Ending the Semester...

Christmas Day, 2010. One of the only white Christmases in my memory, and a strange one at that. I've never been driving through the snow on Christmas day, or expected to do so on the road from Charlotte to High Point, NC. The holidays are hard for a lot of people. What we've done here is to create this arbitrary period of time where we're supposed to reflect on our lives, think about what we've done, register regret, and look hopefully towards the future. It's a simple thing maybe, and we all do it in different ways, but for most people the end of a year is bittersweet. We're all a year older, we've all forgotten about the promises we made ourselves the year before, and we all have concerns about the future - that "undiscovered country."


Thankfully life is more complicated than all that, and the end of a year, however good or bad, is just as arbitrary as it seems. As some songwriter wrote once: "Nothing changes / On New Year's Day." He was right. Nobody changes like this. Real change is difficult and wrenching, and takes real work and dedication. No one changes overnight (I hate to generalize, but I've never seen it happen). And old Ebenezer Scrooge, if he had been a real man, would have taken a long time to get used to the idea that Christmas wasn't all that bad. Change, real change, takes vision, strength of character, and reflection. 


I don't mean for this to be some type of homily. I'm just sitting here on the eve of Christmas Day thinking about the end of my own year, and what that might mean to me. Looking forward, I get anxious about the various hoops I have yet to jump through, about all the studying that has yet to be done, about the next tasks that have to be tackled. But rest assured that I will tackle them, that I will continue to make many of the same mistakes I did last year, and that each task will be completed as I come to it in some fashion. But, like most of us, I try not to make the same mistakes twice, and to know my direction a little better by the time I sit down by myself on a cold winter's evening in December to write a blog entry that no one will ever read. So, in the light of all that, things get a little sweeter and a little less bitter, I think. 


And even if peace on earth is probably not something that any of us can look forward to celebrating, we can possibly be looking to get better at making an environment in which that type of thing might be possible someday. It will take many more years to come, but if we start thinking about it now, we might get there. 


I bid you peace. 

Quakers...

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was a Quaker. After an extremely hectic Thanksgiving, filled more with research and writing than eating and socializing (though, there was some of that too), I decided to go to meeting for worship for the first time in a long time. It apparently needed to happen, because my mind breathed a sigh of relief during the silence. Suffice it to say that that hour every week of reflection has been something I have not only missed, but has become a time that I need in order to take care of myself properly week to week. Why is it that at those times that we most need it, we neglect the life of the spirit and choose to hunker down deeper into our troubles instead? I suppose that when we feel low on energy and/or stressed out, it is natural to turn inward instead of outward, to become insular and isolated. Basically, this is one of the most un-helpful impulses I think we can follow. Better to turn outwards to a supportive, loving community than to dwell on problems that, if we are honest with ourselves, aren't anywhere near as big when we can tackle them with each other. 

This might sound extremely "kumbaya" for those of you who don't know very much about Quakers, but it is certainly a very real and tangible feeling when I leave meeting and re-encounter the tasks I need to perform that week. Certainly today was a day that, for no particular or specific reason, showed me why the act of having faith is so unbelievably important and visceral, and why reaching out again to the community is an act from which a great deal of perspective can be drawn about our lives and the lives of others around us. I know that if I don't do it, I start to lose the ability to have grace and compassion for people who I don't necessarily see eye to eye with, and I lose the ability to be frank, kind, and honest about what I'm thinking and feeling with the people around me. These are qualities that I'd like to try to embody in my day-to-day world that just don't get fostered by the environment of graduate school, or of Boston in general. 

I know I haven't posted since October, and there's no way I can catch the blog up on the things I've been eating, thinking, or reading for the past two months. However, I'd like to start by saying that I went to Seattle and ate a lot of delicious food. I can pretty much stop eating burgers now, because no burger will ever come close to the one I had at Lunchbox Laboratory. Nothing will ever be able to compare with this. Period. If you're in the Seattle area (and you should be because this is an amazing and wonderful city), you MUST go here. Additionally, I could spend forever going through all the possible beer choices in Seattle, but I won't. I won't because good beer practically falls into your lap at many, many, microbreweries and pubs all over town. Just take a walk. Also, I found this, and I want one. 

