it's so much more than cooking

thanksgiving eve salad with sesame chicken for dinner

it's so much more than cooking. i read an article with this title a few weeks ago. with my very domesticated (and wonderful) danish husband, i had to laugh a bit at the issues the author faced. especially when her husband volunteered to make dinner and then didn't shop for any ingredients, but had expected them to magically be in the refrigerator. my husband would know that grocery shopping was part of the deal. without being told. but i will admit that we do mostly divide the cooking along gender lines in our household. especially as the home renovation falls almost entirely on husband's shoulders, it's only fair that i do the bulk of the cooking. and cook i did over the past few days. we invited 10 of our best friends to a thanksgiving feast and it was my best performance ever (all that watching australian master chef is paying off).

my biggest turkey ever! 11 kilos! fresh and delicious. it went into a brine for two days in preparation for its tour in the smoker - our new kamado grill. and yes, that's sabin's first bathtub i used to brine it in.

potted shrimp as an appetizer for people to munch on when they arrived, since that big turkey was going to take forever!

i modified a maple-nutmeg custard pie recipe i found by adding pecans on top. it was delicious! though i was so full, i didn't eat any of it until breakfast the next day.

after two rounds of smoking, the turkey was looking gorgeous.

the skin got a little bit dark and i haven't perfected crispy skin in the smoker, but the meat was juicy and meltingly tender and, if i do say so myself, perfectly smoked.

it was a proud moment as husband took the serving dish to the table. it was so much fun introducing my danish friends to my favorite holiday and sharing this beautiful food with them. it really meant the world.

before i added gravy and a spoonful of stuffing. thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and although it's a lot of work, it's worth every minute. and that nap i took on sunday afternoon was bliss as well. it really is so much more than cooking, it's love and culture and sharing and friendship and happiness as well.

the power of prayer...to provoke

"When very bad things happen around the world, people search for news; they do not search for prayers, the Bible, the Quran or anything related to religion." - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Googling for God

i took comfort in the quote above when i read it in yesterday's new york times. when you look around sometimes, it can seem like the whole world is filled with religious fanatics, but it seems that the trend is actually in the opposite direction, with more people than ever identifying as atheist or agnostic. and that somehow gives me hope.

late last week, a terrible tragedy occurred in the little town where i grew up. a whole family - mom, dad and four children, were killed when their home burned down during the night. i didn't know them, but recognize that it is truly a horrible event with a very big impact on a small community. i immediately went in search of news of the tragedy and found an article on the website of the nearest town with a daily paper, the mitchell daily republic. this link is not the original version of the article, it was updated over the next couple of days, to include more facts about the events. but the initial version had very few facts and a whole lot of god in it. and i have to admit that i felt sorely provoked by that. a daily newspaper that can't even provide the facts of a story, but instead manages a couple of quotes from distraught community members about how they're praying about it and providing ministerial support for the children of the school district. thankfully, they were also providing school counselors, even calling in some from other schools, but what happened to the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state?

there was another article later the same night with even more religion and quotes from two ministers (apparently they're the ones willing to speak to the press) about how the family was well-prepared to meet their maker. yes, really. click the link. interestingly, no one was asking where god was when the fire started. if you believe in such things, that might be the pertinent question.

i've been pondering all weekend why this provoked me as much as it did. i think, like many things, it's a complex web of reasons. an eternal struggle to distance myself from provincial practices. worries about sending my child into that den of fundamentalism next year. an undoubtedly haughty disdain for small, religious thinking brought on by years of over-education and global living and observation of a world made a worse place to be by religious fundamentalism of every stripe. in short, the personal baggage that i carry around. and when something awful happens, it triggers a deep reaction in us and mine was one of disdain for those wishing to see this tragedy through the lens of a god that was apparently not benevolent enough to keep it from happening.

times of tragedy and loss make us need comfort. the comfort of a community gathering together is a powerful thing. we proved at the storytelling evening for my father last november, that being together, sharing stories and laughter and tears and affection and more laughter are enough, there's no need to bring god into it. i have nothing against privately having a word with a higher being or beings, but can't we keep it private, just between us and her/him/them? does it have to be splashed across the pages of our newspapers too?

