Buying in Theory

Shopping brings a thrill of the potential. A new dress? Maybe an exciting date. Yoga mat? Maybe a toned body. Cookbook? Maybe the pots will stop collecting dust.

All of these things are in theory. The new dress will not make a date happen. Nor will it improve a date or make him dance better. The yoga mat can do little to tone the body if it stays rolled up in a corner. And the cookbook might linger on the kitchen table but it will linger without any of the cabinets opening up magically.

Swimming in the Rain

While there is no logic against it, swimming in the rain makes the event more exciting. The thrill of going out to get wet in a time when people avoid it excites those who "risk" it.

Coming out of the water to still be drizzled in it...

Drying off when the air wets what the towel dries...

Feeling the rain hit the head...

The image of cold in pleasure of the event

Potato Greens

Potato greens regularly appear in the diet of Liberia and many other West African countries. They are a staple food to be cooked with palm oil and maybe a white meat and eaten over rice.

Having lived in Liberia for several years, the urge to try cooking them overcame me. It came after a fit of reading about the slow-food movement and wanting to be "intellectually cool" like the people who eat locally and make a living writing about eating locally.

The first step was purchasing the potato greens. The first step was a price inquiry. I like to ask a co-worker about the price of local items and they normally provide not only the fair-market price but also like to explain how to pick the best produce, where to buy it, and the different ways it can be purchased.

Potato greens can be bought on the stem, leaves picked off and washed, and leaves washed and shredded. A slight elevation in price accompanies each addition of labor. Being new to potato greens, I decided the unprocessed option would allow for the best learning and understanding of the potato greens.

I began my adventure by pulling off the leaves and washing them. They were tough and seemed inedible. I would have stopped but I knew they could be edible. With that as a goal, I forged ahead to my goal.

After careful washing, I started to chop up the leaves. This again made me question eating them. Many things on Earth are edible, not all of them I can cook. Certain items, like sushi and creme caramel are better left to the experts. Luckily, I live alone and can only poison myself.

After chopping came the frying. With oil, onions, and garlic, the main ingredients for everything, I stirred and waited. I stirred and waited several hours. An unlucky soul came to visit and thus was forced to try the uncooked leaves. While I did not poison the visitor, they did not ask for more. I stirred and waited again.

Two days later, my chore was done. I ate most of what I cooked. While I do not feel closer to Liberians for my effort, I do feel a bit cooler for trying slow-food.

My food was slow, two days slow, and that made me extra intellectually cool.

Chips on Sushi

This is listed as a club sushi roll. Normally, chips don't fit into the fun category on the dinner table, tasty but not fun. On a sushi roll cut like a sandwich they achieve fun.

Surprising and fun dishes on a table can lighten up a groups mood. The item adds to the table as a safe topic of discussion that invites jokes for everyone to laugh at.

Try to eat a sushi roll the size of a credit card made with rice as the binding agent and nothing but laughs can come.

Tropical Locations

Views like this conjure up thoughts of fruit and fish, drinks with natural sweetness, and finally an icy dessert. The picture calms the mind without a bite. It is a location where the senses fill without a taste taken.

*Note the lack of food in the picture. Fill in with imagination and enjoy.

A Powerful Potato Mash

These mashed potatoes are really a salad served at Royal Hotel in Monrovia, Liberia. While it looks like a ball of fried potato goodness, please note the bed of vegetables that resemble a salad but slightly cooked. This is truly a salad.

Inside the fried goodness, the fork meets potato, feta cheese, and mozzarella melted and sunk to the bottom of the ball. The cooked salad at the bottom has a great dressing and unusually pleasant taste and texture for being cooked. Cooking salad requires skill, how to keep it a salad and not turn into cooked vegetables.

Maybe the best part of the entire dish comes form the presentation. The sophisticated look of the fried goodness with the strips of decorative pure grease excuses the reality of the dish.

Order a potato salad and get a mass of yummy starch and cheese covered in fried wonder.