Next, let me say that I recently bought a 15 inch cast iron skillet. That's right, 15 inches. As one of the greatest kitchen purchases I have ever made, it has so far produced perfect and bubbly Mac n' Cheese that I'm busily patenting the recipe for, and I plan on making cornbread in the near future. Comfort food, here we come! The main advantage here is the ability to start something on the stove top and finish it in the oven with even heat. Not to mention, if you use it the way its supposed to be used, the pan is non-stick and lasts a lifetime. 

I'm working on all kinds of papers right now as well, so you can expect another long wait before I actually post again. I'm trying to find a way to post or link my papers to the blog somehow (in the interests of academic posterity and the possible future failure of ol' compy), but I haven't figured it out yet. I'll be in touch. Go cook something. Right. Now. 

I bid you peace. 

Onward/Upward

As an extension of my life in graduate school, this blog has served a lot of purposes. Food, of course, has a special place here, as do musings about the academic world and the life I've chosen. So it would be remiss of me if I neglected to let you know (whoever it is who actually reads my blog) that I passed my thesis defense and now have a Masters in Drama. You may well ask, "now what?" Does the blog end? Do we go our separate ways? Is there life after graduate school? In short: no, no, and I hope so. 

First of all, I'm not going anywhere because I'm now in the doctoral program. Second of all, I've really come to appreciate having what amounts to a non-academic outlet to talk about academic life. Because the world is scary out there right now for everyone. Jobs are scarce in the profession, and the competition for what jobs there are is intense. Keeping up, from what I understand, is about consuming critical/theoretical tools like we were eating or breathing and then formulating immense amounts of original work from all that consumption. But while doing that, you should be applying for fellowships and grants, pursuing publication, attending conferences, and...oh, right...teaching. With all of this to do, its important to have somewhere to go to talk about something else, or vent, or...whatever. And that's what the blog is for. 

Pursuing this life can be overwhelming, but I think that I'm much more excited about it than frightened these days. There are moments when I feel like my life is totally out of control, but these have gotten fewer, and I've learned a lot about the way that works and how to control it. As it turns out, you do what you can when you can and how you do it best. You improve over time if you can acknowledge your mistakes as places for growth and not as personal flaws, and you also learn how to give yourself the impetus to keep going without being constantly overwhelmed with what you could be doing. Because you can always be working, but you also simply can't always be working. So, you know, I'm excited all over again for the next step in the process. Because this work is incredibly important and fulfilling, and I love teaching. 

I bid you peace. 

The Challenge...

Today was a beautiful day, and I took advantage of it. I walked from Harvard Square to Davis Square, with a stop at Porter Square on the way. Ambling along, Burdick's hot chocolate (half dark, half milk) in hand, something struck me. Well, several things. Let me tell you about them.

As I passed by restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and boutiques, I started to notice a trend: almost every single one of these businesses boasted locally and/or sustainably sourced product. One restaurant was featuring fresh New England oysters, another farm-fresh vegetables delivered daily, and yet another locally grown beef. Several proudly displayed the farms they sourced from on their menus, and many boutiques featured clothing and crafts from local artists. Also, these were nearly all local, independently owned businesses. 

This is good news. The understanding that local and fresh is better and tastier, that fast food isn't good food, is taking hold. Farmer's markets are springing up all over town, even at this late point in the season. For instance, there will be a farmer's market actually on Tufts' campus once a week for an undisclosed period of time once school starts in two days. This is proof that advocacy for farmers is working. Consumers are becoming choosier and more savvy, suddenly realizing that there are hundreds of different types of heirloom tomatoes (see my last post) or that fresh herbs, meats, and cheeses, can be affordable alternatives to the dreck usually available at the local Shaws or Foodmaster. Why buy from these places at markup when I can get the real deal right from the farmer (whose name and business I know personally), and it tastes so much better? 

And what's even more wonderful is that, whereas I knew a lot of these businesses existed before, there were at least a half dozen new ones that are pursuing the same strategy: farm fresh ingredients made into good, wholesome food. For instance, this place Posto is doing it, and a new restaurant called The Foundry is set to offer a significant number of local brews (no website or menu yet!). When I try these places, you'll be the first to know. Now, we just need to get people cooking all this great produce in their own kitchens. Seriously folks, the great thing about fresh produce is that you can achieve delicious meals faster because you can let the flavors shine through in simple preparations. If I've said it once here, I've said it a thousand times...start cooking! 

