Tropical Fruit Crumble: 22 December 2009

I got this recipe from Chez Pim, my favorite foodie blog site.  You don't know Pim?  If you like to eat or just love food porn, you should.  Pim Techamuanvivit is, despite her protestations, an arbiter of good taste.  Her blog site is a wonderland of great food ideas, tips, and recipes.  

We, and by that I mean Jon, made a delicious roast chicken with a soy glaze based on a Pim tip.  This recipe is even better, mostly because, unlike the chicken, it's really easy to make.  It's a real crowd pleaser, especially served with ice cream.  Oh, and, of course, it's cheap, which makes it even better.  I would call it fool-proof, but I have a feeling I might have to eat those words.  


Here's the recipe.  It's slightly different than the one on Chez Pim.  I added butter and salt and I grease the pan to make clean up easier.  


Crumble Topping:


1 cup of rolled oats (I mix the stuff in the round box with a smaller grained variety to get a better overall texture)
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of sliced almonds (or crushed macadamia nuts)
Pinch of clove
1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 and 3/4 sticks of unsalted butter


Melt the butter over medium heat in a small saucepan.  Mix together the dry ingredients and add the melted butter.  Mix with a fork.  The topping will be lumpy and have dry spots, but that's okay.  It's part of what makes it crispy and delicious.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate while you prepare the fruit filling.


Fruit Filling:


1 whole pineapple, peeled, cored, and sliced into 1/2 inch thick 2 inch chunks
2 or 3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and chopped to the same size as the pineapple
2 mangos, peeled, cut off the pith, and chopped into bite-sized chunks
1 1/2 cups of raspberries or blackberries


Toss the chopped fruit and put it all into a 9 x 12 inch greased baking pan.  Sprinkle lightly with sugar.


Finishing:


Remove the chilled topping from the refrigerator and use your hands to crumble it over the top of the fruit.  If there are chunks, all the better.  Try to cover as much of the fruit as possible.


Place the topped fruit in a 350 degree (that's fahrenheit folks) oven and bake for 50 minutes, checking it after 35 minutes or so to make sure it doesn't burn.  When it's done, the fruit will be bubbly and the topping will be golden brown.


When I was a child growing up in Hawaii, we used to say "broke da mouth" to describe food that was especially delicious.  This dish brought that expression to mind.  


One of the great things about this fruit crumble is that it is very forgiving.  You can use all kinds of fruit, and you can use different kinds of nuts in the topping.  If you like, you can add flaked coconut to the topping.  The next time I make this, I plan to use a sapote in the filling.  


If I was in Portland right now, I'd use pears and apples with a big handful of fresh cranberries.    

Mega Revisited: 20 December 2009

I thought this picture would get your attention.    

Multiple choice: 

This is an advertisement for -

1. skincare products
2. underwear
3. sports shirts

If you guessed 3, sport shirts, you're right!  Your prize is the one he's wearing.  It'll arrive in time for Christmas delivery.  

I took that picture at the Mega, the giant grocery store down the road from San Pancho in Bucerias.  I've written about the Mega in a previous journal entry and described it as the enemy of the mom and pop groceries of Mexico.  It is, indeed, evil.  But, like so many things brought to us by the devil, it's also extremely convenient and affordable.  In fact, the difference between the prices at the Mega and the local tiendas is best evidenced by the fact that on a recent visit we spotted the owner of our favorite tienda in San Pancho shopping at Mega for his produce section.

Anyway, I can smugly say that since moving here in April, I've been to Mega three times.  I've also been one time each to Costco and WalMart.  That's a total of 5 trips to hell and back in 8 months.  That aint half bad.  The rest of my groceries and a few jumbo sized cartons of self-righteousness have been purchased at ridiculously inflated prices from local mini-supers.    

The Mega is worth the trip if you're ever here for a visit.  It isn't just a shopping experience; it's a cultural phenomenon.  During the cooler months, Mega is gringolandia, the place where snowbirds wintering over in Bucerias, Nuevo Vallarta, Sayulita, Punta de Mita, Lo de Marcos, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and every other unincorporated pueblito between them converge.  Any attempt to speak Spanish with the store clerks gets me nothing but pity and perfectly serviceable English in return.  

Each trip to the Mega results in one major bargain.  The first time it was mangos, mistakenly priced at what amounts to 10 cents a pound.  The second time it was drinking glasses for 22 cents each.  This time I got an absolutely gigantic bag of carrots for 26 pesos.  I'll be orange by the time I finish eating them all, but it was too good to pass up.

