Pause for Purpose

Mark K September 2nd, 2008

I ran into my friend Tom the other day who was telling me about his trip to Ireland.  He told me that he had had a great time and the Irish were among the friendliest people he had ever met. They really seemed to enjoy chatting with and getting to know strangers and  the only thing that they required of you was that you bring good crack.  He quickly explained to me that this wasn’t a type of drug, but was a Gaelic word, (often spelled “craic”) that could loosely be defined as fun, good times, good conversation, or partying.  “How’s the crack?” or “What’s the crack?” is something like asking, “What’s up?”

Tom’s idea was that to be the beneficiary of good craic, you needed to bring something to the table – add something interesting to the conversation, have a good sense of humor, be a good listener at the same time that you share something of yourself. I’d been reading about the cafes of Paris and the Gertrude Stein’s salons to which she invited artists and writers that came to be known as the Lost Generation.  I imagined that she had similar criteria – bring your talents and an active, curious mind, and be prepared to jump into the lively conversation.

I asked Tom if being exposed to this concept of craic had changed him in any way – would he be more aware of bringing good craic to a conversation?  He said that it probably did help shift his thinking a little and if were choosing a guest list for a party, he would probably be more aware of the craic potential of each of the guests.

I don’t know if our discussion of craic really went along with how most Irish people would define the word – you can read some interesting definitions on the Urban Dictionary website – but it definitely made me think about finding, giving, participating in, and sharing some of the stuff sometime soon.

• cultural diversity , musings
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Mark K March 17th, 2008

I was walking my dog in my neighborhood today (St. Patrick’s Day) when I passed a neighbor’s house. A woman was getting out of her car to join a man and woman who were standing in front of the house. She was dressed in green from head to toe so the man said, “I guess no one is going to pinch you today!” Both of the women, who were probably in their 40’s said that today was the first time they had heard of the tradition of pinching someone on St. Patrick’s Day if they weren’t wearing green. One of them suggested that “maybe it’s a California thing.”

I was kind of amazed by this little conversation. Doesn’t everyone do the pinching thing (not to be confused with the “pinche” thing) on St. Patrick’s Day?

Tags: holiday traditions, St. Patrick's Day

• cultural diversity
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Mark K March 16th, 2008

If an Amish person created a chain letter, what would it look like?

That sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but actually this is a story of a chain letter that I don’t mind passing on because of the spirit of sharing, because I get to bake something, and because I end up with something delicious to eat.

My friend gave me the recipe along with a zip-log bag filled with the bread starter. After 10 days, I’ll end up with some delicious bread, some starter for my new batch of bread, and two bags of starter to pass on to friends.

Like the Amish tradition of barn building, this activity will build community as well as serving a practical purpose. Here are the instructions:

General:

1. Do not use a metal spoon or bowl for mixing.
2. Do not refrigerate.
3. If air gets in the bag, let it out.
4. It is normal for batter to thicken, bubble and ferment.

Instructions for each day:

1. This is the day you receive the batter, do nothing.
2. Squeeze the bag
3. Squeeze the bag
4. Squeeze the bag
5. Squeeze the bag
6. Add 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk
7. Squeeze the bag
8. Squeeze the bag
9. Squeeze the bag
10. Combine in large bowl: batter, 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk. Mix with wooden spoon or spatula. Pour 3 one-cup starters in zip-lock bags. Keep one for yourself and give the other two starters to your friends, along with instructions.

Still on day 10 – to the batter remaining in the bowl, add:

• one cup oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 large box instant vanilla pudding
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Mix. Pour into 2 large, well greased and sugared (mix cinnamon and sugar) loaf pans. You can sprinkle some extra cinnamon and sugar on top. Bake at 325 for an hour (maybe less, crust burns easily). Optional: add 1 cup chopped pecans and/or 1/2 cup cup raisins. May also use chocolate pudding instead of vanilla or 2 small lemon puddings and 1 (or more) tablespoons of poppy seeds.

Enjoy!

Tags: Amish friendship bread recipe, bread, bread recipe, bread starter, chain letter

• bread baking , cultural diversity
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Mark K February 26th, 2008

A few months ago, my son Joe trained to be a line cook at our restaurant. His job was to prepare the various salads and to have them ready at the precise moment when the other line cooks had their appetizers and main courses ready. If one person is slow, the food gets cold, the other cooks grumble, the customer becomes impatient, and the waiter’s tip suffers. It’s a lot of pressure to put on a teenager who is just developing his knife skills and ability to multi-task.

