Border Town Eats

A southwestern flavor in cooking has long been something I jump to the table for. Suppose it’s the legacy of my few trips to Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, where most restaurants apart from Taco Hell offered up great eats during my visits. I still remember with longing food I ate in Sedona, Arizona, Santa Fe and Houston. But as much as I like southwestern cooking, I’ve never had any special skill in preparing it myself. The other day a lady in the supermarket told me how to make a simple hamburger with the distinctive flavor of the southwest.

She called it a green chile burger, which I know doesn’t especially trigger fireworks and lip-licking, but you can call it something else. I kind of like…

BORDER TOWN BURGERS

Here’s what you need:

1 pound of ground beef

1 package of hamburger buns

3-4 slices of Monterey Jack (or other) cheese

4-5 teaspoons of Old El Paso chopped green chiles

1 package of Southwest ranch salad kit (Et Tu brand)

2 good handfuls of bite-sized mixed greens

Dash of Zatarain’s Creole seasoning

Salt & pepper

Here’s what you do:

Season the ground beef with salt & pepper and a dash of Zatarain’s.

Shape the meat into patties and place them on a medium high grill, or in a frying pan.

Cook them for 3-4 minutes, then add a couple of spoons of the green chile and a slice of cheese.

Combine the two packages from the salad mix with the greens. Add half the dressing and toss.

Place the hamburger patties on the bottom half of a toasted bun; top it with the salad mix.

Add the top bun and there you have it.

SIDE DISH • PORTABELLA FRIES

Ingredients:

1 package of sliced portabella mushrooms (about 12 ounces)

2 eggs

Italian-style breadcrumbs

Grated Parmesan cheese

Olive oil

Preparation:

Pre-heat the oven to 425° F

Spread olive oil on a baking sheet (cookie sheet).

Beat the eggs in a bowl.

Combine about a cup of Parmesan cheese and a cup of the breadcrumbs.

Dip the sliced mushrooms (one by one) into the egg, and then in the cheese-breadcrumb mix. As best you can, coat them evenly.

Place them on the baking sheet and drizzle some olive oil over them.

Bake for 10 minutes.

Turn the mushrooms and bake for another 5-7 minutes.

These are delicious and you might try them dipped in what’s left of the ranch dressing.

I don’t know a southwestern expression, so I’ll use the French and just say, bon appétit!

Taking It for Granted

Probably little question that in many ways I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to live in a wondrous environment here at the beach on the east coast of Florida. Some things we are apt to take for granted, and with what is almost indifference, shade or filter our view of the beauty around us. At times an ‘inland’ friend will ask, “How’s life at the beach?” More than once I’ve answered that everything is pretty much ‘same old, same old.’ And yes, it is possible that the routines I follow and the daily turn of screws and gears is pretty much the same. But then I chance to look out the window, step out on the patio, raise my eyes to the sky.

Only in the broadest sense can anyone say that a given day is the same as the one before it. Take another look. Slow down and let the scene, large and small soak in for a minute. Nine out of ten times you’ll catch something in the water, sky or spread of beach that is not quite like what you’ve seen before. The shifting of the light, the coloring of the sand and its interaction with tide, surf and algae, the awesome palette of blue and green that colors the water. Who knows? You might even come upon a pink flamingo behind a clump of sea oats.

The Lore of Wax

In some things I am not too swift. What I mean is, catching on to this or that way of doing something is on occasion slow. Even though I understand the steps or procedures, my hands or fingers won’t move as they should, and I wind up repeating the process more times than should be necessary. This time the repetition and frustration is with a new wax seal.

For a long time I’ve wanted to use a wax seal on my letters, and two weeks ago I bought the Celtic seal and sealing wax from a place in Utah, a disappointing purchase I wrote about here on August 14. Both seal and wax from that purchase have continued to be completely useless; the pewter seal bad, the Ecclesiastical Red sealing wax worse.

So, I contacted Brian at gouletpens.com and ordered a brass seal with my initial, and some J Herbin sealing wax. Two or threes days later the seal and wax arrived and with the excitement I always feel around pens, ink and other letter writing tools, I tore open the package and got to work. But something was wrong. Fifteen minutes and four wax seals later, my attempts all looked like kindergarten arts and crafts. Worse; it was all I could do to make out the initial pressed into the wax.

I sat down down at the iMac and watched several videos by Brian Goulet on how to make a good wax seal. Just to be sure, I watched the videos a second time, even took some notes. Back to my worktable and eager to knock out a few precise, well-done seals, I lined everything up exactly as Brian did and made another attempt… Failure! Total failure. Knowing how agreeable and helpful Brian is, I emailed him for help, attaching a photo of my latest mess. A short while later I got an answer that almost guaranteed improvement in my seal making efforts.

