As some of my friends know, I love to cook and especially like tackling really big and exotic meals I've never prepared before. It seems like anything I've ever made for a gathering of people was my first time making it. Cardinal rule #1: never try out a new recipe for a big party. Or so the cooking wisdom goes, which I have ignored. If I get some big idea, there is no stopping me from trying to pull it off, and expecting a glamorous outcome.
I am remembering several of these memorable meals. Cooking a big Indian curry feast for my friend Sandie's 40th birthday, which included my first attempts at naan, chicken masala, and even mango lassies. I still haven't figured out naan. There was also the big Spanish-themed meal for Jessica's birthday, in which I made my own saffron-spiced mayonnaise (whipping egg yolks to perfection!), coriander-spiced creme sauce for seared salmon, etc. I even attempted--for this same meal--to make my own roasted New Mexico green chile sauce, roasting the chiles from scratch, boiling them down into a pork-flavored stew. Which, I discovered, is just no the same with Hungarian peppers. (We were in Czech Republic.)
Anyhow, there were successes and failures. But mostly I usually surprise myself with how good things turn out. I'm a perfectionist, sure, at any sort of art I undertake, but I realized that I loved watching people eat the food I ate. That it brought me pleasure to serve that way.
I've also realized that food is a large part of how I get to know places. There have been very few foods in the world I've tried that I haven't liked. Croatian octopus, Egyptian noodles, Czech goulash... (Well, my friends made me try some kind of brains in China--it was gross. And my vote is still out for Irish blood pudding.)
It took me awhile to get into patés. The Belgians (and French) love their patés, along with their cheeses. The closest thing we have to it in America is our liverwurst, which my grandmother used to put on bread with Miracle Whip and cheddar cheese. I always associated that particular flavor (liver spread, basically) with poor-man's food. But not here; you serve these as hors d'oeuvres.
You go to any market here, and there is a long line in the deli case of all these pressed liver meats--pork, duck, goose--olive-stuffed, garlic-stuffed, berry-stuffed, you name it. And they don't look particularly appetizing to me. They're a dull grey. They look fatty. They can be strong smelling. Foie gras is one type of paté... and I have learned to really like it, especially if it's warm and served with some kind of contrasting sharp flavor, because it's very pungent and strong. (It's fattened duck liver.) But sometimes I like to buy some and we have it with wine before we eat. Tonight we tried a "paté d'ardenne". I guess, a pate from Ardennes. It's really tasty. Not to mention I feel a little bit elegant eating it.
It seems like it's those little, special things that matter here. My palate is so international, that there is never quite enough variety in one place. The food here is still fairly traditional Belgian food, with French influences. It's not quite spicy enough for me--not much European food is. But that's what I get for getting addicted to Tex-Mex. Or really hot Thai food. My perception of food here is that they do a few things really well, and it takes a long time to get to the bottom of those few things. Paté is one of those.
stay tuned for more diaries of my food journeys...
the fall of the berlin wall was just a taste
when we no longer feel trapped by the familiar
when we feel free to pass through gates
when we feel free to be who we are,
no longer suspected, no longer hated, no longer threatened
when we feel free to run past the bullets
and cry to the other, the one on the other side
You are my brother,
when tears and hugs of joy
Jew and Gentile
when we are thankful
to be
when the wall inside of us has gone down
and we no longer have to hide
or scream because we feel threatened,
then our land becomes champagne, popping open
and pouring over our neighbor
when Arab and Jew, when brother says to brother
I will protect you
then will unleash the force of life
death overcome, graves opened,
the tyranny of the walls will be gone
no one will stop crying,
laughing, yelling, singing,
climbing up and over and back again
(was it real?)
no one will stop waving banners
everyone will dance,
this nation did it
known for their reserve
they did it,
they got drunk and silly
and soldiers forgot their bullets
and children stayed up all night
and everyone forgot to let go of each other
Just got back from a trip to berlin. We love Berlin and have visited it before, but for some reason on this trip its scars had a particular poignancy. The first few times we were there, we spent a lot of time finding where all the new energy is, where things are happening creatively, but this trip had a lot of history in it—really beholding the past and how it drives the present.
