Tales of a Female Nomad - Book Review

Travel often and live outside your country for a while, if possible.  You'll learn three things. 

1. You can live without many of the objects and comforts you feel are must-haves.
2. People want to connect with you.  They want to share what they have, even when they have little to give.  Eating together and talking are two of the most important activities we can engage in with anyone.
3. You create your own adventures. You just have to be willing to take the first step.

These are just a few points I've internalized from my reading of Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman.  I enjoyed the book tremendously. 

In her late forties, Gelman embarks on a series of travels around the world.  A successful writer of children's books, Gelman lives a very comfortable life, but something is missing.  She sells her things, and fills a backpack with the most essential items for a journey into the unknown.  She really isn't sure what she is getting into at first.  But once she goes to Mexico, and lives in a Zapotec village... she is hooked on living simply, living with and learning from different people, and experiencing the sights, sounds, and flavors of another culture.  She travels all over the world and stays for months at a time in places like Nicaragua, Israel, the Galapagos Islands, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Thailand.  She even returns often to the US between travels and stays in different places - giving her the valuable opportunity to reconnect with family and build new friendships.

Gelman's descriptions of people and places were excellent.  I felt as if I were traveling with her.  I was especially intrigued by her detailed accounts of meal preparation and sharing in these very different places.  Female Nomad and Friends - Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World, is Gelman's next book where she "pays homage to the wonders of traveling, connecting, cooking, and eating around the world".  I plan to read that one next.

I've had the opportunity to visit several different states.  I've also traveled often to Bolivia, and I've been to Spain once. (Thanks dad, for igniting the travel flame!)  I hope to have the chance someday to travel more. Maybe I'll even be lucky enough to enjoy an extended stay somewhere where I can work at an elementary school.  Traveling, eating, and teaching around the world... now that would be my dream adventure!

Buen provecho

On my desk and shelves,
in my bedroom, on my bedside table
piles of books, stacked as high
as they'll let me. These towers
built with mixed bricks,
flavors I want to taste.
Afraid I won't have enough
like a binge-eater, I read until full
never feeling like I'm done.
Quiero más.

I skip words when I speak,
I can't come up with what I want to say
but my mouth utters one, two, three disparates
until the right one comes.  
Have I overindulged?
These ideas swimming together,
sorting themselves out, do they
cause me to misspeak?
Should I watch what I read?
Or should I fill up even more,
because there's always more to be had.
No one ever watches how much I read.
They'll judge my plate, eyebrows raised,
but not my shelves.

Me sirvo más.

Hunger and Hope - Bloggers Unite

I teach elementary school in an urban setting where each of my students receives free breakfast and lunch. When lunchtime comes around and I take my kids to the cafeteria, they all of a sudden become more talkative and almost giddy.

In a line they inch up to the kitchen, where they watch as the lunch lady serves a rubbery chicken patty on a yeasty bun, or runny macaroni and cheese. The food is dropped, hurriedly slopped, on to a Styrofoam tray, often with a plastic-gloved hand. Several kids will ask for "two" of whatever is being served. They'll take a milk carton as well, checking the date as I've taught them to do, and a piece of waxy, bruised fruit that is piled up in a plastic bin.

Once they prance over to their tables, my kids unwrap they're straws and drink their milk. Then, they contemplate the food before them. YOU would not serve this food to your children. It's a tray filled with carbs and low-grade food. One day, my kids were served tater-tots (potato rounds), bread, corn, and a cookie! But most of the kids eat, quickly, they're starving. For some kids in my school, it's supposedly "the best" they'll get all day.

Today, bloggers are writing about hunger and hope. I have to think about my students. Children here in our country are hungry. They deserve good, nutritious food, fresh fruit and vegetables. Why is it that, in our country, food aid programs consist of low-grade, sub-quality left-overs?

Children in my school are hungry; they deserve better.

Healthy Meals in 10 Minutes!

