Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Me and a couple of my girlfriends put together an ACE Thanksgiving menu. I thought I'd share a couple of the dishes... I only have recipes for the ones that I made, so I'll just give the titles of the things the others made, and you can google them.

I am blessed beyond measure. To be able to share a special day with friends is incredibly important. I am so thankful that we have such good friends and that they are willing to indulge a couple of Americans in their need for tradition. And it doesn't hurt at all that they're good cooks.

I decorated the apartment a little- in my mind's eye it was much grander than it turned out. But I was pretty pleased with the home-made decs. 

 

(that last one is Mike's Opie-dog-turkey)

For starters, we had Jamie Oliver mulled wine. It was incredible.  We followed the recipe pretty closely, although put in a little bit less sugar than the recipe said (mainly because we ran out). It was really beautiful, not too spicy or sweet. It was a really nice warm starting drink. It snowed about 4 inches here, so everyone was coming in from the cold, and it was nice to be able to give them something warm on their arrival.

For meat, we had "turkey a la Minnesota". We couldn't find a whole turkey, that didn't cost a kidney, so we had to make due with a turkey crown. This was PLENTY of food, so it's probably good we didn't have a whole turkey. Basically, I followed Alton Brown's roast turkey recipe and added some sage butter rubbed under the skin. I also used some heather rock salt instead of kosher salt in the brine, which gave it a beautiful smell. And I didn't use any oil for the aromatics. I thought it was too much with the butter under the skin. We also had a lovely French Canadian meat pie called Tortiere, which was really savory and lovely. Finally, we had apple cranberry sausage stuffing. It was a perfect compliment to the meat pie and turkey, because it had a nice sweet flavor.

For sides we had maple butternut squash casserole, sweet potatoes with sugared pecans, a lovely Jamie Oliver salad, rolls, my grandma's mashed potatoes, corn pudding, and whiskey gravy. I only have the recipes for the mashed potatoes, corn pudding, and gravy.

Mashed potatoes:

1 lb potatoes quartered

1/2 heavy cream

milk

salt

pepper

5 tbsp butter

In a large stock pot, boil the potato quarters until they fall apart when pierced with a fork (10ish mins). Drain and transfer to a bowl. Add small cubes of butter, salt, pepper, and the cream and smash (if you don't have an electric mixer) or mix (if you have an electric mixer), add as much or little milk to get it to the consistency you want. More milk is runnier, less is chunkier and stickier. Add more salt, pepper, and butter to taste.

Corn pudding:

Cook's note: this is almost my most favorite christmas/thanksgiving dish ever. It's a Mike's Alabama/Kentucky family special. It's loooovely.

3 Tbs flour
3 Tbs sugar
5 eggs
1/2 C milk
1 14 oz can creamed corn
1 14 oz can whole corn drained
1 C heavy cream
2 Tbs melted butter

In large mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour, salt and pepper to taste.  Gradually whisk in cream.  Add eggs and whisk till smooth.  Stir in milk and all corn.  Drizzle the butter on top.  Bake 350 for 45 min. or till set.  (around 1 hour for me)

Whiskey Gravy:

1/2-3/4 cup whiskey

flour

1/4 cup cream

milk

drippings from the turkey

salt and pepper to taste

Start by making a roux in a small-medium saucepan with the cream and flour. Whisk the flour into the cream over low heat. Whisk in enough flour to thicken the cream. Add in the whiskey- the more you add the stronger the taste. Pour in 5-6 ladles of drippings from the turkey. Whisk in milk and more flour to thicken. For thicker gravy add more flour, for thinner add more milk. Keep over low heat. Add in more drippings or more whiskey to taste.

We would have had pumpkin pie and tartre al sucre (french-canadian sugar pie) but it snowed about 2 inches in an hour, on top of the 5 inches that we already had and everyone needed to get home... it wasn't the perfect end to the dinner, but it was a great meal, great camraderie, great homey feeling all the same. 

It's still pouring snow, so we might be stuck here for the next week. Thankfully we have enough leftovers!

Now...

