Tykes on truck

Important announcement

For the first time in her short little life, my Lida, my little honey bear, said, "I love you."

Or, more specifically, "I wuurve you."

That was after hugging me tightly, nuzzling her head into my neck, and saying, "Mom Mom Mom" over and over again.

That's about as good as it gets.

Addressing the past

This is the cover of my address book, which has had a place on my desk for several years. It's a bit dusty and rarely used, these days in the age of email only brought out at Christmas or on someone's birthday when only a 'snail mail' letter will do.

Looking through it brings about numerous flashbacks - the address of a friend's apartment during those lean post-university years, my grandma's farm, former colleagues who have long since dropped out of my circle of friends.

The "W" section is full, and encapsulates in a few short lines the movements -- more like upheavals -- of my family over the past decade. Divorce, death, international travel are all marked with slanted slash marks erasing the old location/life situation with fresh entries to mark the new.

My twin sister's address alone was crossed out and rewritten four times, charting a journey up and down and across the American continents, and these are only the few that I bothered with.

My older sister also has four, marking all of her serendipitously-timed real estate deals that moved her closer and closer to the home of her dreams. Her last entry has only her name and telephone number, and I may never get this address down as it looks as though she's set to move again.

My mom has only one, though having the "& Dad" part of the name entry crossed out describes a move of a different sort.

My dad has two, the above mentioned, plus one that has his name plus an "& ____" which also marks a major family shift.

All the entries that haven't been updated are a mix of friends I've made in the span of more than three decades. Their names and addresses remain fixed in time on my pages, marking the last point at which we tried to stay in touch; the last time we were connected.

I reflect on why so many of these connections have been broken. Some are easy to answer - no longer worked together, for example. There are a few names in there that are a total mystery to me. I wonder still who they were and why they were at one point important enough to me to record their address.

As for others, the reasons are unclear as to why we haven't remained in contact. Moving away, moving on, getting busy with daily life and all that, I suppose.

Looking through these pages, I'm struck by the sheer variety of the people I've met over the years, and there are a lot of fond memories of each. It's a pity I haven't worked harder to keep in touch.

Most everything I do now has shifted to my computer, address keeping included, so this little book will probably be my last.

It's a relic, yet a treasure that I will always keep.

Happy Easter!

Very belatedly. I totally blanked and didn't realize that this past weekend was, in fact, Easter until I got an email from my Grandma.

Ooops!

So, anyway, hope you had a good one.

Maybe next year I'll do an easter egg hunt for the kids, provided I can find chocolate eggs that (a) won't get devoured by ants and (b) won't melt in the tropical heat before my kids can find them.

Irony, Phuket style

On my way to work I've always taken a "back road" through Phuket City that twists and turns through a valley surrounded by steep hills. It's kind of a hidden treasure, no traffic, little development, lush greenery along most of the way.

Until recently, that is.

Any time you see an area with a high concentration of oxygen-sucking, organic matter, you know its days are numbered. Such is the price of living in paradise.

First a big wall went up along one side of the road. Then a house started being built near the end of the road.

Then every single tree, shrub, weed and blade of grass along the whole stretch of road, both sides, was ripped out and hauled off in big trucks.

Now the road cuts a path through a dirt pile.

Many wondered what was going on, including dozens of birds, who could be seen circling over the barren landscape in confusion for weeks afterwards.

We soon got our answer.

A big sign was erected, announcing the imminent arrival of project with houses and an 8-building condominium complex with about 1,500 units.

The name of the project?

The Green Place.


(Full disclosure: my husband's family are property developers, too, though on a small scale. And they like grass and trees.)

Swifter, Higher, Stronger, Murder

Why is China allowed to be the host of an event that's supposed to promote goodwill among people of all nations and creeds?

China sucks.

I'm hoping that my home and native land, Canada, which is home to many Chinese people in search of a better life, will take a stand and boycott these Olympic games.

