food

Birthdays

girl in floral dress playing mini bedroom toy — ^{Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com}

I had a birthday recently and decided to take myself to go see “Barbie”. I was hoping for some fun escapism. Well… it was entertaining but it was also a story of a major existential crisis. So I’m conflicted. Not sure I liked it. But Ryan Gosling was excellent as Ken.

I can be conflicted about birthdays in general. Some good, some bad. Some have associations I don’t care for. Some happy occasions.

My mother writes about the menu for my second birthday: hunks of cheese, slices of bananas with peanut butter dabs all on a toothpick, tiny buns filled with ground spam, graham crackers with honey butter, and then cupcakes with a candle on each, coffee and Koolade.
Sounds like an exotic ‘50s meal, doesn’t it?

My fifth birthday was memorable because the family had just survived a plane crash and landed at our final destination two weeks late – on my birthday. Another memorable one was in Lagos, Nigeria when my mother and I marked the occasion by opening a small tinned chocolate cake. They probably don’t make such a thing anymore…

In 1999, the last year of the millennium, I spent my birthday in France.
We stayed with friends in the suburbs who had a house and small yard and a son our son, Noah’s age. They were about a ten minute walk from the train in a nice little village with a pretty chateau. The first day was spent getting our new visas organized and trying to do some shopping. On Saturday we wandered around the left bank and then the four adults went out to dinner at a very nice kind of ‘new’ French restaurant. It was my birthday so we had champagne and wine and great food. Sunday was the boat ride on the Seine with the boys and then a walk through the Tuileries garden where there just happened to be some rides and of course Noah had to go on them.

We rented a car and on Tuesday left for Metz and the eclipse. Metz is a very pretty town right on the river. We scoped out the area on Tuesday and early Wednesday morning we headed out with the telescope, video camera and other cameras. We set up our camp in the middle of the Esplanade which is a nice park right by the river. The town had organized a big festival around the eclipse and so there were parades, music, etc. going on all day long. It was cloudy. During the first half of the eclipse we were able to see it off and on. But about 20 minutes before total eclipse it started to rain. We could tell when the total was, though, because it was completely dark. It was really cool. All the flowers closed up and all the lights came on and it was really night. Then during the second half it cleared up a bit and we were able to see more. Noah kept looking at the “moon” through his glasses. Nicholas got some good shots through his telescope. And I got a new umbrella. When we got back to Paris our friends who had gone 25 minutes north of Paris on the train said they had seen the whole thing perfectly.

From Metz we drove into Lorraine and the Vosges area. We stopped at the Haut Konningburg castle which is a huge restored castle on top of a mountain in the middle of the forest. You can see forever from it. It is really cool with a moat and drawbridge and inner yard. It would be very hard to penetrate it.

From there we wound our way around down to La Bresse which is in the heart of a big ski area and lots of mountains and forest. Really beautiful. Our hotel was very nice with a good restaurant. We drove all around the area and went hiking around a glacial pool where Noah spent the better part of an hour throwing rocks into it.

On Sunday (the day before Noah’s birthday) we took the boys to the Bois de Bologne to the big amusement park there and I think they went on about 20 rides. They had a lot of fun.

Our last day in Paris we had lunch up at Montmartre with all the tourists in town. It was kind of fun.

Art and Food on a Saturday

This week was all about art and food. The Seward Cafe opened in 1974, and was a neighborhood institution when I first visited in 1983. We used to go spend our Sunday mornings there reading the paper and devouring delicious buckwheat pancakes and creative egg concoctions. It is a cooperative with an anarchist bent. You fill out your own orders, get your own water and coffee, pick up your order at the window, and bus your own dishes. Everybody working together. Sometimes there is music in the evening and there is always art on the walls. This week the artist was Mollierae and her art was going for $600 and up. These are a couple that I liked. (click for larger image).

And of course, there was also creative bathroom art.

From there we headed over to the Walker Art Museum which was exhibiting the works of Pacita Abad. We were all impressed with her work. The brochure describes her as “Philippine-born artist, globally inspired masks, portrayals of immigrant life, and dazzling underwater scenes”. The walls were covered in huge tapestries. Some were celebratory and made me happy.

Some were disturbing and powerful. Some were just fun. She traveled and lived all over the world and immigrated to the USA, so her art is multicultural. She also saw the USA through the immigrant lens which was not always pretty. One powerful tapestry was called Flight to Freedom from a series called Cambodian Refugee.

