Eating Brave

Here's something most people don't know about me: I'm an ethnic food poser. I make all this noise about loving a wide range of cuisines, but when it comes right down to it, I still find strange food scary.

My sweet husband, who is suspicious of all things spicy and most vegetables, makes it easy for me to look like I have a sophisticated palate by comparison. My children, unfortunately, have followed and even surpassed him in this vein, to the point where their spouses will one day curse my name because they won't eat anything happily besides macaroni and cheese and gummy bears. Jack cries if you give him chocolate.

So around my house I can pretend to be urbane and adventurous, but truthfully it only goes so far. I'll tell you, for example, that I really like Indian food. What I really like is about three Indian dishes. And I only like them because I showed up at the Indian buffet down the street from my house (because that's who I am: the kind of girl who probably likes Indian food) and proceeded to freeze at the buffet line like a deer in headlights until a chuckling old Indian woman put a bunch of stuff on my plate and made me try it. Lo and behold, it was delicious. And now I like curried chicken, chicken tikka masala, and some potato-cauliflower-pea thing. (Hard to repeat-order that last one.) That gives me enough breadth to be able to pretend that I'm a lover of Indian cuisine, and to toss my hair and roll my eyes at Mark when he asserts that he'd rather have oral surgery than go to the buffet at the end of the street.

Problematically, however, I tend to buy my own hype. This leads to such acts of folly as including "Try 5 new varieties of ethnic food" on my list of 40 things. My culinary experience runs about a mile wide and an inch deep, so finding 5 new cuisines has been a challenge. Once I come up with a prospect, I forget until I'm actually looking at a menu that I have to find dishes that don't contain tofu, green sauce, scary-sounding peppers, soy, or unfamiliar sea life, among other restrictions.

So this five cuisines thing has turned out to be more of a challenge than I'd anticipated.

I have managed to knock off three, though. Last fall my friend Sue took me to a Persian restaurant...we've covered that. All winter this task lay dormant, but in June I dragged my family to a Hungarian festival in nearby New Brunswick, NJ.
At the festival I approached a tent with some authentic-looking options. (Read: signs written in Hungarian.) I nervously bantered a little bit with the woman behind the table, but she found me not at all charming. This may be because I was so visibly out of my element. It may also have to do with the fact that she didn't speak English. Finally I pointed a sausage-looking thing, which she put between two slices of rye bread. I handed her some money, she handed me some change, and after doing the math and checking the menu, I determined that I was eating kolbasz szendvics. I have a feeling that this translates to "kielbasa sandwich," but it was at a Hungarian festival, darn it. I'm counting it as new.
Somehow it was both dry and kind of greasy, and I won't be asking for it on special occasions, but otherwise it was perfectly palatable; I'm always relieved when the unfamiliar turns out to be safe.

I made a little more progress on this front today, but that story is going to have to wait for a bit. I need to make dinner for my kids. Macaroni and cheese. :) Stay tuned.

Nail-a-thon

Today my nine-year-old daughter ran a nail salon in a thunderstorm.

This summer, Joy heard about the plight of children in Burkina Faso...children who have little access to health care and therefore fall prey to a host of tragically curable ailments. Her "Kids' Camp" (really excellent children's program that parallels our summer assignment) has focused their giving efforts this year on helping these African children.

Joy's heart (I love her heart) quickly broke for these little ones, and she decided to tackle the task of running a nail salon in our summer apartment complex, with all proceeds going to aid in medical efforts in Burkina Faso.

When she pitched the idea to me, I literally had my mouth open to say "no" before I realized I had no good reason. It sounded like an odd plan, and I knew that the provision of supplies and support would fall on me, so I nearly defaulted to a self-interested refusal. But something--probably Jesus--caught my words before they escaped, and instead of dampening her enthusiasm I gave her a little bit of direction.

We brainstormed together. What would she need? Who could help? What day and time would work best? How much should she charge?

She launched with resolve into a poster-making campaign. She recruited other nine-year-olds to aid in planning, marketing, and execution. She scouted out a location and spread the word at Camp.

And today was the day. The traffic on the way home from Camp nearly killed her, but eventually she burst from the car, scooped up her supplies, gathered her partners, and set up shop on a brick walkway beneath an overhang.

