Culture and more

Author: Amy Tan

This book is a yarn spun by four women , Chinese Americans and their mothers who have seen dificult times. It is a good mix of else where and now.

The book of is an easy read. The flow of the book will not let you put it down.

I liked reading about the various practices in China. Their belief in fortune, trying to beget favorable conditions, even when everything is not so right, is fascinating.

Different voices in the book form a bridge between short story and novel forms. Although the distinctness of the voices is not preserved, the matter of the stories are still conveyed in a very interesting manner.


May 19, 2005, 5/5

Broaden

Author: Pico Iyer

Travel is no longer just adventure.

The Accidental Explorer's Guide to Patagonia - Putting it in a very trite way, its about an unbelievably beautiful place.

Canadian Gothic - Adds the dimension of local people(famous and everyday) to place known for its locale.

Travel can be by people driven with an agenda to understand a place, its people's struggles, even if the very first step is trouble.

Peter Hessler - Chasing the Wall - best
Mark Jenkins- The Ghost Road - best

A Fleet One - I would never guess, something on trucks could make it to this list.

Travel to places where story of a person at the same time reveals the nation's plight

Elizabeth Rubin - The Road to Herat
Kira Salak - Places of Darkness - saving mountain gorillas
Paul Salopek - Shattered Sudan


Jul 20, 2009, 4/5

Parents for kids

How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm: And Other Adventures in Parenting (from Argentina to Tanzania and everywhere in between)

Author: Mei-ling Hopgood

The author researches into how different nations deal differently regarding the main worries of new parents – how/when to put the baby to sleep, how to get them to eat their veggies, how much of the baby depot should I hoard at home, when to potty train them, when to intervene in kids fights and so on and so forth.

The author uses studies, statistics and others expertise to understand what she finds around the world.

I had heard from a friend that on her trip to Mexico, that she could buy food late into the night. I never thought what that would mean to the sleep of babies when parents feel like getting a late chow on the go. I have read that French children are made to try many foods, so they can widen their palates. The author learnt that the French children are fed the same food that the adults eat. Why train with baby food when they will anyways vie for whats on your plate?

As she learns how things are done differently around the world, the author tries to incorporate them into her life too. Not all of them are feasible, like carrying her baby in a sling like Kenyans, on a flight trip. She finds it like an anti-thesis situation like ‘I like hiking but Er! I am lost, its noon and I’m out of water’.

When she learns of the how, she also looks into the why. The ‘vestibular stimulation’ of babies by carrying them on the mothers is such a great motivator for carrying them so, but how long can we do that?

When it comes to potty training, the author introduces us to the slit pants used in China to facilitate elimination for babies and parents alike, who don’t have to drop everything before the babies soil everything. The author is committed to using the early potty training, customizing the time to the baby’s development unlike, Mayim Bialik who in ‘Beyond the sling’, sings praises of ‘elimination communication’ but never strongly says ’ It worked me, go use it’, instead she cops out that she is not suggesting we follow it.

 Her study also involves the need for parents-child play time, equal involvement of both the parents in the rearing of the child, play time with older kids and no parental guidance,  Structured play Vs free style play.

During high school, I saw a toddler mimic her mom washing clothes, with a mug and a small clothing article of her own. Such partaking of work prepares them for real grown-up life.

The author muses about globalization influencing the said practices. 

Another similar vein book

Do Parents Matter?: Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don’t Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax

A face to a voice on NPR

Author: Frank Deford

Sports as he knows it

I have heard a couple of NPR commentaries by Frank Deford. Long time ago, I had heard that one of my classmate’s father was a sportswriter, but never learnt how different his life was from a regular writer.

Frank Deford has reservations about bloggers, game score statisticians and the future of sports journalism. He is not one to keep a secret of them. Being in his game of writing for a long time, he chronicles how one day when his contemporary players are ready to retire and coach, it hits him hard that he is out of place and he cant identify with the music in the locker room.

He shows the regard or lack of it for sportswriting in the recognition it receives in the form of awards. He compares how sportswriting was when he started and how it is now. Then the onslaught of TV and now the internet, obliterate the need of a sportswriter. For a ‘not so bright boy’ he did well by reporting about ‘unusual personalities, or athletic exotica, the Americana of sports, out on the fringes’. He takes us to the time when sportswriters gathered in pressboxes to give the public blow by blow accounts of the games. He also compares how earlier he could meet the athletes in the lockerroom for statements while now they do press meets.

This book thrives on rich characterization of real people. Grantland Rice’s profile is written in such a way that lack of familiarity with Rice does not take away the interest from the piece like that on exclusive clubs at Princeton. The success of his writing must be due to his attempt to ‘humanize commisioners’. As you approach a paragraph regarding his nostalgia for sports and sportswriting of the yore, you can pat your back for realising it that for him sports was always about the people. In his words -‘Nowadays sportswriting is too much about predicting games; then, it was more about revealing human nature’. He uses his writing wand as a justice tool to give every athlete and coach their due. Through his writing on women in sports, I learnt of a new game – Roller Derby. I liked the description of ‘three match game’ that the journalists played. Another game that I havent heard of before.

