Weekend Update, April 28, 2014

“You can cut all the flowers 

but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”

Pablo Neruda 

It only takes a mediocre poet to say something interesting about something interesting. And almost anyone can say something unusual and wonderful about something unusual and wonderful. But glory (and sometimes Nobel Prizes) belong to those who can use common words to say something about something ordinary and make you realize that everything's amazing. Like this unassuming poet named Pablo Neruda: 

Sixty years after he finished his most famous work, this
guy can still make the ladies swoon. 

(If you know any generals who sixty years after their most famous victory can still help a guy get lucky with the ladies, let me know. Until then, I take the power to woo women from beyond the grave as proof that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.)
Neruda's right- whether or not you try to stop it, the world will turn and spring will come. In fact, the earth will turn right up until the day 

that it doesn't.

But until that day, the earth will turn and turn and every time it does, like a little girl twirling in a new dress, the earth will expect attention and applause. Humans, I'm happy to say, will give it. It's a thing that I especially like about humans- the way we throw a party just because the earth managed to spin around one more time. In this way at least we cooperate with the planet that hosts us-

Gosh, next thing ya know, 

the earth is going to expect a party just for 

showing up in the morning. 

There was enough heat in Texas this week to remind us all that Summer's gathering itself for a mighty pounce but it's been global spring in the kitchen; all week we've eaten the food of spring festivals around the world. We started with breakfast for dinner, because along a particular riverside in Bosnia, on a particular spring morning, the populous of an entire town shows up to share a feast of scrambled eggs.  A dinner plate wants a little more than eggs though, doesn't it. So our scrambled egg feast was accompanied by  bratwurst and tomatoes. Is bratwurst Bosnian? No, it's German. But Germany and Bosnia are on the same continent, so they ought to be able to get along on the same plate. 
Is this a little like someone in France celebrating the American Independence Day with hot dogs and tacos? 

Yes. And I'll bet hot dogs and tacos would be
almost as fun to eat as sausage and scrambled eggs.

The curry and Cobb Salad were okay- grilled chicken and a nice salad are actually better that okay, and the curry stirred up super quick, thanks to a jar of korma sauce.

But the real fun began with the Papaya salad and the Pad See Ew,  some of the food of the terrific spring water festivals of Thailand. Because even though the local grocery is kind enough to stock rice noodles, around here, there's only one way to get a green papaya. Strap on your explorer's backpack

and go to the Asian market.

Somewhere between the dragon fruit, the dried shrimp, the chicken feet and the duck heads, the phrase passed through my mind-

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore"

The thing is, we were. Well, not in Kansas, but we were a twenty minute drive from my own suburban kitchen. Twenty minutes from our own driveway, with a green papaya, Chinese broccoli and Chinese long beans in the shopping cart, looking at about a hundred different kinds of soy sauce for a thing called "dark sweet soy sauce".  Then another thought passed through my mind (a sort of heavy traffic day, thought-wise, wasn't it.)

"Toto, I think my favorite parts of Kansas
 are the parts that don't feel like Kansas"

Dark sweet soy sauce mission accomplished, we headed home, where I learned why the long beans in the papaya salad's ingredient list are called long beans.

Because WOW! they are REALLY long!

This is the finished salad- and it was a nice surprise- crisp and cool on a warm muggy edge of summer day:

Green papayas taste like a very mild radish- if you've got a garden that's giving you more radishes than you know what to do with, think about giving this salad a try with regular fresh green beans. Jicama would work too, and maybe even rutabaga. 

The justification for the foray into foreign grocery aisles was the hope, however small, that I could learn to cook a decent version of a Thai favorite, pad see ew. Using this super simple recipe and a cast iron skillet, this happened:

Was it restaurant quality? No way!
But it was a really good start in that direction.

I hope that this week is a series

of great starts in the right direction.

I hope that as the earth accomplishes

it's ordinary, miraculous spin into every morning

you find something worth celebrating

in each ordinary day. 

 And I hope that once or twice this week, 

you have a chance to watch the Earth remind you

that there have been Springs before this one

and there will be lots more-

all is well,

everything is as it should be,

everything is ordinary,

and everything's amazing.