I still had some reservations about this adventure. Foremost among them: she's not exactly an expert at doing nails. I was also afraid she might not get any customers. Joy entertained no such misgivings. She was all business, scurrying around with focus and energy, making sure everything was in place.

At one point early on she turned to me with wide eyes and gasped, "MOM! We. Forgot. The. Paper. Towels."

All drama, this kid. NO idea where she gets that.

"Hmmm." I responded. "How about I grab the paper towels, then?"

"'Kay." Satisfied, she immediately returned to her post and resumed her chairwoman duties.

And despite my lack of faith, customers materialized. Little girls with pockets full of change, patiently indulgent older sisters, a handful of my very sweet mom-friends...all arrived smiling and ready to have their fingertips generously dabbed with bright colors. Tiny toes were bedecked with blue sparkles and slick neon green. Professional manicures were discarded to make way for enthusiastically applied cheap polish. And I heard my daughter over and over again, speaking with conviction about the children she was determined to help.

"They have no doctors, and no medicine, so no one can cure them when they get sick. If they get an ear infection they go deaf. We need to help them."

I managed to not actually cry.

No one even commented when the thunder rolled in. They just moved further under the cover of the overhang and kept working. For about an hour they were girly and focused and adorable and I wish I had remembered the camera. Then it was dinnertime.

On my dresser tonight sits a box with the fruit of their labor: seventeen dollars and sixty cents. Tomorrow it will go into the fund at Kids' Camp. And sometime soon, a faraway child will avoid scarring and heartache because of Joy.

Oh, how I love this little girl.

The nail salon counts toward one of my "5 charity projects with kids." But I almost don't want to count it. In fact, today's adventure almost makes me want to drop that goal altogether. It was so organic, so unforced, so heartfelt...maybe, if they're already there, I should just let God do that work in their hearts instead of pushing them.

Or maybe it isn't they who need it. Maybe it's me.

I'll leave that debate for later. For now, though, the blotchy coral polish on my fingers makes me smile, and that's enough.

Back to Breathing

So for the past two weeks I've been having my butt handed to me by a graduate-level Biblical Communication class. (Am I allowed to use the words "butt" and "Biblical" in the same sentence?) Mark and I did almost literally nothing but kid management and classwork every day since July 4th. It was exhausting, but it's done. And I have to say that it was transformational. God used it to do a lot of rooting around in my heart, digging up some ugliness that I've been ignoring (la-la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you) and avoiding.

Amazing how firmly I place my identity in things that fall totally the heck apart. I'm a smart girl, I'm a nice person, I'm an ok singer...until someone's better or nicer or I don't immediately get the grades I want, and then everything's down the tubes. When all along Jesus is offering me real life, real identity, in Himself.

So, yeah, I could go on about that for a long time. But now that our classes are over we're into the heart of our National Staff Conference, and in 5 minutes I'm headed to a seminar taught by my friend Heather about "Writing with Flair." Which means I may come back all inspired and do some more writing. Or I may just come back and change all the zillions of weak verbs I've already used in this post. (I may or may not be performing a weak-verbs version of "Jingle Bells" at this seminar, which is not on my list but possibly should be.)

Either way, I just wanted to say hello, and I've come back up for air, and I'm ready to dive back into this adventure!

Being Independent

Today we celebrated our nation's independence. As I sit in our tiny apartment and await the cacophony of the fireworks that will punctuate the day's festivities, gleeful shrieks and the staccato of firecrackers drift into our living room. Just the staccato...not the actual firecrackers. They would probably damage the furniture. Hordes of children, all hepped up on freedom and popsicles, sit outside long past their bedtimes. Not my children, though. They conked out quite a while ago.

This afternoon we participated in the annual "bike parade" here in this Campus Crusade-dominated apartment complex. Since we arrived here bikeless, however, we had to content ourselves with decorating Jack's stroller. This definitely counts as a craft (which helps me, as that item on my list has seen little progress). The fruit of our labor, completely homespun, turned out sort of bizarre and flamboyant-looking, but I liked it.