And better yet, place some economic sanctions on this bully.

We're witnessing the meteoric rise of a brutal regime on the world stage, and doing not a thing about it since we need all those nice, cheap toys and clothes made by people working 7 days a week in filthy factories for shit pay.

Shame!

Mango bits

"There's a faster way to do that, you know," said a Canadian woman who was watching me peel and slice a mango.

I was cutting up the mango by first running a knife down it, just under the skin, which fell away in long, thin slices. It took several long strokes to fully peel it, but finally I had in my hand a fully formed, juicy mango.

Then I made several slices, cutting a grid shape on each side of the mango followed by two long swoops down each side as close as possible to the seed, releasing several cubes of mango into a bowl.

It's a fairly slow process, though one I have mastered over time.

When I first came to Thailand, I extracted the mango goodness by peeling the mango with my hands, then cutting off the flesh from the seed in two halves, and chopping up each half. I stopped doing that, however, after my husband told me that it was wrong.

Wrong? Why wrong?

Because it's not beautiful, he said. He explained the Thai way of doing it.

And therein lies one of the keys that unlock the mysteries that exist between East and West.

Peeling a mango by hand leaves the mango surface rough and stringy. Not beautiful. A knife makes it smooth and shiny and even in texture. But it takes time.

The woman's comment took me completely off guard because I'd long forgotten about more speedy methods.

"Why do I need to do it quickly?", I thought. We're not going anywhere.

Just as I might have thought, all those years ago, "Why do I need to do it beautifully?" It just ends up in the same place.

Her suggestion was to leave the mango peel intact, run a knife down either side of the flat seed, making two mango halves, then scooping out the flesh from each half.

Extremely efficient. Not so beautiful.

While much of a culture is reflected and expressed through its arts, literature and popular images, I've learned the most about Thai culture (and my own, in reflection) from the seemingly insignificant things, like the flash of a knife on a tropical fruit.

And I suppose one could debate endlessly over the pros and cons of differing cultural values. Is too much emphasis on time depleting our ability to create and appreciate beauty? Does too much emphasis on beauty show that we are too conscious of appearance, when we should be focusing on "deeper" issues?

In the end, I don't really care. Either way, when it comes to mangoes, it's a sweet result no matter how you cut it or slice it. And that's what matters most.

Steamy, no feeling of boring

Dumbest product I've ever seen, especially considering this is on sale in a tropical country.

Note to distributor: We live in a steambath here! Why would we want to sit in your hot little box?

Toddler recipe #2

Serves 1

Ingredients:
1 glob of grape jelly
4 fish balls

Take fish balls and cut in half. Fish balls MUST BE cut in half first. Apply dab of grape jelly to each fish ball half with a knife. DO NOT dip the fish balls into the jelly. MUST! NOT! DIP!

Eat 4 halves of fish balls. Put 2 more into mouth, chew slowly, spit out on plate.

Run from table.

Toddler recipe #1

Sticky Icky Fish

Serves 1

Ingredients:
1 glob peanut butter
6 fish balls (the type commonly used in Thai noodle soups)

Apply glob of peanut butter to a plate. Take one cooked fish ball, dip and roll in the peanut butter glob, and pop into the mouth. Repeat with three others. Leave the remaining two fish balls soaking up the remains of the peanut butter.

Run from table.


(This concoction created by a kid who retches at merely the sight of boiled potato. Go figure.)

Sharp Mama is dead

RIP, Sharp Mama
Long live Sharp Mama!

I've put her to rest, for now. It was a title I came up with on a whim when I started this blog 4 years ago, thinking I'd change it in 15 minutes or so once I'd thought up a better name -- that 15 minutes is long past, of course. Another example of my tendency to procrastinate. And though I dearly love the 'mommyblog' genre, which is overflowing with talented, amazing mother-writers, I feel I've boxed myself into a bit of a corner with my 'mama' ID.