There's a MacDonald's at the Mega.  I've been dreaming about it for months.  This trip, I finally gave in and decided to buy a Big Mac.  I went to the counter, teeth set for a heaping helping of secret sauce, only to find that they only sell desserts. It was a terrible trick, but I take heart in wishful thinking.  Maybe the rain forests of Brazil aren't being replaced by cattle ranches because of the eating habits of the people of Mexico.  


I got a slice of pizza instead.  It was no Big Mac, but it was still the best pizza I've had since leaving the states.  It gave me heartburn and caused an oil stain I bet will never come out of my favorite shirt, but it was still a nice treat.  

I promised you pictures in my first Mega blog entry.  The one on top is from the clothing section.  It's really an "after" photo.  The shirts transform your body and make all your hair fall out while you wear them.  


I've included a few more pictures at the end of this entry just to give you a feel for what the whole shopping experience is like.  As you look at them, you may wonder at my overawed sense of the place.  I mean, it really is huge and crowded and this time there were even dancers in plastic tiger suits hopping around near the cereal.  But, I realize it's not really much bigger or grander than, say, a good sized Fred Meyer in the U.S.


Certainly, Mega isn't the cluster-f--k of hugeness, cultural differences and really bad floor planning I encountered in suburban Parisian mega-markets.  The market in Noisy-le-Grand was enough to make me want to go home and lie down (to nightmares of every kind of animal head imaginable, staring out of empty sockets at me from glass meat cases). 


The selection at the Mega is different, though not Parisian supermarket different, than you'd find at most U.S. stores.  For instance, the cheese section is as big as my whole house.  But in terms of size and organization it's about the same as any U.S. big box store.  The thing is, San Pancho a very small town.  On this last trip to the Mega, the number of people shopping with me was about equivalent to 25% of the total permanent population of the pueblo.  That, and, well, I have a terrible sense of direction and get lost a lot.  

So did I get lost the first time?  Um, yeah, I once got lost for 5 minutes looking for a bathroom at a Starbucks in Washington, D.C.  I nearly peed my pants.  At the Mega, I got lost the first, second, and third time.  ¿Donde estoy?  No sé.    

Anyway, here are those pictures as promised -

Twinkies and HoHos!  But with pineapple?  Um, no me gusta.

The Little Things, Part 1: 17 December 2009

Early on in this journal, I often wrote about why I left the U.S.  In my first entry I talked about wanting to "leave behind one life and embrace another...(and) to escape the 'me' that created the lifestyle from which I am seeking refuge."  

I committed myself to a process of personal transformation and came in search of bits of myself I hoped were still there, pieces of the past and of the person I was, once a upon a time, when I was a rural social worker.  This was nearly 30 years ago, long before rich rewards for minor achievements caused me to give in to the culture of competition and achievement that so defines life in the U.S.  

The person I was back then believed that being clever was but a minor personal asset, while kindness was a virtue with a value beyond measure.  He believed that being quick was fine, but being patient enough to work at the pace of the slowest person, and with a genuine appreciation of the unique contribution of everyone, was a quality to be treasured.  

Unfortunately, that person was also poor and wished for more - more material comfort, security, and acknowledgement.  When those things came to me, they came all at once.  I suddenly found myself a modest earner, but making more than my parents ever dreamed of in their working lives, and for work that brought me public recognition of a sort I, as a child of the 60s, had always believed was reserved for those a bit taller and a shade lighter than I am.  

What's more, I had no college degree.  I'd failed high school.  Nothing I'd done before had prepared me for this life.  Losing my way was easy enough; I had no compass.  

Of course, I know the years have changed me in ways that cannot be reversed.  I can't erase the experiences I've had, nor would I choose to if it were possible.  

I just want to remember how I saw the world when my relative youth and naivete gave me the wisdom to believe in the goodness of every person. I worked for work's sake, and created for the sheer joy of being creative.  The very notion that anyone cared about me and what I thought about, what I might have to say, was so novel, so wildly exotic, I treated every chance to participate as if it might be my last.    

To accomplish this and more I came here seeking a change of context; a place where I have no history and where I face little if any expectation of consequence.  Here I hoped to shed the layers of cynicism and suspicion, arrogance, and entitlement.   