To make matters worse, the culture of the kitchen in a busy restaurant can be a bit rough-and-tumble. At its worse, the vocabulary and style of communication falls somewhere between longshoreman and carney. To complicate matters even more, this colorful exchange is in two languages. The hispanics speak Spanish with one another, those born in the US speak English and then there’s a sort of “restaurant Spanglish” that’s used between the two groups.

Those of us who studied Spanish in school and can understand the “textbook perfect” diction of our high school Spanish teacher don’t stand a chance. There is one word that stands out above all the rest, an all-purpose adjective that crops up in just about every sentence – “pinche” (pronounced peen-chay).

Now, depending on who you ask, this is either a harmless little filler word, or a foul curse. It seems to depend on where you are from. In many Spanish-speaking countries it means something like “insignificant”, “lousy”, “miserable” or “worthless”. It might be used in this context to emphasize the dirtiness of “los pinches platos” or the difficulty of “este pinche trabajo”.

In seems that in Mexico, however, the word has a harsher connotation. The website pinche.com (I kid you not) defines it thusly

In Mexico, “pinche!” is an all-purpose insult enhancer, which is roughly equivalent to the use of “f***ing” in English.

So, this is a long-winded explanation for the purpose of explaining to you how my son Joe became known as “Pinche Yoey”, as in “Pinche Yoey, hurry up and finish the pinche salad so we can serve this pinche food!”

Sure, the older, more experienced cooks were being a little rough on him, but it was also a sign of acceptance that they were teasing him and hanging a nickname on him.

But then I bought a new dictionary for my Spanish class and was checking to see how thorough it was – did it even contain colloquial expressions? I looked up “pinche” and there was the expected definition, “rotten”. But then, there was a second, unexpected definition – “cook’s assistant”!

This changed everything! Joe’s coworkers weren’t teasing or demeaning him – they were calling him by his rightful title! It was a sign of respect!

As it turns out, what they had been saying to him all along was, “Esteemed colleague and assistant chef Joe, please, at your convenience but with a hint of urgency, complete your salad which, next to your impressive talents might seem insignificant, but nevertheless needs to join our comparatively modest dishes.”

Who knew that the meaning of one pinche word could change an entire pinche conversation!

Tags: pinche, restaurant humor, Spanish slang, workplace humor

• cultural diversity , favorite posts
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Mark K February 25th, 2008

Are there some countries with happier citizens than others? Is happiness something that comes from within, or something you can find by traveling to a happy place? Columnist Thomas Swick asked these questions in a recent article. He describes a new book called The Geography of Bliss, in which author Eric Weiner describes his travels around in search of the happiest countries.

It’s hard to draw any easy conclusions from his findings. The United States, home of the happy hour, the happy ending and the smiley face, did not rate particularly high on the happiness scale, nor did Holland where people are often drawn in the pursuit of pleasure. He found that a fairly wealthy country, Switzerland, and a poor one, Bhutan, had happy populations perhaps due to the beauty of nature there. Not surprisingly, Russia was found to be a somewhat unhappy place, but Iceland – with it’s six months of cold and darkness was actually a fairly happy country.

Weiner points out that Americans, more than people from other countries, tend to believe that they can find happiness by traveling or even moving to another (happier) place. This makes sense, since the United States was populated by people who emigrated here from other lands in the pursuit of happiness.

I have always thought that Americans were known for traveling and that it was a right-of-passage for young Americans to take a journey with a backpack throughout Europe or some other part of the globe. Maybe things have changed with the weakening of the dollar and the fearfulness brought on by 9/11. In his blog Where the Hell is Matt? the author wanders around the world and films himself doing a little dance in each country he visits. Despite traveling tens of thousands of miles a year, he made this observation about himself and his fellow Americans in a recent post.

I didn’t invent world travel. I’m not even particularly good at it. There are lots and lots of people out there. It’s just that very few of them are American.

He contrasts this with his take on Australians:

I have an unabashed fondness for Australians — especially as travelers. They’ve got a sensibility that makes them really good at it. They’re tough, they don’t complain, and they can manage to laugh about pretty much any situation, no matter how bleak or miserable.

