Move On...

Keep up with me over on the new site...much prettier, I should say:

snackbasket.tumblr.com

Cooking as Ritual

Cooking and I had for a long time a love-hate relationship. Cooking was the name given to that which stood in between my lover, eating, and I. Cooking was the reason for the mess in the kitchen, the pots to be scrubbed, and thus, the hands that curled like raisins around a pillow of suds and heap of steel. Eating was my harlequin lover, the one who played to my senses and the only one for whom such an impending cleanup seemed acceptable. I’ve long romanticized eating—but with a recent appreciation for process, the mere act of cooking quickly awakens the soul like a knife across a bundle of basil: breathing odor across the cutting board, wafting up my spine.

When I was kid and my friends were purchasing comic books, I was purchasing cookbooks—or perhaps more embarrassingly, I was writing rock star chefs who would then in time send me autographed copies of their latest tomes. While some prized Spiderman and the Hulk, I kept Jean Georges and Ming Tsai snug behind Lucite next to my bed. When I went away to college, I did not at first pack the cookbooks, perhaps thinking food would be about sustenance, and there would be no time for the slow courtship of ingredients and personality I had long savored. Yet, I couldn’t stop buying new cookbooks, sometimes staring for hours at the pictures wondering where the vision to create these things began. I spent most of my time in college in the dining hall; surrounded by the people and the smells I enjoyed so much. Sometimes, I would sit through meals, holding court over a mountain of dirty plates and half-full glasses.

On today’s trip, my local farmer’s market produces several interesting finds, including a handful of leeks too fragrant, too beautiful, to merely turn over to someone else’s care. I found them, tucked in between bags of mixed greens and just beside the butternut squash. Everyone wanted the butternut squash. I lurched for the leeks. My mind raced, and I dashed three stalls down: fresh butter, creamy like fudge.

Back in the kitchen, it’s a symphony of noises: the crack of a pepper grinder, the groan of boiling water, the hiss of a blender. There is a calming way these noises flood over me. There is ritual and there is practice in the seemingly mundane: chop, stir, pour. Today, there’s no recipe, just simple ingredients and the patience to keep tasting and tweaking. And when it’s my mother’s macaroni and cheese recipe, still kept on the oil stained note card she wrote it on years ago, it is a dialog between past and present—reinvigorating the tastes and smells that called me to the table so long ago. Cooking is about a ritual, the most essential of human practices—it’s about knowing what our food looks like before we play with it and knowing how to be ready to take risks and slice.

Good Morning, Baltimore!

It has been four oddly robust days every way you measure it--hours asleep (less than 6 a night), miles walked, and balloon hats made (more on that later).

Somewhere between Louisville and Tokyo, there is Baltimore--a city who by all accounts, is big enough to keep you busy, small enough to allow you to easily enjoy it. The taste of Old Bay is still in my mouth and I have confidently explored much of this quirky locale's offerings. I stayed in town centrally located within a half mile walk of the Inner Harbor (yuck), the cultural institutions of the Westside (Walters Art Museum, the Pratt, and the Cathedral), sports (walked on the Camden Yards field!) and the artsy happenings further North--with Baltimore School of the Arts, MICA, and the Symphony. So, I walked a lot, mostly because the MTA ticket machines don't take credit cards, but still, I walked all over this city, and the architecture, the food, and all the heaploads of culture here leaves me with a soft spot for the Charm City.

As the cab driver back to BWI said, "2 hours to everywhere, but why would you want to leave?" Well said, cabbie.

Carrying On, Movin' Out

I’m on the road again, a mere three days since my last trip. And, sitting again, for the third time in Philadelphia International’s F concourse in a week, it is strikingly clear why I picked up this ‘life in transit’ theme for a blog in the first place. It’s early morning—7:50 to be exact—and somehow, magically, Sbarro and the entire food court already smell like stale pizza, the same pallid display of bread and grease, it appears from three nights ago.

Today is a work trip, but I’ve given in and given up on work clothing. When I packed up for summer, I put some of them in my luggage and others, most actually, went in to a storage unit. My one attempt to look at said storage unit has resulted in me opening the door, taking note of the 70 or so boxes, a couch, bed, nightstands, desks, tables, and a Knoll chair (can’t forget that—my favorite! Ask me, sometime about how I used to stare at this thing in the windows outside the Merchandise Mart and how I miserly saved to splurge on this mid-century velvet chair, even when I had no room to walk around it.) I stare at my contents—I fought and saved for this stuff—and I am but powerless and utterly confused. I walked out of my storage unit with two mahogany hangers from Nordstrom and a personal steamer. Somewhere, it that very well assembled game of Jenga-Possessions was all the clean clothes I could want. But given the prospects of rifling through these boxes, I’d rather not want.

I’m not alone—The New York Times recently ran a story in the Sunday Magazine chronicling the storage industry. Not surprisingly, Americans have and hold on to, a lot of crap. While that’s dipped ever so slightly since the financial apocalypse last fall, there is still, a heavily entrenched sense of wealth measured in America by the amount of stuff we hoard. (I wonder if I really need a dinner service for 20 after all.) Given my short stint of a couple months of living with less—no waffle makers, no sandwich presses, and a vastly smaller selection of haberdashery—I am inspired to trim the fat and get rid of all that extra junk weighing me down.