Understanding that money is a trap, I purposely lowered my standard of living.  I ate less and lived more frugally, conserved water and electricity, and reduced my consumption of everything.  I believed then and understand now more than ever that being free of the need to maintain a first world standard of living is, for me, the key to rediscovering the deep and satisfying kind of happiness I once experienced in my creative pursuits before the mortgage, the retirement plan, the home renovation, and a life cluttered with too many choices and far too many expensive diversions blurred my vision.  

But the road to freedom has not been straight and narrow.  I've wandered from the path, occasionally backtracked, even lost myself completely, especially recently.  Boredom is the main culprit.  It drives me to seek out immediate gratification, escapist pursuits, mindless puttering.  

I've heard that boredom and fear are closely bound emotions.  I believe it.  The evidence lies in the things I do when I'm bored.  I watch TV, eat out, drink like a fish, putter around online, avoid my language lessons, and generally take refuge in activities that give me comfort because they are familiar.  

After a youth spent deprived not just of wants but of needs, high living is source of emotional comfort, a reminder that I'm not poor anymore, that I have enough and then some.  And so I indulge, especially when I'm bored, which is usually when I'm anxious, feeling timid about the changes I'm undergoing and the strange new world in which I'm living.

But the cumulative impact of all that self-indulgent behavior and mindless puttering around is more boredom.  Too many bright lights blur into a dull glare, blinding me to the reality that there is everything and more to occupy my mind right here in front of me.  I just need to let go of the distractions and acknowledge the importance of the little things.

Paying attention to life's details turns out to be tougher than I thought.  Being grateful, experiencing happiness, living more authentically, these notions that inspire me require discipline and determination to realize day to day in the face of nagging stressors and easy escapes.  It requires practice.

In pursuit of practice, I went on a very long walk into the jungle on which I took pictures of every variety of flower I saw along the way.  I ended up with nearly 100 pictures.  I realized that amidst all of my diversions I'd failed to notice that we're in a blooming season.  I'm surrounded by plants in full flower.  

I saw bougainvillea, ginger, mimosa, hibiscus, lantana, oleander and dozens more I couldn't name.  Chanel No. 5 is just so much cheap cologne compared with mock orange in bloom.  And, here and there, mango and papaya blossoms, promises of the sweet fruit we will harvest in spring.  

Cooking Class: 11 December 2009

Three weeks ago, I found a Spanish teacher who has lured me out of cyberspace where most of my lessons have taken place over the last 8 months.  I take a group lesson with her once a week on Fridays with my housemates Soya and Jon.

My online programs have worked pretty well at giving me a rudimentary understanding of Spanish grammar, though only in the present tense.  I've actually started having very basic conversations about the weather and travel plans which is great, if you're a travel agent.  Not being in the travel business, the time had come to engage in a more interactive learning process in a live class.  I need to hear Spanish spoken, but slowly, rather than just sitting in front of the computer translating recorded English for an empty room, or, worse yet, into a room full of people trying to concentrate on other things while I blather on and on, saying "Ella abre la tienda temprano en la manana; Ella cierre la tienda muy tarde todas las noches" ad nauseum for an hour or two at a time.

My teacher's name is Rosa.  She is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the nicest people in San Pancho.  And, she comes with a bonus.  She's a great cook.

Yesterday, Rosa cooked with us to teach us how to talk our way around La Cocina Mexicana.  Rosa taught us to make albondigas en caldo, a Spanish/Mexican version of meat balls in brodo.

The dish wasn't pretty.  It looked great on the stove, but once served the meatballs were a little grey.  But, pretty is as pretty does, as they say.  The albondigas more than made up for their plain appearance with flavor and texture.  It was muy, muy rico.

Here's the recipe -

The Salsa:

8 plum tomatoes, peeled, cored and roughly chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled

1/2 of a Spanish onion, roughly chopped

1 chipotle chile en adobo (they come canned in the Mexican food section of U.S. groceries)

1 cup of water

Start some water boiling on the stove.  Cut the tough core at the stem end of the tomato out with a paring knife and then cut an x with your knife into the opposite end of the tomato.  Drop the tomatoes into the boiling water for a couple of minutes until you see the skin along the x cut start to curl back.  Remove the tomatoes with a slotted spoon and drop them into cold water to cool.

