Thai Cuisine

Since I had never eaten Thai food, I decided to go to Thai Cuisine on Drake Road near Smoothie King and Colonial Kitchen. The restaurant is close to my home in the Westwood neighborhood.

I was able to talk my boyfriend into going to the restaurant with me. He is a very picky eater and has had very little experience with trying ethnic food. The restaurant is small. There are 20-30 tables inside and set up pretty close to one another. We walked in and didn't know exactly what to do. Should we seat ourselves? Should we wait for a server to seat us? I saw a young man holding a pitcher of water near a table and assumed he must be a server. He made eye contact with us, then continued talking to his table. I assumed that meant he wouldn't be helping us, so we sat ourselves at a table near the door.

The room was decorated with red and gold wall paper featuring some kind of goddess. There were gold fixtures and décor all around, but only a few things hanging on the walls. A china cabinet containing small gold figures stood in the corner and two large gold dragon-like figures sat near the door. Another large gold dragon was near the cash register. A very large gold sunburst-looking piece of art was an eye-catcher.

After a couple of minutes, the young man approached us and asked quietly what we'd like to drink and handed us menus. He brought back our lukewarm waters, no ice, with a small slice of lemon. We hadn't asked for water without ice or with lemon, but that's what was served to us. I was confused why the water wasn't very cold and didn't have ice, but I didn't ask. The menu was very straight forward. There were a few special items listed but most of the menu seemed to be a "create your own" style dish. It said: "Choose your protein" with chicken, beef, pork, tofu or veggies as the options, and then the noodle/rice options were listed underneath.

The young man walked in and out of a door leading to the kitchen, and a young (seemingly Caucasian) girl finally came to our table and said she was our server. She asked if we needed more time and I told her about my project. She suggested I get the Bangkok fried rice, "It's the most basic," she explained. But I wanted something a little more ethnic. My boyfriend exclaimed that he wanted the Bangkok fried rice and I decided on Lad Na with chicken.

Lad Na with Chicken

It was a dish with wide noodles, snap peas, carrots, onion, and chicken sautéed in a light brown garlic sauce. The server asked how spicy I wanted it and she suggested "medium" would be good if I like spicy food. I do, so I agreed to medium. My boyfriend ordered his rice extra spicy. I was scared for him.

The food came out less than 10 minutes later. It looked and smelled delicious. There was a lot of the liquid sauce on my dish so it was hard to scoop up the noodles. The food was spicy! It left my lips and tongue burning. My boyfriend said his was "dragon spitting fire" hot, but I couldn't try it since he got his with beef. Even though the food was spicy, we both really liked it. The server came back to check on us and she was glad that we liked our food. I asked her about the spiciness and she explained that it was dried, ground chili peppers that made it so hot. She said a lot of Thai food is spicy. She didn't seem to have time to talk so I didn't ask her any more questions.

The meal was good and the experience was new and exciting. I'm glad we went there and we both decided that we would go back again. After leaving, we went to get ice cream to cool off our mouths. It was a great date night.

KPL Event: Farm City

I've never read the book, Farm City, but after hearing the presentation about it last night by the author Novella Carpenter, I'm convinced it's something I should read before I die.

 

That's Novella above. She's an urban farmer. Novella live in Oakland California and started a farm in an abandoned lot near her apartment building. Farm City is the story of Novella expanding her farm in the middle of the ghetto by raising animals for meat.

 

Novella studied under Michael Pollan, the author of Omnivore's Dilemma (one of the books we looked at in class). Another book we looked at was featured in KPL's Read Together 2014 event as well - The American Way of Eating, the book I chose to read. I can't believe how perfect the timing was for this class and this KPL series of events!

 

Farm City describes a nearly perfect way of how an omnivore should eat and live. When Novella came on to the stage, the first tings I thought of her was: HIPPY!! She wasn't extremely well put together, but she looked comfortable. Her hair was long and pulled back. She wore orange, cork-bottomed clogs that matched her oversized orange sweater. She looked like a lady that cared little about what others thought of her appearance, and I can totally respect that.