I asked my husband, who is also a teacher, what he had for lunch today. He told me he scarfed down a chicken sandwich and a diet soda from KFC, while in his car, driving from one school to another.

My lunch today consisted of a can of V-8, lots of hot sauce shaken in, and a hard, sour-dough pretzel, the kind that cracks a molar. Somehow, the meal satisfied. As my mother always says. "Cuando hay hambre, no hay mal pan." (When you're hungry, there is no bad bread.)

I only had about 10 minutes to eat. The kids were indoors for recess, and my school is WAY to big to walk ALL the way to the teacher's lounge. Besides, I avoid that space (bad vibes, mean people) unless, of course, someone has brought bagels or some other kind of goodies.

There's nothing like the occasional sunshine fund-sponsored breakfast or special event in the teacher's lounge. We don't admit it, but some of us make sure to stop in, as busy and frenzied as we are, to grab a bagel, a handful of cookies, or a bunch of grapes. (Teachers neatly place these on a small paper plate, covered with a napkin, to take back to their rooms... for their lunch.)

If it wasn't for these occasional treats, many of us would not eat at lunch time. I happen to know many of my colleagues are working through their lunch, there is so much we have to do. I see many of my coworkers gulping down cold coffee, or microwave oatmeal, or kid-size yogurts and juice-boxes, while they write lesson plans, correct papers, make phone calls to parents, and supervise their students for lunch detention.

My nutritious lunches are quite varied! They have been:
a handful of dried fruit, or
a fruit cup or snack-size applesauce, or
a cup of instant cinnamon-spice microwave oatmeal, or
a handful of pretzels, or
a stale Pop-Tart, or
a spoonful of peanut butter, or
V-8 (vegetable juice) with hot sauce, or
a small bag of Cheez-It crackers.

I've grown accustomed to these fancy little meals. However, every now and then, the lunch gods look down on me, and my husband hands me my red and black insulated lunch bag as I run out of the house. When I finally get to sit down at my paper-laden, disaster of a desk, I open the bag and find a clear container, holding the most beautiful salad - romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, cheese cubes and almonds. He has also packed a plastic fork, a napkin, and a can of iced green tea.

For ten minutes, I am human again.

Diversity Book Review: Stealing Buddha's Dinner

The book title, along with the cover’s image of a little girl contemplating a pink snoball, called my attention. Bich Minh Nguyen (first name pronounced Bit) writes a memoir interweaving food as a symbol of belonging. SpaghettiOs, Pringles, and fast food were the stuff of becoming American, of fitting in. Green sticky rice cakes, pho, cha gio, and fresh fruits, were the tastes of family, of home.

Nguyen and her family escaped from Saigon in 1975 and settled in Michigan. Growing up in the 80s, in the Midwest, Nguyen’s immigrant experience was similar to that of so many deemed “different” from the host culture. She struggled to fit in, longing to be like her classmates and neighbors; she fantasized about macaroni & cheese dinners and “homemade” Toll House cookies. Nguyen, however, is comforted by the foods her grandmother continues to prepare, shrimp soups, noodles, and meticulously chopped-up vegetables. She treasures even more the fresh fruits her grandmother lovingly peels and cuts for her; solace is often found in the familiar, the natural. Throughout the story, food seems to satiate different kinds of hunger. As a girl, Nguyen needs attention and encouragement. She appeases these needs in a closet with a candy bar or a ripe pear, stolen from her grandmother’s altar to Buddha.

The foods, music, and clothing styles mentioned in Nguyen’s book were familiar to me, as I was a teen in the 80s. I could connect to the childhood desire to “eat what they eat”, the shunning of that which is familiar, and the happy return to the foods that your mom makes (or grandmother, as in Nguyen’s story). It was also interesting to note that certain foods, considered “delicacies” for some, become everyday fare for others. This is especially true now, when we can regularly enjoy exotic foods in just about any American city, and savor Cheetos, tater-tots, Cozy Shack pudding, and a can of Chef Boyardee any day in the comfort of home.