Here are some important points I learned from Brian:

1. Place your seal face down on a small ice pack during the few seconds you are melting the wax.

2. Use a butane lighter to melt the wax. I use one of those long-nosed grill lighters.

3. Once the melted wax is on the paper, waste no time applying the seal; no more than five seconds between melting the wax and impressing the seal.

4. Press down hard on the seal, no longer than three seconds.

My first attempt after reading Brian’s suggestions was an improvement, though not yet what I hoped for. That didn’t bother me because another of Brain’s comments was that it takes some practice to get the hang of. Well, I’ve practiced some (and wasted a lot of expensive wax) and things are definitely getting better. Might take a little more practice, but I’m confident it will come.

I’ve attached photos of the two best impressions (thought still feeble). The seal is in the shape of a scripted W, my first initial, and the two colors of sealing wax are forest green and silver. The third photo is of an earlier attempt where you can see the kind of mess I was making.

“The board thinks…”

The weeks are stacking up since May 1, the start of this condo living, and I'm learning bit by bit what it means to be a member of a residents’ association, and how ‘community’ issues come to color the atmosphere of my days. Not my intent to imply that every day is governed by a group of owner-board members wielding whips, passing out rules and decrees and telling residents what to do and what not to do. No such thing. If I chose to do so, I could push it all off to the side, out of sight, leaving my days undisturbed and with little awareness of board discussions and decisions.

But I've chosen to be involved, because as one of few owners living full-time in the condominium, my thoughts on problems and conditions have the advantage of daily on-site observation. In other words, I see what’s going on around here more than the majority of owners who live far away, and visit on holidays.

For the most part, the issues at hand are minor matters easily fixed with a little discussion at board meetings. No question, the discussion of ‘pool rules’ has more complications than rocket science, and is an endless cycle of ridiculous, repetitive talk. What escapes most of the debaters is the reality that there is no one waiting around the pool to enforce rules, whatever they are. If there’s no sheriff in town…

But lately a larger question has come up, and this one does strike me as interference and manipulation by the association board. Like homeowners anywhere, once in a while an owner decides to sell his condo and go elsewhere. Nothing new; happens frequently. At the last board meeting—open of course to all owners—a proposition was raised to involve the board in the sale of individual owner condos, to give the board right of veto, to step between owner and prospective buyer and influence the sale.

Objection to that idea came from all corners, including my own voice, but the board has yet to lay the plan aside. I'm confident it will never come to pass, but in the meantime imagine the following owner/board member exchange…

OWNER: I have put my condo up for sale and have an interested buyer. But then someone told me that I need your approval. I mean, hello! Duh! Have I heard right?

BOARD: Well, we’re sorry to see you go, but yes, a committee of three will have to investigate your prospective buyer before any sale can be approved. We don’t want to have any pedophiles buying into our community.

OWNER: Mmm…That’s distressing. I can vouch for the buyer myself because we are friends. But now I suppose I should worry that your decision will be swayed by the fact that my friend and hopeful buyer is a one-legged black Arab lesbian.

BOARD: (choking, clearing his throat) Uh…er…Oh, yeah? Well listen, we’re gonna have to get back to you on that. Meanwhile don’t sign any papers!

Rhodia Perfection

For a long time I have happily used for my journal writing a Japanese made ‘notebook’ called Life Noble Note Plain. I like the size of five and a half inches by eight and a quarter inches, as well as the thick unlined ivory pages. I also like the brown cover with its old-fashioned design. Several months earlier, at the time I was living in Japan, but making plans to leave there, I bought five of the Life notebooks to take away with me, certain I would be unable to find the same brand here in the US. But that stack of five has dwindled, and I’ve had my eye out lately for a replacement.

And then came Rhodia. I read a couple of reviews on pen & paper related blogs of the new Rhodia Webnotebook. It looked good and right off impressed me as a likely replacement for my longtime Life notebooks. I’ve had good experience with Brian Goulet at gouletpens.com, so I ordered from him the larger of the two Rhodia Webnotebooks, which just happens to be the exact size of the Japanese Life notebook I’ve always used.

My order arrived amazingly fast, and as is usual with Brian, included a handwritten note of thanks for my order, finished off with a wax seal. To my mind, the note is a special touch. But to the point, the Rhodia ‘Webbie’ as it has come to be called…

I chose the orange (tangerine) cover because I wanted to expand my range of colors, journal-wise. The Rhodia orange is beautiful, but it isn’t until you hold, touch and feel the Italian leatherette cover that the color comes into full bloom. The best way to describe it is to say it is something I want to hold onto. It feels good in my hands, and moving my fingers over the leatherette is almost a soothing sensation. It certainly makes me wonder what exactly this ‘Italian leatherette’ is. The Rhodia logo in the center complements the notebook’s softness.

