Employment! 10/16/2009
 
The job I most coveted through this process, is as a part time cheese monger at Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge.  I'll only be there two days a week but I'm thrilled to be able to learn about cheese from such a respected institution.  And also be so close to so many awesome products.

My next job which I'm also really excited about is at Create A Cook teaching culinary classes to 9-11 year olds.  I saw an ad on craigslist for a teaching position there and as luck would have it a friend from culinary school is one of the main organizers at the school, and things just fell together.  I'll be observing classes next week and hopefully I'll get my feet under me soon after and begin to teach classes.

Life is very exciting for me right now.  It's a really great feeling.
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My time for the past few weeks has been occupied with finding a job, which I think I've done.  I'm really excited because it's the job I was really coveting.  I'll put a link up here when all the details get straightened out.

I've also been up to my eyeballs with bureaucratic crap.  Both immigration-wise and life in general.  Balls. 

Not much else to report.  Excited to spend this American Thanksgiving in Anguilla (seeing both my partner's family and my Mum and Uncle).  Haven't been able to visit down there in awhile, and the last time I was there was for more solemn circumstances.

Life's moving on in general.  Looking forward to getting on with it.
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Even though I just got back from Canada, I will be heading back to Toronto for surgery in a few weeks.  I have to get my wisdom teeth out, and apparently I wont be able to have solid foods for a few days.  In order to make these few days livable I'm compiling a list of things that are yummy and mushy.

-Pudding
-Congee
-Polenta
-Creamed spinach
-Creme caramel
-Mashed potatoes and gravy
-Schneenockeln (aka floating island)
-Chicken soup with griesnockle (cream of wheat dumpling)
-Cream of mushroom soup
-Chopped liver on fresh challah bread
-Ice cream
-Poached eggs

Savory mushy things were harder to think of than sweet mushy things.  Any suggestions are welcome.
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Recently I've been getting into fermentation, which even as I type this seems like a weird thing to be 'into'.  Two weeks ago I started a batch of Mexican pineapple vinegar, from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, I tasted it on Sunday and it's almost got a vinegary taste.  It needs another week or so of fermenting on the counter I think.

When I was last home to Toronto for a visit with my Omi I told her about my experiment with making vinegar, she laughed at me and told me that this was how they made vinegar when she was a child.  She's eastern European, so they didn't use pineapple but other kinds of fruit.

It's funny to me that my Grandmother moved to Canada more then 50 years ago to give her family a better life, and a generation later I'm making vinegar the same way she did on a rural family farm in the 1930's.

I'm not sure what that says about me that I feel the need to try and make my own vinegar instead of spending 1$ on a bottle at the store, but it certainly felt nice to give my Omi a good chuckle.

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Thinking about the banh mi.  It's interesting to think about the history that landed this sandwich in Allston MA.  France colonized Vietnam in the mid-nineteenth century, and that colonization lead to my sandwich.  During the French colonization the Vietnamese embraced (or maybe more accurately were forced to adapt to) parts of French cuisine. Most deliciously baguette's which they now make with a combination of rice flour and wheat, and pate's.  The banh mi is a direct result of the French colonial occupation of Vietnam, not to mention the complicated path this sandwich took the US.

The paths that foods take (immigration, colonization etc) to get to their current whereabouts say things not only about their origins, but also about their authenticity.  Is a banh mi sandwich eaten in Massachusetts less authentic then a banh mi eaten in Hanoi?

Another example, my Grannie makes an apple pie with nutmeg and teaches the recipe to my Mum.  Mum who favors cinnamon replaces the nutmeg and then teaches the pie to me.  I prefer a lard crust to a butter crust so I change the piecrust.  Is this still my Grannies pie?

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