Once the tomatoes are cool, peel off the skins, roughly chop them, and put them into the jar of a blender.  Add the garlic, water, chipotle chile, and roughly chopped white onion and blend on high until the whole mixture is completely pureed.

Once the tomato mixture is nice and smooth, pour into a mesh colander and push it through, removing the seeds and some of the tougher bits of solids.  Rosa advised us to do this, though the next time I make this recipe, I think I'll seed and core the tomatoes before I blend them to save time.  But, if you're using Rosa's method, be ambitious and try to get as much of the liquid out of those tomatoes as you can.  The salsa will make a delicious caldo so you want as much of it as possible.  No wasting.

While you're straining, heat a tablespoon or so of oil in a heavy bottomed 4 quart dutch oven or casserole.  Pour the strained salsa onto the hot oil and bring it to a boil.  This is called seasoning the sauce.  You're frying the sauce in oil in order to cook away the raw flavors.  It's a very common Mexican cooking technique that is almost always used when making chile sauces.

Keep the salsa simmering gently on low heat while you make the meatballs.

The Meatballs:

1 1/2 pounds of ground beef

3 hard boiled eggs

1 raw egg

Leaves of 5 sprigs of mint

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Salt and pepper

If you thought making the salsa was easy, you ain't seen nothing yet.  The meatballs are a cinch, requiring less work than any meatballs I've ever made.

The first thing to do is hard boil the eggs. Once the eggs are boiled, peel and roughly chop into half inch chunks.  Set aside.  While the eggs are boiling, add the whole mint leaves, the raw egg, salt, pepper, and cumin to a blender jar and whir the mixture until well blended.

 If you want to know how to make a good soft or hard boiled egg that peels easily, check out the tip at the end of this recipe.

Add the egg mixture to the ground beef and mix it all up in a bowl with your hands.  Don't over-mix.  I think over-mixing meat for meat balls or meatloaf makes the meat too smooth, and that, I think, toughens the texture of the finished product.

Then, using your hands again, pinch off about 2-2.5 tablespoons of meat and roll it into a ball.  Press a finger into the middle of each ball to form a depression large enough to put a couple of pieces of chopped boiled egg in the middle, rolling the meat around the egg to seal it inside.

Lower the meatballs gently into the simmering salsa.  The meatballs should be completely submerged.  Place a lid on your dutch oven and continue simmering for about 20 minutes.

Once the meatballs are completely cooked, serve them in soup bowls with plenty of broth (the caldo) accompanied by hot tortillas.

This is kind of what they looked like.  The caldo was a little redder and the meatballs a shade less grey, but they were, nonetheless, not the prettiest sight.  The taste however was fantastic.  I could have eaten them all day.  As it was, there were 11 meatballs.  Rosa and I, being the most timid diners at the table, had two each.  There was one leftover.  I am still thinking about that one meatball, wishing that it had somehow found its way home with me.

Here's that tip on boiling eggs -

Boiling eggs so the shells peel off easily and the yolks are yellow rather than sulfury and green is a bit of a mystery to a lot of home cooks, probably because it's the kind of thing for which one doesn't generally go looking for a recipe or considering technique.  Here's how to boil what I consider to be the perfect hard boiled egg.

Boil water over high heat.  When it really gets going, gently lower room temperature eggs in, making sure they are completely submerged.  Cold eggshells may crack when they hit the boiling water, and that makes a mess.  Reduce the temperature to avoid boiling over, and simmer for 10-12 minutes, depending on how solid you want the yolk.

While the eggs are boiling, prepare an ice water bath.  As soon as the eggs are done boiling, lower them into the ice water bath.  When they are cool enough to handle, remove them from the water, crack the shells (be gentle), and replace them in the ice water.  After a minute or two, the shells will peel right off and the yolks should be nice and yellow, not green which is a sign that you've overcooked your eggs.

Egg yolks turn green from the interaction of the iron in the egg and the sulfur in the yolk.  The green color is the result overcooking.  The way to avoid this is to avoid boiling the eggs for too long and cooling the eggs quickly once they are cooked.  The green smells funny so it's not just about how the eggs look.  A lot of what makes food taste good is how it smells.

For a soft boiled egg that peels easily, follow all of the instructions above, but cook the eggs for 8 minutes.

These tips come from Alice Waters of the famous restaurant and even more famous song.  I believe Alice knows everything and she wears a jaunty chapeau almost all the time to boot.  She kicks Martha Stewarts ass in the kitchen.  Of course, I'd choose Martha over Alice in a cage fight.  Martha's done time.

