COOKBOOK TALK TWO: TAKING TURNS

One of my favorite food related adventures was the Tuesday food exchange with my Columbian friend, Zahydee.


Every first and third Tuesday of the month, I tapped into my cache of memorized recipes and doubled up on a coordinated meal. I called Zahydee. She bounced down the sidewalk, sniffed her way through my door, down the hall, and into my kitchen. We sat down to one of my well-rehearsed spreads: Greek or Persian, sometimes Italian or Hungarian. All the time I’d spent experimenting paid off in her smile.

On the second and fourth Tuesdays, I was treated with an exotic array: Columbian empanadas, cucumber salad, and a no-holds-barred version of tripe soup quite different than the menudo I’d enjoyed in good Mexican restaurants.


Zahydee's tamales

 My favorite, by far, were the Columbian tamales. By now I’d wrapped a variety of husk-filled little logs representative of several Mexican regions. But her green bundles were new to me, each an enfolded bit of paradise.

Replacing the more familiar cornhusk with emerald green banana leaves, the steamed result delighted with uniquely flavored masa, onions, and chicken. Upon digging deeper, I found unexpected carrots and green olives.

  Though jobs inevitably took Zahydee and me to different states, ending our Tuesday swap, she gave me a parting gift I’ll be forever grateful for. She taught me how to make Columbian tamales. I couldn’t bear the thought of depriving myself of the occasional banana leaf wrapped wonder. Thank you Zahydee for teaching me one more recipe I could add to my cookbook!
-Good Cooking!  - Inkpot (AKA Karen Albright Lin)

Columbian Tamales

COOKBOOK TALK: Why I Cook in Leaves

My infatuation over the Galloping Gourmet ended abruptly once I discovered three-dimensional real-time boys.

     Latino hunk, Manuel, swept me off my middle school, size five feet.  It was on his tie-dyed bedding, surrounded by black velvet rock art and the required black lights, that I had my first…

tamales

     …tamale.

     The doctored masa with a choice of fillings steamed in cornhusk qualifies in my book as food cooked in leaves.  What’s a husk if not a glorified leaf with static cling?  I must have known I’d someday write this cookbook.  You could say I used Manuel for my tamale education.  But, he got even ten-fold using me for my social studies test answers.  Our mutual opportunism ended after a mouthwatering two weeks.

     I honed my taste for the exotic with Freshmen crush, Eric.  His Behemian father gave me smuggling tips for getting betal leaves into the US.  They are stimulants and anti flatulents (the latter, I joked, was the reason commercial importations are banned). 

betal leaves

The mildly addictive cousin of cocaine is commonly sold on the streets throughout Asia where people wrap betel nuts, lime and spices in them. 

Pate in Cabbage Leaves

A Hungarian defector helped me refine my stuffed cabbage galumpkies. At left is a later rendition, an entire cabbage stuffed with pate and served cold as an appetizer.  Later a twine-thin African American broke every food stereotype by eating only endives (sans the filling I offer up in the cookbook). 

Stuffed Endives

His anorexia made him much less appealing around meal times.  Then there was the Jewish intellect.  He liked kosher stuffed cabbages but not his mother’s corn flakes-coated gefilte fish.  He confused me with one set of dishes for dairy and one for meat, a yearly clearing of the yeast, and his inability to de-bone fish on the Sabbath. 

#

Then came first generation Christophoros, AKA Greek God.  I loved him as only a food-crazed high school girl can love.  Everything about him tantalized my senses. 

I could smell his house from a block away, like approaching the Greek Orthodox gate into heaven: garlic, onions and green peppers browning in extra-virgin olive oil, tomato and lemon juice simmering with bulgar, goat feta and something briny that turned out to be preserved grape leaves, which developed into an obsession that lasted beyond the six years we dated. 

Chris’s mother, Helena Papos, was an olive-chubby Cypriot who stood only as tall as my shoulders.  But she was a giant if measured by her pastichio and baklava.

She taught me what I needed to know to marry her son.  The path to his eternal devotion, she assured me, led right to his stomach.

No one could more skillfully incorporate kasseri cheese into bread, fold spanikopita into perfect triangles, or better teach the fine art of filling and rolling vine leaves into dolmathes.  

Dolmas

“Every girl should make dolmas,” Helena said with pinched Os and not-quite D’s. 

She instructed, “Pull the clump of leaves from the jar.  Rinse.  Flatten one out on the counter, veins up. Now add filling like this.”

I emulated.

“No, no, not enough.  You’ll starve my Christophoros to death with that pea-sized filling.”

I scooped more onto the leaf.

“Roll like this.  Like a cigar.”

I was suppose to know how cigars were rolled?

“Side near you up.  Two sides in.”

I copied her motions.