Being a mama is by far the most important role of my life, and I certainly like writing about my experiences as such, but I feel like I want to travel into new directions that will leave Sharp Mama behind. She was a guise that never seemed to fit right (especially the 'sharp' part, as most family/friends of mine could attest to!).

So I will now be writing under the title of...

Serrated Edges

Because it describes the state of my mind most of the time.
Because I hope to cut to the bone with my writing.
And because it's far more fun to travel from point A to point B in a jagged little line.

I realize, of course, that in terms of blog traffic this is quite a dumb move, but it wouldn't be the first dumb thing I've done with this blog, and certainly not the last, I'm sure. Anyway, it's not all about the traffic...having hundreds, millions of people read your work is of course a writer's dream but it's not the motivation.

Blog traffic doesn't make my gut burn; it's the stories that need telling that do. And tell them I will; here, there and everywhere.

More serrations coming soon!

Home cooking, Alberta style

Our family does meat, too. Big meat.

As evidenced by this photo in the family recipe book...

Gotta get me one of those!

Comfort food

I made scalloped potatoes for dinner this evening. On the surface it's a very ordinary side dish, easy to make, tasty but nothing special. For me, however, it provided mouthfuls of memories of a different time and a distant place.

Scalloped potatoes don't often occur to me here in Phuket. Anything involving creamy, buttery sauces and hot ovens and starch that is not rice doesn't often occur to me. Since moving to Thailand I have never once made scalloped potatoes and can probably count on one hand the number of times I have cooked anything with potato.

Quite a shocking thing for a prairie girl. When my Grandma visited two years ago she ordered a baked potato in a Western restaurant where we were having lunch and asked me, "Don't you ever just want a nice potato now and again?"

This is the Grandma of scalloped potato (and ginger cookie) fame, who creates tater masterpieces in her casserole dishes, of which I alone have probably consumed enough in my lifetime to feed a small Irish village for a decade.

Scalloped potatoes are Easter at Grandma's, Christmas surprises, backyard barbecues, warming your toes by the fireplace after coming in from the cold, the aroma of baking bread and burrowing under an electric blanket. Scalloped potatoes mean that a sweet dessert is coming soon.

Rediscovering one's roots through a root vegetable.

The inspiration - and recipe - for the dish came courtesy of a Christmas gift from, who else, Grandma: a recipe book compiled and published by another relative - a cooking goddess in a long line of cooking goddesses.

While I've been busy ensuring that our family is well scattered across the globe, this woman has painstakingly created two books in recent years that bring our family together, in print. The first was collection of pictures and stories from our well-branched-out family tree, going back to my great-great grandfather's time.

For her recipe book, the title says it all: Hand Me Down Recipes For The Joy Of Cooking. My mouth watered for days as I leafed through it, scanning the recipes of long-forgotten favourites such as potato skins, cinnamon buns and poppycock. Cakes and squares and loafs and roasts, puddings and soups and pies...mmmmmm.

It's more than 100 pages, illustrated with pictures of family members and every single dish. There are detailed instructions with accompanying photos on such things as making a pie, cutting a chicken and de-boning a turkey. An unbelievable amount of effort involved.

The book, which includes the favourite recipes from several family members, really shows the author's passion in preparing food for her family. It's a shame, really, that I haven't yet picked up that 'joy of cooking' torch from these previous generations of kitchen queens.

But with the scalloped potatoes I made this evening, it's clear that food and home and family are powerfully intertwined, and I'd love to be able to evoke the same kind of warm, fuzzy memories in my own *kids someday.

Perhaps I'll start with **Sex in a Pan.


*Neither of which, by the way, ate these beloved scalloped potatoes! (Justin because he never eats anything that's not fish and Chalida because she was already full on chicken and broccoli.)
**A layered cake made with pudding, whipping cream, cream cheese and, of course, lotsa butter, flour and sugar. Its name was always good for a giggle.