Now there is another significant matter to discuss. No one who knows me from this blog knows that I used to be a vegetarian. And I don't mean one of those idiots who identify themselves as a vegetarian "but, I like, sometimes eat chicken and fish." No. That's not a fucking vegetarian, people. Because, contrary to popular belief, chickens and fishes are both living and breathing organisms with nervous systems and brains and etc. They are, in short, meat.  No, from 2003-2008, not a bit of meat passed my lips knowingly. I had been a vegetarian before that as well, but I'm not going to claim those years because I can't remember when I started. 

One of the big things people used to ask was, why? And now they ask, why did you stop? So I'm going to briefly answer both of these questions now because I have an ethical quandary I'm busy sorting out, and I want to put it out there and make it official. I want to mark the day, so to speak. 

I stopped eating meat for ethical reasons. For one thing, the meat industry in this country is morally and ethically bankrupt- treating animals to horrifying conditions before being slaughtered, forcing them to eat each other in their feed, forcing them to eat grains, drugs, and hormones their bodies are not equipped to withstand. I'm also a pacifist, and was one long before I identified as Quaker. To take this literally means that killing other living things, especially when it isn't necessary, is abhorrent. I also had a belief in Gandhi's principle that "violence begets violence," and that that's a good enough reason to stop participating in the mass wholesale slaughter of animals. I had other reasons too, but those were the biggies. 

Then I came to Boston, and I was poor. Very, very, poor. My roommate Amy, whose own eating habits and knowledge about food and cooking I absolutely and fully respect (she just got her MA in nutrition at the Tufts Friedman School), saved me from certain starvation by pooling her resources (read:food) with me. We had several long discussions about vegetarianism, about best-practice meat production,  and about the economics and ethics of sustainable food. In the end, I started eating meat again. 

In some sense, this will seem hypocritical in the most profound way. The ethical stance I had was, after all, very clear. Please bear with me. First and foremost, my thought was that supporting a structure of meat production that was antithetical to industrial practice was very important, and second, I had never understood or really been exposed to the "meat culture" in America. I grew up in the Virgin Islands, a son of two health-conscious European ex-pats, with soy milk, tofu, and vegetables as dietary staples. Even after I came to America, my exposure to meat was limited to the occasional (organic, free-range) hamburger. This was fine with me, and I had no compunction to rebel against it because I felt that what I was eating was much better than what the kids down the street were eating (and I knew for sure after I had stayed over for dinner a few times). I got interested in how the other half lived. I wondered, what was I missing? I decided, partly for these two reasons, to forgo being veg for a while to find out what it was like to eat meat in this country, and how available sustainable  and affordable meat products really were. 

I feel as if that experiment is drawing to a close. As it turns out, and as other people have concluded before me, we eat too much meat. We've sanitized the process of killing to the point that we have no connection with the animals on our plate, nor do we care. Meat is just another "product"- a nearly artificial-seeming thing produced by a mystical process that we don't want to hear or know about. As if there was a "meat-tree" from which prepackaged cuts of ham and steak materialized and were put in the grocery store freezer. And this is wrong on nearly every level I can imagine. Life deserves respect which, at the very least, has to begin with an acknowledgment of taking it for sustenance. We have to understand where these animals come from, how they were treated, who treated them, how they died. Animals have stories and feelings and histories, and denying them that is the goal of our meat-centric culture. And, while this may seem like hippie-tripe to some people, our lack of respect is quite literally killing us.  From heart-disease to mad-cow to rampant obesity, our obsession with death (and the requisite cover-up of it for an ignorant public) is deadly. We're killing biodiversity, and animals, and ourselves, in a nearly perfect industrial machine that even professionals have to take years trying to understand. 

So, starting today, I'm ramping down the experiment. Eventually, this means that I will probably be totally vegetarian again. I'm starting by never eating ANY animal that I can't verify had a good, healthy lifestyle before it showed up on my plate. I want to know where these animals live and how they die, because that's the very least that I owe them. I want to know the farmer who took care of the animal, to look them in the eye and understand something about my place as a consumer. We can call this phase two of a multi-phase process.  And as an acquaintance of mine argued well to me not too long ago, dropping out of the process of meat-production, industrial or sustainable, is actually one of the best things we can do to help. Lowering the bar for meat-production of all types is itself the best discouragement of industrial agribusiness. Because if demand lowers, agribusiness must follow, and that means that the small farmer has a better shot anyway. So that's it. No cheating, no going out to get a random burger from a random restaurant, nothing unless I know what I need to know about that animal. 