UPDATE: the story gets worse, much worse. autopsy results have revealed that the wife and four children were murdered before the husband apparently set fire to the place and turned the gun on himself. i really do wonder if they were as prepared to meet their maker as that minister suggested...

expectations will kick you every time

i am in need of a bit of wonder woman's fearlessness at the moment.

i put myself in a situation this evening which made me realize that i'm still feeling pretty wounded. i went with a friend to sing with a little countryside gospel choir. i went with high hopes to be energized and filled with happiness by soulful gospel music and i'm afraid that didn't happen. and to be honest, i didn't know that i expected that until it didn't happen. expectations can really ruin things.

it started with the usual round of shaking everyone's hand, which always wrong-foots me. it's an aspect of danish culture that i never really get used to or comfortable with. going around a room, shaking hands with strangers and saying your name is, in fact, a really good idea, but it makes me wildly uncomfortable, even after all these years. then, i ended up standing with my friend, who was standing with the sopranos. i'm an alto and was told, rather rudely, in my opinion, that i needed to go to the other side. we hadn't been singing in parts at the time and crossing the half circle, in front of everyone, after being rather summarily sent over there, felt like a statement on my singing ability. "get over there because i can't stand the sound of your voice next to me." it probably wasn't meant that way, but it definitely felt that way.  and it took me awhile to talk myself out of my prickly reaction. truthfully, i never fully shook it off, especially as it felt like the part of the circle i found myself in kept pushing me back and kept me a step out of it.

the songs we were singing didn't help. they were all unfamiliar, difficult arrangements and for the first one, we didn't have the music. i'm a music reader. i need to see the actual notes on the page, i don't do well just listening and humming along at first. and it wasn't like the others knew the songs either, they were new for all. and it wasn't the warm, familiar songs i had expected. see, there're those expectations again. they creep in, even when you don't even know they're there, spoiling the experience.

the second song should have been familiar (happy day), but it was a new arrangement that was very different and difficult. at least we had the music to look at, but with three parts - soprano, alto and tenor, and varying ability of those there to follow the sheet music, i felt bewildered at times, thinking i was the only one in the room reading the actual notes on the page and that all of the others were in on this alternative method of reading music that i didn't know about. leaving me once again feeling vulnerable and slightly rejected.

not what i wanted to feel at the gospel choir.

i wanted to enter a room of people who were open and warm, or who had been opened up and warmed through by the familiar, energizing gospel music of my cultural background (this was a reasonable expectation, right?). because although i am a midwestern white girl, i do know gospel music when i hear it. and i wanted to give myself over to that energy and soul and warmth. and it simply wasn't there in a little parish house in denmark full of middle aged white women and a couple of men. and i am undoubtedly a middle-aged white woman as well, so maybe i shouldn't talk. but, i think you can take the gospel out of the US, but you can't retain the soul of it so far from its origins, especially if you have danish composers creating their disjointed version of it. one song was seriously like four very different genres smooshed together into one and it was downright disorienting. again, not the energy and comfort i was looking for.

tonight, i was reminded that i am wounded and it made me sad. and left me with that old familiar mid-atlantic feeling. i'll grant that i would be too white trying to sing with a real gospel choir in the states, but i can't even fit in with one here. so i'm left alone, somewhere in between.

i don't know why in these moments that i can't summon the energy to dive in and sing along on the happy day solo part, giving some of the energy to the room that i was wishing it would give to me. i don't know where my confidence has gone. and i don't really know how to recover it.

my inner wonder woman, where are you when i need you?

too young to die

i don't keep in touch with many from my old high school class - it's been nearly 30 years since we graduated and i've quite literally drifted far, far away from them. but i'm friends with at least one classmate on facebook. late last week, she let me know that another of our classmates had serious cancer and wasn't expected to live much longer. it was just a few days later that i learned that he had died on saturday. i hadn't thought of him in years and he wasn't someone that i'd say i knew very well, despite being only 36 people in our graduating class.

when i was a kid, we had lived in the same neighborhood and biked around in a pack as kids do. but my main memory of that is that i argued with him that i was older than him because my birthday was in march and his was in may, not realizing he was a year old than i was. but it was because we were in the same class, so i assumed we must be the same age. odd that i clearly remember that silly argument after all these years.

i don't know what became of him after high school, what he studied, what he decided to be when he grew up, who he married, whether he had children, if he was happy. but i find myself thinking about him now that i know he is gone. 47 is far too young to die. i've since learned he had a very aggressive and rare neuroendocrine cancer. although i'd lost touch, it makes me feel sad to think that someone (nearly) my age, is already gone. how much more did he have to do? how old are his kids? now he won't see them grow up and become who they will become.

he still lived in south dakota, about an hour from where we grew up. and on sunday, the community pulled together and held a benefit auction for his family, since they are facing a whole heap of medical bills. i imagine when they planned it, they didn't expect that he would die the day before the event. those organizing the event shared it on a facebook page. all kinds of people and businesses in his community donated items to be auctioned for his benefit and to scroll through the timeline, looking at them is somehow comforting. it was clear that he was well-liked and respected and loved by people around him and by his community. and although i hardly knew him, it brings a little tear to my eyes to see how they rallied around him and his family.

