won the birth place lottery. Second, I need to separate my money from my pride anyway. Finally, that guy is not intending to cause me any personal harm. He’s only trying to make his situation better in a way that’s relatively painless to me. I should be glad it’s so easy to help. (Of course it might be a different story if it ever happens in Norway.)

I was still thinking about the quality of smiling at the very poor young man across from me, and I decided I should start searching for things to smile about more often, which is very unnatural for me. So the train passed a bird sitting on the nose of a cow, and I pushed out a smile. There was a row of abandoned railway cars that had been turned into consecutive rooms of a person’s home (kitchen in one car, living area in another, bedroom in another), and I smiled.

When I got to Petchburi I looked for people to smile at. There was an old lady who stared at me as I picked my way down the street, and when I got to her I threw a big smile and her face exploded into a smile itself, the wrinkled map of her face being dramatically redrawn. It’s so different than mutual stoicism! So I tried it with everyone I passed, and it was a really nice way to walk through town.

I used to think that smiling at strangers was the last thing a person did before getting sucker-punched outside a bar, but now I’m reconsidering.

When reading the comments on various websites (like The Seattle Times, for example) I wish everyone who was about to post would take a second to ask themselves the following question: “What am I trying to make other people feel?” Many of them try to make other people feel bad intentionally, whether through direct insult, sarcasm or a subtle slight. If they asked themselves that question, hopefully they might pull back the comment and cleanse it of venom.

Point is that the flip side of that whole “What am I trying to make people feel?” thing would be the command, “Find something to smile about.”

God this sounds vacuous.

1) Travel slowly. Sacrifice geographic breadth for social depth — the world is unmanageably enormous as it is, so you couldn’t possibly spend quality time every place that deserves it. It’s better to spend quality time in the places that excite you at the moment and to remember that you can always go back to a town you might pass this time around.

Traveling from place to place is the best way to waste your precious time. We like to make a base and explore out from there, like tracing a flower – stay in one spot then make day-trip loops in each direction, or just stay in town for the afternoon. Come back to the same bed as many nights as possible.

2) Get off the beaten path. Get away from people who work in the tourist industry. Every time we leave the backpackers’ circuit we wonder why we were on it in the first place. (That is, unless you’re a single college student. In that case you should go flirt with all the other youths.)

3) Learn the language of the place you’re visiting. Know at least the following: I, you, please, thank you, need, want, searching for, 1-10, how much is it, where is…. These are the absolute basics for day-to-day stuff, but the better you know the language the more rewarding your experience will be. If you’re going to one country (or linguistic region), make language a priority. With all the great websites out on the internet, there’s no excuse.

4) Make learning a central theme in your activities. Otherwise you’re just a tourist.

5) Pack light. No, even lighter. You don’t need that many shirts. Things are an extension of home and the more crutches you bring from home the less exposed you will be.

6) Give yourself a purpose. Even if it’s as simple as keeping a blog or learning to surf, it will give you direction and a reason to interact. When Azure decided we needed to learn to make brocciu, we immediately came in contact with a community of interesting characters. Get involved in something – a social group or a job or hobby. Find something that excites you and start asking questions. Be curious, be brash.

by Azure

My birthday was a typical day here at the chateau. I got up and started working on our painting project in the morning. At around 1pm we stopped for lunch. Since it got sunny last week, we have been having lunches out on the back patio under the columns. Mike made a tomato sauce (tomato, red pepper, eggplant, zucchini) with an egg in it over pasta and we had a mache salad with beets, kiwi and tomatoes.

For the “special” birthday dinner, we started with Kir Royals on the patio with creme fraiche and smoked salmon and caviar (caviar is pretty normal here, cheap and easy to find). Even though it was just the six of us, we still ate in the fireplace room, since I love it so much.

Mike made a chicken caccitore with potatoes and I made an unsuccessful Oeufs a la Neige (Eggs in snow?). The neige turned into a baked pancake when it should have been a fluffy snowy thing that sits in english cream. Luckily, Linda had made a walnut and chocolate flat-cake, so we put that in the creme. I drank Negrita and coke all night, the others had their choice of red or white wine.

After dinner, we talked by the fire and I got some beautiful soaps and some stiff french linens from everyone. Mike got me treats, popcorn, the Negrita and coke and some mache seeds for taking home. It was a lovely day to add to the list of lovely days here. It feels like everyday is my birthday!

by Azure

I attempted my first unassisted batch of brocciu today in the kitchen of the chateau. Everyone else had gone to the brocante (a big flea market) in Chauveny and Mike and I stayed back to have a leisurely lunch and make the brocciu.

Patty had introduced us to her cheese man who is impossible to get near at the Chauveny market, but parks his cheese van by the Abbey on Fridays and is available for chatting. We had asked him for some “petite lait”, pronounced “petite lay” which, coincidentally, Patty would also love to receive from the cheese man, though not for the purposes of making brocciu.

He brought us two buckets of it to the market (for free) and told us where to go to get the fresh milk. We went to the farm and asked for some fresh milk and they brought us 2 liters for 2.50 euros. A cheap project!

When I started the process today, it looked like everything was going well. I figured out the temperature conversions and did everything right on schedule. We figured out that at the exact same moment that the pot boils, the brocciu arrives. We watched and watched and it started to smell like cake, just as it should. It arrived. The foam on top began to part and we turned off the flame and I dipped my ladle in the pot to scoop it out and there was nothing there. What happened to the brocciu????

We had done everything right, I checked and rechecked the proportions and couldn’t figure it out. The tough part was that I could see the brocciu in the pot, but every time I tried to scoop it out, it went through the holes. I then realized that the woman, instead of giving us fresh-from-the-udder goat milk had given us normal drinking milk. Sure enough, I took a sniff and it was so mild. I drank a little and tasted normal, 2% or maybe even fat free.

Mike said that he hadn’t thought it would go smoothly the first time. I was disappointed, but with the discovery of the wrong milk, I was relieved that it wasn’t human error. I could at least have hope that I could still make brocciu given the correct ingredients.

I have decided to try again. I’ll have Mike call the farm ahead of time and ask for all the correct ingredients. I am determined to get this right before leaving here, so I can be confident that I know how to make it. Stay tuned for its arrival.