Kampot Pepper

On my last day in Cambodia I arrived at the airport a few hours before my departing flight to Bangkok. Hungry, I headed towards a cluster of restaurants to find some lunch. My choices were as follows: Dairy Queen, Burger King, or a chain called "BBQ Chicken." After traveling throughout the country and enjoying an incredible bunch of meals flavored with spices like lemongrass, wild ginger, kaffir lime leaves, fresh green pepper or the delicate black Kampot pepper (my reason for traveling to Cambodia) I chose the only restaurant whose name I didn't recognize: "BBQ Chicken," which looked to be a sort of Cambodian-style fast food joint. My hope was that despite the name, I could avoid the dreaded monoculture of tastes that accompany a fast food establishment dependent on industrialized processed food products and factory farms (DQ & BK). But despite the promising look of chili sauce bottles adorning plastic tables, I was out of luck.

Khmer Flavors

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA    
As a fairly frequent traveler, I'm wary of scams: tuk tuks offering to take you on a "tour" only to veer off in the direction of gem shops, cute children selling souvenirs on the streets, strange powders masquerading as true spices. I was prepared to ignore the people who were simply begging; I was prepared to contribute in some other way. I was, I thought, wary and savvy and in control. Traveling alone requires you to repeat these self-assertions before heading into the fray. But I wasn't prepared for the woman with an infant on her hip who approached me and said,
          "Madame, I don't need money I need milk."

Fresh Pepper Flourish

WAYANAD, INDIA    As I walked through the Kuppamudi coffee and spice plantation one late afternoon this January, I listened to the chattering of monkeys, the call of birds, and the distant sounds of people working on nearby estates - trees being cut, a car crawling up a dirt road, a dog barking. There was both a stillness and an activity in the air. The dimness of manmade sound and the clarity of rich natural sounds was soothing; I felt lulled by these sounds, having just travelled from the harrowing city streets of Mysore and Delhi. As I walked down the path I noticed pepper plants, i.e. Piper nigrum, growing up the long, straight poles of betel nut trees.

Kerala, Ginger & da Gama

It seems fitting that, after two weeks travelling around India and feeling a bit rickshaw-sick and travel weary, I decided I needed some ginger in my life. Some fiery, soothing, delicious ginger.

I arrived in Bangkok, Thailand this past Sunday night, nursing a bout of travel sickness after my departure from Kochi, India. I arrived on the eve of anti-government protests that have threatened to shutdown the city of Bangkok. Indeed on day 4 of the protests, there doesn't seem to be any sign of letting up. Check out The Guardian for the latest news on the situation here. Thank you to my brother Colin and his family for being such welcoming and wonderful hosts!

Peppery Preparations

Gray skies, snowflakes, red berries, the vague outline of trees, the cold dregs of coffee, the scent of fir. Can you tell I'm mixed up about how I feel? December is at once depressing and delightful, dark and twinkling, exhausting and joyful. To sum it up, last night I had a dream where a talking snake said: "we have to search for the sparkly places."

Auspicious? Perhaps.

My passport is now in the hands of the Indian and Thai consulates (fingers crossed that I spelled my name right). In the meantime I try to collect the things I need for my trip; read strange stories about Ms Yingluck and the Thai government, do the laundry, buy Christmas presents, watch the snow fall, make onion soup.

Saffron & Onion Jam

My back is throbbing from a cortisone shot at Quincy hospital yesterday, where afterwards, sitting in a wheelchair eating Lorna Doone shortbread cookies and sipping cranberry juice, I listened to a nurse give the office lunch order for Chinese food over the phone, at the end of which she was required to give the delivery address: "Quincy Medical Center, fourth floor, wing C, Pain Clinic," but the person on the other end of the line, the Chinese take-out phone person I suppose, couldn't understand what she was saying so the nurse kept repeating "Pain clinic. PAIN clinic. PAIN. No, no, PAIN. As in, P-A-I-N." 

Sweet Fennel Seed

A lot has changed in the past month. The light has changed, and darkened. Now when I come home at six o'clock I find that the orange from the sky has gone, and the landscape looks like she's been dipped in blue ink. I love these changes, as everything begins to smell different, and the menus shift to autumnal flavors, and the sound of Red Sox sports-casters rattle noisily from car windows.

Curry Love

Trying to consider the line of a poem that caught in my throat at my brother Ian's wedding last weekend. I'm usually pretty good at speaking in front of people, loving the spotlight just for a moment, my voice a calm and steady stream, but this time I got caught on a line and couldn't go on, tears streaming down my cheeks while all the guests sat and watched and the sun blared, and the blue sky stared me down with a blank blue stare. "For better, for worse, splicing spirit-bodies to each other in the daily / Communion of light..."

Even now I'm having a bit of trouble keeping it together here on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I like to think of this line from Eamon Grennan's poem as a nod to the beauty of a good marriage, a wedding of two people whose "spirit-bodies" are suddenly realized. A wedding ceremony offers us the chance to join in this literal "splicing [of] spirit -bodies" and we are all there to share in the joy of that joining.

And even though the wedding last weekend on the coast of Maine was not religious, there was indeed this "Communion of light" that we all drank—it glimmered off the surface of the Atlantic, it sank into the pores of our skin, it lapped up against the rocks and the grasses and the fir trees. Though the toasts are all finished, the tent is collapsed and the chairs folded, I'd still like to raise one last glass of sunlight to my brother Ian and his wife Amanda: may your love be a kind of walk on water.

Dizzy Lemongrass

It's the last day of August. This summer was like a bright, strange dream. The last thing I remember I was swimming in the Atlantic ocean in my underwear on July 4th. Then everything went into super-speed-surreal mode, like a ferris wheel of colors, days, moments—here they all are, views of the landscape in the late afternoon light, of treetops and little houses and the blur of fairgrounds down below and then of the bored operator's face as he stares at the gears in the giant turning wheel, the blinking lights of the fried dough stand like a halo around him. I close my eyes and feel dizzy, I open them and am fed with light.

It's been a vibrant summer, and I'm celebrating it tonight by drinking a martini out of my home-made lemongrass straw. I'll tell you right now it doesn't work too well, but it tastes nice. What better way to spend a Saturday night?

Lily Children

My days open and close like the lilies. Each day another bloom, a new color, a fresh try. The flowers are named daylilies because they only bloom for one day, reminding us, I suppose, to live in the moment. But right now the lilies are in full force, showing their faces for us in every shade of orange, red and yellow. They demand my attention, they holler at me in five-petalled flower voices. The colors reflect the bright pulse of sunlight, that bee-buzzing, cricket-singing thrum of early August.

My dad hybridizes daylilies at our home in Maine. Every year he must plow new land to plant more of his daylily offspring, and we wait for even another year to see what new colors, heights, and ruffles emerge. During a recent visit to see my folks up in Maine, I decided I wanted to try to experience dad's lilies in a new way—that is, to eat them.