Hanging on

 Almost 6 months ago to the day, cold winds blew outside my window, as the woodstove kept us warm and dry inside. My computer screen was lit with hope of a summer day, waking up on top of a mountain in a lean-to. I booked a weekend at Coolidge State Park in Plymouth Vermont. There I would be climbing out of my sleeping bag, joints sore from sleeping on a harder than I am used to surface. I start a fire, the Coleman coffee pot on the fire. I wait for that blissful sound of the coffee bubbling up the funnel into the percolator top. The scent is amazing. The sun filtered through the fog. It’s going to be a great day. I want to remember this feeling of the morning air, the smell of the coffee perking on the fire, and eventually breakfast cooking. I want to remember the birds chirping happily that it is summer and that it is a beautiful day.

Somewhere in a parallel universe that we call reality, we are staring down the barrel of a miserable forecast. With it raining every day during the middle of the week I just knew we had to be safe by the time the weekend arrived. Those were odds that we’re not going to happen, however. Bringing up the weather channel I can clearly see that as far as the forecast goes the skies are turbulent with lots of what meteorologists describe as beneficial rain.

 As I think of the things that I need to pack for this weekend and how much extra work it is to tent camp, everything inside of me says to cancel. But is that what I really want? It’s not like if I stayed home I could get a bunch of the chores done that I want to knock off the list.

I know from experience that it is a weekend like this that is more likely to stick intensely to my memory as the years go by. It is a firing of all the senses to hear rain on the rooftop of the leanto or to fight a smoky fire. What really constitutes recreation? Is it doing something beyond your routine? Is it blue skies and perfect weather? Is it struggling for basic comfort? I honestly don’t think I really know the answer to this. What relaxation, regeneration, or discovery awaits on a weekend when you put yourself closer to the elements that remind us that we are very small, and it’s not really all about us.

I have canceled camping weekends in the past in the promise of terrible weather on the way, only to see one of the most beautiful weather weekends there could be. I imagine my appreciation for those trips would have been spectacular had I stuck with it. 

To cancel would be a mistake. Foil packet meals, keeping warm and dry when the elements suggest otherwise. Being out in nature and really taking in what summer is, wet or dry is what we really need as humans. Our manufactured version of comfort is irrelevant. After all, look at where it has gotten us. As a species, healthwise, we are breaking down and falling apart. I am all too aware that this is because we are removing the natural elements from how we live.

Back in 2016, we camped with our family at Green River State Park in northern Vermont. We canoed out to an island campsite, that after we spent three days there, my niece nicknamed “Hell Island” after noticing that the rain and the wind seemed much more intense than the other sites a quarter mile away. The day we arrived it was beautiful, but after breakfast the second day the skies turned dark and it began to rain and the wind was intense. It had been in the 80s but the temperatures were now falling. I have RA, it does not do well with dropping barometric pressure and cold damp settings. As the second day progressed it got even more intense and the rain poured out of the sky. This has been difficult for me because I spent a lot of years in the military on muddy rainy 40° rifle ranges. I think you get your fill of this in your life and you just don’t wanna do it anymore.

That night the rain never stopped pounding on the tent that my family and I slept in. The wind blew hard all night. We woke up on day three with the ground just absolutely saturated, 51°. All of my extended family members canoed over to our hell island for breakfast. Somehow we managed to get a fire going cooked a lot of food and had a great time spending time together. I had this incredible revelation during this breakfast. My auto-immune condition should’ve made me absolutely miserable, barely mobile. I should’ve been in pain more than normal. I live in pain so the expectation was that it would be even more intense in this miserable weather. But it was the opposite. For the first time in years, I was not in pain. I felt strong and powerful. Something about getting down in the dirt and being a part of it was very healing. It was on this day that I gained a serious understanding and appreciation for the power of being in the natural elements.

So what about canceling? Not me. Well, it’s probably going to be one of those no way but the hard way situation’s, I am sure that this will not be a watered-down (sorry) type of camping experience. This is real life.

The silver halide forest

 Lately, I have been developing film that has been sitting for approximately 20 years. It was never our intention to wait so long. This is a great risk because film’s life quality expectancy is so much less than 2 decades. After researching online for the best option, I determined that Walmart development still seems to be my best option. Even so, there has been close to a four-week turn around on when my photos arrive from the drop date. Every roll deposited for processing feels like a piece of myself is lost, even though I have no idea what is on these rolls.

These rolls were taken at a time when we were in the transitional period of moving from analog photography to digital. The progression of resolution was slow. Somehow, with time marching on, some of the most substantive memory capturing was erased from our collective family memory.

So far, this round of developing has been from the 2003-2004 timeline. Liam’s first 2 years. The depth of the amazing life we were living back then is now coming to life with the arrival of every new set of developed prints.

There is an anomaly I have discovered with this exercise. Scenic photos, photos of butterflies or goats for instance no longer seem as important when it has taken two decades to develop a roll of film. How could we have known this?

I am doing my best to keep the momentum going by taking one roll to be processed each week. Back in 2018, I started doing the same thing. Back then it was a two-week turnaround. Currently, I have 2 rolls in process and 13 to go. I know that great treasures await as I cling to the precipice of hope that these all make it safely through. 

The odyssey of chaos

 In the last couple of years, I have learned that I thrive on disaster. The more chaotic a situation, the more in my element I am. This is where my love of contingency was born. I realize that just saying these words may seem wrong or off-center. It is nothing so weird. I was raised at a time when it took serious creativity to get by abundant limitations. I am so thankful because even though I say that there were limitations, there were also people who provided solutions to keep me and my family safe.