Over the next half hour, we rolled and wrapped and packed the Dolmas until we had enough to satiate all the circle dancing members of a typical Greek wedding reception.  We’d sealed the stuffed leaves, we’d sealed our friendship.

Thanks to Helena, I was hooked on cooking in Leaves.

Inky - AKA Karen Albright Lin

Teaching Through the Baltic – Copenhagen



Rosenborg Castle

I kept a journal as I visited ports, befriended people of various nationalities, and taught writing courses on sea days. My trip informed my writing. I learned a lot about people from the Baltic, an area of the world I’d never explored. True of all my trips abroad, travel exposed me to the authentic cuisines of other countries, important since I’m a food writer among other genres.

http://sistersofthequill.blogspot.com/2013/07/teaching-through-baltic-part-three-beer.html   I conquered preconceived notions while conversing with post cold war Russians and two beer-drinking, twice-our-size brothers from Amsterdam: I wiped out a few stereotypes like discovering that few Scandinavians are tall, blonde, and model beautiful--at least in the cities we visited.

Crown Jewels

I learned that people on the other side of the pond are even more politically frustrated than we are. The Brits and Danes resent high taxes, welfare run-amok, national health care, and immigration of Muslims who don’t assimilate. The Scotts resent the Brit’s control over them “for the oil” and their disparity of wealth. Every country represented on ship and shore was crushed by inflation (9 dollars for a gallon of gas).


Rosenborg Castle

 Unusual characters in life might just inspire protagonists and antagonists on the page. We found super quirky in Copenhagen. Danes have a sense of humor. Or at least Christian the IV did. He covered his insecurity and paranoia with hodgepodge décor, a slapped-together art collection, pompous attempts to wow his visitors, and a penchant for practical jokes. Though St. Petersburg’s Church of Spilled Blood had the most remarkable building exterior of the trip,  http://sistersofthequill.blogspot.com/2013/07/teaching-through-baltic-part-two.html The Rosenborg Castle had the most memorable interior. Built between 1606 and 1617 it contains peep holes in the bedroom doors, as if enemies could somehow make it past guards. He added secret tiles in the floors that allowed music to mysteriously drift up from the orchestra the king relegated to the basement, all to wow his guests. He had deceptive tapestries woven to depict himself triumphant on horseback, leading Denmark as it won battles against their neighbors; we were assured by the museum docents that they won some sea battles but never the land battles and ultimately they lost.



Unicorn Horn Chair


Envying other royals the king had minions travel about purchasing random art. They trimmed them down to fit panels in his home, creating a mosaic of unidentified works on his ceilings and walls proving him to be a snob with bad taste. He claimed his ivory throne was really made of unicorn horn. An ornate tile restroom reminded us of the wanting hygiene of the day; a hole in a wooden bench led right out to the Castle’s moat. If the King’s bad taste didn’t drive them away the stinky moat surely would have. The four corners of a long hall had different corners of the world represented.  Europe with an owl, Asia with a camel, Africa with a lion, and the Americas with a head with an arrow shot through it.

The highlight of tacky was the king’s “wet pants chair.” He asked a guest to sit in a red velvet chair, anchored him in at the arms then poured water down a custom cut hole in the back. It dripped down and wet the pants of his victim. Then to add insult to injury, when the hapless visitor stood, the chair made a farting sound, a velvet whoopee cushion. This king was a piece of work, and if the portrait of him in a long hall was any indication, he was extremely ugly, too. So ugly Wen thought the painting might even be a joke, but I doubted it since his Majesty was insecure and wouldn’t likely allow anybody to depict him in this way without chopping off a head.

As writers we sometimes go on unexpected adventures. Copenhagen was no different for us. We hopped on and climbed to the top of an open-air bus to make our way past the famous Tivoli Garden amusement park (claimed to be the most famous in the world – Disney step aside). After several minutes and the departure of other tourists, Wen noticed we were quite a ways off the map’s route. Fun sidetrack? Not really since we were going to be late for the departure of the ship if the route wasn’t as advertised. I climbed down and heard the gasp of the driver as I approached with a map and asked where we were. He didn’t realize anybody was still up top and was almost to the bus depot! So he headed to the port, huffing resentment that his day was going to be thrust back on its usual schedule; he wouldn’t get to quit for the day an hour early.



Little Mermaid

We got off before the usual port stop a short walk from the ship to see the Little Mermaid who inspired the Disney movie but had a more European fate, having lost her land-locked love after giving up her tail for him. A forlorn wisp of a girl, she was smaller than I had imagined her.
Many things in Copenhagen weren’t as I’d imagined them. I like that about travels. I like that about writing fiction. What was the most unexpected thing you ever saw or did while traveling? 

