2011 in Review

Happy New Year! We're one step closer to flying cars and living on that recently discovered balmy planet that has a water source.

It has been quite an eventful year, with more international headlines than any year I can remember. I witnessed the horrors of a tsunami and reminded myself that indeed giant tidal waves are no longer the stuff of science fiction, gawked a royal wedding, rallied with the cries for a more just government in Cairo, sympathized with the anger at corporate greed but still wondering what they hope to gain, worried as country after country in Europe suffer crippling fiscal demands, entertained at the bumbling circus of Republican presidential candidates, stood incredulous at the news that the world's #1 terrorist has been captured and killed, excited like watching a high speed chase through the felling of another dictator, and felt a tinge of relief with growing uneasiness that a megalomaniac dictator has died only to leave an unstable country in the hands of his inexperienced progeny. Yes, indeed, it has been a milestone of a year for the world, all of this happening amidst one of the calmest years of my life.

Calm in the sense that there is very little drama, but not that nothing happened. I've indulged my self in cooking and baking, poring over cookbooks and recipes, watching with rapt attention the pervasive food shows on television, working on my knife skills, pushing my creativity with unfamiliar ingredients and new techniques for old favorites, kneading and rolling dough, learning how to bake without kneading or fussing with dough, and discovering the joy of tasting it all. Also, I've delved deeper into organic vegan cuisine by successfully growing a tomato plant (yes, singular), better understanding why it is so important to buy organic, and grimaced at how dairy leeches calcium from our bones. Notably, one of my favorite new recipe discoveries is a simple dish of burnt eggplant with tahini, which makes me think of what new vegetables I can char that exponentially improves its flavor.

I'm happy to report that I still have a roof over my head, a full (and happy) belly, warm clothes on my back, a soft bed, computers with which to write my blog, and electricity. I am very lucky, much luckier than a lot of others who are struggling to get their basic needs met in this economic recession. I do not have these worries from day-to-day, although I am watchful of my dwindling savings.

I'm thankful for all that I have, and for all that I can give. I shall continue with my volunteer work helping to feed the hungry for it gives so much purpose to my life. In the last week, inspired by a truly generous fellow volunteer, I decided to make an appointment with the local Red Cross to give blood. Although I was sent away due to my low levels of hemoglobin (due to a slight iron deficiency), the resolve to temporarily suspend my extreme phobia of needles and to stop hoarding my own blood has taught me to be more generous this coming year.

Lemon Marmalade Mania

I've always wanted a lemon tree, and grape vines, and I have neither.

My bff recently rented one unit in a cute cottage duplex that has a private yard with a very fecund little lemon tree. I'm not sure what type of lemons they are, I'm guessing they might be Meyer lemons as the tree is quite small and the fruit is rounder and smaller than Eureka lemons (I suppose if I had taste buds that were more developed, I could taste the difference, but generally I'm not a fan of sucking on a lemon). One of the benefits of being bff's with my bff is access to that lemon tree, and I have big plans for it!

You can never have enough lemons, you use it in cooking all the time, and it is so handy in making beverages. I like keep lemon juice in an ice cube tray in the freezer, so I have lemon juice for cooking handy in case I don't have fresh lemons on hand.

Recently I've discovered yet another great way of preserving lemons - lemon marmalade! Orange marmalade is much more readily available, so it is no wonder I've never had lemon marmalade in my life and was curious. The process is simple but time consuming: prepping the lemon by washing it, removing and slicing the zest, cutting off the pith (white part underneath the zest, tastes bitter), slicing, de-seeding, cooking, and canning. It takes a whole afternoon, at least, but the end product is a sweet, golden nectar that would taste great on just about anything. I've even made a beautiful label for it, the kind that gets wrapped around the lid of the jar, not the sticker kind as I find that stickers and their glue make it a bit more cumbersome to re-use the jar. I hope my friends will be as excited about receiving them as I will be about giving them.

Persimmon Update

The freezing method worked! I popped a few hachiya persimmons into the freezer until they are rock hard, took them out and put them in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator to defrost slowly, and if necessary, repeated the process until the persimmons are as soft and tender as naturally ripened fruit. My greatest fear was that the newly softened fruit would retain its astringency, but the freezing method even took out the astringency. I cannot be more pleased!

Back in California and How to Ripen Persimmons

Wow, it's been a year-and-a-half since my last blog post, it makes me really feel the passage of time by how much has changed since February 2010. Allow me to recap: I've hiked an island in Japan, sampling all sorts of delectable udons and nigiri rice balls...yadda yadda yadda...I've left the island and am back in California.

An important component of my new life has been volunteering. Maybe it is trying to rack up good karma, maybe I have more time than what to do with so might as well do something good, maybe but I truly enjoy it.

