January 14, 2012
There’s something about January, something that makes it feel as though time is slowing down and the days are beginning to blur into each other, like the weeks are stretching out to be longer and longer while the weekends shrink into barely noticeable pauses in a never-ending string of sameness. It’s always this way, in January. The sparkle of the holidays is gone and the novelty of the season has worn off, but Spring is still so far away; there are still so many flat grey mornings and long black evenings to get through.
Last week I met up for coffee with an old friend from university. We don’t see each other much any more – I’m living here, she’s living there, and our lives are on different paths going in different directions – but once a year I find myself sitting across from her in a crowded coffee shop, cappuccinos in our hands, with that inevitable question hanging there in the air between us: “So, what’s new?”
It’s been a year. I should be able to talk for hours, to fill novels with answers to that question. I should hardly know where to begin. And instead I feel like I’ve been treading water: So much effort, so little progress. What’s new? Not much. Of course, there are the little things. There was my trip to Europe in the fall – the highlight of the year, really, the only time I felt truly alive – and there were moments with friends, achievements at work, certainly enough smiles and contentment and good times to convince people that 2011 was a good year. And all things considered, it was a good year, but good in that vague, imprecise sense – It was good mainly because there was an absence of anything truly bad.
It probably sounds like I’m unhappy. Sometimes I even wonder if I feel unhappy, but I think I’m really just restless, impatient, waiting for that next big step, knowing – at least in part, on some level – what that next big step is, and knowing that now, right now, is not the right time to take it. I’m not one to make lists of detailed, specific resolutions for a new year, but I will paint with broad strokes and imprecise goals: This year will be about moving forward, moving towards this still-blurry idea that’s been hanging in front of me for a while now. This year is going to be an interesting one.
January 7, 2012
There are a few things every home cook needs to have on hand: A good knife, an ample supply of olive oil, a cupboard stocked with staples, and… A recipe for a really good dip. The kind of dip that can wow people as an appetizer at a dinner party, sit proudly on any potluck table, and even do double-duty as a complete meal for those days when you’re really not interested in cooking something elaborate.
That’s where this recipe comes in. It’s healthy enough to eat by the spoonful (and believe me, I have), surprisingly quick to prepare, and the Middle Eastern flavours of spices and smokey roasted eggplant along with rich caramelized onion are exotic enough to make this recipe the one you grab when you’re surprised with a last minute invitation to a dinner party. Serve it with pita bread (I like to make my own – they’re always softer and more flavourful than the plastic-packaged pitas found in stores), crackers, or, really, any type of flatbread.
Ingredients
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 2 large eggplants
- 1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons mint leaves, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, soaked in 2 tablespoons of hot water
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1.5 teaspoons cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- Dried chili flakes, to taste
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Chopped walnuts, to taste
- 2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt
Preparation
- Lightly coat eggplants with oil. Roast in a 450-degree oven (or place under the broiler) until the skin is charred and the eggplant is releasing juices. Remove the eggplant from the oven, cover with foil, and allow it to rest for 10 minutes. Scoop the flesh out of the roasted eggplants. Don’t worry if pieces of charred skin are stuck to it – this adds a nice smokey flavour to the dip. Tip: Eggplants contain a lot of water. If you like your dip thick and substantial, you’ll want to squeeze out as much of the water as possible.
- Heat a heavy-bottomed pan and add olive oil. Add the onions and cook over medium heat until caramelized. Heat should not be high enough to burn the onions. Remove cooked onions from the pan. Set aside a tablespoon or two for the garnish.
- In a food processor, pulse the eggplant and the onions until well mashed but still slightly chunky. Set aside.
- Turn heat down to medium-low. Add garlic, sautéing until golden (you may need to add more oil), then add the cumin, turmeric, saffron liquid, chili flakes, lemon juice, mint, and the onion-eggplant mixture. Stir together until heated through.
- Transfer dip to a bowl. Top with Greek yogurt and chopped walnuts, and serve with pita bread.
Note: If you’re looking for a good pita bread recipe, check out this one on Smitten Kitchen. I substitute whole wheat flour instead of the white flour, and add about a tablespoon of honey for a subtle sweetness and an extra-soft texture.