- Inkpot

Teaching Through the Baltic – Part Three – Beer in Estonia

We’d started in Southhampton, had visited Zeebrugge and its famous beer, Rostock in former E. Germany and its darker beer, Stockholm and its unmemorable beer, Helsinki and its watered-down, poor excuse for beer, and St. Petersberg--where we had no time for beer on our elaborate and expensive excursion.  I’d taught “Have a Great Story to Tell” and “Writing Your Life” to the curious and receptive who’d passed up a popular quiz game, mud therapy in the spa, a glass blowing show and the fruit and vegetable carving demo.  We were just over halfway through our two-week cruise.

If you missed earlier ports and what it was like teaching on board, feel free to visit:

 
http://sistersofthequill.blogspot.com/2013/07/teaching-my-way-through-baltic_16.html   and

http://sistersofthequill.blogspot.com/2013/07/teaching-through-baltic-part-two.html

 

As our capable captain guided us into our next port, beer didn’t come to mind.  Mistake. 

 Tallin, Estonia is a delightful sum of many quaint parts: little signs hanging above store fronts, cobblestone roads worth walking on despite the risk of twisting an ankle, ornate lamps, earth-toned vertical homes, 

arched doorways, turrets and crosses cutting the sky, cute balconies, archery practice for a price, monuments to successful struggles against neighboring countries, sidewalk cafes and an unexpected gem, The Beer House.

After roaming the town between sun showers, we slid into an outdoor bench where locals enjoyed elaborate salads and beers.  We ordered two different varieties from the huge beer-shaped menu.  16 oz each. 

Wen ordered a silky light Tallin beer; for me it was a local honey beer.  Our delicious first sips were distracted when two 300+ pound brothers who might have been twins tried to pry and struggle their way into the bench seat next door.  Finally, perhaps spotting our dismayed glances, they decided to come and scootch in next to us.  They ordered beers that had to be 1 ½ liters.  I thought, “This ought to be interesting.”  And it certainly was!  These two brothers were amusing, and our hour or so with them was one of the most memorable of the trip. 

They were frequent travelers to Estonia from Amsterdam and had raunchy tales to tell of their homeland that went beyond medicinal greens and red-light districts.  They shared a unique scoop on Estonia and Holland. 

 

Our dinky beers paled in comparison to theirs so we slid our tiny diminutive butts close to them, took up their mugs (larger than my head) and snapped photos for fun. Since the pictures were on Wen’s smart phone, he immediately emailed them to our new giant friends.

  We learned a few lessons: don’t judge a dinner neighbor by his size, open up to even the most unusual fellow travelers, and be sure to tell others about the joy of Tallin’s honey beer, a nice finish to a beautiful day in Estonia!  The best of our trip!   

   

Let's do launch! TRAIL WINDS by Janet Fogg

Hey! Where's the champagne? It's in the fridge? Okay then, it's time to launch Trail Winds, five etiological tales presented in this (very short) ebook.

From Splitwing, the first Red-winged blackbird, to HeCoYa, a massive gray coyote, in Trail Winds you'll find fanciful tales of how five natural phenomena came to be.

Trail Winds is available from numerous online ebooksellers, including Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, Smashwords, and others!

If you enjoy book trailers...


Thank you for stopping by!  I hope you enjoy Trail Winds!

Janet Fogg
Janet is also the author of Soliloquy, an award-winning historical romance, and co-author of the military history best seller, Fogg in the Cockpit.

TEACHING THROUGH THE BALTIC -- Part Two

I never would have thought I’d end up cruising through the Baltic, let alone have it be free for my husband and me.  This post is part two of my report on the experience.   If you missed the first one, it can be read here:  http://sistersofthequill.blogspot.com/2013/07/teaching-my-way-through-baltic_16.html

We’d visited London for a few days before hopping on the ship, meandered through Belgium for the beer and Rostock in former East Germany. I’d already taught “Have a Great Story to Tell?” and “Writing Your Life” to eager cruise guests. My husband and I had taken up daily Zumba, become regulars on the ballroom and pop dance floors, and had gotten used to the norovirus-restrictive dining. It was DAY SIX, time to visit Stockholm.

We saw cathedrals that all became a blur, a palace, and the building where the Nobel Prizes are awarded. Then we lucked into a prized spot to watch the changing of the guards. 

DAY SEVEN we docked in Helsinki. We had little time to do much beyond taking photos of Senate Square, the Rock Church, cathedrals, and museums. But we found time to taste their famous rye-battered tiny fish and reindeer meat accompanied by horrendous room-temp 2% local beer. From Belgium forward we’d decided try a local beer at every stop. Exploring the nooks and crannies of new cities is more fun with a bit of a buzz. Starting our search for souvenirs, we skipped over reindeer pelts Wen had eyed, figuring hometown Boulderites would sniff it out. Every thing was very expensive when converted to Euros. And many of the smaller items were made in China.

