Kimchi is Life

 As I look to the year ahead, I think of the weather. The snowy days ahead, the mud season tease, the awakening of the impossible spring, summer heat, mosquitos, cicadas, autumn that seemed to take 90 years or 90 minutes to arrive, and finally, the terror threat of November into December.

I ask myself: Culinarily, what do I wish to achieve during this year? The only thing I could say to sum up the entire composite is that the underlying theme of flavors in my rock opera of cooking would be "maximum impact with minimum effort."

In case, throughout my rambling ranting, I have not made this absolutely clear: this is what Fight4Taste is all about. I look back at the tattered calendar of the last year; some plans are memories, and some memories never materialize. You win some, you lose some. Three dear friends went down with the ship, and there was nothing I could do. 

As I contemplated being practical, I found myself in the sand, digging for treasure that I already knew was not there. I persisted, and in a couple of short circuits, my senses returned, and I seriously asked myself what I was doing. I would never need the things I was collecting. 

Sunrise and the scene is different. I see roads and trails that were not visible before last evening. Is it a dream? Will it slip away? I know what this is. The rest of the random particles have been traveling through the void. Refracted light has bounced off a particulate or two, allowing me a gracious thought or reference, but if I were to be challenged at the border by the guards demanding my credentials, I dare say it ends there.

My new rank dictates decisions, actions, and plans. I know in my heart I have earned every last bit of it. If I fail to take action, all the adventures ahead are unknown to those in the lands that these roads and trails lead to. Will I be the killer of that era? Doubt is doubt is doubt, by which I mean;

Doubt is that which causes me to pause.

Doubt is the potential destroyer of the future.

Doubt is the tool that shows others they can do anything they can dream.

You asked me where the door was. I did not even see one. That is when you told me there were three. This is just what I needed. Patiently, you repeated those words over and over until my eyes were open, and the doors began to become visible. This is where the days of weakness and tired soul must dwell. 

In the darkness, the violins struck hard like rapid-fire thunder in the rose garden. How can this exist without me? But as I stared down my own mortality, I knew I only own my version of this. The empathic marketplace has been around longer than any of us imagined. Seriously?

I consolidate, I reorganize. I get high, then I get low. I cash my chips in and count them slowly, realizing I must make every minute count. On the one hand, I need to slam things around and get it done; on the other, I also need to carefully dust the sand off broken pieces as if with a fossil brush to discover that which is sublime and leave behind the substance I will pay storage on and yet never touch again. 

I am not done yet and maybe have not even started. I told my oppressors they were in trouble, and they were not so quick to believe it. But they will know they have failed when the glass shatters and the burning steel contacts my hand with such velocity. Pain, a drain on energy, the very air around us that tells us, we cannot. But I can, and I am, and I will. There is no "no." Deal with it.

In my writing, I realize I have returned to my abstract roots. It is often designed to not name names when an actual story is being told. Today, in these words, it is more to depict the struggle I face daily dealing with wanting to do something with food and time. I have so many great ideas, and I feel they can be inspiring. I have been fighting pain for the last two decades whatever. For a year and a half, I am accompanied by the sound a ciccaidas screaming in my head 24 hours a day, so be it. 

For so much of my life, I have collected endless information. The problem is that it was all in fragments, as if partial novels were disbursed from the clouds and dropped into the land where I lived. Many are fascinating, practical, and useful; others are interesting but have little value, and others I do not understand. For the first time, pieces of this puzzle fit together. Undoubtedly, a gift from the girl who landed in the spaceship over 3 years ago guided me through my whole life and walked with me for 2 years. I never did get to thank her before she disappeared.

The clarity of my ideas is being challenged by my pain and affliction. But when the fragments start making sense, I know I can create so much and show others that they too can do anything, explore their strengths, cook for their loved ones, and not give in to the machine that seems to dictate to us as if we were drones.

Kimchi is like this. It is alive. Anyone can follow a recipe, but a successful batch is a perfect storm of life. Everything falls into place when you really understand what it is to make it and how natural forces must be achieved. Those forces allow the process to make something out of things that previously seemed unrelated. They become one, they make sense and Kimchi becomes life.

The storm is coming - I will understand it

 I have seen it in my father, late at night on a mission to cook things in ways that we or others may never have thought of before. I have seen it in my sons, the call to create something they can see and taste in their minds that they just have to plate into materialization. I am the bridge of this and man, let me tell you it is really something! I cannot ignore it.