This has been a long and strange journey for me, but I am glad that at this stage of the process I have somewhere I can document it. I am confident that this is the right thing to do. 

I bid you peace. 

The Road Ahead, The Road Behind

When I'm not working, I get a little crazy. 

I had decided to allow myself an enforced break from work now that the summer is winding down and the busiest time of the year is about to start. You would think that I would be ready for this, that my brain would want to let go for a little bit and sink into a state of stupefaction in front of a television, or at least with one of those summer novels that people like to read on the beach. Instead, I am plagued with ideas for papers, with thinking about upcoming conferences, with the possibilities for this or that article...and the list goes on and on. I can't. Stop. Thinking. And the result is that I end up here, sitting in front of a computer and remembering the statistics concerning the relative ages of people who have psychotic breaks (turns out, its about my age). 

Maybe you reach a certain point where the brain doesn't want to take breaks anymore? Where it just wants to run down all the stray ideas? I don't know. Maybe it means I should be writing that paper now? Trying to publish that article? All I know is that I can't watch any more Law and Order, and for God's sake lets get the semester started already! 

Anyway, my insanity aside, I have finally been eating some delicious food. I did promise that I would slow down enough to do that, and Restaurant Week came at the end of the summer like a shining beacon of light in a field of food despair. 

But before I get into that, let me say that the tomatoes this year have been unbelievably beautiful. I went to the farmers market and bought heirloom tomatoes, the kind you practically never find at the store because of small-minded agribusiness. Go to the market now and get some! There are so many varieties and so many different flavors and colors to choose from. I also bought some fresh burratta, which is essentially fresh mozzarella stuffed with cream and other delicious things. In this case, it was stuffed with sweet roasted garlic and onion. Add in a baguette, and you have a feast for one worthy of the summer. You don't really need anything else, except perhaps a glass of wine. 

That same evening, I made burgers for a few friends who stopped by. I used free-range ground beef that I had gotten at the same market. Instead of buns, I favored a fresh baguette from When Pigs Fly in Davis Square, an excellent bakery. I made the burgers by hand with Sweet Vidalias and just a touch of breadcrumb to keep them moist. I topped the burgers with fresh Mozzarella, some more of the heirloom tomatoes, and a pesto dressing using fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice. I also used a technique that I've been employing more and more to cook meat: starting off on the stovetop to get that nice sear, and then finishing in the oven. This works especially well for the cheese, which for the mozzarella meant that it got melty and lightly browned on top. You want a pretty hot oven for this, probably around 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 

For the side, I made onion rings. This is super simple, and incredibly rewarding. Season some flour with your favorite seasonings (I used salt, pepper, cumin, and a little chili powder) and place in a bowl. Place 1-2 cans of evaporated milk in another bowl. You want to use large onions to make sizable rings. Now, dip the rings into the milk, and then into the flour: Repeat. You want to double dip them so that you get a nice crust on your rings. Make sure your oil is hot enough (but not too hot!), and drop the rings in a few at a time so as not to crowd the pan. When they float up to the top golden brown, they're done! I served them with a dip that was a mixture of chili sauce and sour cream.  Salt them a little more right after they come out of the pan. This is also something you can get guests to help you do when they get to your house. It keeps them involved in the cooking process! 

I also tried my hand at blueberry cobbler recently. I love blueberries, and I found some great ones at the market. I used a recipe I found online, and it worked out pretty well. I'm in favor of the biscuit-like topping it makes, and the blueberries couldn't have gotten any fresher unless I had picked them myself. 

Now, with all the farmer's market goodness drawing towards a close, I'm wondering if there are any CSA's I can join over the Fall/Winter months that would help me feed myself through the busy times in the semester? If anyone has any ideas/suggestions, please post them in the comments. I'm interested mostly in winter vegetables (squash, potatoes, onions, winter greens) rather than meat/fish. 