All three kids participated in the festive-making of the stroller, and all of them had a blast...until they saw the throngs gathering in the parking lot outside our door. Many other families had gone all-out, festooning their bikes and scooters with yard after yard of crepe paper, shiny ribbon, banners, and the like. Joy worked through a long moment of pause before she agreed to allow her friends to see her with us and our humble creation. I have to say, though, that I'll take home-decorated pennants with hearts and stars and oddly-shaped Transformers over yards of curly ribbon any day. They looked adorable in the parade.

Later in the evening I squeezed in one more craft-like project. (An edible craft still qualifies as a craft, right?) We spread vanilla pudding and whipped topping in a 9x13 pan and asked the kids (and two of their dearest friends) to decorate it with strawberries and blueberries. Red, white, and blue dessert.


Two more crafts down. Even with my modified goal, though--20 crafts this year instead of 40--I still have a long way to go. I may need to enlist Joy's help on this one.

One other exciting thing happened today. I ran into my smart, funny, articulate friend Heather. Heather and I haven't had overmuch opportunity to develop our two-year acquaintance yet, but I really, really like her. The fact that she teaches English at the university level would have endeared her to me all on its own, but on top of that, she WRITES. Like, actual things. And teaches others to do the same. Her latest book, How to Write with Flair, will soon make its way onto my nightstand. While I wait for its arrival, though, I've spent the last couple of days perusing her blog. Our chance meeting at the bike parade led to a tentative plan to have lunch together, and I can't wait to catch up and talk about life and God and writing.

Inspired by her exhortation to embrace prose infused with life and creativity (she likes verbs like "grapple" and "fritter"), I've actually attempted something a little bit unusual with this very blog post. The one in front of you right now. I've omitted a very common English verb...one for which writers (myself included) often settle instead of searching for the exact right word in the exact right voice. I don't know whether I got it exactly right, but I've enjoyed the exercise! It has taken a while, though. The fireworks have now come and gone, and judging by the mostly-quiet, the children have finally gone to bed. I'll soon follow.

Can you figure out what verb I've eliminated? If you took my A.P. English class in high school, you may have an advantage...most years I assigned a short essay with this same challenge.

I'll likely return to something closer to my normal written voice next time, but thank you, Heather, for raising the bar!

Fish Story

I'm back! Did you miss me? I just noticed that I managed, just barely, to miss the ENTIRE month of June. Sorry.

I have to tell you...I'm just sort of that way. Inconsistent. Things in my life tend to happen in bursts where they get a lot of attention for a while and then just lie dormant. I'm sure it is a constant source of frustration to the people who love me, and it's something I've wanted to improve upon for my whole life, but...well, here we are. I can't promise it's going to change. And it doesn't mean I don't love you. :)

Having said that, things really were nuts around here. Shortly after the 10k life devolved into a flurry centering around the end of the public school year (WOW, that was intense) and our preparations for our stay in Colorado. Which is where we are now.

We're taking seminary classes out here. I love, love, love being a student, but this first class really kicked my butt. Mark was taking it, too, and we've been working pretty much nonstop for the last two weeks. I submitted my final paper this afternoon, and now I can breathe for a couple of days until we start the next class on Monday.

I'd love to expound on the virtues of Fort Collins, Colorado, where we are staying, but if I try to do that in earnest I'll blather on forever and never get to the point of this post. So I'll just give you a couple of highlights from our trip so far...

• Favorite scenery: OK, there's no contest here, but I had to include them. We're right at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I tried to go to the end of the street and take a picture of them just now, but my crappy camera did the same thing it did with the supermoon. So here, once again, is someone else's much nicer picture of the Fort Collins landscape:

See? So pretty, right? They make me want to write poetry and buy trail mix.

• Favorite quote: Jack (2), looking at lots of new wildlife as we drive to yard sales: "Hey! I see a rabbit! Oh, wait...it's a horse."
• Most surprising personal discovery: Apparently my hair is curly. My hair, which has been pin-straight my whole life, can never, ever, ever be allowed to air-dry in New Jersey...the humidity does very bad things to it. Very bad. The other day, though, my frantic scholarly endeavors prevented me from drying my hair, and a couple of hours later I discovered that I had this beachy, wavy, not-out-of-control thing going on. Someone told me I looked "sun-kissed." (!!!) I will be experimenting and will try to photograph.