A Powerful Salad

Salads automatically feel healthy. No matter if they are doused in a creamy ranch dressing with only lettuce leaves, croutons, and the dressing on the plate. They can have more calories than a hamburger but still have an element of "healthy" to them.

Salad dinners empower a person. They are healthy while still being rich. To enjoy them require a couple of things: a love of vegetables and a variety of vegetables and other salad items for it. Like a party, the more diversity in the salad produces the better flavor results.

This was a power salad night.

Standardizing

Standardization simplifies meals. Same thing for breakfast, same for lunch, and then something different for dinner. Diet and health guides often recommend it to save calories and control quantities eaten. Others fall into it for convenience sake.

Breakfast is the easiest to simplify with choosing a standard cereal. Few have the time to ponder morning meals and thus give up on options and even cooking. The meal gets modified on an upgrade basis, find a healthier cereal buy it, add blueberries, or change the milk to soy.

Lunch varies more. People often eat determined by leftovers, time, and opportunity to eat out. These variable can effect the quality of taste, pleasure, and calorie count of the meal.

Dinner is normal to vary throughout the week and the month.

Each meal can be new and exciting but the task of choosing and creating a different meal, every meal, every day can wear out the mind and detract from it. The idea of standardizing a meal can reduce stress, effort, and health concerns while allowing for a good meal to repeat itself in a simple fashion.

A Light Fish

A light fish fell into place for dinner. Apoka could not believe her luck of finding the fresh fish at the market.

Well, luck had a big part in the plans.

Apoka went looking for an impressive meal. A simple meal meant to leave her guest with more than a positive feeling about her. While the invited boy had shown interest in the past dates, Apoka did not want to leave anything to chance. Her night would shine in the womanly art of cooking. She never felt less feminist and yet so anticipatory proud.

Fresh fish came onto the menu when she daydreamed into the fish counter and noticed an error. The fish she had looked at before was now re-priced in error. The mistake came home with her.

Into the make-shift kitchen, she felt a desire for long counters and matching pots with a variety of aprons to match. The unpacking of the groceries bought special for the night tarnished her image of the kitchen.

Such nice, white fish did not deserve to be hacked into fillets by her dulled beyond sharpening knives that didn't manage to cut nor match. The promise of perfection from her moment at the store dulled. She might not be able to rely on the fish's nature qualities to carry over her meal.

Nor could it carry over her excitement about the date to anticipation on the guy. Her fish would cook. Her kitchen would change that night. The boy would be himself and she would be Apoka. Someway, the night would proceed.

Apoka

In the mist of baking, Apoka felt a twinge of regret. Chocolate cupcakes, while popular, were a completely safe option to take.

"Why am I baking so safe?" entered her mind and rattled around her brain as she put down the cup of coco powder.

Apoka stood in her apartment kitchen with an efficient layout and bland colors. All the accent colors where items were given in a haphazard way. Family, friends, and college roommates had all bequeathed the items they most wanted to replace. She had accepted out of poverty, practicality, politeness, and a lack of thought as to her kitchen. Before committing to a kitchen style, she had received excess items from others and had no need to ponder her own style as the essential basics of a kitchen freely came. Yellow cups, plates with country edges, modern red mixing bowls...all nice items, all necessary items for a kitchen, but none managed to match or were what she would have picked out.

With the basics of her kitchen covered and barely in her first "real" job, Apoka tried not to let the decor bother her. She never thought about them bothering her enough to toss perfectly good items in favor of matching and pleasing items purchased cheaply from a large box store. Her needs were filled and she repressed the self-expression desires as being frivolous.

But it did bother her, enough to annoy subconsciously but not to consciously dispose of usable items to replace at a higher expense just to have them please her for their newness and matching style.

So while not able to consciously recognize that the used measuring cups given to her by an aunt, who happily replaced them, was the source of her irritation, she put away the coco.

In the fridge, she took out the lemon juice and went off recipe, beating with old wooden spoons left by a roommate.