His initial writing has led him to be a judge for beauty contests. He boasts that

‘you are never going to find another expert writer the equal of yours truly with feet in both the tennis and the pulchritude camps’.

He has reported on all kinds of games. The book has many interesting anecdotes from his years of writing from the stands. On tough subjects, he stood up. He called out ‘Commercial racism’.

Writing about the coverage of sports on road, he became the chronicler of Americana of sports. When he says ‘I wasn’t just writing about Americana. I was Americana.’ Somehow he becomes the snake with its tail in its mouth encompassing the world of sports.

Kiwiland

Author: John Kinsella

A poetry book after a long time.

We learn about kangaroos in and out. A goat. has it ever been treated with so much weight? 

Should mom feed or hold you in womb to mother?

I picked this book as I am always curious to know how the world looks at India. The book turned out to be a great info on In vitro fertilisation and the emotions involved in going through the whole process.

I wonder what it must be like to have your body suffused with hormones externally. The author has described what the medical procedures the genetic mother goes through in the process of IVF. She brings out her disbelief even while going through the process in a foreign territory.

It was a revelation that its not just women who cant conceive that make use of surrogates but also mothers who are prone to miscarriages. She says that everybody knows that first trimester is danger zone, though not that common knowledge – I realize the tenuousness of human life in the foetal stage.

Filhaal - a bollywood take on surrogacy.

Coming to experiences of the author in India, except for the travel urged by her mother in law, she has been mostly inside the vegetarian village of Anand. The author has been to India before to mourn her mother's loss. Her interactions with her surrogate, even without a common language inform her about the surrogate as well as her self.

'The sacred thread' had me in tears when the surrogate mother gave the children away with their protective threads.

food lit mag

The first issue of Lucky peaches was large on Ramen noodles. In the second issue, the theme is 'The Sweet Spot'. 

Ike jime

'The Ripeness and the rot' moves from a vegetable's freshness situation to a chef's most creative period which is generalised to all artists. Rebecca Rusch  is an example of comeback in sports.  This ties in with 'Perfect moment' of knowing the window of the best taste of an ingredient.

Celeste Byers

sweet spots on banana.

Christina Tosi details few recipes like Arnold palmer cake made at Momofuku milk bar.

'Expired to perfection' is a look at refrigerator's contents and their status. 'Repurposing'. 

I like the comic-satire of accepting the mistakes in their recipes. The comic of the experiences of an experimental cook speak to the uncertainity of the dish hanging over the head of the cook.  It is literal when a sheet of pasta is hanging from the head of the cook, being churned out of the pasta machine. 

There is a great history of Miso but when it read list of ingredients it became irrelevant like the many kinds of ramen in the first issue.

Not all of it is accessible. I dont get what they mean by 'high level cooking'. Never the less, you learn many things about cooking, not just techniques and ingredients but a broad look at cooking not just as a set of recipes or ingredients but also as an art both in execution and representation, its tradition and history.

Tatsuo Ikeda knife

Naeng myun

Coi restaurant

Nage

Another review

Eating lychees under an avocado tree

Author: Gail Simmons

At first I mistook the ‘professional eater’ in the title for the competitor eater like Man Vs Food.

Our first experiences with food start with mom and her kitchen. Gail Simmons’s interest in cooking too took off at her mom’s kitchen making omelettes. Later she took this to an assembly line level churning out 50 of those at a Kibbutz in Israel that sounds like a ‘Biosphere’ experiment.

Her father having grown up in South Africa, the author had access to special foods there resulting in a wider palate. She has traveled widely and tasted food in all those places.

She let her passion lead her to her career in food writing and then a Merchandising manager. She went to culinary school, worked on the line and learned the business of restaurants. She excerpted a food journal to give the readers an idea of how much food she tastes in a day.

I have seen my share of ‘Chopped’. So I was interested in knowing the behind the scenes of cooking competition on TV. The author has written of her experiences judging food on top Chef. She classifies the contestants whom she calls chef-testants. ‘Top Chef Just Desserts’ was an insight into how food contests have to consider the cooking time and recipe policies before issuing a challenge.

The  book's focus on food is maintained well all along the food. Even when she describes her wedding, the emphasis is on the food for the event. Even though this book does not have many recipes or much cooking, with its description of techniques (how in modernist cuisine, having a foam adds the essence without adding texture or volume) and a wide variety of foods it urges the reader to savor each morsel to get the taste/essence of it. Like the author says 'being a young line cook (is) you dont use your mind much. You are taking orders. you're not thinking or creating - ... I needed to go back to using my head'.

In the end she does say that she is ‘not in the business of competitive consumption’.

Culinary skill acquisition at 'Chez Weil Duane'

How to Cook Like a Man: A Memoir of Cookbook Obsession by 

Daniel Duane

Theres the eternal question of art for arts sake or for the buyer/viewer. When it comes to food we know its about the one who is going to eat the food, but its difficult to wrap your head around the fact that atleast courtesy would call for exclusion of bell peppers from the ‘pav bhaaji’ if your audience does not like the peppers, but it wont be the real pav bhaaji if you get compassionate. The author is in for a surprise when he ends up ‘interested in food as love – food as sustenance, generosity and balm’ after years journey of hacking at cookbooks.