My advisor and I are starting to build a rhythm to our conversations. We talk about the advisor-student stuff, then future stuff, then personal stuff, and finally always end the conversation with me asking “anything else you need from me?” and him recapping the conversation, and mirroring the question back to me- “do you need anything from me?”. Today, I said, I didn’t think so, but could I get back to him later. See, I’ve just spent the last couple of weeks entirely mentally engaged in finishing a really complicated thesis chapter. (And by finishing I mean writing a complete first draft. Yet to be commented on by my supervisors. So not finished at all.) I am only just now coming back up for air and starting to think about my final PhD study. My supervisor said, yeah, it’s a funny thing about research, you’re always in the past or in the future. You’re never right now. I laughed, but that really struck me as a profound statement. You’re either writing up what you’ve already done, trying to defend it, or thinking about what you’re going to do next, trying to avoid the pitfalls that will inevitably be there.

I think this observation, about always living in the past or future might be inherent in the way that society works today. Society and culture don’t lend themselves to being in the moment. You need to meticulously plan and be very deliberate in your actions to be successful. Forget ‘to be successful’. Just to have enough money to eat! A heavy societal premium is placed on those that can anticipate possible problems and account for them before they happen. Simultaneously, we are anchored (a psychological principle) in our past. We are who we are because of what’s happened to us. The way humans perceive the world is based on their point of reference. This isn’t just a philosophical argument, either. It’s how the brain works- short term memories are the most easily accessible, therefore are used when making decisions. Long term memories are deeply ingrained in our neuronal patterns (long term potentiation). Plus, because humans are cognitive misers (not using more resources than required) we seek out patterns that are familiar or confirm our hypotheses about the world around us. So truly, we are physiologically and psychologically stuck in either the past or the future.

Yesterday evening I got the opportunity to go to an advanced yoga class. I haven’t done real yoga in a while (the crap they do at the gym- fitness yoga- doesn’t cut it. Not to sound like a yoga snob…  wow. I am a yoga snob…) and it felt amazing. The teacher said something that I remember my first yoga teacher always saying at the beginning of class- “let your mat be your island. This is just you and your practice. Let everything else go and focus on where you are right now.” I tried to breathe, and focus only on the now, how my feet felt on the floor, how my back expanded with each breath, how my arms were positioned… eventually I was able to pay attention only to my practice, but it took a little while.  I kept inhaling and thinking “breathe innnn (oh my god did you send Tim that email about the simulation on Thursday), breathe outttt (shit, no. it’s ok, just do it when you get home. Oh crap you didn’t look up the bus) breathe innnn (schedule, oh well you can drop by tesco on the way home and grab milk) breathe outttt(and maybe some chocolate. you are doing yoga right now, so eating chocolate is totally ok)” and so on…  It’s almost like the devil in The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. The book is beautifully conceived as a collection of letters from a senior demon to one of his demons in training, who is also his nephew. The henchman is always asking questions about how to bring his human over to the devil’s side and away from holiness. Screwtape, the demon, tells Wormwood (henchman in training) to distract his Patient (the human), to interrupt his prayers with mundane thoughts, to undermine the Patient’s faith using the treasured tools Doubt and Loneliness.  Sitting there, trying to breathe and be in the moment, I kept getting distracted by my own Wormwood, who had built a little nest on corner of my mat.

It’s really counter-intuitive to live in the now! How do you pay attention to now without judging it, comparing it to previous experience, thinking about what could happen next, planning the next position, the next class, the next the next thenextthenext… Eventually, through the class, I was able to focus only on my world on the mat, and gradually Wormwood moved and sat right outside the door waiting for me. After the last pose, corpse pose, I felt renewed. Like there was fire in my muscles and I’d been wakened.

As I left class, my advisor’s earlier quote came back to me. Initially, my brain greeted this statement with an automatic anxiety response, tensing my shoulders and frantically scrambling around in the dusty mind grapes trying to remember what I have to do when I get home tonight to be ready for tomorrow. I took a deep breath. The breath reminded my body of where I had just been. Not frantic, not anxious, just patiently existing on my own mat. I tried to reframe my thinking about tomorrow and instead of anxiety, think about the opportunity.

It’s just interesting the juxtaposition between past, now, and future. It’s essential to attend to all three, but impossible to do so.  Or at least, I haven’t figured it out yet.

