Hold Your Ground

I actually made food the other day!! A real dish of sorts. Dad was the director and I was the labor. As such because I've still got a lot to learn, hah.

1 entire head of white or yellow onion
1 handful of peeled garlic cloves
3-4 peppers at least, or more, according to your taste (we used jalapenos + tiny red Thai chilli)
some olive oil
3-4 lemons or limes (limes are more delicious says my parents)
1 chunk of fish (I used a 2(width)x4(length)x1(thickness) of ahi tuna) or 1-2 cans of tuna fish

frying pan
mortar and pestle
eye protection (used my highschool science goggles)
apron

Slice onion into chunks. Put all of onion, garlic cloves and pepper on a heat setting between low and medium, no oil required. Don't burn your pan like how I did! Stir around until roasted. Put into mortar and pestle and mush around. Fry the huge chunk of fish in olive oil (or whatever kind of vegetable oil) until seared all around and add a chunk into the mortar. The inside will still look/be raw. This is ok. If you've got canned tuna, open the can and squeeze out as much excess water as possible, then add a bit into the mortar; just enough to keep the onions&etc from sliding about too much. Mash with the pestle until you think it's enough of a paste. Your preference, basically. I'd be best if your huge chunks of chilli became as mashed as possible, imho.

Take out from mortar and put into a big mixing bowl of sorts. Add in lemon/lime to taste. Add in fish sauce (or salt) to taste. Eat with a little bit folded into lettuce, like a wrap, and or with steamed rice. wah-la!



After grounding and mashing it into a paste I smelled like fish from all the splatter. As my dad was mixing lemon pulp/juice and fish sauce into it, I felt like an actual Thai person. I don't know when was the last time I "felt" in such a way. Maybe when my mother and her two children were chastised off a bus in Thailand for carrying around so much shit on our way to her aunt's, my grandmother's sister's, house. (You know, immigrant families and how they are with property once they've acquired it and are constantly getting requests from family or are always giving gifts.) I never feel American unless one of two things; I'm buying something that's clearly been through multitudes of middlemen, however many degrees separated from the original producer, or I'm in Thailand and someone argues with me in Thai about my origin. In the end I'm just an unconvincing person anyway, because those are things I cannot win and it's not about winning anyway, right?

I made this thing two days ago and only after I (let my dad) ruin a 'teflon' pan, mashed most of it into a pulp, did I realize well maybe I should'a taken some pictures of the process because that's what a real blogger would've done?

But I'm lazy and not a real blogger so this is all I'm left with; a photo of the final result. One that doesn't reflect the work that went into it, but that's most of the world and it's products these days. I underappreciate most things (99.7%) in my life too, so I'm the same as the shit I complain about.

Anyway. The fish paste is REALLY GOOD. Even my mom thinks so. My mom and dad are good at making food, when they want to be good. As for me... More weeding in the backyard for today, more dirt-making, which is the only thing I can really do well around here.

THERE ARE MAGGOTS IN MY COMPOST. Must be the shrimp shells, and it smells lol. I put in more grass clippings and turned the pile. Trying to not gag, haha.

For the last two, almost three days it felt like winter, save for the very cold crisp in the air which makes winter here unbearable. It's very gray right now, and it's JUNE. Fuck all of this global-warming-climate-change system thing whatever. Not anything I do could impact it's impending take over.

Whenever I get the chance to work outside, I always work until the sun sets. With summer solstice approaching, I go inside to clean up a bit and then straight to go pick up my mom. Earlier in the year, I would go on the internets to read for a bit before leaving, but there's not time for that anymore. Ah, it really feels like I'm growing up.

Except, on monday I parked the car at a place that I usually don't park and had a small panic. I was already outside the building without a key, waiting for my mom to come outside.

"Mom, the car is gone," I exclaim when she finally emerges. My mom looks at me with slight exasperation and says, "child, you parked at the end of the block today."

"oh," I said and laugh a little too hysterically. She literally LOL'ed all over the place.

"I began to forget like this when I was 35, dear." She then told me a story about how she forgot where she parked and called camp security. They found her car in an adjacent parking lot and they were like, is this your car m'am? I can imagine her laugh, saying yes. Don't call me again, the told her.