Harvesting

Back in April of this year, my sister took me to a Village Harvest event, their concept is brilliant: neglected food in backyards and orchards + volunteer labor = helping to feed the hungry in my community. My sister had volunteered with them a few times and found it worthwhile to keep going back, and it was she who took me to my first harvest. Now we're both event leaders, passing on the sacred knowledge of how to use a picker and the best direction to lean while on a ladder. With a lot of fruit, there's inevitably good pretty fruit as well as damaged blemished fruit, the food bank gets the good stuff and whatever will spoil from sitting around for a few days before the fruit gets distributed goes home with the volunteers. That said, I've taken home probably over a hundred pounds of fruit so far, 20 pounds of French prune plums, 20 pounds of apricots being the more memorable single event takes, with 10 pounds of this and 15 pounds of whatever else is in season.

How to Speed Up Nature

This is persimmon season. Never had a persimmon? You don't know what you're missing! Both types of persimmons range from pale to bright orange. Fuyus look like flat tomatoes, and like apples, are eaten when hard and crisp. Hachiyas are longer with a pointy end, and requires great patience to wait for them to ripen to soft sublime gooeyness, otherwise they are bitter and astringent, like swallowing a mouthful of sawdust.

The hachiyas we harvested yesterday were very hard, and the ones I brought home had some gashes and holes. I'm told that it must be dehydrated quickly otherwise the fruit will mold before it goes soft. While we recently bought a juicer (20 lbs of apples reduced to 1/2 gallon of juice in one afternoon), we don't really have any gadgets for dehydrating except for the sun, and that takes forever. Really, I'm hoping to expedite nature, and what better way to find out how than on the information superhighway (do people still say that?).

From what I can find, there are a few ways of ripening hachiyas, none of them as successful as sitting on the counter for a long time and waiting until they go really soft, but here goes:

1. Place them in a paper bag along with an apple or banana, which emits a gas that will help fruits mature faster. I've heard of this trick with green tomatoes, to make them turn red. On the whole, it seems putting fruits into paper bags is a very popular activity.
2. Freeze them, then take them out to defrost. They will be soft once defrosted, and somehow or other the process also takes out the astringency. Freezing and defrosting can do magical things, just try it with a block of tofu and you'll see.
3. Put them in a plastic container with a few drops of brandy or rum on the leaves on top of the persimmon, cover and wait a few days.

I've decided to try the first two methods, as I didn't have any rum or brandy on hand for the third method. To sweeten my odds, I placed both a banana and apple into a paper bag along with four hard hachiyas, I'm hoping the extra gas will be extra encouragement. I washed and placed two hard hachiyas in the freezer last night, and took them out this morning to thaw. They're still thawing on my kitchen counter, so it's a little early to tell, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

A year-and-a-half ago, I was too busy singing karaoke, smoking hookah, and teaching English to have imagined myself delving so wonderfully joyously into volunteer work. Even though I've always enjoyed volunteering and have always wanted to give back to my community, I hadn't quite found the type of work I want commit to. Now I've found my niche. Stay tuned for fruit recipes!

Pushers

I am back to being the vision of good health...hooray!

I'm on a doctors visit kick. Gearing up to go backpacking in Japan next month, and I figured it's about time to get some long-neglected medical things done. I haven't been to the dentist or optometrist in over two years, stupid I know, especially since I actually have medical insurance to cover most of the costs.

Trying to pick a dentist is hard, so I checked out Forumosa, an online expat discussion forum, hoping to get a recommendation on a good dentist, only to be totally discouraged by all the accounts of BAD dentists who rush through a cleaning, do only half your teeth and ask you to come back for another appointment, or simply don't do very much at all. Ironically, because of affordable national health insurance, a lot of dentists try to see as many patients a day in order to maximize on the insurance reimbursements, and many are becoming as lazy and indifferent as Communist workers in a state-owned factory.

Luckily, a friend of mine recommended a dentist not too far from where I live. After filling out a short form, the receptionist gave me a small plastic tote bag with complimentary gifts: a small tube of toothpaste, a box containing 20 new toothbrushes, and a packet of those plastic toothpick flosses that old Chinese men love to use then discard on the street. I figured I could use the toothpaste, but really don't have any use for the toothbrushes because I use an electric toothbrush, and I wouldn't be caught dead using the plastic toothpick flosses because I'm neither in the right age group nor gender. So, trying not to be wasteful, I bring the box of toothbrushes and toothpick flosses to the receptionist thinking she can give it to someone else, but she refused to take them back, suggesting instead that I could give them to someone else. Ok, whatever, maybe I can find someone who will put them to good use.

Next, I go see an optometrist for a new pair of contact lenses. While I'm paying my bill, the receptionist tells me that the doctor has given me a prescription for anti-fatigue eye drops and hands it to me in a little white plastic bag. Sure my eyes get tired, but I've always figured that a good cure for tired eyes is to get some shut-eye, not apply some drops to force the tireness to go away. I protest and tell the receptionist that I really don't need these drops and would she please take it back. She refuses, explaining that the drops are already covered under my medical insurance and are of no additional cost to me, so I might as well take them in case I need to use them.

Despite trying to push drugs and medical supplies on me, I have to say that both the dentist and optometrist do credit to their profession.