Another one that struck me was called “I Thought the Streets Were Paved With Gold”. Apparently a quote she came across on a trip to Ellis Island inspired this work: “I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, I found out three things: First, the streets weren’t paved with gold; second, they weren’t paved at all; and third, I was expected to pave them.” I have come across several people in my own travels who believed the streets of the United States were paved with gold. I tried to tell them this was far from true, but they held on to their image.

I found this octopus especially whimsical —

You can see Pacita Abad’s work at:
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: April 15–September 3, 2023
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: October 21, 2023–January 28, 2024
MoMA PS1, New York: April 4–September 2, 2024
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto: October 12, 2024–January 19, 2025

Afterwards, we went for a drive around the lakes taking in the natural beauty of the day and ended up at a burger joint. A multicultural, multi eventful, all American day….

Local Indigenous Food

Owamni Restaurant opened in 2021 and received the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2022. In April of this year they had an electrical fire and had to close, but damage was not extensive so they were able to re-open recently. It is located in a historical building next to St Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. The name Owamni derives from the Dakota name Owámniyomni which roughly translates to “place of the falling, swirling water”.

The name of the restaurant is actually Owamni by the Sioux Chef. The Sioux Chef is made up of: “A team of Anishinaabe, Mdewakanton Dakota, Navajo, Northern Cheyenne, Oglala Lakota, Wahpeton-Sisseton Dakota and others. We are chefs, ethnobotanists, food preservationists, adventurers, foragers, caterers, event planners, artists, musicians, food truckers and food lovers.” The founder is Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. He has been cooking for 30 years across the world and has received several Fellowships and awards including the 2018 James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook, and the 2019 James Beard Leadership Award. The cookbook is called the Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen.

At Owamni, all the food is indigenous. The waiters wear t-shirts that say ’86 Colonialism’. All the food served is sourced from indigenous food producers and does not include any colonial ingredients such as wheat flour, cane sugar or dairy. Honey and maple were the only sweeteners used that I saw. A perfect place for the gluten lacto sensitive.

The restaurant features small plates and encourages ordering multiple dishes and sharing them. We ordered the:

Wild Rice (hand harvested)
Ashela (Duck, Corn Mush, Tepary, Sunflower Seed)
Cured Salmon with huckleberry sauce, kelp, and trout roe
Bison Asada Taco with pesto and Guajillo Salsa, and a blue corn tortilla, and topped with mustard greens
Elk Taco with burnt ends, carrot and turnip slaw, Warrior’s BBQ Sauce, and a blue corn tortilla and topped with mustard greens

I had a Sweet Wandering tea made from sweet clover, hawthorn leaf & blossom, milky oat top damiana and sweet grass. My dining companion opted for a wild rice lager.

The Ashela was interesting. It was a mush that tasted a little like refried beans. It definitely had duck in it but very subtle. Tepary is a bean. It was pretty good. The salmon was very cold and I could barely taste the huckleberry. The Elk was a little tough and the mustard greens had a bitter taste. We both agreed the Bison Asada Taco was our favorite. I could have eaten more of that. And the wild rice was excellent as always.

This was a place we had wanted to go to for ages but could never get a reservation. Maybe because of the fire, people didn’t know it had re-opened. Not sure why, but we got in. It was an interesting experience. The flavors were subtle. Not what we are used to with all the salt and spices usually thrown at us at restaurants. It was all fresh and felt healthy. We were full but not stuffed. We agreed it was a pleasant experience but we weren’t sure it was someplace we would frequent often.

Dundee and Alyth, Scotland

See London to Dundee if you need background.

After 10 hours sleep, I woke to a rainy day in Dundee. Still dragging a bit, I went off to see the Victoria & Albert museum down by the river Tay. Architecturally it was a beautiful, interesting place with a large open interior.

I learned that Scotland exported ceramics including Asian themed plates to Asia in the 1880’s. Also the Scottish Imp, made by Chrysler in the 1970’s had tartan seat covers.

But the best part was the cafe. I had a delicious pea mint soup and a scone. All while enjoying a view of the river. After lunch it was pouring rain so I went back to bed. I lucked out the following day. It was sunny and perfect for exploring. Dundee is a city of about 150,000 with several good museums, three shopping centers, and a university all in the center. It is very walkable and the people are friendly and helpful. In the morning I was out before anything opened so walked around and found a lot of public art.

Dundee is home to DC Thompson and Co. comic book publishers so several comic book characters were featured around town as well as prominent figures like Queen Victoria who visited Dundee in 1844. My next stop was the McManus Art Gallery.

