Weekend Update

A truly enjoyable 25 mile bike ride with Sean, a tour of Baltimore's private schools including one very large, long hill that me and my lowest gear did not see eye to eye on;
ensuing sunburn;
a new best-ever porkchop from SuperFresh, via Sean and Marin's grill (with perfect grillmarks, natch);
A trip to said SuperFresh, whereupon I left my iPhone in the shopping basket and drove all the way home;
But the kind grocerypeople turned it in and sent my friends a message on Facebook to let me know they had it;
pretty awesome;
Drinks and lunch and catching up with good friends;
thanks to cost-savings somewhere else, negotiating a business class ticket for me and my colleague on this next trip to Tanzania, which should make a good first impression on him;
determining that extra days in Uganda in August can certainly be well spent;
and the mundane: pancakes and NYT and getting Kima's nails trimmed and lamb chops and laundry;
and finding tenants to take over our lease in September! Check plus!

T minus 3 days till J's final draft of Paratexts R' Us goes to the committee!

Instant Fish

Josh is in the last 9 days of finishing the dissertation, so I'm in charge of dinner this week. Last night I came home, went running (let's hear it for Lady Gaga, by the way, who makes this possible), and literally whipped up dinner. Two barramundi filets were thawed; leek confit was reheated, as was some indian spinach that Josh had made a few days earlier. I threw some pecans in the Cuisinart and added salt, slapped that onto the fish for a nice nutty crust, and pan fried (sauteed? what's the difference?) the fish until dark brown and cooked through (longer than I had expected). Slap those puppies down on a bed of leeks with spinach on the side and some barely toasted frozen homemade sourdough bread and you have yourself a pretty nice meal! The pecans gave a nice crunch and the leeks (and their butter) were a perfect mouthful with the white fish.

Fish is my favorite fast food.

Flattery will get you everywhere

So I just finished up this fantastic three week process evaluation of Mali's first universal coverage distribution, in the region of Sikasso. I got to work with a couple ladies from MEDA, Ricki and Ariane, and we blasted all around Sikasso documenting strengths and weaknesses of the distribution, which was planned by PSI and the PNLP and carried out by all the dedicated district medical officers and health facility doctors and volunteers, who went house to house to register each family in every village and neighborhood. I wrote up a 36 page draft report in French with inputs from my team members and revised the microplan that had been developed for the next region, Segou - it had some major formula errors! Using what we learned from the campaign in Sikasso, I also revised the training manuals for the volunteers, both for the registration process (which is complicated in the urban area, since people figure out they can lie about how many people live in their house to get additional nets) and for the distribution process (which mostly went fine, except for the reporting timeliness and some stockouts of nets).

So I get back home and easing back in to all the other work stuff that's going on, and then get an email from another guy at MEDA, the boss of Ricki and Ariane. "Are you interested in spending four weeks in Tanzania to evaluate options and make recommendations for delivering nets through a combination of channels, so that universal coverage can stay high even after they finish their universal coverage campaign? We think you would be great."

Let me explain a little bit. The country of Tanzania will be writing a huge proposal to the Global Fund starting August 15th, to fund (for the next 5 years) a comprehensive malaria control program that includes a comprehensive net delivery strategy, made up of probably multiple channels so that nets can get out to the people who need new ones. We've all theorized about how this might look in a hypothetical country. But I get to spend four weeks actually figuring this out for Tanzania. Then they put it in their Global Fund application and hopefully a year later they'll get the money and be able to implement the plan.

Well hells yeah I'm interested! This is a) the biggest challenge facing net distribution at the moment b) a country that has made tremendous progress and used innovative channels already c) a country I know pretty well, at least in terms of the major organisations and people and recent net-related history d) they think I would be great!

I am so so so susceptible to praise of this nature. To be honest, I had seen this consultancy before and had recommended someone else for it, not even thinking it might be within my expertise (but that was before Mali). This is what we're talking about when we talk about professional opportunities - you get an opportunity, you do a good job, and all of a sudden people are putting you up even bigger and more important jobs. It's the kind of luck you make. And it comes right at the moment where I am confident that I can actually do a good job - no more faking till I make it. I know what I'm doing now.

The downside, of course, is that this means I will be gone for another four weeks, missing both our anniversary and Josh's PhD defense. Not cool. But - I'm around for the next couple weeks during which Josh will finish his draft, and I can cook him dinner each night so that he can write and revise; and later in July we'll both be back in Tanzania to really celebrate our anniversary, with proper vacation and adventure travel. And perhaps I can skype in to the defense...

Sooo excited. Hooray!

Moo

 

We're pretty sure Kima's all Dalmatian, but with her constant grass-grazing in the backyard, it may be time to ask: do we share our home with a barking, shedding, squirrel-chasing Holstein?

Happy Easter!

Kima gets 15 microseconds of fame!