January 3, 2012
Vacations are a strange thing. They unfold something like the plot of a novel might: Introduction, climax, conclusion; only in a vacation it’s anticipation, actuality, reality. The anticipation part drags on for ages in a weird mix of excitement and stress as suitcases are packed, travel insurance is purchased, and sandy palm-flanked beaches are envisioned. The day before you leave stretches on endlessly, then the trip to the airport takes unfathomably long, and of course you arrive too early and fill the hours with magazines and bad coffee and maybe a glass of wine at an airport bar, where you watch people move up and down the concourse until they seem to blur together into one disorganized mass. The flight itself is like a page turning; an oddly blank immeasurable stretch of time before you’re actually, officially on vacation. The vacation itself starts off slowly and then starts to slip by faster and faster until you’re standing in the airport again, the handle of your suitcase in one hand and your passport in the other while reality creeps back into the edges of your mind.
The first morning is, without a doubt, the best part of the vacation. The whole thing feels very fresh, and there’s a certain decadence in knowing that an entire week has been devoted to nothing but sunbathing, eating, and lounging around. I should stop here and clarify something: In my mind, I’ve always drawn a line between vacations and what I consider to be true travel. One is about relaxing and disengaging and isn’t very concerned with pins on a map, while the other feels somehow more weighty and full of opportunities for inspiration and exploration and the sort of cultural enlightenment a person would expect to experience when they jet off to the other side of the world. I’ve always favoured travel but can certainly appreciate a vacation, which is why I joined my parents on Maui for what might be fifth Christmas in a row. When an opportunity to spend a week escaping winter is dangled in front of me, I’m not one to turn it down.
It takes about a day to get into the routine of the vacation. At first, I’m vaguely anxious at the thought of spending day after day sprawled out on a lounge chair or staring out at the ocean. I’m restless by nature; the kind of person who likes to go places and do things, and I usually prefer my relaxation packaged up in neat little portions that slot in between various activities. And then there’s the strangeness of spending so much time with my parents after living on my own for several years. Soon, though, it all starts to flow smoothly. Mornings: Wake up early, shorts on, tank top on, stumble to the farmer’s market and the coffee shop under a sun that’s already starting to feel intense, back to the condo (more awake now), fruit and granola on the patio, then coat all exposed skin with sunscreen and get into position beside the pool. Afternoons are a rotation of sun and shade and back to the sun. Evenings: Dinner, sunset, then some kind of short stroll next to an inky ocean.
Part of the enjoyment in all this, I think, comes from the complete predictability of the situation. My parents love predictability, and nothing showcases this more than our family vacations. Year after year we’ll eat dinner at the same places on the same nights (“Have you dined with us before?” “Yes, this is our fifth year in a row”), order the same food (in the car on the way to the restaurant: “Now, last year I think we had the shrimp and scallop dumplings…”), retrace our footsteps to the same sights. Part of me wants to resist this. The other part recognizes that there’s something appealing about falling back into old routines, knowing what to expect and handing the decision-making off to someone else. I think it underscores the sense of disengagement that a true vacation brings about: The real world is annoyingly full of choices, schedules and obligations, and when these things can fade into the background for even a few days, it’s a vacation. The setting – the palm trees, the beaches – is really just an accessory.
And this is how to disengage and de-stress: Put down the phone, turn off the computer. Really think about things, or, alternately, think about nothing at all and relish how good it feels to be able to do that. Pick up a book; read it from cover to cover. Marvel over how strange it feels to have such long uninterrupted swaths of time, then pick up another book and repeat. Feel the sun on bare shoulders and the sand on bare feet, smile a lot, talk a lot, take a lot of pictures. Then pack up the suitcase and head back to the real world, where, weeks later, you’ll still have a hint of a tan and a few grains of sand stuck in the bottom of a shoe.
Unrelated tech note: I’ve figured out how to fix the RSS feed problem, for those of you who are seeing each post show up three times in your RSS reader. It appears as though an old feed (from a previous incarnation of this blog) is still kicking around and messing things up – if you’re seeing multiple posts, you need to unsubscribe from verbalized.net/rss and resubscribe to verbalized.net/feed, which is the correct feed URL.