OK, enough. The real subject of this post happened a couple of days ago when our 11-person coaching group from our Biblical Interpretation class all went out to lunch together. We landed at some kind of Asian bistro (which: is it just me, or is that an odd juxtaposition?) where there was a sushi bar. I figured this was probably a sign from God that I needed to knock sushi off my list. One of the guys in our class, Joel, is half-Japanese and knows his way around the world of raw fish, so he agreed to help me do the following things:

1. Case the joint to see if it looked trustworthy. I've been told a number of times (though once would have been enough) that you can't eat sushi from a less-than-stellar establishment. He agreed, but to my secret dismay, the Asian bistro passed muster.
2. Choose what to order. Because I have NO idea. I told him that I'd let him pick for me, though I have to say, if the words "squid" or "octopus" had made an appearance, the deal would have been off.
3. Answer my many questions, all of which would likely be asked for the sole purpose of stalling once the sushi was in front of me.
   

After some deliberations, Joel told me that tuna and salmon are probably the most typical sushi choices. I ordered two pieces of tuna. And I ordered chicken teriyaki. Because I never promised I would eat a LOT of sushi.

When the tuna arrived, it looked like this.
Each piece was about three inches long, and elegantly simple in its construction: an oblong pile of white rice topped with a slab of raw fish. And it was a slab, to be sure. I had envisioned a cute little silver-dollar-sized nugget of rice wrapped in seaweed with a little piece of fish in the middle. This was...well, not that.

I took the above picture partially for you but mostly to stall. I wouldn't have gotten any meaningful photos of the event at all had it not been for my friend Pam, who sent me these pics from her phone when we got home. You can thank her. She's a lovely person.

Here's me taking the stalling picture.
See how big they look now? Am I wrong?

To the left of the pic is Joel, who has an actual sushi lunch in front of him, like a grownup who eats sophisticated food. Mark is on the other side, feeling not sorry for me.

"You know, no one is making you do this," he said.

"I want to do this."

"You don't look like you want to do this."

"It's on my list."

"You wrote the list."

"Shut up! It's on the list!" (I'm gracious and articulate when working up my nerve.)

He gave up trying to talk sense into me and returned to being supportive.

I looked at the tuna for another couple of minutes, poking it occasionally with my chopsticks. I learned about the wasabi (green pile of hot) and the pickled ginger (supposed to cleanse your palate...tastes like I imagine smelling salts might taste).

"People love this," I said at Joel.

"Yes," he confirmed.

"They eat it all the time."

"Yes."

"They eat it, and then later they decide they'd like to eat it again. On purpose."

"Yes."

I took my chopsticks and picked up one of the two piles, having been instructed that they are intended to be ONE BITE EACH. The Japanese must have very large mouths. I dipped it in the little bowl of soy sauce and held it for a moment. Then, mostly because at this point people were watching, I put it in my mouth.


My three impressions from the first five seconds:

1. It tasted fine. No fishy weirdness to speak of.
2. The texture was like...like...a cross between a roasted red pepper and a slice of bologna. Soft and wet, but firm enough that you had to actually bite through it.
3. One of these is a LOT OF FOOD to eat all at once. There was zero available space left in my mouth, which made the chewing extremely challenging. It had nowhere to go, and so I had to chomp away at it for about seven years.
   

Everyone around me was watching for my reaction, so I tried to manage a smile (though my mouth was too full to really allow it), but I don't think I really fooled anyone.
You will note that Mark is graciously not gloating.

Laughing good-naturedly at my reaction, everyone returned to their lunches and left me alone to battle my giant mouthful of marine life. I did eventually swallow it and take a long draught of Diet Coke. I even ate half of the other piece, because A) no one is the boss of whether I eat sushi, and B) I am an idiot. Then I turned to my chicken teriyaki, which has never tasted so good.

I suffered no ill effects from the experience, except that for the rest of the afternoon I was constantly aware of the presence of raw fish in my stomach.

Joel felt badly, I think, that I wasn't thrilled by my first sushi experience. There's no need for that...he was extremely helpful and patient. He suggested that maybe next time I should try something like a California roll, which I gather looks less like it has fish sunbathing on the top of it. I wasn't willing to commit at the time.

But having gotten over the hurdle of trying the thing, and now being three days removed and not having developed any frightening illnesses, I have to say it's not outside the realm of possibility. I might be brave enough to give it another shot. Anything's possible.

For now, though...check. Next.