We’d barely caught our breath when we woke too early on DAY EIGHT and DAY NINE to join a large group on our VERY EXPENSIVE 2-day excursion to Russia’s St. Petersburg.  If you arrange for a visa yourself ahead of time it is $300.  If you take a $370 excursion it is tucked inside that cost.  So double that and you can see that it was the biggest cost of our trip – since frequent flyer miles got us to and from the ship in Southampton.  It was worth every penny. 

Though our guide was painfully political, bashing Germany every other step, she knew all the hot places to go and got us great spots standing before two DaVincis in the Hermitage – the largest museum collection in the world. Then there was the remarkable Church of Spilled Blood.

 

One of my favorite indoor places of the whole trip was the amber room in Catherine’s otherwise gold-gaudy baroque palace.

  In honor of that amazing room, I brought back amber souvenirs.  After all, the ubiquitous nestling dolls were mostly made in China.       

Another must-see was the Peterhof with its grand fountains overlooking the Gulf of Finland.     Looking back, that excursion was eye opening. The USSR was enemy number one when I was little, one reason we learned to file down to the basement of our schools then duck-and-cover… not only for the Missouri tornados. The Cold War made me fear all things Russian.

I no longer fear it.

I’ll continue with my writer’s journey through the Baltic in the next post.  Stay tuned!

TEACHING MY WAY THROUGH THE BALTIC

In June I had the pleasure of teaching on a cruise through the Baltic. I’m back and would love to tell you about the experience: the good, the bad and the wonderful. 

My husband, Wen, and I adjusted to the mid-June BST time zone by staying in London for a few days before taking a bus to Southampton then a taxi to the port. My special boarding letter allowed us into the VIP short line but before we could get into it, we discovered that the port personnel had no idea how to mark our bags. As a guest speaker, my state room wasn’t on the manifest. We were asked to leave them abandoned, isolated from the others. We could only hope they’d make their way onto the ship.

Once aboard, it took a trip to the guest relations desk to find out that our mystery room was just past the “crew only” door. When the bags didn’t arrive, we went searching. We soon found one of them outside another state room door and grabbed it. After informing someone who appeared to be a bag delivery man, we later got the other two.

The first meal was a bit chaotic, as they implemented new server rules after the last trip included a norovirus outbreak. That also explained the obsessive sanitizer guy at the dining room door.

I donned my spiffy blazer and met the activities director and the cruise director to film a teaser for the classes. It would air on the stateroom TVs. We filmed in what would become Wen’s and my afternoon Zumba/karaoke/pop dancing hangout the rest of the trip. In one quick take I gave a brief bio and a general idea of what I would teach. I never turned the in-house TV station on to see it or the subsequent 5 classes I taught.

We spent DAY TWO wandering and sampling terrific beers in Zeebrugge, Belgium.

When the next day’s itinerary was delivered, I discovered that my classes were scheduled parallel to a quiz game modeled on a popular British TV show as well as talks about coming ports. The competition was akin to teaching at a writers’ conference parallel to Donald Maass, Deb Dixon and Robert Crais.

After the luggage SNAFU and the clogged up dining hall, I worried about whether there would be an AV assistant helping me get hooked up to the screen when I was to teach the next day.

DAY THREE, Sea Day, 10:15am, first class: Have a Great Story to Tell? I was relieved that the AV guy was there and a perfect helper. I used a headset like Justin Bieber’s and felt like a star in front of the red velvet curtain, a screen the size of a three-car garage door, and one smaller one off to each side. There were 30 or so in the small theater and I discovered quickly that Brits and Australians (and a scattering of Irish and Scotts) were extremely attentive but did not like to raise their hands when queried. I had to adjust; I was used to U.S. writer attendees who tend to be wide-eyed and eager to contribute. I was thrilled when several followed me out, complimenting my PowerPoint presentation, sharing their stories and asking questions. The number of attendees who chatted with me after the sessions grew over the course of two weeks.

My husband and I are both gregarious. We chose the flexible dinner time and to be seated with new people each night. Along with dancing and socializing every chance we got, this was a great way to get to know many guests and talk up my classes—one reason the attendance grew. A new friendship sometimes overrides a quiz game!

The evening after my first class, we returned to our room to find a “job well done” iced-down bottle of Champaign and a plate of apples. Of course, I called the activities director to thank her.



DAY FOUR we strolled through former East Germany’s Warnemünde and took a train into the quaint town of Rostock to visit the Marienkirche Church and see the world’s oldest working astronomical clock (built in 1492).

              DAY FIVE, at sea, I taught Writing Your Life to a bit larger crowd. Lots of fun energy and a few people willing to raise hands and ask questions. Balcony vantage at that evening’s Las Vegas-style show offered a view of a sea of gray and silver hair, many likely interested in puttinig legacies to paper.

If my class motivated a few of those in the crowd to write their stories, I will have earned my free cruise for two.                                                              Inkpot