Many of the survival skills in life that I learned, I learned from people around me and developed the mindset that consistently worked out better ways to solve everyday problems. In doing so, solving problems monetarily was erased from the manual. I subconsciously removed that as an option and as you might guess, there are an infinite number of possibilities.

So, yes.  Most of the chaos was an implied threat to daily life. Eviction, the loss of a couple of refrigerators, two years without a car, loss of income, minimum wage, things that many families endured. Although my Mom did a very good job making sure my sisters and I still could be children, I could feel the intensity of the struggle and developed my contingent mindset.

It is pretty amazing how being raised this way can mold all the decisions you make on a daily basis for decades to come. There is a cavalier sort of attitude that as the world becomes more materialistic and disposable, I was out to smite it, throughout the course of my life.

 There are so many interesting side effects that come with this ability. I’ve created the demand within myself to expect creativity in almost every decision no matter how great or small. I am fascinated at how it is actually developed into my running into a task and expect that I will fully deploy the assembly, execution, and delivery, every single time. I have even detected this type of creativity in my sons. Obviously, that comes from learning it from me as opposed to it being born out of necessity. But this is something I certainly want to be careful

In two days, I am starting our second camping trip of the season. This one will be without a camper and upon a very rural mountain. The regular method that I have of doing meals, which is bringing a pile of food and then creating something is a headache. I am pleased right now that I can perceive this as a mess. It means I am understanding my approach to things more than I ever have before. So instead of going on my typical creative and complex path, I have decided that I’m going to put some serious forethought and preparation into all meals. Because this is such a primitive camping experience, I’m going to do my best to build a bunch of parchment and foil packets with delicious food in them. Metaphorically this is huge!

I think somewhere along the way my demand for creativity in finding solutions somehow translated into choosing complex methods. I have always joked that for me it was, “no way but the hard way“. Really, the foil packets are not the only thing that I’ve been doing this with. So many small decisions when compared to the weeks, months, and years of your life, add up to significant differences. So yes, the great experiment continues. You might say that this is not far of a departure from other ideas that I regularly deploy, and you’re right. But if the last couple of years have taught me anything, a worthy question to ask before taking on an effort is: “What is the return on investment of this effort?“ Basically, is this worth spending time on?

So, I look forward to this weekend. Looking forward to not having to create things on the spot. I look forward to freeing my mind space to enjoy the moment opening the cooler and placing that foil packet in the coals and not having to perform, which is what the alternate feels like sometimes. Here is freedom.

The pressure is on

 What happens after one writes an entry in a blog for 7 days in a row? The inclination is to pull over to the side of the road. To reflect. To analyze what just happened. But then I remember my thought process from 7 days ago. I was asking, why can’t I be more consistent in writing? It was then I knew pulling over was not the answer.  This thing has a second gear and it is time to use it. 

There is a bigger picture here too. Too many times when it comes to cooking I have done this symbolic pulling over to the side of the road. I will devalue my abilities before I move into the next gear because I get stuck in my own head and allow all of the obsolete traditional voices to beat me down into uncertainty.

I have learned some very interesting facts recently. Before COVID-19 began, 16% of all Chinese restaurants closed permanently. This was due mostly to the generation of people running these retiring with no one able to carry on the legacy. COVID-19 did far more damage. By mid-2020, according to CNN, America saw 59 percent of its Chinese restaurants shut down.  While some of these reopened, consider all those who were somewhat close to retiring, struggling with inflation, and the extreme loss in business volume in an industry in which profit margins are narrow.

This fact was recently discussed in a podcast examining what it takes to make Chinese food as available as it used to be. The answer is not good. This is the part I forget. Chinese, well, Asian food altogether, is not easy to make.  Yes, you can follow a recipe and make Asian food. But, it is really a state of mind. An Italian, French, Mexican, or American chef cannot just whip up Asian dishes, and be in the zone that defines it. You have to live it. 

If you put me on the TV show Chopped, no matter what is in the basket, I am going to honor Asian cuisine in some way. It is who I am. Sure, I love tacos too, but please I used to live on the South Texas Gulf Coast. It comes with the territory. My Asian experience came with over two decades of hard work, wins, and yes, failures. “Gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues, and you know it doesn’t come easy” right?

All of that hard work has refined me. I am hard-pressed to find a dish out at the restaurants that I can’t make better. In fairness, I am not running a business. The economics of feeding the masses are not an issue for me at home so those ingredients that I can add more of to make my dishes robust are not practical when you are running a business. But it does tell me that culinarily, I can hang with these folks. With the massive losses to Asian food service, we need to carry on.

This means that I not only owe it to me to shift into the next gear, but I owe it to the industry. Things are different today.  The chefs without restaurants movement is getting bigger every day. I am good with this. Personally, I have been moving things around to prepare. There are great things coming and it has to be done my way. For writing, for cooking: stand by second gear.

It’s a legacy…of sorts

 I have the gift of an extremely associative memory. This is not the photographic memory that everyone talks about. That one has its own advantages. An associative memory is limitless. It is one that takes the visual, auditory, and olfactory and pegs something else to it as if it were an actual hyperlink to something unrelated.

For example, if I am driving westbound on Interstate 84 in New York State and approach the Port Jervis exit just before the Pennsylvania state line, a very detailed conversation that an old friend and I had over the cb radio decades ago rises to the surface. This is just one of a thousand examples.