And speaking of local food, I had a lovely (and entirely local) meal at Henrietta's Table two nights ago. Crabcakes with a delicious relish, duck with blackberries and a port wine reduction, Taza Chocolate mud pie (all proceeds donated to help Taza rebuild after a flood). Basically, this is comfort food, served at tables that feel like they might have been taken from your mother's kitchen. The atmosphere and service were pleasantly informal, and the menu was precisely what was needed for a rainy day. The Restaurant Week menu was the normal menu (always a pleasant surprise), and the wine list was robust and affordable. All in all, I recommend it highly. These folks, like Craigie-on-Main, are serious about local and sustainable product. That's pretty important in my book. 

That's all for now, I think. 

I bid you peace. 

What I've Been Doing, Or, Why I Have Not Posted In a Month

The short answer is that I've been busy and exhausted. I've been a group leader at a theatre camp at Tufts  for the past six weeks, doing final revisions on my thesis, and trying to study for comprehensive exams - all simultaneously. 

I've also been eating pretty badly, so I haven't really had very much to report to you about good food because there hasn't been very much of it. I'm planning on getting back to some kind of normal rhythm in time for school to start again on September 7th. At that point, I'll have the Fall just ahead of me and the last glorious days of summer just behind. I believe I have mentioned more than once on this blog how wonderful the Fall is in Boston. It might be the best time of year here, and there's bound to be apple doughnuts sometime in my future. 

Now, the summer has been nothing if not productive. My thesis is done, camp was wonderful, and the studying (while I could stand to throw some energy into it) has been going just fine. I had time to myself at the beginning, and now I have just enough time to get my head back in the game and prepare a new syllabus for my Introduction to Acting class version 2.0. I'm streamlining the class this year, going simple and neat, without all the bells and whistles. I think it will turn out just fine, and the kids will profit from it. 

After having done my thesis I, of course, don't even want to look at it. Writing the conclusion was like pulling teeth. How does one summarize a year's worth of writing, editing, and revising in a few pages and make it make sense? I still don't know. What I do know is that I learned something from the process of doing it that I didn't know before. Which, I suppose, is the most important thing. 

I'm not going to try to summarize any of that here and now. Partly because I don't really want to talk about it now, and partly because I don't want to jinx myself. I still have to get people to read it and defend the thing. It's not over yet. When it is, when I don't have to talk about it, I think I'll be able to think about the whole year a little more clearly, and then it will start to come out in fits and starts. 

Anyway, when I start eating something worthwhile, you'll know. Right now, I have to go and read. 

I bid you peace. 

Pesto Power and New Horizons

When most people think of pesto, they think of a mixture made with basil, pine nuts, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and garlic. This is all well and good, but we often forget that pesto just means "paste" in Italian, and that you can make delicious pesto that has none of these ingredients. Pine nuts are expensive, and you can absolutely toast walnuts in a dry pan and use them in a pesto, or put in kalamata olives, or even substitute Spanish Manchego instead of Parmesan. You can make a delicious pesto using mint, lemon juice, walnuts, olive oil, and toasted bread crumbs. The proportions are really just to taste, and you can use any shape pasta you want. Throw in a few (soaked) sundried tomatoes into a traditional pesto for added depth of flavor. This is truly frugal food, and it provides light sauces with intense flavors using seasonal ingredients. 

In other news, a friend and I have been toying with the idea of an interdisciplinary conference on Lady Gaga. We've had some trouble getting it off the ground because we've both been incredibly busy, but I think we've found a reasonable alternative. In order to build support, or as a professor of mine says, to build "hermeneutic momentum" in the interest of eventually holding such a conference, I'm probably going to create an academic blog devoted to themes and scholarship related to Lady Gaga. The blog would be dealing especially with her place in pop culture, her theoretical implications, and her possible applications to other sociocultural spheres. I've been seeing this type of scholarship pop up all over the internet, which proves to me that there is a broad arena of support in multiple discourses for this type of work, and a clear suggestion that scholars want to be having this type of conversation. This article is an excellent example. 

More and more, I've been seeing the traditional boundaries of academic departments break down and enter into fascinating conversations with other disciplines. This is one of the major reasons I appreciate the way Gaga has been proliferating. She has become a flashpoint in the intellectual landscape for gender theorists, Marxists, post-humanists, and many others. If thinking about her work brings us into a deeper conversation with each other, I believe we can use her work as a stepping stone to intersect matters of art and culture that are deeply relevant, pervasive, and important. I'll keep you all apprised of the process as I start to think about the blog's design and discussion format. Start preparing your submissions now, since we'll be opening the field up to multiple contributions!