Chicken

Saying the word "chicken" is saying half of a joke.

Please don't think disrespectful thoughts about the animal.

Seriously.

Chicken.

Chicken.

Chicken.

Chicken.

I bet you're smiling.

Few animals evoke such a common emotion with but the name. Is it the feathers? Is it the clucking? Is it how chickens run? Is it the tilt of the head as each step is taken? Someone, somewhere is studying the humor we find in the animal.

So I didn't have a chicken but a rooster in the house. He was brought in a cage to watch a game. He was named "Gary the Gamecock" and that's the last time I will type his full name. As a guest, he was polite, quiet, and didn't share his food nor water. As a talisman for his football team, he failed miserably.

SEC championship for 2010, Auburn Tigers vs South Carolina Game***** finished 56 to 14. He watched the game, he had a chance to cluck or crow, we brought him out, he was brought out to watch the end of the game, and we encouraged him to win. Nothing saved the college football team.

Luckily, his team did not determine his fate.

The chicken walked away free and safe.

Isn't that the punch line for a joke?

Liberian Cherries

For 40 LD (about $0.70 US) I bought two pound of Liberian Cherries. I have now been in Liberia for 3 years, so I'm wondering where these cherries have been hiding.

The thing that is irksome is that in Liberia, most of the produce in the grocery stores is flown in at great expense, and then sold for even greater. I have seen two zucchini for $11.25! Strawberries are flown in and a text goes out to faithful customers. Tomatoes come from Spain and oranges are from South America. In the heart of the tropics, restaurants sometimes serve canned pineapple. They grow here!!!!

With the shipped in fruits, comes an elevated price foreigners rarely question. For the zucchini, asking if the price was correct, the worker who weighed it loudly and vehemently went into an argument about how it was priced correctly. The two zucchini cost half the wages of a maid for a week of work. They cost the same as hiring a a private taxi for two hours and giving the driver a good tip. The zucchini went back into the bin.

So now, out of the blue, local cherries appear (though they were still the appropriate red color). With an outer layer of leaf that needed to be pulled off, but could be done with ease. The taste was a bit tart but still juicy, fruity, and a hint of cherry flavor. Smaller than the normal cherry varieties, these fruits come with an outer husk and provide an experience of flavor, texture, and effort similar to the addiction pistachios invokes. A small bit of work for a reward, and repeatable but in a fruit version.

I found the mysteriously addicting berries at a local fruit stand that catered to locals waiting for transportation. Nothing on the table came in a box or on a plane, all were locally picked and probably from that very neighborhood. I think the owner was so amused by my interest in her products that she forgot to double the price. And at 70 cents for two pounds, I would have happily been the fool to pay more.

So I saw an unusual fruit and asked about it at a stand normally patronize by locals. It was incomprehensible that I had missed cherries in this country. The owner said they were cherries. I kept repeating my question in various forms unable to believe that I had been missing local cherries.

Me:

"What are these?"

"Cherries?"

"Liberia has cherries?"

"Are these cherries?"

"These are cherries?"

A woman in a perfectly made traditional dress, eating cherries unpaid for was at the table. She helped me out with this explanation:

"They are cherries. You know cherries. See cherries."

"You eat them like this. Cherries"

Then she ate another one without paying and handed me one to try. Then I purchased.

See cherries in Liberia.

Almost Chili

I almost made chili today.

It started out a week ago with the desire to make spaghetti. Sauce is better if made a day before and the day before plan never happened.

So Sunday came around and the basil in the garden had grown plus there was a large bag of onions in the cupboard. I chopped and chopped, fried, and seasoned. Tomato sauce from scratch was the goal.

Seasoning was my downfall. The pleasure of adding flavor took hold of me. I kept adding and thinking, oregano, sage, pepper, salt, and fresh basil. And finally I had thought too far. The cumin seduced me. I added it and thus my tomato sauce had a chili taste.

What to do? Two options appeared: make chili or add a jar of non-scratch sauce.

I accepted defeat, losing the battle but winning the war and making dinner.

On Top of a New Building

I stood on the top of the building. It was a new and would not be finished for another year. From the view, the whole of the city could be seen. Perched up high, my eyes were level with a soaring hawk.

Cities have a special look from a distance. Patterns emerge when the entire community is seen. The gridlines of streets can be made out by the repetitions of roofs. The curve of the river and the significance of a hill do not always form meaning on the street, but standing with the birds they do. Repetition of architecture and building construction pop out, while the details to distinguish blur in the distance.