My two boys have it too. About 10 years ago, my family and I were driving out to South Londonderry Vermont for a camping weekend. Chicago’s Saturday in the Park was playing on the radio. It reminded me how my friend Karen loved ice cream, and when the part of the song says, “Man selling ice cream…” she always sang that part of the song as kind of a queue meaning, “Now I want ice cream.” This conversation happened 100 feet west of the rail crossing in Chester Vermont on Route 11. TO THIS DAY, Liam will say just as we drive through this spot, “Dad, man selling ice cream.” Both boys demonstrate this unique system of memory pegs all of the time.

We often demonstrate it to each other, to show how acute it is. It is the reason why when in a conversation I can make an odd turn in the direction the conversation is going that probably will not make sense. A hazard of knowing me? I apologize to all the kindly folk who have endured this. You have to admit though, it keeps things interesting…maybe.

Associative memory is more than an anomaly it just happens to be a technique taught in Kevin Trudeau’s Mega Memory Course. I was very pleased to find this back in 1999. In this course, he teaches you to build what he calls a tree list and then when you need to remember something, you assign it to one of the memory pegs in the tree list. After a while, you develop the habit of automatically assigning everything to a peg and can remember anything. You basically create an event that has the memory peg and the item you want to remember. Doing so creates a mini-story that you cannot help but remember.

In all honesty, I have never been disciplined enough to make the habit stick. It’s ok though, I have my random, involuntary, never-know-when-it-is-going-to-strike version of associative memory. It is my legacy, or whatever you want to call it, it is mine.

The dynamics of knowing

 When you know, you cannot know where each minute hour or day can lead. I climb into the cockpit ready for the mission. Those I care about also set out on their journeys. Yes, I could stay on task, but then all I have assimilated in the past decades would mean so much less. The smart thing to do is to let them do as much of it as I possibly can, yet push like mad to get them started. Who cares what it looks like on the accomplishments at the end of the day. It is a rich life, and you know it.  It is one that reaches so far beyond what I did today. These words I need to remember.

As I contemplate this, I think back to the spring of 85. Joe Jackson, the restraint you had to maintain to just not do things for me up to the point where you could not take it anymore and just did some things, still yet, not all for me was incredible. Sometimes I am surprised at how you are still contributing to our relationship and in turn to me. 

Sometimes I lament over how much I do not get done in the endless list of things I need to do. I need to remember that the things that derail me from really getting those done are far more important. They are the things that allow me to still be learning something from my own father nearly 40 years after it happened.

The density of a moment

 There have been a few times in my life in which I noticed that in intense and dangerous moments of life in which you know that it could all stop in the next second, your senses extended to superhuman clarity and you can pull sensory information in such large volume that time itself slows into granular segments. Very similar to when you reduce a filmstrip to its individual frames of pictures. Time becomes a choppy slideshow of second after second pieces that it seems you could actually walk around the scene carefully looking at everything around you. There is something deeply alien about it too. Ironically, it is one of those fascinating exercises you do not want to duplicate.

That is the involuntary instance of this. There is another way. We grasp onto a fleeting moment that captures us at a level so deep, that we really cannot explain why. It could be a moment of eye contact, a touch, a word, a smile. It has no definition and no description. It is one moment in life that after it happens, our mind begins to unfold, looking for every molecule of it so that we can feel it more. To appreciate it more and perhaps, find even more within it by magnifying it.

For us regular people, this is the un-describable. But for one of the most creative genius of our time, he actually did it. I am talking of course of the late, great Leonard Cohen. 

Leonard transports us to this beautiful depiction of instant love. The moment happens so fast, that he replays the moment over and over in his heart and incredibly and futilely extracts all he can from something that at best was 3 seconds of his life.

Dear Heather Lyrics

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the winter
And your legs all white from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the winter
And your legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the W-I-N-T-E-R
A-N-D-Y-O-U-R Legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the W-I-N-T-E-R
A-N-D-Y-O-U-R legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

I recall hearing this song for the first time and it brought tears to my eyes and made me smile and laugh too.

If you know Leonard, his capacity for the most impacting lyrics was hard to top. This abstract departure from his usual poetic apocalypse was a wonderful surprise. By exploring the very words that describe the moment, Leonard psychs himself up to believe that his interaction with the mysterious Heather was more than those 3 seconds. By doing so, he historically augments an actual relationship with Heather. It is an admiration that will never entertain the possibility that Heather is anything but the most incredible woman to have ever lived.

Who was Heather? Maybe she was a waitress, who by the way, was not actually serving at the songwriter's table, otherwise, he would have reported an actual conversation. Maybe Heather is more of a symbol such as youth that disappeared in a flash of time.

We may never know. I recall as a child, extracting every pixel from something that caught my attention. I am thankful that Leonard happened our way. I am glad that he is, as he put it: “speaking to you (me) softly from my window in the Tower of Song.”

The awful truth

 After the storm, the shelter doors open. It has become normal to live today as though this were a different planet than we had traveled to 20-something years ago. If not for written words, how could we ever remember who we are?

Sometimes you need the 18-year-old from 40 years ago to help you get a foothold. I feel fortunate that I can still communicate with him. The contrast of what a 17 or 18-year-old needs to go through today compared to 40 years ago is like a planetary difference. 