University of the Third World: 7 December 2009

                                             I fall to the realm of forget-me-nots,

                                             to a mourning air that clings,

                                             to a forgotten room in ruins,

                                             to a cluster of bitter clover.

                                             - Pablo Neruda

Just off Avenida Tercer Mundo, behind the the old town square, lies a careworn road that narrows to an overgrown path leading into the woods.  Just a few steps down the path you will cross a cattle guard, and on the other side, just a few hundred yards in the distance, an overgrown field and a cluster of concrete ruins.  Some here refer to the ruins as "el museo."  Indeed, it is a museum of a sort, preserving, for now at least, a bit of history and a record of a promise of something more, something to ignite the imagination.

I've often walked this path, stopping just this side of the cattle guard to catch a glimpse of what remains of the once grand building that was to be a marine and agricultural college.  The college was a cornerstone of former President Echeverria's plan to turn San Pancho into a "university of the third world."  Today it stands as a symbol of the failure of Echeverria's vision, and of his hubris and the bald-faced corruption that finally drove him out of office in 1976.

I have often gazed wistfully at what almost was, wondering what San Pancho would be today if Echeverria's vision of the pueblo as a model of third world development had been realized.  I've been curious about what is left of the college, but between signs warning against trespassing and some very (to me) menacing looking cows, I stayed on the coward's side of the cattle guard.

Last week, my curiosity drew me down the path again.  The cattle were gone, the field between me and the ruins cleared.  Someone is developing this piece of land.  I decided that trespassing warnings or no, I needed to see the old college before it is torn down.

I wandered in among the ruins and felt as if I had, like Alice before me, fallen down a rabbit hole, a gateway to a wonderland.  No strange creatures or Queens of Hearts lived among the ruins.  In fact, what remains gives little indication of even so much as a wish for a major center of learning.  But the feel of the place, the sense of something lost, of an unfulfilled dream of something more, still lives between those walls and leads one to wonder about what could have been.

The deterioration, the long years of neglect, wreak of cynicism.  The invading jungle reminds me of my puny existence, of the mean legacy of any single life.  But hope still clings to these walls.  After all, even Echeverria's dictatorship relied on the collective wealth of the people of Mexico to build arches twice as tall as the imaginations of the people of the time in the middle of a field in a rural fishing village just this side of nowhere.

The tiles on the walls offer evidence of the exuberance of the times.  It was the 70's after all, an era pregnant with the promise of all that had been accomplished in the generation before; accomplishments that lulled a generation into dreams of an end to the dictatorships of Latin America, of Pan Africa, of finally and fully addressing the enduring legacy of slavery and apartheid in the U.S., of reconciliation between the hemispheres, of a unified third world.

Reflections of Azteca, promises of a new Tenochtitlan.

I imagine the architect inviting us to look up at the soaring arches, away from all things pedestrian and earthbound, to imagine something else, to question, to wonder.

The Roosters Crow: 2, December 2009

A lot of virtual ink has been spilled in this journal over the wonders of San Pancho.  It is, indeed, every bit as "muy tranquilo" as the cabbie promised when he brought me here for the first time in April.  San Pancho is among the most beautifully scenic, tranquil, friendly places I'm guessing I'll  encounter in this lifetime.

But, wonderful though it may be, life here is, as is the case everywhere to be sure, imperfect.  Among the minor (for me, at least) challenges of life in San Pancho is dealing with noise.  Yes, I know, I've written about this before, but in spite of having lived in Manhattan and Washington, D.C. I still consider the noise level in our new neighborhood worthy of additional documentation.

Here in our new pad on Calle China, we are positioned on a hill, just two short blocks above the main town square, three blocks from the ocean, and four blocks (three short and one long) from the Malecon, the commercial center of the pueblo and the busiest section of the shore.

Here, the air is thick with jingles blaring loudspeakers attached to the roofs of vending trucks.  At least three times a week, a water truck blasts its horn outside our front gate, trying, but failing, to wake us for our 8 a.m. water delivery.  As the day wears on, the gas truck makes the rounds, piping music extolling the virtues of Soni-Gas.  Next comes the fish peddler who invites customers to buy "Camarones, camaron grande y medio, camaron con cabeza, camaron sin cabeza, camaron del mar!"  Occasionally there's a bread truck, a cake truck, a truck with household supplies, even one selling toilets.  On Saturdays, the open air disco in the square just two blocks away tops everything by playing a mind numbingly repetitive loop of hip hop, pop, and electronica until as late as 1 a.m., sometimes even later, and at a volume that is audible through most of the pueblo.