I really enjoyed the museum. It had art and artifacts from around the world as well as Victorian and Edwardian paintings. There were sections on natural history, history of Dundee and the history of the building itself. The inside of the building was very cool

I headed to the other side of town to see the Contemporary Art Museum near the University of Dundee. It was small and there was one in depth exhibit on a lighthouse on the Algerian coast. I bought some postcards in the gift shop and the guy who checked me out was from Wisconsin. Lots of people working, studying and visiting from other countries.

Another big attraction in Dundee was the Discovery ship. There was a museum dedicated to it and you could board the ship. Since it cost 17 pounds, and I was pretty museumed out, I decided to skip it. The ship was built in Dundee in 1901 and its first mission was to carry Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their successful trip to the Antarctic.

On Wednesday I stowed my roller bag at the Premier Inn hotel and caught a local bus to Alyth. The driver didn’t announce any stops so I was a little nervous I would miss my stop but after about 45 minutes we arrived at Market Square, Alyth. I found the guesthouse where I had reservations to stay but I got the times wrong. It was 3 pm and check in was not till 4.

I walked down the road to see the Alyth War Memorial and was taking it all in when it started to pour. I managed to find a bus shelter but not until after I was soaked to the bone. Back at the guesthouse I spent several hours trying to dry out.

See My Morning Walk for more on Alyth.

My Morning Walk

Alyth, Scotland

Enjoyed my time in Alyth. Stayed at the Tigh na Leigh guesthouse on Airlie street. Nice hosts, clean, excellent food. They serve breakfast every day and dinner three nights a week. I ate dinner one night at the Lands of Loyal hotel situated above town on Loyal hill. Nice views of the valley and good food.

It was a beautiful day so had a nice walk along the Den of Alyth.

I stopped at a cafe in town for a sandwich at lunchtime. It was the meeting point for the local ladies who lunch group. All with their walkers in tow.

In the center of town there is a small museum only open in the afternoon. The caretaker was very knowledgeable and interested in helping people with any questions they had about the history of the area. He spent some time with me working on genealogy questions.

A Sweet Weekend

I took my car in to get the dents banged out of it this week. That meant getting a rental car. I had the choice of this tiny little thing or a “small” SUV. I took the SUV because it looked much sturdier. But it is big. Bigger than my car. And of course it is an automatic.

I bought an automatic (my first) about ten years ago. The first day I drove to work, I parked my car in the garage and I couldn’t get the keys out of the ignition. I panicked. I tried it again and again. I got out the user manual. And finally I phoned roadside assistant. After some back and forth, the mentioned the gear should be in “park”. What a complete idiot. I apologized profusely for wasting their time. I put the car in “park” and out came the keys.

So now I know. This is happening to me with the rental on a daily basis. But at least I know what to do.

I’m making pumpkin pie this weekend to take over to my dad. My grandmother made her pie with full fat cream and molasses. I started out with her recipe but modified it a bit because I like my pie spicy!

Here we go.

Mother’s Pumpkin Pie

1.5 cup pumpkin (cooked and mashed – I use it out of a can – 425 g., or 15 oz.)
1 tablespoon flour
½ cup brown sugar
5 tablespoons molasses
3 eggs
1/2 tsp ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
¼ tsp allspice
½ tsp salt
1.5 cups cream or evaporated milk (I used half and half since that is what I had on hand)

Beat eggs, add pumpkin, sugar, flour, molasses and seasonings and beat thoroughly. It will look dark.

Stir in cream. The cream lightens it up and makes it soupy.

Pour in unbaked 9 inch pie shell. The shell is the hardest part to make as far as I’m concerned. I used to be fastidious about it and make perfect little ridges around the edge and cut-outs for the center. No more. To heck with Martha Stewart. My crust is always overworked and a little tough but frankly, I like it better that way. It’s not beautiful, but it is functional and tastes good!

Bake at 400 degrees F. for 20 minutes, then lower heat to 350 degrees F. Pie will be done when a knife inserted comes out clean. (I check it at 30-40 minutes after reducing temperature. It will kind of puff up.)

Serve with whipped cream, ice cream, or plain.

Enjoy the weekend!

Red Wing, Minnesota

The weather turned. It got warm. Almost 80 degrees F. So we took advantage of it and spent the day in Red Wing, a town on the Mississippi with a population of about 17,000. It has a great used bookstore and a Scandinavian shop along the several blocks of downtown.

They have an “Art Walk” downtown with several statues scattered around. One was of a young Rosie the Riveter: “We Can Do It!” Lee Leuning & Sherri Treeby, Bronze. They even had prices on them. This one was $25,000.

Red Wing is the home of Red Wing shoes founded by Charles H. Beckman in 1905. It was one of the primary companies manufacturing footwear for American soldiers fighting in WWI.