I highly recommend this book. If you connect food with life's experiences (like me!) you will especially appreciate this story. You may find that you suddenly have a craving for a Pop-Tart, or you may want to try something new and visit any one of the many Asian restaurants in your area.

Personally, I need to find me some cha gio! Looks delicious!

That thing that moms do

Can I make you French toast this morning?
My son’s eager eyes convey pleasure at the thought of
a real mom-made breakfast,
not frozen, not shaken out from a box,
nor spread between two pieces of wheat bread.
Do I have the ingredients? Let’s see…
here’s eggs, white bread,
in the cupboard the cinnamon, and near the coffee-maker
a container holding hundreds of pink packets, and lucky for us
several white Domino packets of the real stuff.
But there’s no milk in the fridge.
No problem – I’ll use half & half!
It’s the same thing, pretty much.
In fact, it’ll probably taste better.
I gather everything and get to work.
Crack open three eggs, pour in the “milk”,
shake in a bunch of cinnamon, and pour in a few sugar packets.
I do that thing that the chefs do with a fork, really fast
making sure he sees me.
He’ll have a memory of me making him French toast.
I drop a glob of butter in the pan,
and while it melts, I place the bread in to the stuff I’ve mixed,
letting it soak.
With my fork, I stab the bread and transport it across
several inches of countertop
dripping cinnamon-egg slop along the way,
and lay it in the sizzling pan.
He walks by, and I’m humming, poking at the bread with the fork,
peaking underneath to see if it’s time to turn it over.
Is that what it’s supposed to look like? we both wonder.
After a while, both sides look ready, I place the toast on a plate and
take it to the table where my son waits, smiling.
This is awesome! he says, while I watch him eat.
I’ll have a memory of him eating French toast,
that I made for him.

Breaking off a piece

It works like magic
on your insides,
the parts suppressed by adulthood,
your center, your soul,
the hideaway you keep.

It loves you -
a brief respite from daily matters
that makes you smile,
intense on your tongue,
curiously erotic,
making your eyelids flutter and
filling you sweetly,
kisses melting on your tongue
soothing every imaginable pain.

You forget
for a moment
where, what, why.
The treasure of the Amazon
has become your delicious secret.

Ha!
That’s why women I know have buried
Russel Stover in their lingerie drawer
Whitman’s in their desk
and Hershey in their handbag.

En busca de la ensalada perfecta...

I’m thinking of a salad
a big fresh green salad
with shredded leaf lettuce
big slices of red onion
and cut-up cucumbers
crumbled feta cheese chunks
bacon bits and almond slivers
and maybe something sweet like
dried cherries or raisins
some kind of creamy vinaigrette
drizzled on top, no,
lavishly and generously poured on top
with a lovely, large, crunchy-on-the-outside
soft and chewy-on-the-inside
french or italian bread
(does it make a difference?)
to push the salad around and on
to my fork, to soak up the
dressing from the plate.

En casa, siempre había ensalada con la cena. Acostumbrábamos comerla después de la comida. Primero venía la carne con arroz, o los fideos, o algún guiso. Luego, se comía la ensalada, preparada en un Pyrex amarillo, que tenía lechuga, tomates, a veces cebolla picada. Nos pasábamos la alcuza, nos echabamos aceite, vinagre, y sal (así, en ese mismo orden) y cómiamos. Yo tenía la mala costumbre de exagerar con el vinagre, quedándome con los labios blancos. Pero qué rica era esa ensalada tan sencilla.

Ahora, por el acceso que tenemos a variedades de verduras y condimentos, y el deseo de realzar el gusto, la ensalada se ha convertido en algo más complicado, a veces en una obra . ¿Quién hubiera pensado que hay miles de maneras de comer ensalada? Aún pienso que la mejor ensalada es la que hace mami. Claro está, hace falta comerse una ensalada simple, para recordar y regresar a lo básico.