Lady on the bus

I watched a lady getting on the bus the other day. As the bus pulled up, she didn’t do the standard hand out signal…

A brief editorial aside: When I signal for the bus, I do it as nonchalantly, bordering on grudgingly, as possible. I try to make as little external deal as I can about signaling that I’d like to get on this bus. Internally, I am screaming, pleading for the bus to stop. As a person who has previously (naively) thought that the bus would stop if you were standing at the agreed upon bus advancement location, only to walk serenely toward the street and get splashed with puddle as the bus zooms past at mach 7, I know the importance of a good external signal. You have to strike the right balance between seeming almost too cool for the bus like you might call it back, but only after at least a week, like you are doing it a favor by riding on it and hand-wringing desperation- PLEEEEEASE STOOOOOP-I’ve-already-left-7-messages-on-your-voice-mail-but-I-swear-I’m-not-crazy-I-just-stopped-my-medication-because-I’m-actually-doing-a-lot-better-just-ask-my-cat-Schnoodles. This is important because if the bus doesn’t stop, that’s you screwed for another half an hour on the side of the road- IF the busses are running on time. And remember, you are in Aberdeen, where more than likely, if it’s not raining, it will soon.

Secondary editorial aside: it’s been absolutely beautiful in Aberdeen for the past 5 days, so based on my experience, there’s a 10/365 (2%) chance that it won’t be raining.

Back to the lady getting on the bus. What struck me was that she didn’t do the blasé hand out nor the anxiety spasm. She waved for the bus. Almost like you’d wave when you are at the airport and see your family car coming around the bend toward the pick up area. It was that kind of happy wave. The bus stopped (obviously, how could you not, she’s obviously happy to see you) and she got on. She immediately struck up a conversation with the bus driver, oblivious to his curt answers and lack of eye contact. She mentioned the weather (‘bonny’), how she’d counted out her change to be ready just for him (‘1.50 on the nose, thankfully I found that extra 5p in my pocket!’), and that she was going to the ASDA for her weekly shop (‘I always do on a Thursday’).

As this lady walked down the aisle she looked and made eye contact with almost everyone. Rule 1 in the Laws of Interacting With Strangers is Don’t Ever Make Eye Contact. You are basically giving all those people permission to talk to you, to interact with you, and you have no idea what could happen next.

Another aside: I have been known to be an ‘Eye Looker’. I look everyone in the eye as they pass, and I sometimes smile if they make eye contact with me. One day, I did this, and ended up spending the next 30 minutes on a street corner in Rochester, MN talking to a woman who was an 87 year old, chain smoking, mail order bride from Russia. She was nice enough, but she was Crazy. I try to limit my ‘eye looking’ to days when I don’t have much to do.

This lady on the bus had absolutely no regard for these rules. She looked everyone, even the drunk people, square in the eyes, smiled, and proceeded down the aisle. Although there were many open seats on the bus, she chose one sitting next to another woman, directly in front of me. She smiled at the woman, and sat down. She was quiet for a few moments as the bus pulled back into traffic. I could see her sizing the lady next to her up- it was almost like she was deciding the best way to initiate an interaction. This is the 2nd rule of the Laws of Interacting With Strangers- if no one has said anything to you, you don’t have to start anything. But this lady… she went right ahead, complimented the bus rider on her shoes, and asked her where she was off to on ‘such a bonny day’.

I took off one of my headphones (tactic to avoid talking to strangers) and eavesdropped on these two women chatting. They were lovely. Perhaps it’s that Aberdeen has a small town, everyone-knows-everyone feel, or that they were just both extremely kind people, but they were both very willing to chat away to each other. They somehow got onto their kids and grandkids, realizing that their grandsons played football (soccer) together. It was a lovely thing to watch. I was watching a relationship form. It was really… refreshing.

When the bus got near to the ASDA, the ladies were wrapping up their conversation, saying that they’d probably see each other at one of the upcoming matches. And the one lady got up. She didn’t have my vantage point, but I saw the driver look in his mirror at her as she rose, and slow down a bit, so that the stop wouldn’t be quite as jolting. This could’ve been because of her age, or it could’ve been, and I choose to believe that this is the reason, because he wanted to do something nice for her, in his small way. Perhaps he appreciated that she was oblivious to him acting like a stranger to her. She instantly brought him, the lady sitting next to her, and me all into her world. She welcomed us in, in fact. I admired her willingness to connect, her openness to the possibility that it’s worth saying hi to someone, and to try to find a way to connect with them, regardless of the potential risks. I thought it was really lovely the way she didn’t give anyone a choice in whether or not they would be part of her world. She just made it so.

As she rose and gathered her bag, I caught her eye, and we both smiled.