A whole section of town is devoted to pottery. When it was discovered that the glaciers had deposited large clay beds in the area, the clay was shipped to Red Wing and the Red Wing Stoneware company was founded in 1877. It changed hands several times but it and other pottery companies are still in business and welcome visitors from all over.

The architecture is eclectic.

If you are lucky and Memorial Park is open, you can see a view of the whole area from the top of the bluff. We were not lucky this time. But here are some views from last summer.

We did find a good restaurant – Home Plate Grill & the Dugout Lounge is a sports bar with live music, trivia, and comedy nights. The food is burgers and sandwiches with some salads and entrees. We had the spinach and artichoke dip and a couple of burgers with blue cheese and bacon. It was all quite tasty. Good atmosphere, good service. Fun place.

After dinner we walked down by the river where we found more statues.

And a boat village

And the back of the St James Hotel.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

It is St Patrick’s Day! Who doesn’t love St Patrick’s Day? The patron saint of Ireland who drove the snakes out of Ireland (even though there were no snakes in Ireland). Sub zero wind chills for the parade today. I think I’ll skip it.

I watched the film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles the other night. It is a three and a half hour film starring and directed by Chantal Akerman, first screened in 1975. What little dialog there is is in French. It follows a single mother over three days. It is slow and mundane. She cooks, she shops, she feeds her child, she does the washing up, she takes a bath, and she provides sex for money. It is mesmerizing in its monotony. But the changes are subtle, you have to watch closely to see her controlled behavior begin to unravel. She is a complicated woman trapped in her own world. Trapped by society? Very interesting film.

She cooked potatoes every day and some kind of meat. One day it was veal. I am feeling so uninspired. Nothing sounds good lately. I’ve been watching the Sopranos. They eat mounds and mounds of pasta at every meal. Manicotti, Ricotta, Salami, meatballs, Spaghetti, Ziti, Fagioli, etc etc. What I really want is a short rib bolognese but I’m too lazy to make it.

Requiescat by Oscar Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone
She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life’s buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

Not a very happy poem but nicely done by an Irish son….

Have a good one!

Cooking in the Snow

a man in black jacket lighting up a cooking fire — Photo by Koen Swiers on Pexels.com

No, that’s not me…

It’s snowing again. What else is new. I saw a movie years ago, I don’t remember the name of it or really much about it except it was about some nuclear war in the future. What I remember about it was the nuclear winter. It looked like it was snowing all the time. (It might have been The Day After) When I moved to Moscow I used to say I lived in the nuclear winter because it snowed constantly. That light steady snow that never accumulated much but just kept coming down. This winter feels like that. Constant snow.

I’m typing my mother’s letters she wrote to her family from Burma in the early 50’s. I’m almost done with 1953. She helped to edit the Rangoon International Cookbook put together by women, both expats and Burmese… and Indian and Chinese, American, English, French, Australian…In the Forward it says:

“There is a Thank You written invisibly to every contributor and source of treasured recipes, named and nameless. But here we wish to record our special thanks to Mrs. Sung San, honored with Burma’s martyr-hero, and beloved herself as Daw Khan Kai for her service to her people. In the midst of new and heavy responsibilities as Chairman of the Social Planning Commission for the Union of Burma, she has found time to give us her entire delicious “company menu”, with the recipes for the nine distinctive Burmese dishes therein.” (She was Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother)

One recipe contributed by my mother is an old favorite of mine. There were no lemons in Burma but she substituted limes and that worked fine.

Lemon Sponge Pudding

Combine:

3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. grated lemon peel
1 1/2 Tbsp. soft butter
3 Tbsp. flour
2 egg yolks, beaten

Add: 1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup milk

(Mixture may have curdled appearance, but no matter)

Beat: 2 egg whites until stiff and fold into mixture.

Pour into buttered 1.5 quart casserole.
Place in pan of hot water
Bake at 325°F uncovered 40-45 min or until set (1 hr).

Serve warm or chilled. I like it warm!

The cook book was published by the Woman’s Society of Christian Service of the Methodist English Church, Rangoon, Burma 1954

About this time my father was traveling around Burma visiting schools to potentially help with agricultural education. He writes:

“I returned last Friday evening from my trip up country. We had a very enjoyable trip for that area is comparatively free from insurgent activity. We were able to drive about 150 miles away from Mandalay without a guard. That has been impossible until recently. On Sunday we were in Maymyo (by car) and the following Wed. the insurgents blew up the train and killed 14 between Mandalay and Maymyo. Day before yesterday the insurgents blew up the guard train and the regular train following behind between here and Moulmein. They then attached the train and killed several and robbed all the passengers. On our trip we were royally received everywhere we went. These people genuinely seem to like to have us visit their schools. At several schools we were presented bouquets of flowers and at practically every school we had to have tea or food. All the schools are clamoring for agricultural teachers so my program should continue to grow. They have never had teachers of agriculture in the schools before and the ones I turn out this year will determine how effective my program is for I’m the only one in Burma doing this work.