it also gives me pause, because you don't see such things here in denmark, where a community rallies around someone who is ill and comes together to help. mostly because we have universal health care and there wouldn't be any big medical bills piling up around someone who was seriously ill. but i also think that we miss out on a feeling of community spirit that such events bring. there are times when i admit i miss that sense of community here in denmark and when i feel that the society is poorer and more selfish without it.

i suppose like any death, it makes us confront our own mortality and that's what's really giving me pause - someone my own age dying brings it a little closer to home. now don't get me wrong, i don't go around fearing death like a cloud hanging over me. but it does make me think that i should probably do a little bit better with the time i have, because you never know.

overt racism becoming endemic in denmark

even our little black bunny was the last one to find a home.

in recent weeks, there's been some media swirl about a horrendously racist, pompous, superior and fascist-leaning blog post written by a danish politician, marie krarup (of the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti)), after a trip to new zealand. the blog was published on berlingske's website and is an absolutely stunning exercise in xenophobic, arrogant offensiveness. there is a full text (in danish and english) here. krarup stands by her racist remarks and refuses to apologize. but how do you apologize for stupidity?

being shockingly racist is nothing new for krarup - look here to see what she said about a visit to niagra falls. since it's in danish, and i do realize that's a minor language, i'll tell you what she said, "Niagara Falls in Canada has been allowed to remain White. In this multi-culti country a white person is always seen next to a black, one brown and one yellow. And they're all smiling so happily! As if to say to us: multi-culti is really good! But the waterfall is just white." this was posted on her facebook page and the comments all glowingly agree with her that multiculturalism is bad. jesper (the peasant) frederiksen actually comments,  "multi-culti functions only if there aren't too multi of the antisocial culti." i am rendered speechless by such a public display of racism in an elected official.

when i first came to denmark fifteen years ago, it was frowned upon to say things like this in public. a politician's career would have been over for such behavior. now, it's commonplace and even encouraged. granted the danish people's party is the most extreme right wing example, but they're the ones who have made it ok to bash foreigners and lump them all together into one big, bad group that's out to destroy the danish way of life.

all of this underlines the power of storytelling. for a good decade, in denmark the story has been told and repeated that foreigners, especially from the middle east, come to denmark to cause trouble and live off the supposed fat of the danish welfare state. there has a been an entire bureaucracy built up around a push for integration that looks a whole lot more like assimilation. and fear of The Other has become the order of the day.

i've spent some time in recent weeks interviewing foreigners who have moved to denmark for various reasons and i can safely conclude that this rhetoric and tone are not without damaging psychological consequences on the immigrants themselves. in the push to be stuffed into boxes at danish language schools, many of these people end up in a fog of depression and loneliness. they are bewildered that their danish neighbors don't speak to them and aren't interested in them. they feel isolated by a lack of language and bewildered by a culture that feels like it's rejecting them (and may actually BE rejecting them). many more of them than is healthy made the distressing statement that they began to feel they didn't know who they were anymore.

perhaps this is a common phenomenon for all who are in exile (chosen or not). it's hard to retain who you are in the face of an alien culture and way of thinking. especially when a psychological switch lays the entire burden to suck it up and integrate at your feet as the alien.

it's important to return to enlightenment values which value all individuals as equal and equally having something to offer if we are just open to what that might be. we've got to stop the negative, racist rhetoric in this country. we need to get a whole lot more outraged about it and show the elitist, fascist marie krarups of this country that it's not acceptable. i'm increasingly convinced that as individuals we can and must make a difference, starting right here in our own neighborhoods. my project gives me a chance to do something and i definitely intend to use that chance.

inner prudish american alive and well

it was a glorious afternoon on the beach. much better than legoland. no one was wearing any shoes at all. and sand feels gloriously wonderful on your feet. the only unpleasantness encountered was my own inner prudish american, who i was surprised to find was still there (after 12 years) and in apparent robust health. she was suitably shocked by the sight of a 60 (possibly 70)-something german woman with more than a slight mustache sunbathing topless on the beach.

i know, i know, i'm in europe, it's not unusual here. and really, after 12 years, shouldn't i stop being shocked by such things? on one hand, i really wanted to admire her and her body confidence and on the other, well, eww.... sometimes, as a member of a civil society, you have to participate in societal norms and being properly clothed in public is frankly one of those. especially if your bits are hanging down to your waist. real life is not an issue of national geographic.

but speaking of that, i do wish i'd dared to sneak a photo, if only to subject all of you to what i was subjected to...but i guess i'll have to leave it to your imagination. and honestly, we should all be thankful for that. the picture in my head is haunting enough.

am i just a prude, or is it a bit ew?