Food (August 2014) by Josh W.

Dough

 

I enjoy eating dough.  Dough or batter of any kind: bread, piecrust, cookie, biscuit, roll, scone, brownie, cake, pancake, any uncooked goodness.  Thinking about it now makes my stomach growl.  I don’t really understand my affinity for it.  It does have some nostalgia associated with it.  Helping my grandma make pies.  Or hovering while my grandma made pies is probably more accurate.  She would throw in the ingredients without measuring, mix it up and taste a little.  Add something and taste again.  I thought it was fascinating.  That she knew what to add based on taste.  She would let me taste the final product.  And I couldn’t get enough. 

 

Another memory is making sugar cookies at Christmas time with my mom and brothers.  There’s always a little bit of scrap once you cut out a cookie.  That piece can’t be wasted.  So I salvaged and savored each morsel of leftovers. 

 

Also, as a kid, we would have cinnamon rolls out of a tube each Sunday morning.  And my brother, who knew how to work the oven, would take them out early so they were still stringy and doughy.  And we would utterly destroy them.

 

So maybe my affinity for the stuff is related to home.  I’m transported home when I consume a nice chewy glob of raw dough.  And sometimes it’s nice to be home. 

Food (August 2014) by Katie

We really jumped around this summer. From Finland, to Palestine, to Nepal, to Thailand. Each destination a culinary delight. And each stop with its own vice.


In Finland it was ciders and beer. Our friends were eager to show off the lush-ness of Finland. And we obliged.


In Palestine it was shisha. I'm not normally a fan of 'sweet'. The more it tastes like smoke or just like 'burning', the more I tend to like it (I have a theory this is why I wasn't as bothered by the tear gas as Keith). But the hookah I like.


In Nepal it was fried food. Especially Josh's Didi's fried cabbage and potato cakes. Mmmm.


And in Thailand, it was the sugar. I hadn't remembered what sugar-laden menu I enjoyed in Chiang Mai. Sweet teas and coffees. Banana and corn rotti. And sugar on the garlic bread. But then again, they sprinkle salt on their strawberries.

Food (August 2014) by Josh W.

My neighbor Jackie is an amazing cook.  She teaches a cooking class every week to interested individuals.  I’ve never been.  Cooking is not one of my favorite things to do.  I’d rather just do the dishes after someone else cooks.  Jackie has cooked for many years. Her mother is Burmese while her father is Indian.  She looks Nepali.  She has lived in India, Bermuda, Australia, the UK, and now Nepal.  She garnered cooking techniques and ideas from each of these places.

 

One day Jackie made a pumpkin curry with a secret ingredient.  For a super taster it wasn’t too difficult to determine that peanut butter had been added to the mouth-watering sauce.  It was garnished with cilantro and the pumpkin pieces were pleasantly plump.  It wasn’t difficult consuming three servings.  She served it on local Basmati rice cooked fluffy and pure.  Afterwards she served a coconut custard pie with passion fruit.  It was a blend of sweet, tart, and coconuts.  It was the best meal I ate in Nepal.

Tunes (June 2014) by Josh W

This reminds me of middle school days on the bus. Woof...

Currently, my most listened to song: 

Tunes (June 2014) by Katie

Courage (May 2014) by Josh W.

“When problems overwhelm us and sadness smothers us, where do we find the will and courage to continue?  The answer may come in the caring voice of a friend, a chance encounter with a book, or from a personal faith.” –The White Stripes album Elephant “Little Acorns”

Courage is a visceral sensation, somatic and spiteful.   Many corporal words can be substituted for it: intestinal fortitude, guts, nerves, heart, balls.  It stems from the pit of your stomach, you retch it forth in spite of your situations.  Life goes on and you persist.  It’s whimsical, uncalculated, and illogical. Shirking a draw towards complacency, despair, apathy, avoidance, and self-preservation.  It’s a fire from within, a stubborn persistence to act.  Tenaciously, problems are faced head on.  There is nothing to fear, except for the seed of fear taking root and choking out courage.  But even if you are fearful, life goes on.  And the choice is to courageously plow forth or begrudgingly trudge onwards.  

Courage (May 2014) by Katie

When the sun and all its visions slips around the corner to trick the other side of the world, step out, look up, and see. Really see. We are standing in eternity. One dot, staring out at a thousand others, with more emptiness than substance between. 

When the sun returns, she draws the blue shades, and turns on the lights, to illuminate that which is immediate and close. 

Is it more fearful to be tethered to this rock, or floating in space? 

There will be a day when it ends for us. There can be no other way. A day when one generation will not beget the next; when a generation will be the last generation. 

And who can say what is worse? The horrors of that moment, or all the horrors around the world on any given day, or all days cumulated throughout time. Our time. This strange human existence. 

Both day and night, we are powerless. We are as clueless about meteors and black holes as we are about relationships and our own ambitions. 

It doesn't feel like our choice. We just have this life. And this black and blue sky. And this awareness. 

And, it seems, awareness will always have fear as its shadow

and courage in its bones.