And the music isn't confined to the nights.  Around every other corner at practically any time of the day ranchero music is played at top volume on radios ("because," I have been told by at least one Mexican music lover, "we are free").

And then there are the dogs, barking, growling, and howling as they roam the streets, especially at night (I suppose because they, also, are free).  Not to be out done, cats often join in, yowling and moaning as they get it on in the wee hours of the night.  It's a veritable symphony of canine and feline sex and fighting noises.

But, my favorite (in the spirit of maintaining a positive frame of mind) noises are courtesy of the chickens, especially, though not exclusively, the males of the species.  Now I'm sure many among you are thinking, okay, so roosters crow at dawn, that can't be all that bad.  And you'd be right, if that's all there was to the crowing schedule.  But, to quote the great chanteuse of American pop music, Whitney Houston, "hell to the no!" Oh, and "crack is whack!"  I threw in the second quote just because, well, you know, crack really is whack and you should try to steer clear of it.

Hell to the no, the roosters of San Pancho aren't just sun worshippers.  They crow all the time.  They cockle-doodle-doo their asses off through most of the day, with brief breaks around noonish and again just after dusk.  Then, right around 1 a.m., just as I start to drift off to sleep, they get their doodle-doos back into gear and continue revving up the vocal chords until just a couple of hours before daybreak.   At sunrise, the whole cycle starts again and repeats itself.

I know a little something about yard birds and I can tell you that the roosters around here are no ordinary chickens.  Most of the birds around here are made from the same DNA as fighting cocks, and unless fighting cocks are caged, they crow, constantly getting into arguments with each other and with the cats and the rats and who knows what other kinds of predators threatening their broods.

Our little barrio is cock central.  During nights of fitful sleep, I've entertained myself with a kind of Mexican version of counting sheep, giving names to the roosters I hear most often, and creating stories to endear them to me.  The two loudest I've named Chavo Santana and Chamaco Hernandez in honor of luchadores.  They are the survivors of many a battle, and crow to remind us that they are the cocks of this particular walk.

Contending for third place there's a youngish sounding bird who I call Chad.  Chad is a new generation kind of dude - a lover, not a fighter.  In the morning he crows to his girlfriend Tracy, a marketing manager for an organic grocer, to let her know he's on his way to espresso on the Malecon before going to a brainstorming session to come up with a new slogan for Nike's latest - an all recycled, cruelty-free shoe-phone.  You text with your toes.  

Chad's named it the Get Smart.  It's a shoe and it's a cell phone.  Cone of silence not included.

If you come to San Pancho, and I'm hoping you do, you will hear the roosters crow and wonder as I do at how the locals live with all this noise.  Of course, just as I start to fall prey to my impulse to criticize and analyze that which I cannot change but which, nonetheless, kind of sucks, I remember 2008.

In that year, most of my days began with a commute from the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle to the downtown financial district.  I drove it every weekday and about every other Saturday and/or Sunday at this time last year.  The whole drive was only a few miles long, but on the worst days, on days when it rained, sleeted or snowed, or when I'd overslept (usually after lying awake at night, worried about one or another of my staff, or how to meet our fundraising goal), or had a morning appointment that made me late getting onto the freeway, those few miles could take 40 minutes, even a hour.

Oh, you travel by light rail?  How P.C. of you.  Try taking the train to the beach every morning before work.  Oh, and then go for a swim in Puget Sound, I dare you.

Thanksgiving: 27 November 2009

The Mexican people, for the most part, know little if anything about the Thanksgiving holiday.  In fact, a gringa friend of mine told me that her eight-year old, the child of parents born and raised in the U.S., recently asked her “momma, what’s Thanksgiving?”

That Mexicans know so little of Thanksgiving is something about which I suppose I should be thankful.  After all, as cultural traditions go, Thanksgiving blows. 