Matt travels to some pretty unusual places that require an adventurous spirit. I wonder if his conclusions about Americans not being out there in large numbers are accurate. I wonder, too, what this says about the theory that Americans search for happiness through their happy feet. I’m also wondering how Australians rate on the happiness scale.

Does happiness come from within, or does it come from the places where we live or visit?

Tags: happiness, slow travel, travel

• cultural diversity , mindfulness , wandering
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Mark K January 23rd, 2008

Our friend Angela invited us to her parents’ house for Sunday supper last Sunday. Her parents both come from the town of Molfetto, in the Puglia region of Italy (near the heel of the boot) and they have a tradition of having friends and family come over for dinner each Sunday. After Mass, the mother, with the help of her sister who is visiting from Molfetto, prepared a tremendous meal of Italian regional dishes. This is what we had last Sunday:

1. fish and green onion calzone
2. “fratelli” fried calzone filled with cheese, tomatoes and herbs or with vegetables
3. assorted cheese, wine-cured salami and olives, which were harvested and cured by varous family members
4. marinated eggplant
5. fresh mozzarella cheese, hand-stretched from cheese curd
6. mozzarella cheese rolled with prosciutto and then cut into thin slices
7. grilled octopus and calimari
8. eggplant with ground turkey and marinara
9. garden salad
10. dessert – fruit and Italian almond cookies, both homemade and imported from Italy
11. drinks, including Italian coffee, lemoncello and vin santo

And this is their weekly tradition!

They also told us about “Il Fornaio” back in Molfetto. Not the Il Fornaio restaurant chain popular in the U.S., but literally “il fornaio” – the baker. Back in old times not many people owned an oven, so they would prepare their bread dough, focaccia dough, or lasagne and then take it to one of the many businesses in the city where a professional baker would bake their goods for a small charge. Angela’s mom remembers when she was a girl and her family would take the lasagne to the fornaio on the way to the beach and then pick of the finished dish on their way home. A few of these establishment are still in business in Molfetto to this day.

There is something about this coming together around food, whether at Il Fornaio or at a friend or family member’s house for a Sunday Supper that really appeals to my wife and me. We invite people over from time-to-time for Sunday Supper, but have decided to make more of an effort to keep this tradition alive – but probably not with quite this impressive of a list of handcrafted, homemade labor-and-time-intensive treats!

Tags: about this blog, Community

• cultural diversity , slowing down
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Mark K January 18th, 2008

A friend of mine grew up in Bolivia and told me about the ancient feud between Bolivia and Chile, stemming from a dispute over some coastal territory. In the 1800’s, after the two countries earned their independence from Spain, Bolivia claimed land along the Pacific Ocean and had a seaport there. There was a war involving Bolivia, Peru and Chile and eventually Chile ended up with all of Bolivia’s beachfront property. Relations between the two countries have been cool ever since.

My friend explained that children are taught this lesson in school at an early age and that her grandmother, who was born in Chile, is always quick to add “accidentally” – her Bolivian parents were only visiting Chile at the time.

My friend went on to explain that she believes that the fact that Bolivia is a land-locked country has affected the personal make-up of Bolivians – they are more shy and less worldly because they don’t have that connection with the sea and the greater world beyond. Each year they celebrate a Dia Del Mar – Day of the Sea – on which they ask once again that Chile return their coast to them. I read that they even maintain a Bolivian navy, using the ships to patrol rivers and lakes, waiting, I imagine, for the day when they might have a coastline to protect.

It made me wonder about someone living in the interior mountainous Andes region of Bolivia, far from the sea. If Bolivia had a narrow corridor of land, connecting to a seaport, would this make a subconscious difference in the way this person would perceive himself and the world, just knowing that he could travel to the sea, if he wanted to?

I have always lived in California, within a few hours, at most, from the ocean. I don’t actually go the beach very often and in fact, can go for months without seeing the ocean. I find it hard, though, to envision living in a land-locked part of the country. Just feeling the breeze from the ocean, knowing that the weather patterns almost always form over the sea and then pass over my home on their way inland, seeing the fog and smelling the nautical air – all of these things give me the feeling that I have a place to visit nearby that is open, expansive, connected to the world – if I should choose to go there.

I feel the same way about living close to San Francisco – it’s not like I’m constantly venturing into the city for the opera, museums, restaurants, or a baseball game. It’s just knowing that they are there and benefiting from the cultural sea breezes that waft north to my suburban home, remind me of the possibilities.