Hosta [is] La Vista, Baby

Unless you're a tulip person, in which case perhaps you prefer the vista from the porch view:




The confetti is white cherry blossom from the trees that will cover the backyard in shade for the rest of the summer. Lots of rain here means the grass we planted is making a real go of it. HK gets the credit for purchasing and planting all the lovely daffodils and tulips this Fall. Still to come: Alium pom-pom blooms. We hope, anyway.

Popcorn Multiculturalism

Can't remember where I first heard the term "popcorn multiculturalism," but I've always liked it as a critique of the ways that Americans "celebrate diversity." I'm sure it could also mean that the discourse around multiculturalism and the way it gets presented in schools is often without substance or much nutritional/ educational value--that it's a lot of nonsense dressed up with butter and salt. And I have a vague memory of eating popcorn in elementary school around Thanksgiving, since pilgrims and Native Americans may have eaten popped corn in the seventeenth century, and that bit of cross-cultural culinary celebration of coexistence worked out smashingly well in the long run for all some of the guests , so voila, popcorn = the multiculture.

I think the best example of why culinary multiculturalism as practiced in schools yields unpredictable results comes from a few lines in Li-Young Lee's superb poem, "Persimmon," in which his teacher presents his sixth grade class with a persimmon:
...
Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat
but watched the other faces
...

It's a beautiful poem and this is the smallest, least interesting part; really you should go read it now. I like the idea of a well-meaning educational exercise derailed by incomplete knowledge and unripe fruit, with the other kids eager to try and then having their suspicions of the foreign confirmed by the chalk and pucker of the unripe flesh instead of the delight that is a properly ripe persimmon.
The poem, of course, tells you how to eat persimmons: you age them first in crumpled newspaper and then monitor them on the bedroom windowsill with the same care and patience you need to weather your own emergence from adolescence and your father's encroaching blindness. Are you convinced yet? Really, just go read the poem already.

So, no popcorn multiculturalism. But popcorn that incorporates two cultures--fusion popcorn--well that's culinary multiculturalism I will embrace.

We're enjoying Grace Young's stirfry book and she says that no wok performs at its best until it has years' worth of patina seared onto the carbon steel, but you can cheat the process a bit by making popcorn in the wok--it distributes the hot oil all around in a way that speeds the darkening of the wok.

So lately I've been making popcorn in the wok, and instead of soy sauce and nutritional yeast I've been drizzling on some Sichuan chili oil that I decided to make after an awesome visit to NYC. I met my brother and my parents and D.'s friend and his parents out in Flushing, Queens for Sichuan food at Little Pepper.

7 of us ate:

cold tripe
dan dan noodles
cumin roasted lamb in tin foil (apparently more Northern Chinese than Szechuan but still delicious)
dumplings and wontons in two different sauces
fried tilapia in red sauce
crunchy cubed and deep fried chicken with sesame and chiles
bamboo shoots in chili oil
tea-smoked duck
pea shoots
two variations on leeks (I think?) with pork belly or maybe some kind of sweet-cured bacon
cold silken tofu in chili oil with blackened scallion and Sichuan peppercorn

The tripe was my fault; I'd never tried it before. For something that looks like the hook side of velcro and has the texture of a long-chewed chiclet, this was actually pretty tasty, but not nearly as good as half a dozen of the other dishes. The tea-smoked duck and the leek dishes were lovely, and so was the cold tofu, which I decided would be easy to duplicate at home if I had this Sichuan chili oil that I read about on the Red Cook blog recommended by Grace Young. The chili oil is wonderful stuff--star anise and cinnamon for aromatics, scallion and ginger for hearty flavor, Sichuan peppercorns and pepper flake for heat. But as you can see from the comments, it wasn't the right recipe for the cold tofu. Kiam Lam Kho explains the right way to make that dish in the comment section:

The cold tofu dish you described is a wonderful appetizer served regularly in Sichuan. It is sometimes served as a preserved egg and tofu dish. The dressing is what we call “mala” dressing. It is made with soy sauce, black vinegar, sugar, Sichuan peppercorn powder, the chili oil and optionally a little extra Sichuan chili sauce.

This chili sauce is made with fried onions, Sichuan peppercorn, fermented soy beans, sesame oil and other seasonings. You can buy this Sichuan chili sauce in Chinatown market and the best known brand is “Lao Gan Ma” or “Old God Mom.” Here is a facebook page on “Lao Gan Ma” brand of chile products. The one you should look for to make the dressing is currently depicted in the fifth picture in the photo album.

https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2361721520&v=info

I believe this is the sauce that Little Pepper use for their “mala” dressing. Enjoy!

Recap:
1) you should go to Little Pepper if you can.
2) you should read Li-young Lee's poetry and Kiam Lam Kho's blog.
3) Looks like I'm headed back to the Asian grocery store for mala dressing ingredients.