I’m sure many among you already know that the story of the first Thanksgiving, sweetly sentimental and full of fine intention though it may be, really never happened.  The truth, or a decent facsimile thereof, is that the pilgrims did indeed once host a harvest celebration with Indian guests way back in the day, but just once.  They did it to give thanks to Squanto, the last remaining Patuxet Indian (the rest of his people having been captured as slaves or wiped out by small pox) and to the Wampanoag Nation with which Squanto had recently negotiated a peace treaty on behalf of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 

This was the one and only time we know of that the pilgrims and Indians sat down together to party, guzzle grog or whatever it was they drank, and happily scarf down the harvest in an attitude of gratitude and friendship.  All of the parties after that had a strict dress code: white collars and black hats required. 

The next major day of thanks was declared by colonial churches many years later to celebrate a major victory over the Pequot Indians.  That successful offensive was just one of many against the Pequots during the Pequot War during which literally thousands of vanquished Pequots were sold into slavery, and many, many more were murdered (and sometimes scalped).

On that day, colonists commemorated their victory by, among other things, playing pilgrim soccer with the heads of murdered Pequots.  The colonists in Plymouth were so full of thanks they beheaded a Wampanoag chief, (who was their ally, by the way) and displayed his head on a stake.  In case you thought maybe they got caught up in some kind of psychotic frenzy they would later regret, the head of the Wampanoag chief stayed up on that stake for all the public to see for 24 years.

I could give more details, but you get the picture.  Thanksgiving is a disgusting annual propaganda campaign when U.S. history gets a major shellacking with the worst kind of bulls—t.  Thanksgiving glorifies colonialism, religious fundamentalism, and gross opportunism, not to mention dodging accountability and telling lies.  And, it’s been laid on American children for almost 150 years, much to their detriment. 

Year after year, we squash our kids’ critical thinking faculties with nonsensical, materially unsupportable accounts of the days of the pilgrims.  Kids hear these stories and then look around them for evidence.  Finding none, they adopt the kind of irrational thinking that will one day make them susceptible to crazy product pitches (a cream to apply to your thighs to melt away fat, anyone?), and the paranoid delusions of birthers and Palinites who believe that President Obama’s healthcare proposal will lead to death panels, euthanasia lotteries, and eventually socialism, which of course loves the devil and hates Christians.

At this point, some of you may be scrolling back up to paragraph two, sentence one, where I write, “That Mexicans know so little of Thanksgiving is something about which I suppose I should be thankful” and are wondering what the hell I was thinking.  And well you may, because I love Thanksgiving. 

I love cooking and I love eating and I enjoy doing both of things best in the company of friends.  And, to me, Thanksgiving Day is a day to commemorate the one incontrovertible truth of colonialism:  in spite of all that has been done to us we’re still here.  We survived, and, miracles of miracles, with our humanity intact.   Those of us who have survived, whether we be native people of the Americas, the descendants of slaves in the U.S., Native Hawaiians in Hawaii, or just about anyone else who got in the way of western ideals and western empires in the last 500 years or so are living evidence of the resilience of the human spirit. That’s cause for celebration for everyone, including the descendents of pilgrims.  Our survival says something about what we as people, regardless of race, class or gender, are made of and what we may some day be if only we can overcome our baser impulses and trust in our goodness.  It’s a cause for hope and a source of inspiration.

So I party, year after year.  I cook for hours, sometimes days, concocting cocktails and appetizers, desserts and main dishes in an ritual of remembrance and acknowledgment of the determination and stamina of the generations that have gone before me, and of my great good luck in landing on my feet among good friends, well loved (or at least loved enough), relatively safe and sound, as wealthy as I have a right to be, and happy. 

This year, we hosted a little Thanksgiving fiesta in our new casa.  We made carnitas and bulgogi, sushi, and a fruit crumble.  Our friend Glades brought Filipino adobo and a chocolate cake for her son Gael’s seventh birthday which just happened to fall on the 26^th.

There was no turkey or pumpkin pie, but then there probably wasn’t any back in the day either. 

Our San Pancho friends gathered around us, bringing bottles of wine and tequila and a bar of the most delicious Argentine chocolate.  Once gathered, we partied in the tradition of Hawaiian royalty - we ate until we tired ourselves out with food, rested, and ate again. 

Our neighbor Gaby brought her dogs and her newborn Sophia.  I have to admit that as much as I love babies, and I do love babies, the dogs really stole my heart.  It was nice to have dogs in the house again.

It was a lovely night, right down to the cleaning up.  I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving, too.  Maybe, if you have a spare minute, you'll share a Thanksgiving story of you own.  I'd love to hear it.