 

Novella is a very funny lady. She's very crass and has a straight forward, no questions about it sense of humor. Novella talked about her urban farm called, "Ghosttown Farm" where she grows or raises nearly all of the food she needs to eat. Novella read a couple of passages from her book that described her experiences with getting her first meat birds. She bought turkeys, ducks, and chickens to raise for meat. She later raised rabbits and pigs as well. Novella did not spare any details when it came to talking about slaughtering the pigs for meat and using every part of them to make some kind of food. "We boiled down the hog heads to make bologna. Like head cheese. It was so delicious."

 

Novella talked about her interest in bee keeping to harvest honey. She sells it at farmers' markets in her town. She also raised goats for their milk and used that to make cheeses.

 

Novella is living the lifestyle of the perfect omnivore. She eats meats and plants as much as she wants, and she knows it's all healthy because she grew or raised them herself. I am amazed at this concept. She talked about ways she used her surrounding to help sustain her farm. She dumpster dives at a local Chinese restaurant to get the food for her pigs and birds. She finds and reuses wood to build structures for the animals to live in. She is a full blown farmer right in the middle of the ghetto.

 

I admire what Novella is doing and I'm glad she wrote a book to spread the word about it. Something that struck me was said after a question was asked about growing your own food. Novella said, "You know, we all need to learn how to do this. If the world were ending, I could only feed the people around me for like 5 minutes. What will we do then? Everyone needs to learn how to grow their own food so we can all be empowered. We should all be able to be self sufficient."  

My Religion / Food Tradition

I loved Lexie's presentation about Judaism and food. I never realized how much food is incorporated into that religion. I'm very glad she shared her stories. It was very enlightening.

I grew up in a household that called themselves Christians but we never really went to church. I knew the very basic ideas about Jesus and what it meant to be a Christian, but I never felt comfortable talking about my beliefs because I didn't know exactly what they were. My family didn't talk much about God or religion unless someone was dying or people of other religions were doing crazy things. I was uneducated and confused about religion and didn't really have anyone around to ask the questions I was wondering.

In school, some of my friends talked about going to youth group or getting baptized, and I always stood silent. I felt ashamed for not regularly practicing my faith (I didn't exactly know what that faith even was). I felt judged when I told people that I didn't go to church or had never read a bible. These are things that real Christians did. Was I not a real Christian? I didn't really want to be anything different, but I didn't know how to be a Christian either. I never had family members that were dedicated to going to church or reading the bible. My great grandma taught us to say our prayers before bed which I'll never forget:

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. (And I added in these next few lines myself) God, help my family and my friends. Keep me safe from harm. Leave the good dreams in and the bad dreams out. Let tomorrow be better than today. Thank you for my many blessings. In Jesus's name, Amen."

Other than my prayers at night, I only really prayed when I was really scared or when I found out someone was hurt, in trouble, or dying. I'm pretty sure the rest of my family prayed only during those times or when money was short, which was often.

As a child, religion was a very confusing and unfulfilling thing for me. As an adult, I still don't know exactly what I believe. I believe there is a greater power somewhere. I believe there is a reason for the world and our existence. I believe in destiny and I believe that some things are just out of our control. I was raised to believe in Heaven and in Hell but as I think more about this, I wonder if these terms were created to scare people. Or to give people something to look forward to if they lived a good life? I believe in these ideas enough that I'm afraid to not believe in them. What if Heaven and Hell do exist and I'm sent to Hell simply because I don't believe in them enough? What if this questioning blog post is revealing my doubts about religion and I'm damned for eternity because of it. I don't like feeling this way and it's unfortunate that there has to be so much pressure to have a religion, believe in it fully, practice it daily, recruit others, and know all the ins and outs of it. I don't know much about Christianity but I know much less about the other religions that exist in this world, so I feel that it's my most reasonable option.