My concern is that, as a society, we have tried to minimize emotional pain by taking away the true meaning of relationships. But the depth of the emotional attachment in relationships is just as constant as the force of gravity itself. This means once our relationship is coming to an end, the inevitable pain and desolation are still there today just like it was 40 years ago. The problem is, as a society we have tried to pretend it wasn’t there and in doing so we are making it feel like it’s only happening to that one person. It has never happened to anyone else ever before in the history of the world. In doing so, we are not there for our younger ones.

As the Crawford family was getting ready to hike Mount Katahdin in Maine in 2018, having walked 2000 miles from Georgia, they did a lot of talking about how important it was that children are familiar with discomfort. I believe this to be 1000% true. When Liam was very little, probably about 27 months old, we were camping at Donna‘s brothers. The older kids were down by a little brook that flowed through the low part of the property we were at in the woods. I was keeping him in my sites while I talked with a couple who were visiting from Connecticut. Liam was very good at sprinting. He suddenly bolted down the hill through the brush towards the stream towards the other kid's voices. I was instantly out of my chair running at my absolute full speed towards the brush and the stream where he had disappeared. As I neared the bottom of the hill I tripped. Not wanting to be slowed down by stumbling, I vaulted myself through the air almost Superman-like, parallel to the ground that was sloping below me, and caught Liam just before he fell into the water. I walked back up with Liam in my arms, to where I had been sitting at the table. The woman I’ve been talking with shook her head and looked at me. “I’m gonna tell you what, I have never seen anybody in my life move as fast as you just moved.“ It was nothing talented. For lack of a better term, I would have to quote Woody in the Toy Story movie, Who described Buzz Lightyear’s flying as simply “falling with style.“

My point is, that my life has been a series of jumping in the dark without ever knowing if there was a place to land,  yet having some blind faith that there would be. I wanted something different for my children, and in doing so it made me the classic helicopter parent. If you would ask me in my 30s if I would ever do such a thing I would’ve told you that there would be no way, yet there I was. I never realized how important it is for a child to feel discomfort. It was only after I stopped being overprotective did I noticed that my son was amazing at figuring things out. Like me, he had to experience them though. 

One of my children is very good at gleaning solid lessons from other people's experiences. As you might guess, this only goes so far. The deeper valleys of coming of age still lie in wait, like snakes on the trail ahead. It is at those moments that I wish to regress to my overprotective parent status. Old habits die hard. I have to remind myself that here, the refinement arrives. I fear that modern culture has done a major disservice in trying to erase that refinement, and in doing so has left so many people in a 15-year-old-like mentality for the rest of their lives.

This came with a particular generation, but I am not blaming them solely of course. My generation, Gen X, is responsible for that generation. What did we do? What happened from the mid-80s to the year 2000? MTV stopped playing music. The Internet happened. It would be an excellent scapegoat to blame social media but during the formidable years of millennials, It didn’t really exist until later. It makes me wish I had met the Crawfords 20 years earlier, or at least the idea of what they symbolize. Their thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail had nothing to do with suggesting that other families should do the same. It was a reminder to look at the people in your family and understand what each one of their gifts is and allow them to show each other who they are. They showed that in doing so a level of discomfort is experienced based on decisions and it strengthens them and gives them the resolve to take on challenges, to express their gifts, to succeed, to not be afraid to fail, and to live.

As a parent, I now crave balance. I really do value what I have. We all know the awful truth is that hindsight is 2020, and inevitably I can never stop the wish but I had done things better. I know I’m a good parent, don’t get me wrong. I think I am just expressing the depth of love that all good parents have when they see their children grow up so fast. It takes more than a lifetime to learn.

Notes from the campground bathrooms - Sara

The pieces of life you can catch in the conversations around a campground bathroom have always fascinated me.

 I was Listening to a mother, who has a significant Hudson River Valley accent while at the bathroom this morning. I will call her Sara. She was talking to a man she did not know out by the dishwashing station. They were talking about the cold last night. (It had been in the 30’s). She said they were in a tent. She said that hopefully someday they would be in a camper. That’s made me thankful for ours. It may be 31 years old, but it is ours, and it takes good care of us. 

Then I heard a little girl say “Mom, can we go swimming?” “Later” was the answer. Sara shook her head and said to the stranger, “She just had a winter jacket on 10 minutes ago!”

I love these moments.

Big day coming

 “The years pass by so quickly. One thing I’ve understood. I’m only learning to tell a tree from wood.” -John Lennon.  I know. Mind Games. 1973.

 

The alarm clock is going off every 10 minutes now.  Waking from working dreams of effort and change are now going by like telephone poles on the open road. My twilight struggles overnight are torn away from me and rendered useless as the real struggles become exposed in the light. I land on the ground. Pain check: 18 years - check. In the next 30 minutes, I sweep up the shattered pieces of what makes me a person who can make it to the other side of the day, and with coffee, love, and rage, I put them all together, and the day begins.

Big day coming. When I think of all of the good and bad that can funnel into a single 15 minutes, it is remarkable. Why should I be surprised? I have changed the course of my life in a split second so many times before. The next morning, I awoke in a different life each time. Today, the changes are the result of lessons learned. I am more concise. Looks like indifference, rudeness, and disinterest, but it is only the desire to speak worthwhile words, listen to worthwhile speech, and take fruitful steps.

As I glean the pluses and minuses of the lessons learned, I look for abstract solutions to the journey that is today. Sometimes I create an orchestra of harmonics around the task, other times, I rush in, guns blazing. Yes, there is a big day coming. I hope as I collectively grip all that I am in the midst of the mess that I am made of, I have learned something. 