Tags: Bolivia, Dia del Mar

• cultural diversity , favorite posts
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Mark K November 5th, 2007

The following are some reflections on the trip that my wife and I took to France in late October. We spent three nights in Paris and then continued to a small city of Limoux, in the Languedoc region of southern France. Heidi served as the host of a culinary tour and we stayed at a small hotel, owned by a couple from California. If you’re interested in knowing more about the hotel and the tours that they offer, you can visit their website at montfaucontours.com.

Tags: Limoux, Montfaucon

• cultural diversity , wandering
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Mark K October 26th, 2007

I’m back at my favorite cafe in Limoux again today. “Un creme?” the barman asks as I walk in the door. “Oui, merci,” I respond as I head to my booth. After two days, I’m a regular!

As far as I can tell, this is the procedure for ordering a coffee:

1. Enter the cafe, being sure to greet whoever is working at the bar. It’s considered rude not to do so. “Bon jour!” for acquaintances, “Salud” for close friends.
2. Order your drink and have a seat at the bar or a table. I learned that a “grand creme” was the thing that I wanted – probably the closest thing to a latte or cappuccino. I’ve been told that the French generally only drink cafe au lait or of cafe creme in the morning and I noticed that many of my fellow customers were ordering a small, espresso-like coffee, without cream.
3. Help yourself to a newspaper from the rack to read and return when you’re finished.
4. They’ll bring your check along with the coffee.
5. Pay up on your way out. Don’t forget to say, “Merci, au revoir” on your way out or, if you want to be hip, “Ciao!”

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Mark K October 24th, 2007

I’m standing in a Laundromat in Limoux, France with my notebook resting on top of a washing machine. There’s a perfect little niche for me to stand in, and the washer-top is just the right height.

It took me awhile to figure out how to use the French washing machines, but there was a very nice English woman (there are quite a few English people who own homes in this part of Southern France) who explained how to do it. You put your coins in a machine on the wall that looks more like a change machine in an American laundromat. Then you push a button corresponding to the machine where you have loaded your clothes and the washing cycle begins. Put in more coins and select the soap, and the soap dumps into a plastic cup at the bottom of a nearby soap dispenser.

One of the few times that I ever saw a French person become unpleasant was when a French couple entered the laundromat and the husband forgot to return the plastic cup to its home in the soap dispenser before the wife purchased 40-cents worth of soap. What followed, while the soap dumped into a messy pile at the bottom of the machine, was some finger-pointing and blame-assigning using French phrases that aren’t in my limited vocabulary.

After spending a week in France, we still haven’t encountered the notorious French bad attitude or anti-American beliefs.

Peter Mayle, in his book French Lessons – Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew, retells a legend about how God created France. It seems that France’s European neighbors were jealous that France had so many outstanding qualities: The Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, mountains and fertile valleys, southern sunshine and romantic northern winters, an incredible cuisine as well as the finest wines in the world. The neighbors decided to go to God to complain. After presenting their case, God thought it over and had to agree that he had perhaps been a bit overgenerous with the part of the Earth occupied by France. And so to make up for the inequalities, God created the French. The other Europeans went home happy, feeling that justice had been served.

We had been told that when you try to speak French and do so poorly, the French will scoff and either correct you and rattle off something in incomprehensible French or shame your efforts by responding in English. I found this not to be the case at all. Although the first French words out of my mouth were usually, “Parlez-vous Francais?”, I found that the natives were polite and receptive even when I ventured to say something more ambitious.

I have two theories about why people were so polite. The first is that people tend to mirror the attitude that you bring to the interchange. Treat people decently, try to fit in with their culture, show respect and curiosity, and you will be shown respect in return.

My second theory is that people treat me differently than when I traveled through France in the 1970’s because I can now afford to stay in respectable hotels, eat at fine restaurants, and take taxi cabs, rather than lugging a backpack and spending the night in a youth hostel or even worse – sleeping on a bench in a train station waiting for the morning train. Many of the people who are so nice to me today are charging quite a few Euros for their services, which may put them in a more receptive mood.

I don’t really believe this, though. We had plenty of encounters with people in a variety of situations and they were almost always either friendly, or at the very least, civil. Like the legend of the creation of French, stereotypes about the “difficult French” make for good stories, but have very little to do with reality.

Tags: T

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