I have often described my desire to cook and create like Eric Clapton's "Have You Ever Loved a Woman". Since 1999, food has been my Patti Boyd. She was the former wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, the woman who served as the powerful inspiration for songs like Clapton's "Layla", and "Something" by the Beatles and many more by Eric and George respectively.

I don't pretend to know much about Patti's life, other than her presence seemed to have a runaway train effect on the people mesmerized with her. Whether this was due to qualities within those persons or not, I do not know. Nonetheless, a powerful effect took place.

For me, it is like one lone raindrop falls from the sky, and I can hear it from a thousand miles away. I get up and look up at the sky. I can feel it in the air, I smell it coming in like a distant storm. Something awaits and even now, I am not sure what it will be. I know more at this point what it will not be and that is a powerful thing. Before I know it, it is pouring.

It's not just what happens now. I know that we can learn to cook almost involuntarily. We can move in harmony with cooking synching our lives with the food and having it mean something. Instead of letting it be a chore and a utility function, it can flow with ease and without effort. It can just be.

So inside my head, I am screaming, but I am not making a sound. I know I have something here, but I am still trying to create words that can describe it. 

It is February.  For the last two Februarys, I have done something called taco week. They were a lot of fun, but I am not feeling it this year. Besides, I can do taco week any month of the year that I choose, right? I do have this desire to pull off some sort of thematic event that will edify how food and life can flow together, reducing stress, not creating it.

This is where we lock the door of the barroom, turn and face the advertisers, the propagandists, and the naysayers and tell them they are about to get their butts handed to them. The slaying of people's self-esteem and confidence ends today. Unpack your knives, now.

Eighteen hours passed since I felt the drop of rain and I thought, Korean food is a flow. I needed a friend to spell it out to me though. I found Robin Ha in my bookshelf with her Cook Korean A Comic Book with Recipes cookbook on the shelf.  I have had this wonderful book for years.

Robin told how her Mom was so busy that she would produce breakfast, lunch, and dinner before Robin even got up for school as a child. As a result, she never learned to cook until she was staying with a family in Italy and the mom there showed her that anyone can cook. Robin developed a taste for international cuisine while attending college in Manhattan and then missed it after moving away. She set her focus on cooking Korean food much to the delight of her friends. When they asked her how to make this food, she could not simply do that. Koreans do not measure things and Robin was a cartoonist. So after deciphering measurements in her recipes, she created a wonderful comic book that allowed her to share her food.

It had been some time since I took this book off the shelf.  When going over the four pages of Korean pantry items I was pleased to realize, I have 95% of everything here in my pantry.  She also pointed out that Koreans eat rice and kimchi at all 3 meals and they eat whatever kind of meal they want at any time of day. There it was.

I was up and rinsing rice to put into the rice cooker (thank you Linda M.) Rice has been second nature. It never matters how much you choose to make, it cannot get messed up as long as you do the finger trick, which is placing your index finger on top of the rice, then filling the water until it reaches the first joint on your finger. Perfect every time.

I made kimchi on January 2nd and it is in this perfect place right now. Okay, so there are the two staples of a day in Korea.  Naturally, protein was next. I wanted some fast but creative.  I have studied people teaching how to remove salt and nitrates from Spam. Spam is a staple in Korea, I keep some on hand. 

During the Korean War (1950-1953) Korean families were struggling to feed their families. American soldiers, touting boxes of C-Rations (canned food served as military meals) contained what we know as Spam today. Resourceful Korean mothers and grandmothers gratefully accepted all the GIs were willing to give them. Out of this, traditional Korean recipes were created, most famously, Army Base Stew.

I slowly simmered the spam in a skillet full of water adding mirin and soy sauce towards the end. Then just before the rice was done, I pan-seared the spam and seasoned it with dark soy, rice wine vinegar. If I had not known this was spam, I would not have been able to tell. It was so wonderful. 

During this time, I did up a cold spicy celery bowl. Four very nice components of a simple and delicious brunch were born. This is not hard, but it can make your day. Shouldn't this be what food is about?

It was then I knew, the thematic mission was accepted. All meals were going to be Korean this week. As I looked forward, why couldn't next week's be from Vietnam and the week after Japan? In doing so, I wish to adapt their intelligent and holistic view of food to my existence.

My desire is to take the "what are we going to make for dinner" attitude and punch it in the face, not with aggression, but with diverse creativity.

Stay tuned. Dinner is coming.