Wow, where was I going with that? Basically, I don't have enough of a religious background to say that I have any food traditions that mean something to my family's religious history. I do, however, have many food traditions. We make deviled eggs for almost every major holiday. My sister and I argue about who will be making them each time and battle about whose turn out the best. My MawMaw makes her famous potato salad for all of our major family events. My mom makes some of the best cornbread dressing known to man and brings it to every Christmas and Thanksgiving feast.

That's about it. I love food and especially love celebrating with it during holidays or special occasions. I loved learning about how Lexie's family values food and thinks about it differently than I do each and everyday (like only being able to eat Kosher). They also have special food traditions for holidays. Maybe one day I'll be able to say I have those too, but for now, religion and food aren't really connected for me.

Global Warming

Global Warming.

It's a topic that's flooded the headlines for over a decade. The term has been tossed around so many times that many people have doubted its severity or validity, and even further, lost interest in the topic all together. To be honest, I was someone who swept the idea of global warming under the rug.
There were too many differing opinions. It was too controversial. I didn't know who or what to believe and I didn't understand half of what I read or heard. I tried to understand, but I was young and uneducated. I tried to make sense of the information given to me, but I wasn't sure how much of what I was reading or hearing I should trust. I gave up on trying to figure out global warming. "Someone else can deal with it," I thought, "It's not like I can do anything about it anyway."

Many of my family members disagreed with the idea of global warming, saying it was just made up to scare people or make certain people earn more money. I went along with their statements because I didn't know any better. There were scientists that were providing evidence against the reality of global warming. They said the earth experiences periods of heating and cooling all this time, that this situation is no different and nothing to be concerned about. I believed that was enough to convince me.

I'm older now. I'm more educated and have the ability to look at evidence and decided what to believe or not to believe. I'm less easily swayed by opinion and persuasion. I no longer agree with someone just because I like that person or because they're someone I'm related to. I know longer assume a statement is correct simply because it came from the mouth of a "scientist." I have my own opinions and I have the ability to base those opinions on facts and hard evidence. After the presentation on Monday, I believe I was provided with enough real, specific data and evidence to form an educated opinion on global warming.

It's a real problem and it needs to be addressed now. Global warming will have negative effects on agriculture and the sustainability of the planet. The earth could increase 2-5 degrees Celsius by 2100. This would cause a tremendous amount of problems.

Burning fossil fuels and deforestation are the main causes of global warming. The solutions to this problem are somewhat simple. The technologies are developed and available for use. Why are they not being used? Why are they not being used? WHY ARE THEY NOT BEING USED? This question rang through my mind when the professor talked about solar and wind powered energy sources. If these technologies are available are proven to be able to provide us with more than enough energy to sustain us, WHY IN THE HELL ARE THEY NOT BEING USED?

I don't have a real answer to this question, but I have an idea. Greed. The people in charge of making these decisions are being persuaded by fossil fuel burning, tree-slashing, smoke puffing, animal killing, pocket stuffing jerks who keep their own interests at large with campaign dollars and sponsorships. The representatives chosen to protect us and vote in our honor is being swayed by money. It all comes down to money, after all.

"Farmed and Dangerous"

Chipotle is in the midst of creating an online series focused around the horrors of the food industry, especially in relation to the infiltration of petroleum and other harmful chemicals into the food we eat.


"'They wanted something that could be scripted and fun but at the same time deal with serious issues and help drive people to Chipotle,' said Piper. 'We cracked this idea in an early meeting, wrote a 30-minute pilot, did a reading for them, and they fell in love with it.'"


They came up with the webseries called "Farmed and Dangerous." It's about a big, heartless corporation that has created a food pellet for cows that's made of petroleum. The petroleum pellet causes a cow to explode and the footage leaks onto the internet. The head of the company, called "Animoil," is concerned because he doesn't want this bad publicity to decrease profitability or raise awareness to the dangers of his product.


This idea is absolutely great. I think it brings attention to the realities of the food industry and will appeal to people through satire.