It is the kind of change I’m finally ready to make. The big, meaningful changes that help us appreciate there is a difference between wealth and happiness. And that holding on to play and child-like imagination does not demand a childish sense of materialism. I make no pretenses that purging will be easy—it won’t be, and I can cleverly craft a narrative for each julep cup, each keyboard, and every vase in there. I was that consumer who was hopeful each piece said something about me—as if my personal ethos could be commoditized in the aggregation of junk.

So, one of these days when the travel cools (if only for a moment), we’ll head to the bin. Look out for me as I wax nostalgic and get ready to say goodbye to that Family Ties board game and every boarding pass from 2006. Now, 2007--well, that's another story...

On Play

The Old Man and the Monolith
Originally uploaded by joshlabove

Travel can be incredibly nourishing, even as it tires us and leaves blisters on our toes. As I crawled up the statues in Vigeland Sculpture Park, I couldn't help but think, when did we stop playing?

Business travel--what I used to do much more of--is not about roaming, but about order. The conveyor belts and security lanes feel not like a new special stage of Super Mario Brothers but the kind of uniform people processing that quickly make even the not terribly introspective feel like a cog in a machine who's on/off switch we've yet to find.

But, leisure travel--and I mean real leisure, not Thanksgiving at home with the whole family and that fattening food you would never cook for yourself--is about roaming. It's about exploration and quenching one's thirst for discovery. Simply put--it's about play. Sometime in middle school, recess was crimped to some stifling 'break' time where we sat around and hoped to trade apples for ho-hos. In lieu of carving out our nooks and crannies of the playground, we were left with a locker bay and a cafeteria to roam. Meager prospects compared to the great outdoors.

My time in Oslo has been, as I think you'll soon gather, about reaffirming faith in play. That when they took recess away, they didn't take away innately human desire to explore, to question, to witness. I came to remind myself that such values are enduring and a belief in that principle is incredibly nourishing. I don't do this often--or, I haven't placated my whimsical desires in a while, and seeing the prescribed 'adult' life of work and sleep, I realize that just as we looked forward to kickball, we still need opportunities and adventures to look forward to, to live for. The answer, to that stinging question most Boomer-parents ask their college graduates, "what will you do with your life?", is "live".

Swedish Films on Norwegian Rooftops

Up in the Clouds
Originally uploaded by joshlabove

Such a title already suggests the kind of culture-blur that happens when one leaves the comforts of one space and moves in to another altogether different one. The weather was decidedly cooler Saturday, a crisp, clear autumnal (or pre-autumnal, yes?) night that produced wispy clouds and a breathtaking sunset. While I've done my best to attempt to capture the beauty of sun falling in to the horizon line of the North Sea, you may just have to take my word for it. Standing on top of the Oprean--a building of glass and limestone that is part ballet hall, part opera house, 100% urban park--I looked out, to one side, on the capitalists transforming Oslo's modest skyline, while on the side, the chilly coastal waters still rippled from the passage of yet another cruise ship.

This morning, the Operaen had been taken over by the Norwegian Bokklubben--a book fair/sale of epic proportion. Now, as the sun was falling behind it's elusive angles, the roof played host to a film screening. In a literary twist, this film, Swedish as you've by now surmised, was based on book two in a three part series by Steig Larsson. Larsson achieved something of a cult popularity in Scandinavia when his trilogy hit bookshelves only after the writer himself had suddenly (and quite sadly) passed away. The ensuing year has been a chance to eulogize the man who became the voice of Northern Europe, whose commercial and critical success has been loud, proud, significant--but all sadly, long after his early demise. Few have taken up the practice of truly using the setting of chilly winters in Stockholm, or a dock in Oslo, with as much nuance and skill--in doing so, he earned the affection of plenty in these parts.

I was at the movie, oddly enough, with one guy I had met at cafe from Spain, and a girl who worked at said cafe, herself from Boise, Idaho. He was a graduate student in Salamanca; she was working through a visa program similar to one I had once used in the UK--learning Norwegian (she was already convincingly local with her six foot stature and blond hair). And together, we, a rather motley crew, enjoyed the cool air, the camaraderie, and a rarity in Norway: a freebie. The film, and, as it turns out, a bagful of hot muscat rolls (boller). We made no pretense about this night being fleeting and beautiful--no pretending to take down numbers and emails and promising to "facebook you later". It was organically derived connections between three people--in a moment, in a place--and when it was over, we'd all have a great night under the Oslo stars.

I Turn My Camera On

The weather has cooperated and provided a beautiful first day in Oslo. With a small bag of a change of clothes, water, and peanuts (what more do you need, really?), I picked up my camera and began capturing my travels. You'll have to wait a few days for the photos to make their way to my Flickr feed--traveling without my computer means no uploading and no editing. (It also means running low on storage space. More on that later, perhaps.)

It has been delightful: snapping photos and walking (lots of walking) from the fjords to the fortresses (yes, fortresses). I knew from even a cusory scan of the visitor's guide that the sight to see would be the Opera House--a breathtaking feast of archetecture and engineering carved right in to the Oslo coastline. I stopped off in the Nobel Peace Centre, waved "Hi" to the armed guards outside the King's digs, and took in a national science fair at the University of Oslo.

It has been noisy in that way that Europe is--here is a city smaller than Cincinnati, Ohio with light rail, subway, train, monorail, and bus after all--and it has been quiet in a way that almost never is. The penetrating sound of the day has been the snap of my shutter--my phone is buried at the bottom of my bag. My photos will say more for me and my time in Norway than I could to anyone by a phone call. I'm staying busy, then, amassing a most impressive text.