It’s all about trajectory

 I’ve often thought of my daily existence and collective existence as random particles traveling through the void. That is certainly true. After pondering this for about seven years now, I have come to the conclusion that random particles they may be, the good news is that they are all traveling in the same direction.

Let me lose the abstract here. At the age of 57, there is an awful lot of clarity. My 28-year-old self is extremely envious of that focus. But let’s face it, there are way too many non-existent bridges leading back to 1993. So deal with it.

What I mean by this is, I know the things that I want to do and I also recognize that time is a more budgetary thing than I have ever realized. Despite this, I have my moments where I lose the fight against my 18 years of RA pain, fatigue, repercussions of hard living, and don’t make the best of every moment. But that doesn’t stop me. Like someone tied down at those times, I struggle and tear against those bindings in order to make a difference, to move forward, to make every day not look like the day before.

So where am I now? Something that has taunted me for years is that house-smashing trees in my front yard were taken down 2 1/2 weeks ago. Although I will be processing that wood with a chainsaw and a wood splitter and dealing with that for the better part of this year in some way, it is definitely a relief.

I love to cook, this is well known. After all the dust settles on personal and work projects in the first half of this year, I have really wanted to take the first steps into making my side hustle the reality in which I provide meal kits for sale, a farmers market appearance, or two, and maybe even some small catering jobs. In doing so, I see that as a family endeavor. To work with my family would be the most rewarding thing.

Sometimes it feels like I’m sort of moving further away from that. As the storm of projects pelts me like asteroids striking the hull of a spacefaring vessel, it seems that I lost the ambition to cook, which is sort of important for what I have in mind. In May of 2020, I secured my ServSafe certification, which just ran out about two weeks ago. Sorry for being whiny about this, as I know that I just need to invest some time and take the certification again. But, really? Three years gone and you (I) haven’t done anything yet?

I noticed that I navigate these days as one would in a large unfamiliar, booby-trapped library. I don’t want to make mistakes like I did last year, in which I allowed piles of dirt to steal an entire year of my life from me. This year, I want all of it to mean something. There is so much to do, and I am looking for ways to make sure that I can do those things in the most intelligent manner.

My boys have automobiles that they need help with. My own vehicle has significant maintenance needs if it is to continue. For some reason, my existence always seems to be connected to the organizational level of my garage. I know this really sounds pretty stupid, but let me tell you what, when it is chaos in there which has been most of the 22 years I have lived here, my life cannot have a true course. That needs to happen.

I also know how important it is to be in the moment. On Sunday I was outside in the woods cutting up large limbs of the ash tree. It was in the low 50s, light rain and I was trying to make the day count for getting some of the wood processed. The whole episode at times can feel like singing 999,999 bottles of beer on the wall. I know that’s silly, but I am moving forward. Then, in one moment, I was done. I was sick of standing in the rain cutting trees, sweating in my gear, just done with this task for today. The one thing I wanted to do was get cleaned up, take a ride with my wife, and do something together.

With all the things that I know that I need to do, sometimes it feels like I am writing new lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire “, but hey, I’m not special. Isn’t that everyone? For now, I think I am going to write a project map/calendar. It should allow me to take on tasks easily without wandering back and forth like a caged animal not knowing where to start. It should also allow me to see progress, should I make any. (Sorry for the cynicism, my humor can be dark.)

Moving forward that is what it is all about. I am going to do it, and I’m going to write about it. It is not for you. This is for me. Just putting things out there somehow clears the debris, and maybe, somehow the garage of mine can find order, thus causing all of the tumblers in my life to fall into place.

LEll

 

My life has changed course several times on the head of a pin. And yet I keep finding connections that are hardwired through past, present, and future. I am shaken by these. I am thankful. I am grateful. It tears my breath away from me. That number that I see every day, is always there to remind me of what I once had, of what I have ultimately lost, and what I still have. I’ve made a decision. The story I have not told here will be told. for now, I just need to remember to breathe. 

Taco Week 2023

Back in 2016, I read the book "Julie and Julia". For one whole year, Julie Powell had this themed undercurrent that was the star of every day for 365 days in a row. The book was riveting and stark, and the movie was cutesy and profitable. I wanted a quest. Her adventure was so unique. I could copycat that and choose Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking, or the Vietnam Memories cookbook. But to cook through one of those books in a year would be a significant challenge, and one I feel that I am not up to at this point with everything else that I have to do during my busy weeks. That said, Julie Powell, you were a superhero.  Sadly we lost Julie last November at the young age of 49.

In February 2021, I found a theme that I thought I could handle. I had this idea about having a taco week, its goal is to create a completely different taco every night that week. It was intense, educational, fun, delicious, and memorable. February for me can feel like I am on the International Space Station, counting the days till my return to Earth, with 18 months to go. Taco week adds a festive distraction to the long short month.

For 2023, I wanted to take it a step further.  I loved the raw learning of pulling a farmer's market or cooking for 165 people I have previously experienced. What could I do to increase the challenge? It was not hard to come up with.  Food is better when shared, so this year, I would adopt someone's family.  The family, known affectionately as the Ryba's would pick up their evening meal from my kitchen each night, and hopefully, it would be great. The meals fed five to seven people a night and produced leftovers throughout the week.

Overall Taco Week was a success. If I had to sum it up in one word, that would be “control“. With some brief moments of an off-target taste or outcome, there really was never a doubt about whether I could save it or not. Well, that’s not exactly true.  I did have one moment in which I almost threw away a sauce. I also had a batter that showed a pepperiness that never happened before. Obviously, a different brand of spice or ingredient can change the game.