In this city, a new building would stand. The beginning was marked with a ceremony and so would the end. Those on the roof were there for a middle mark. A person spoke about the significance of the new site, praised the workers, and spoke about the country. Others spoke about the significance of this new building, the rebuilding of the country, and appreciations to the workers, with hope that they might pass their skills along after its completion. All spoke well, all said meaningful words, and the hawks kept playing in the air.

They stayed so close because of a tree. Beside the building stood several trees with branches covered in orchids and moss. Beneath the cover of the leaves, a magical green playhouse of limbs hid. Within a limb sat a nest for the hawks. The tree had withstood over a hundred years of human presence. Weathering construction, destruction, conflict, and transition in the county, the limbs held the leaves and many living things lived in the forest of limbs inside.

I stood on the top of the new building. The plans allow it to withstand hostile conditions but so the the formation of the trees. The hawks eyed us all as they flew. Diving and soaring, they survived in this city through war and peace. As they watched us and the city, I prayed they watched over before retiring to their nest.

The Effort

The effort that goes into each day
need not produce results

if not for the work
nothing would get done

so nothing changing
with energy used

still means that something gets done

For My Ambassador

We stand on the beach with feet in the sand
the tide bring the waves up and over us

each wave is different and last but the time it was meant

Some softly cover the feet with tickles
Others forcefully wet our knees
Few splash up with droplets reaching high

The shape of the sand around us changes
But our feet do not change
They stay as we put them as the landscape alters

We plant our feet in the beach
we stay until time to go

Enjoying each swell but knowing
another beach will always bring us similar joy
in another pattern of waves over our feet

Simple Fun

Close and a Face Forms

Photographing close to an object allows images to pop out. This tree had a face hidden in it. Staring closely at normal items can reveal surprises and delights.

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.

Fudge

Fudge is made with ingredients.

Fudge is tasty.

Fudge also mean to lie a little.

People lie a little to themselves. Its a lie believed to be true, but alas is not. The lie comes and is easier to live with than whatever ugliness is the truth.

"No, I was right."
"You need these pants."
"She will understand."
"They should have know"
"I am the one who really needs it"
"It's my turn."
"This is mine."
"I'm sharing"
"We're a team."
"There is no reason for them to think that"

All of these statement can be said in truth, all could also be lies. Fudging life comes from only looking at it from one perspective. From a first person perspective, all of the statement could be true. Which recipe to follow? The one that requires more knowledge and thought or the one that is fudged.

Fudge requires ingredients, the truth requires information and thought. If the recipe calls for milk, wine will not do.

Oscillate

Going round and round never seems like a good idea unless egg whites are involved. The turning of clear, gluey liquid into white peaks which then get sugar and applied to lemon pies requires magic. The magic being an electric beater.

Making meringue by hand could become the new exercise fad called "Lose Weight by Cooking Great".

Oscillating on a problems lacks meringue magic. It wears down the senses and perspectives. As the beating repeats, nothing changes, no whiteness appears, bubbles fail to turn into foam, nor do any peaks become stiff. Instead, the problem grows and solutions wither with the spirit as the energy is used.

At a point, just like getting a bit of yolk in the whites, any and all solutions seem infeasible unless it's the "perfect and optimal" one. The obstacles grow and so does the negative energy.

So why beat a bowl of egg whites with a drop of yolk in it? Admit that the cracking and separating of the eggs was not perfect and redo it. See the problem as being beyond a perfect fix and work on doing what is possible.

Egg whites can become an omelet. The person who separates the egg is not always the one who beats. The oscillator does not always have the power to fix the problem but can end the waste in energy and heat up the pan.

Seven Hundred and Fifty Grams

A danger in grocery shopping as the only shopping done is the possibilities that come to mind. One example:

See a coconut
"I could crack open the coconut, dig out the meat, shred it, and toast in the oven as a snack" comes to mind.
Buy coconut
Never even crack coconut open
Coconut goes bad
Wonder why ants are in the kitchen.


Kitchens can become full of items with an intended use. Intentions that never come through. Fun intentions which occupied the mind while wandering the isles looking for cheese. Purchased intentions wasting money and space but filling up daydreams. The dream can still happen, over and over again, if the temptation to act remains repressed.

Making lemon cupcakes
Frying homemade potato chips
Icing cakes without using a can
Whip cream with a whisk
Hard-boiled eggs cut thin in the egg slicer on fresh french toast
Crepes hot of the maker
Hot chocolate without tearing a packet open
Blending homemade peanut butter

Putting aside the dreams, the reality still sit on the counter in the form of 750 grams of Godiva chocolate fresh from a friends hands.

Then the list is put aside for questions.

750 grams of chocolate - Does that equal 750 more grams to the weight scale? Does it count if eaten in grams but weighed in pounds?

It is all but a daydream unless eaten.