Well!!!!!-- maybe I'm not a late bloomer in some aspects. Geez.

Got dragged out of bed at 9am to go to the local farmers market, lol, which takes place in a church parking lot. It's in a part of town that was developed a few years ago and had all of its sidewalks, fountains, lamps, etc revamped. Last week, my parents talked to some public service city worker who does sustainability projects and they all were chatting about solar panels for home use. It's a hefty 12k though, which my parents totally cannot afford. And we're in cloudy, it-rains-8mo-out-of-the-year Oregon, so I dunno how useful it would be anyway.

This worker and my parents got to talking about their kids and she told them to tell me to e-mail her so I could do volunteer work for whatever projects she has going on. But ugh, I can barely keep up the energy to the current volunteer commitment I made last year, how can I keep up with more? So I dragged my feet about e-mailing her, and my dad was getting upset in his particular way, looking at me like I was a particularly fickle dead tree that wanted to fall exactly on his garage.

We didn't buy any plants but we did get a mini pie (pear-sweetened blueberry pie with an oat crust on top) and some wildflower honey (the bees were moved about to different plots of wildflowers around the Willamette Valley; the same if it was labeled "holly," or "blackberry") for my mom's terrible pollen allergy. $4.50 for like 10oz, yeesh.

Early in the morning there was a lot of sun, but as we got home the sky clouded over and now it seems that the rest of the day will be without actual sunshine. Today I'm feeling not exactly tip-top shape, and it looks like I'll be digging to remove grass, weeds etc, maybe even having to do some food service this evening. Mmmm I am a ball of reluctance today, and I really hate it when I get this way.

So instead of making big long blog posts, which was my original idea and method of updating on this project, I'm just going to update as much as possible with the things I did that same day/evening.

Last night I dug holes in the ground and put plastic bowls into the ground, filled them with pabst.

Ever since dad's been laid off from his job, he's been doing a lot of yard work on top of the restaurant related things he already does. It was kinda hard at first, because when it was really dreary outside we'd stay in and I'd have to endure his political talk (nearly all of which I disagree with) but now that it's actually, finally sunny outside we're collaborating a lot on making the yards look nicer, rather than constantly arguing.

It goes like this: I have a project idea and thennnnnnnnnnn it usually fizzes out after the initial flair. This one, this about being up to my elbows in dirt, about reversing the alienated relationship we Americans have with our food, has been in the making for a while. It's also about challenging myself to physically work, and to mentally be able to condition myself to be able to slog through it. Ever since I've started working, it's been short of though not quite nearly a nightmare to get myself used to the daily, mind-numbing grind of doing the same tasks over and over again.

For gardening, though, I'm taking my time. During the months I gathered compost material, I wandered through the backyard, seeing all the changes that happened through the last four years that I hadn't lived here, and the last two plus years of neglect. While the hornet's nests have largely disappeared, and we finally, no longer have poultry of any sort, there are a lot of other issues. The pathway to the creek is now overgrown with thorny Himalayan blackberry bushes. English ivy is creeping in from the neighbor's property, and sneaking up two trees, ready to smother. There's a dead tree that's now leaning on two trees, and when the wind blows, you can hear it creak eerily. The greenhouse is no longer completely covered with plastic, and all the tires of the bikes that were stored in there, have rotted.

Honestly, I'm probably biding my time too long, though it stopped being freezing at night only in early April. I put the seeds into dirt about ten days go, and I'm worried they won't sprout! For most of those days, it's been at least a light sprinkle to unforgiving rain. The kind that makes even driving difficult.

Both of my parents, in some way, are into making/like making stuff grow. "Gardening" is a word that feels too much like a hobby, so it's not accurate enough for what they do. It's a lot like a hobby, because it's what they do in their spare time, but it's more important than just a hobby. What is it about having food from your childhood available to you, even though back then it was ubiquitous greens that were on the side of the road, now akin to gold, years later, thousands of miles further from the places you grew up? What is it about waiting for it to grow, protecting it and cooking it for people you love?



I need some icons up in this place.