The first two nights begin with using charcoal and wood chips to cook the proteins. Sunday was Taco Night 1. Carne Asada tacos. These are char-cooked marinated beef and they were cooked perfectly. What I find amazing about that is the logistics part of this. My desire to use charcoal made me have to deal with an unwelcome reality. Lately, it’s been pretty mild, and one might actually start to believe that spring was coming. But this is Vermont and it’s February, let’s not kid ourselves. So on Sunday a cold wind kicked up and made me very nervous about the idea of using a charcoal grill on my deck even if I put a fireproof mat under it. So I moved the charcoal grill to the backyard. This put the meat cooking station on a completely different floor from the rest of the preparation which is upstairs in my kitchen. 

It’s kind of funny but I was looking at my Garmin data for day one and day two on Sunday and Monday and I have 28 stair events on Sunday and 25 stair events on Monday. It is also very surprising that I could have cooked beef, actually, a lot of beef, so perfectly while having to run back and forth like I was attending 2 parties at the same time. 

Monday, taco-day 2 perplexes me. The Pollo Asado chicken is made with boneless skinless chicken thighs after a 48-hour marinade, which of course is far more forgiving than chicken breast. While this meal was a success, I am my own worst critic. Making absolutely sure I was hitting the prized 165° Fahrenheit on the poultry, I went over the temperature. I usually pull sooner and allow residual cooking to take place. It wasn’t what you could call dry in a white meat sort of way. But it could have been dialed back for sure to allow the natural juices to prevail. The flavors were right where I wanted them.

Wednesday night taco-night 3, my copycat recipe of an Applebee’s appetizer from 12 years ago was this night star. It was also the Ryba family's favorite taco of the week. I have refined and sharpened the flavors in this recipe which may only visually resemble its inspiration. Everything about those crispy chicken Asian slider tacos I have given new life to. And they came out perfectly. The wontons were fried at the precise temperature to have every single one come out perfectly golden and crunchy. The chicken was tasty and velvety. The Asian slaw was savory. The peppers and onions popped with brightness. If there was not a party going on at the Ryba's before this dish was served there certainly was afterward.

Taco-night 4 was good, although looking back on it I could actually begin to see some interesting fatigue showing. This fatigue was only in my perception of things.  Chipotle shrimp tacos with bacon lime-cilantro slaw and lime Crema. Also did roasted pork butt tacos with a creamy soy-based sauce, bacon slaw, and pickled jalapeños. The flavors were excellent. My one critique of this taco was that I was mocking pork belly with the pork butt. So I slowly roasted it at a high temperature for 30 minutes then drop back to 275 for over an hour. You can do this with pork belly with no problem and it comes out beautiful, but you cannot do this with pork butt. The pork was overcooked, yes. No one really seems to care though, evidently because it tasted so great that flavor overshadowed a tremendous amount of cooking it endured. Talk about distraction. This would have certainly taken me out at the Judges' Table.   In hindsight, were I to cook this like I was cooking Chinese Char Siu, it would have been the bomb!

Friday taco night 5. I really thought this would be my auto-pilot meal. I have made a variation of Baja fish tacos for about 18 years now. I can do it in my sleep. I made the avocado lime cilantro sauce and to my surprise, it did not taste as it should’ve. I use yogurt to substitute sour cream as sour cream can bother some people's stomachs. This time I used a different brand of yogurt and got a different outcome. For a moment I thought about starting over, then I got my head back into the right space and asked myself "How do I pull this back together"? After all, one time I accidentally used Banilla flavored yogurt and it was STILL good!

This is where you really know that you’re instincts are adapted. Add, taste, add, taste, taste, add, taste and OK, we’re back! I was so pleased with the 3.7 pounds of cod that I found in West Lebanon, it was beautiful, fresh, and firm. Seasoned, then dipped in a beer batter and deep fried. One plate in, I decided to taste, and much to my surprise, this also did not taste like I expect it to. It seemed peppery. So I added another cup of flour and started adding seasonings. This had to be completely intuitive because raw fish was in this batter, you cannot just taste and season here! 1 piece dropped into the fryer then back out, taste test, all good now! Now I have enough batter to fry 20 pounds of fish!

The Ryba’s went on their way with their dinner and I with mine. The only thing left to do for Taco Week is clean up this greasy mess. I am happy it turned out the way it did. It was fun to share. It was very educational to have deadlines, and it was amazing to see how much I have grown in ability, technique, and purpose! I love the control I had over everything and I was very surprised that my awareness of that control began fading in the final two days. Thursday I began second-guessing myself, and Friday I almost tossed 2 key ingredients and started over before I realized that I could do better, right from where I was. Don’t ask at this juncture "What did I do wrong"? Ask instead "Where do I go from here"?

Cooking for the Ryba's was a great experience.  I am grateful for them to do this adventure and to be starkly honest about everything. The connection you can have with the people you are sharing your cooking with is fantastic.  In Korea, there is great respect and honor that goes into sharing a meal together.  When a Korean host has invited you to a meal, upon arrival, it is customary to tell the host, "잘 먹겠습니다 – Jal meok-ge-sseum-ni-da – I will eat well".  It is a respectful statement that says, "I appreciate the effort you have put into preparing this meal, I will have a wonderful meal because of you."  It is times like this, that you can really understand that connection.

What will there be for future challenges?  Who knows.  But, there are many other months in the year that could use a little something extra.