The Honorable Vice President of the U.S. is visiting here this week. There was some comment in the papers before his arrival that the Communists were going to demonstrate to protest his visit here but nothing has come off. There was a short meeting on Tuesday of the Embassy and TCA personnel to meet Mr. Nixon. So, when I get home you can shake the hand that shook the hand of the Vice President.”

So, interesting times…

Cheers

Footprints in the snow and other thoughts

More snow today. I’m getting tired of it. I drove across town yesterday to meet my cousin for lunch. It honestly felt like I was crossing a minefield. I was dodging potholes all the way. Some of them were very large. I feel lucky and surprised when I find a street that is fairly smooth.

I bought my train ticket from London to Dundee online but somehow I must have screwed it up because it turns out I have two train tickets from London to Dundee on the same train, three seats apart. There are so many different ways to buy tickets I guess I went back and didn’t realize I doubled up. Now I have to go back and try to figure out how to get a refund and hope I still end up with one ticket. I am obsessing over every detail of this trip. I was fine until I realized that I arrive the morning after Coronation Day. I’m sure London will be a zoo.

Today’s featured postcards at PostcardBuzz are of Guatemala. The postcards are paired with a couple photos I took when I was was there in the 1960’s. Here is more about that trip:

My first plane trip in many years was in the first class section on a PanAm flight from Mexico City to Guatemala City when I was twelve. We were the only ones in first class so I got to be kind of chummy with the flight attendant. Toward the end of the flight he asked me how I liked the flight and how I felt about it. I thought that was kind of odd and didn’t know what he was talking about. Apparently my parents had briefed him on me and my troubles with flying, and so he had made a special effort to distract me. (We had been in a plane crash when I was 5 years old.)

In Guatemala, we rented a car and drove up the mountain to Lake Atitlan. Volcanoes surrounded the city and the lake itself was a collapsed volcanic cone. On the way up the mountain, we saw people lying by the side of the road. We didn’t know if they were dead, passed out or taking a nap. It was very odd. We later found out that the previous day was payday and they had done their celebrating and not quite made it home. Apparently it was a familiar site in the countryside. We also went to Chichicastenango and to Antigua. This was major earthquake country. Antigua was the original capital of Guatemala but in 1776 there was such a bad earthquake they moved the capital to where it is today – Guatemala City. Antigua was surrounded by three volcanoes.

There was a new part of Antigua and an old part. The old part was all ruins. It was an eerie place. It was once a major city that tumbled down and was left there like a memorial. We stopped at a small restaurant and ate our meal in the yard. There was a group of musicians that wandered from table to table. We could see laundry hanging at the end of the lawn.

From there, we continued to El Salvador. One night in San Salvador we were staying in a high-rise hotel and I was sleeping on a cot. The building started to sway and my cot started moving across the room. All I could do was laugh at the crazy “ride”, as earthquakes were so common at home in Mexico City. In retrospect I guess we were lucky the building didn’t come down…

(excerpt from Expat Alien, My Global Adventures)

I continue to work on my mother’s letters. In one of them she describes a meal they had at a Chinese restaurant in Rangoon (1953).

The dinner was held at one of the Chinese restaurants, and consisted of about a dozen courses of perfectly delicious food. The one good thing about Chinese food is that it is served steaming hot, so that one may be sure that most germs have been thoroughly cooked. There was shrimp and vegetables, duck served with head and tail on and covered with big mushrooms and nuts in gravy, then a whole baby pig with head and tail of which we ate only the skin which was very crisp and chewy at that course, a whole fish with delicious sauce with vegetables, then the pig came back all cut up, soup with abalone, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, etc. served in a big gourd, fried rice, dishes of Chinese vegetables, tea with real flowers in it and cookies, then lychees for the final course served in ice water. I probably have forgotten some courses, for it is very hard to remember back. I liked most of dishes, and at least tasted all except a noodle dish (which I forgot to mention above). I’m not fond of Chinese or Burmese noodles! The fish and soup were my favorite dishes – always are of Chinese food.

March first. Winter is almost over?? So I never knew this but today is National Pig Day in the USA. Apparently National Pig Day is “to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place” as one of the most intelligent domesticated animals. Of course anybody who has seen the movie Babe already knows that about pigs… Happy Pig Day!