Five Quarters of the Orange - In Review

Wow. What an interesting and surprising story this turned out to be. I started this assignment by reading the first 50+ pages of The Physiology of Taste. It was horribly dry and boring, so my group decided to switch novels. And I'm so happy about that decision.

I had a hard time getting ahold of a copy of Five Quarters of the Orange. One person in my group borrowed the copy from Waldo, so I knew that wasn't an option for me. I didn't want to wait for it to delivered from Amazon and it wasn't available for purchase in stores at Barnes and Noble. With a packed-tight schedule during the week, I decided I would go to Parchment Public Library on Saturday since I would be in town that night. I went there to discover they didn't have a copy of the book. Since I  had tickets to an event at the High School that night, I knew I would have to wait until Sunday to borrow the book from another library. Kalamazoo Public library is closed on Sundays, so Portage Public library was the one - and they had a copy! I waited until they opened at 1pm, standing anxiously at the locked doors. I walked up to the receptionist's desk to receive a library card, since I had never been there before. After providing my ID, the reception told me that since I did not live in the city of Portage, she would have to see my Kalamazoo Public library card first. I didn't have one, I had never been there either. "Oh, sorry. We have a reciprocal agreement with KPL which means that you can't have a library card here until you have a library card with them first. Sorry, you can't borrow anything today." I WAS FURIOUS! I didn't understand why that even made sense - does it? - and I didn't know how I was going to read the book. I ended up having to buy an ebook through Barnes and Nobel and reading the full novel, 335 pages, on my iPhone. I started reading at 2pm and didn't finish until after 2am. Oh, how I wish I had just selected this book from the beginning. Even with the exhausting and frustrating experience I had obtaining this text, I did actually enjoy the story. And here is what it's all about.

Framboise is the youngest of three children, to a mother who suffers from complicated "bad spells" or migraines that leave her debilitated. Framboise and her siblings, Cassis and Reine-Claude were adventurous young children. They conspired with German soldiers occupying their country after WWII. The children provided information to the soldiers regarding any actions people took that may have looked like resistance to the Germans. In return, the Germans provided the children with magazines, chocolates, chewing gum, cigarettes, and make-up, among other odd things. Framboise took a special interest to a particular soldier named Tomas. Tomas was very friendly to all of the children and had a special, charming way of relating to them easily. Boise loved him.

Framboise did whatever should could to avoid her mother. She hated her. Her mother was very distant and seemed uncaring. She used harsh words with the children and acted more as a dictator than a loving mother. The children's father died in war. The mother was forced to take over the farm and maintain the household by selling her baked goods and preserves. The mother suffered from severe migraines that left her bed-riden and sick. She sometimes wouldn't come out for days. The spells were usually prompted by the scent of oranges. Boise took advantage of this situation by placing oranges under the stove and in her mother's pillow case when she wanted her mother to go away for a while. Boise received the oranges from the soldier for information about resistors.

The mother kept an album of recipes and hand-written notes. The notes were written in a secret language created by the father. Framboise received this album after her mother's death. It wasn't until then that Framboise realized or understood all that her mother was going through.

The mother suffered with an addiction to morphine. She used the pills when she had the bad spells. Framboise's orange throughout the house gave her many migraines and the mother soon ran out of her supply of pills. She traded goods with German soldiers to receive more pills, and sometimes did other things to get her fix. Sometimes, it was revealed later on, she did these 'things' with Tomas, the soldier Boise loved.

Framboise is reading the album as an adult. She went back to her hometown after fleeing as a child. She renovated the home she grew up in that was destroyed by fire and attack. She started a small restaurant that was extremely popular. Boise is an amazing cook. Many of her recipes came from her mother's album but Boise has her own specialties as well. People all over the world come to her restaurant for the genuine experience and good food. Boise's nephew (Cassis's son) and his wife try to talk Boise into handing over the album so they can use the recipes in their restaurant across town. Boise fights against them and refuses to ever give up the album. The nephew and wife do horrible things to try to fail her business so they can get ahold of the recipes, and later, the story of Boise's mother.