An Unexpected Culinary Journey

 It was an unexpected and unpredictable journey. For a guy who could cook less than a dozen things for the first half of my adult life, I discovered a wonderful gift. My cooking heroes have changed over the years. It makes sense. My launching point was the training wheels-like safety of the 20-year-ago Food Network. Chefs like Rachael Ray, George Stella, Guy Fieri, and Tyler Florence? As I look back on this I cannot help but feel a wave of embarrassment. But this was the road that got me to where I am today, even though I’m not exactly quite sure where that is, although it is becoming obvious.

I can tell you that my cooking heroes have certainly changed. At the top of my list, are June Xie, Stephanie Cmar, Adrienne Cheatham, and Anthony Bourdain just to start with. These are not cookie-cutter chefs, and perhaps in some definitions, not chefs at all. (Had to add this as June does not like being called a chef).

15 years ago there was definitely some excitement watching shows like The Next Food Network Star. As I look back on this I realize that this was some seriously gimmicky stuff. Food Network was not interested in bringing anyone in with talent. In fact, the best I can tell their goal was to recruit some side-show with hair that looked like the result of an overnight college prank and jewelry sold in dollar discount stores back in the late 1970s. They just wanted to appease the armchair quarterbacks of the culinary television world with an odd brand of shock and awe.

These were necessary steps though. These shallow, sugar-coated, absolutely void-of-nutrition-type cooking shows actually did lead somewhere. The empty calories in the substance these shows provided made me hungry for natural talent. 

When I ate the first best meal I ever ate in a little restaurant in Kansas in 1999, it made me feel great. Not only the food but to celebrate with people, the same people I ate sand, dirt, MRE, and T-rats with 10 thousand miles away during the Gulf War! Until this happened, I had no idea such a thing existed. Food can create an atmosphere. It can make that one night you wish you could revisit for the rest of your life. I knew that the Food Network and their paint-by-numbers cooking were never going to take me any further.

 Then I discovered Bravo. Between Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, you could actually begin to see some natural talent, some real creativity, and get a taste for something that you really want to do yourself. The one thing that shines through in watching these competitions is that true culinary artist expresses themselves from their hearts with their cooking. No gimmicks, no garbage! Chefs are cooking their hearts out to further their dreams and build their creativity. Above all, I saw respect. I seriously wanted more.

In 2010, I went to culinary school. This happened not in the traditional way, but through the trailblazing audacity of Chef Jacob Burton of Stella Culinary School, amazingly then known as the “Free Culinary School Podcast.” Mr. Burton clearly broke all the rules. Exactly like one would learn at CIA, Cordon Bleu, or Johnson and Wales, he shared all of the secrets that others paid tens of thousands for in a beautiful series of some of the best and most compelling teaching I have ever known! His structure was perfect, the content clear, and you could see, then employ every single lesson because this man could teach. I consider myself very fortunate to have found this treasure.

Now on a higher plane of understanding, I saw bits and pieces of technique rising to the surface every now and then. The great but elusive realization was that a good meal comes from the heart, not from a cookbook or an online recipe. Technique was a crown jewel that I had searched for. But, like the song says, “Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues” and this is so true of technique. So many fails! But so much to learn. At first, even my capacity to learn was weak, but as time moved on it got better. I started making connections between what I do and how things came out or failed to come out. Yet, I was still at a 10% ratio of understanding.

Mistake, after mistake, after success, I noticed that learning came with both of them, and dare I say, there was more to learn from the failed attempt than there was from the successful one! It still took me a long time to grasp what that really meant for me.  Today though, I get it.  Every attempt at cooking is a success no matter what the outcome.  Journaling wins and losses really helps me get the most out of the lessons that await me.

My cooking heroes of today edify what I have learned, that cooking is not this facade. A 1950's family TV show, displaying impossible virtue and simple outcome. My heroes are real people.  They have been overlooked because of their skin color, not taken seriously because they are not male, deal with anxiety over simple things, and magnify it in their own ways. At times, they are their own worst enemies and make no mistake, the strongest of advocates. They lead with their weakness, and because of it bring profound depth to their craft. They are beaten, injured, discouraged and so many times have not been in the winning circle despite having worked harder than all others.  But you know what?  They won't give up.  They will not stop bringing it.  Each in their own right, the injustice and frustration have fueled a fire that cannot be put out.  There is no vengeance here, only a drive to bring food out of the dark ages.  There is a lesson, for all of us.  We know who we are.

From June Xie’s superhuman-like creativity with no known barriers. From Adrienne Cheatham’s humility, courage, creativity, and strength. Stephanie Cmar’s core talent is bold and impenetrable by the factors that erode us all today. Rick Bayless’ wonderful storytelling of each meal, its origins, and the respect he conveys in bringing it to us.

Finally, Anthony Bourdain. I was going to add an adjective before his name but I realized, he was too complex for me to attempt that in two words. I heard Tony say in an interview one time about finding a successful career of blissful food and travel, that he was always figuratively watching the rearview mirror, waiting for the law to pull him over and arrest him for living a life that did not belong to him. Such a sad and beautiful sentiment that described his deep respect for all those incredible cooks, moms, dads, sisters, brothers, and the like, cooking their hearts out in places that our crybaby, sterile American collective could not muster a grilled cheese sandwich in.

Of course, there are many more people I so appreciate. Emily Kim (Manngchi), and the aforementioned Chef Jacob Burton, to name a fraction of them. This story is about change. 