Berlin has some very powerful symbols, and they are hard to ignore. The tearing down of the Berlin wall was probably the most powerful symbol of the 20th century; I never get tired of looking at photos of the euphoria and celebration as east and west Berliners climbed the wall and shouted, hugged, danced way late into the night for a 2-day party that was broadcast around the world. In just one day, there was such an explosion of sheer joy and freedom, that I remember being glued to the television when it was happening, and racing to the library from college classes to watch more. All over campus, the school put up impromptu televisions to broadcast this unbelievable event. Even now, years later, I look at these photos and I get very emotional. There is something in them that is more powerful and more liberating than all the pictures of bombs and wars and grief we see in the papers every day.
People that were there said things like, “there was a certain electricity in the air, like some giant force had just been let loose.” Everyone knew they were a part of something bigger, bigger than politics, bigger than history—
These pictures are from an internet exhibit about the wall. You can also watch a video with some of the original BBC footage.
I think the images and story are still powerful because there is something eternal in them. The fall of the wall was an eternal symbol. It really exists in God forever—the one who tore down the dividing wall—who came to bring unity and freedom…
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Everything he does is about tearing down those hostile walls that keep races, even families, separate. Racism is one of the most horrific assignments against humankind—wanting to separate people out of fear, distrust, pride of self. Obviously there has been no contemporary nation that has grappled so out loud with the issues of racism as Germany. Berlin in particular has embraced its role as a teacher of these things—as a warning sign and also a memorial to horrific results of division between people. Berlin has so many scars of what happens when people are split apart from each other.
One of the most profound memories of these wounds was the detonation of the “Chapel of Reconciliation”. This church was established in the 19th century particularly as a congregation of Christians who wished to provide help to immigrants—people of other cultures and nations, but it became an eye sore for the East German government. Once the wall was built, it literally separated the congregation, who mostly lived to the north of the wall in West Berlin, from the building, which remained south of it in the eastern sector. (The wall wasn’t just a straight up and down line; it criss-crossed through the whole city.) There was a path that ran between the actual border and the wall, which east German soldiers manned, and the church was the only non-military building which stood in this path, making it the only area of Berlin in which the soldiers did not have a ‘clear shot’ at the wall. So, in the interests of ‘national security’ the East German government decided to detonate the church. This happened as recently as 1985, just a few years before the wall was to come down.
This picture of its demolishing was broadcast around the world, causing shock and outrage. In response the congregation performed ‘a dance on the wall’, and in a speech one said, “We can do something. And if we have faith in symbolic actions, then we know that symbols have a silent power which can make the ‘impossible’ possible.”
The chapel’s destruction was so clearly a metaphysical message and symbol, and not just one of a government—but something outside of it all saying, no, I will destroy the thing that stands as a bridge and a safe zone between people: the cross, the power of reconciliation.
But he cannot destroy it. It lives in us… in Jesus we are made peace, and we carry that message as ministers of reconciliation. I feel this position as I travel Europe, which carries in it deep and old wounds of racism. These wounds have not disappeared and feel more potent than ever as Europe tries to unify itself under a political and economic banner. Underneath the banner, however, the tensions run deep. The nations here are so different from each other and many have not healed from ancient hurts. There is only union on paper, but the kind of union where people laugh and hug and dance together wild-eyed late into the night, calling each other brothers, as they did that wonderful day, is missing.
But the fall of the Berlin wall was a clear sounding bell, and anyone with ears to hear knows that it was a prophetic promise to Europe, and also to the human race, tapping into something that’s very deep inside of us—the desire for freedom and acceptance and oneness with each other.
This is part of a poem from berlin. Amy and I just got back from germany, and were really moved on every level by how exposed the wounds of europe are there--visibly and tangibly present in that city.
berlin, no sing or song--but a churning in
the neck, a grate, a rustling of bones and metal
over time.
still, here is europe's lament
here is the unhealed war's end
a type of buzzing silence
today we saw
a jesus statue in a bombed church
missing his right arm--the Arm of blessing
the Arm of protection-a Father's Arm really.
at night a one armed giant keeps moving
forward alone, with an unexplainable sense
of destiny saying,
Germany is not done!