Tomas drowns in the river trying to help Boise capture the legendary "Old Mother" pike she had been after for months. The children try to cover up his death, in fear of being accused themselves, by making it look like a resistor had shot him in the head. Framboise's mother, having had relations with Tomas, find out about his death and believes she may have killed him herself during one of her "bad spells." The town knew of her involvement with Tomas and her children's conspiracies with the German soldiers. After a mass execution of resistors in the town, a mob formed to attack the mother and her children. They burned the house down and the four of them barely escaped with their lives.

The mother moved away and changed her identity to start a new life on her own. The children were sent to an Aunt's home to live new lives of their own. Framboise had the urge to come back to her hometown and restored the home she grew up in. She kept her identity a secret to avoid banishment, until at the very end of the story, she revealed herself and her mother's story to a reporter.

Of course, there are many details included in this story that play a significant role in its overall meaning and theme, but I tried to create as brief of a summary as possible. The idea of food used to manipulate, bribe, and hurt people is a theme that catches my attention especially.

To be continued...

I couldn't stand to read any more from The Physiology of Taste so I decided Monday night to pursue reading a different novel, Five Quarters of the Orange.

Today, I intended on borrowing the book from the library to get started on the reading. However, after working from 7:30 am until 6 pm and then heading directly from work in Mattawan to the conference center in Lawrence for a two and a half hour training on Infant & Toddler development that lasted until 9 pm, I literally had no time left in the day to check out the book.

So, I've decided, I will do a summary of what I can collect from online sources about Five Quarters of the Orange until I can find the book tomorrow sometime in between classes. At that point, I will read as much as humanly possible within the next couple of days to catch up to the amount of reading everyone else has done.

Here's a summary from Amazon.com:
"When Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous woman they hold responsible for a tragedy during the German occupation years ago. But the past and present are inextricably entwined, particularly in a scrapbook of recipes and memories that Framboise has inherited from her mother. And soon Framboise will realize that the journal also contains the key to the tragedy that indelibly marked that summer of her ninth year..."

This novel sounds interesting to me because I've always been very interested in WWII related stories. I'm not much of a history buff. I dislike talking about wars, kings, and colonization. However I enjoy learning about the personal, psychological, social, human perspective during times of great importance in history. The era of WWII is a time that sparks my interest  so much because there are so many emotions that are tied to this war. I love hearing the stories of the people affected during this time and trying to get a glimpse of their life during those tragic years. I'm extremely intrigued by this type of information.

I also have a huge appreciation for recipes - especially old ones! I love cooking and baking. Some of my most favorite gifts have been cookbooks filled with recipes of all types. I like the idea of incorporating the recipes into a novel. I'm excited to find out how those tie in and I'm also curious about what types of foods were described in those recipes!

A very interesting paragraph about the book came directly from the author's website :

"Five Quarters, like Chocolat and Blackberry Wine, is a story about food as a metaphor for change, but in this case the transformation is not always benign. As a child Framboise deliberately torments her mother with the scent of the orange which brings on her migraines - food here is used as a weapon rather than an agent of kindness. It is only much later in her life that Framboise is able to understand her mother and to forgive her, and at the same time forgive herself. Food continues to be a source of pleasure, but here it is far from simple; it is politicized by the fact that much of it is in short supply; it becomes a means of bartering and blackmail, both during the war and in the present day; it becomes an expression of style (much to the elderly Framboise's disgust); a gateway into the past, a means of self-assertion and finally, the agent of a long-delayed reconciliation between mothers and daughters."

Food, as a weapon, it sounds unheard of but is entirely real, just as this scenario describes. Food shortage and inequality - topics we've talked about many times during class.

I'm very intrigued by the ideas shared about this novel. I can't wait to dive into it. I'm positive that it will be much better than my first pick of novel...phew!