There is a question I keep asking myself: “What do I want out of this?” The simple answer is, that I want a business sharing great food that I can work with my family in. I want to up the ante of the food where I live because people deserve to know. But the core reason is, that corporations are reprogramming everyone today. They are subliminally telling us all that cooking is too complicated for the average person. They tell us that it takes too much time. They tell us in a steady stream of white noise that what they make in boxes, packages, bags, and mail-order meal kits actually tastes better than if you made it in your own kitchen. IT’S A LIE!

The food network under the cloak of telling you that you can is also telling you to follow these steps and your meal with the look and taste like the one made by the warm and personable face on your screen. Of course, the meal does not turn out that way, so then, by way of advertising, they gently, relentlessly nudge you into buying their sauces, spice blends, meal kits, and whatever else they can conjure up. My friends here is the dirty little secret, your meal most likely won’t look and taste like theirs. This is not how cooking works. It takes making something over and over. You will find yourself in that recipe eventually. It will be better than on the screen too because when you find yourself in the creative process it is yours.

June Xie and Delish just parted ways. She was really the only thing keeping them afloat. Without her, they are just a recipe Pez Dispenser. She released a video on her personal YouTube channel redoing a chocolate banana cassava cake that she made the week before. Her goal was to make it again and have it turn out not as dry as it did before. A learn-from-the-experience demonstration. She headlined the thumbnail photo: “You are not a bad baker.” She highlighted how we need to do these things over and over, and in doing so, this is when we shine. I truly believe that sourdough would not be possible if only positives existed without negatives!

What do I want? I want everyone to know, that your kitchen is not so big and bad. You got this! Let’s all rise and show who we are, to ourselves, and our families at the table. Corporate processed, commercial retail food distributors think they have won, but I am telling you: we are not finished yet.

Flavor, blackouts and Memory Almost Full

Flavor, blackouts and Memory Almost Full 

Lately, I have been throwing myself into the very depths of understanding, the situational flavorings, and breaking free of using recipes. It would seem that as one chef put it, cooking from a recipe is no more than painting by numbers. I know in my heart, that my initial drive is something primal. I have to do it, I have to cook whatever that thing is that hits me like the fever. I’ve become powerless to resist. Suddenly I give in and I fall and keep falling. Then the wonderfulness happens. So, come on! I know who I am there, or at least, I’m knocking on the door. Thinking, analyzing, breathing, and tasting. Feeling the vibrations on the floor. The light breeze. It’s all there, all contributing. What it becomes is that taste that just may never happen again, and if you were here, you were here. You can never tell its story, you can never give it, sing it, or paint it. Maybe. 

I know Poppy Crum how right you are. I am talking about art. With my head in the clouds thinking and meditating, all of this tuning and acoustics of flavor. Uncle Paul is singing in my ear. At first, I did not think much of it as there has literally been a song in my head playing every nanosecond of my life. But the flavor is more than the ingredients, more than the atmosphere, the mood I am in, the season, the weather, and yes, how I will feel walking out of a restaurant on a crisp fall night, or a sweltering humid afternoon. That is a lot to be accountable for man! 

Paul’s voice, feet in the clouds, head on the ground. I realized what was playing in my head was the medley from the "Memory Almost Full" album. This was one of my favorite 21st-century McCartney compositions. The complexities of this medley are staggering. It will certainly take 1000 years to decipher Macca’s genius. 

We start with "Gratitude". I hear Paul’s voice of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s in this. The almost reconstructed musical transitions, that in another universe, and played underwater, listened to through a stethoscope against a glass wall, may be identified as something Zappa was demoing in a home studio, one night when he could not sleep. OK, maybe that’s out there, but this medley is so unprecedented, that it is taking me years to absorb. 

"Gratitude" is followed by a favorite of mine called "Vintage Clothes". It’s happy, it’s gritty, it’s got the carney element to it, and yes, I am afraid it has it all. I never want it to end, but of course, it must. But it does it in such a beautiful way, by which I mean, sort of clumsy, but in a sophisticated way. Instead of that expected climbing and heart-racing speeding around the corners of one of those coastal, California roads, that the star in the movie suddenly loses the brakes on, then arrives like Superman, landing with perfect balance, then, last note, then boom! “She came in through the bathroom window!“ Yeah, not here. In the transition from "Vintage Clothes" to "That Was Me" you might expect that "Abbey Road" and "Red Rose Speedway" interchange but instead, the instruments trip over the threshold in the doorway, and somehow pull that off perfectly! I said, clumsy, OK, but strangely it is clean, too! "That Was Me" is beautiful, hard, and driving, nothing stops it, and it declares I was here! I did it! That was me! 

I think it is a worthy pause between "That Was Me" and "Feet in the Clouds". There needs to be a division here, kind of like that very odd silence that would fill my childhood home before that first note would sound as the theme from "Perry Mason" would start playing on television. You’re in a different place now. This is a song about authority telling a young Paul. This is where he is supposed to be, but he is somewhere else. 

Why am I on this? This medley speaks to me on all of this study of what makes a successful and memorable meal. Food that is said to be made with love, not from habit or script. Something happened! I always say dining should be like snapping life out of the jaws of death! 

This medley from "Memory Almost Full" is the musical, lyrical, artisan expression of what I have been trying to wrap my head around. It is something I do, and yet I understand so little about it. My absolute need to hear the "Memory Almost Full" medley shows that my awareness of this cooking by season, weather, flavor, heart, soul, texture, atmosphere, and letting the night decide what the dish will do is an awakening giant for me. And so, dear friends, y’all need to stand back. …and I sure hope the power comes back on one of these days.