I like reading anything about food and cooking. After reading ‘how to cook like a man’ by Daniel Duane, when I realised that ‘No Cheating, no dying I had a good marriage. Then I tried to make it better’ was by his wife Elizabeth Weil, I was curious to know the effect of the author’s cooking straight from the horses’ mouth.

Daniel Duane has an obsession for cookbooks, especially the ones which have some chronological order associated with them. ‘the book’s A-Z quality – inviting me to cook every recipe therein –‘. The book being referred to is Chez Panisse Vegetables. He didn’t stop with that. He then moved to other books by Alice Waters.  He justifies that ‘…my (his) compulsions came not from dysfunction or narcissism but rather from a healthy impulse to find joy and curiosity in everyday life’. But it wasn’t just a compulsion for the new dad, he was doing the cooking to feed his family that consists of a wife who likes to eat simple food.

The author’s wife refers to his pre-cook book days as ‘when food was still fuel for him’. Faced with all this food on the table, she wondered if he could offer her choices in meals. The chef conceded for choice in breakfast but not in dinner, which is when he gets to follow all the complicated and exotic recipes, not to mention the expensive grocery shopping preceding that.

His wife’s pregnancy, the house’s dire carpenting needs do not deter the man with a knife. He carried sourdough sponge along with him, if he went out of town so he could feed it regularly.  Somewhere along the line when too many truffle recipes alienated him from his friends, he realised that he needed to mould his interest to meet his family needs instead of maniacally following recipes.

In the end he is at peace with culinary tastes of his family members. When he began he had two signature dishes. After years of making all the recipes, he has learnt the middle way of keeping his audience and their food taste in mind.

He is not just a home cook. Magazine assignments take him fishing, let him go on a steak marathon in Vegas, meetings with the food celebrities. This reporting life gives us a peek into the exclusive world of food.

When he met Alice, he asked what she would do with a certain set of ingredients and that’s when I realized that I read an article of his in ‘food and wine’ which combined this experience as well as cooking with Thomas Keller.

  

In cooking you begin with the ache and end with the object, where in most of the life of the appetites – courtship, marriage – you start with the object and end with the ache – Adam Gopnik

Z Wraps 3-Pack, Reusable Food Wrap and Food Saver, Alternative to Plastic Wrap, Sustainable, Eco Friendly Beeswax Food Wrap - Small, Medium, Large (Connect the Dots)

Married to an obsessive cook

Berkeley faith in better living through chemistry - Elizabeth weil
Neil LaBute
surfer mellow
Sukkah
Octopus Daube
Creatine in ox heart for muscle recovery
Kung Fu grasshopper
Spatchcocked chicken

Sign language

is not the same to everyone

To natives:
Beggars put their left hand
on stomach
and the right - fingers
gathered to join at tips
are held midair ever so
close to the mouth
to mimic eating

To foreigners:
The right hand holds
an imaginary fork

********
from Anne Lamotts experience of 'beggars ..pantomiming feeding themselves with fork' in India from 'Some Assembly required'.

Resounding questions

After going through this book, comparing Jerry McGill's experience with 'Save the Date' Jennifer's, a big glaring question. What about legal recourse?

With every aspect of life that has been and could have been, McGill tried to place his assailant in a definable web of love and family ties that keep us rooted. He did this by asking him questions around the time the tragic event of the shooting happened and his stance of everyday life.

Grandson's first year

We as parents have the illusion that we make our kids stronger, but they make us stronger - Sam Lamott

When Sam tells Annie in an interview that the child in question 'gets bigger and stronger every regardless of us(them), instead of because of us(them)', Annie must have felt less helpless about bringing up Sam without the father around. 

Annie summarises life's lessons to Jax that  there is no instruction manual.

Funny that Annie should go into Enraha mode to shoo away beggars in India - My Grotesque nation.

Four immutable laws of spirit
Japanese cow noisemaker

foot phone

They never walk towards you - Anne Lamott

Annie is the author of 

We call these the journals of the babies. But they are by the mothers/parents. The language and the behavior of the baby that we try to decode.

How would the journal be in the baby's language?
After the morning feeding, I smiled and regaled mommy.

Anne Lamott says that her grandson's actions would put Jack lalanne. When I read that line, I thought of all the times where we do this comparision to the top performers. Why is it not enough to say the best of the fitness gurus (That would also refer to the times when news traveled not farther than the next village). To make it real, we give a specific name that is not known to all.


I can barely work a toaster - Anne Lamott in reply to possessing any knowledge of car wiring. If the toaster she uses has anything to do with producing a graphic of the weather on the bread, then its something.

Sometimes

A hand on your chest
in ASL "please"

hand together
on your chest
like in prayer

she stops
to shake her
head
like she's had
some heady mix

A housewarming gift

Nef
One young summer
our night lamp
was a ship
silver colored with a
small bulb.