Another thing I like is the rounded corners. No matter how you turn or hold the Webbie, there are no sharp edges. Everything about it is smooth and silky, and that includes the 90g ivory Clairefontaine pages inside the cover. The Clairefontaine name is enough to tell you that the paper is going to be of superior quality. The Webbie has 96 blank (or lined) sheets, or 192 pages. The paper is acid-free, pH neutral and PEFC-certified.

One add-on at the back is a great idea, one I’ve seen in Japanese notebooks. This is an inner pocket just inside the back cover, perfect for small notes or clippings, maybe business or personal cards, things you want in a journal that aren’t written on the pages.

The notebook also has an attached elastic band which offers protection from other things getting wedged in the pages while in your bag; a simple band that keeps the book closed when you want it closed.

So what about the paper inside, the Clairefontaine 90g? Hard to imagine that anyone could ask for better. For my first bit of writing I chose five different fountain pens and five different inks. Each one proved to be a beautiful marriage of ink and paper. Smooth, clean, no feathering or bleed through, satisfying in all its qualities—what I would call ideal or perfect for pen and ink.

PENS AND INKS USED

Lamy 2000 (M) • Sailor Blood Orange ink

Lamy Safari (M) • Waterman Florida Blue

Pelikan 200 (M) • Sailor Miruai

Pelikan Souverän 600 (M) • Iroshizuku Tsukushi

Pelikan Souverän 1000 (BB) • Montblanc Violet

It’s just a matter of time until I order my next Rhodia Webnotebook. I’m hooked.

My thanks and appreciation to Brian Goulet at gouletpens.com.

Burning in Moonlight

Hachirô Sasaki 1922-1945, was a graduate of the Imperial University of Tokyo, volunteered to be a tokkôtai (kamikaze) pilot in February 1945. He died the following April, a navy ensign. He was 22 years old. His diary was titled, A Testament of the Youth: Diary and Love, in the Absence of Life.

From his diary…

‘Finally I will join the Navy on December 1. In anticipation, I have trained my body by swimming, gymnastics, and target practice. I am confident about my strength. We must now be the shield to protect the eternal life of our nation by going to the front to prevent the enemy’s advance as much as possible…Even if I fall, society does not rely on one individual. I am not concerned and shall eagerly go to the front.

If one thinks of a young life who dies in a state of purity and beauty one even regrets that a human being is essentially a political animal. I know it comes from sentimentalism, but if one must die, one wishes to die beautifully.’

Quoting writer-poet Kenji Miyazawa, Sasaki writes a passage echoing his own thoughts…

‘I don’t know if I am supposed to win this war but I will fight as much as I can, leaving my fate in your hands…I pray that we will see the day as soon as possible when we welcome a world in which we do not have to kill enemies who we cannot hate. For this end, I would not mind my body being ripped innumerable times.’

Tadao Hayashi 1922-1945, attended the Third Higher School and then the Imperial University of Kyoto. He was drafted as a student soldier in December 1943. He died at the age of 23, shot down by an American fighter plane. His diary was titled, My Life Burning in Moonlight.

From the diary…

‘I feel I have to accept the fate of my generation to fight in the war and die. I call it “fate,” since we have to go to the battlefield to die without being able to express our opinions, criticize and argue pros and cons of issues, and behave with principles, that is, after being deprived of my own agency…To die in the war, to die at the demand of the nation—I have no intention whatsoever to praise it; it is a great tragedy.

I do not avoid sacrifice. I do not refuse the sacrifice of my self. However, I cannot tolerate the reduction of the self to nothingness in the process. I cannot approve it. Martyrdom or sacrifice must be done at the height of self-realization. Sacrifice at the end of self-annihilation, the dissolving of the self to nothingness, has no meaning whatsoever.

The hard part is not death, but to live. At the height of life, life is terminated, the curtain goes down. Maybe it is splendid. After the climax the messenger of death arrives without notice. This is a splendid scenario. But it is unbearably miserable if one dies after a life in which one cannot devote oneself to one’s task and one cannot express oneself.’

Norimitsu Takushima 1921-1945, was drafted into the Imperial Navy out of Keio University in September 1943. He died in April 1945, a lieutenant, age 24. After his death, his father titled his son’s diary, The Writing Left Behind: Cape Jasmine—for the Beloved People of My Homeland. The Japanese for cape jasmine translates as “flower without a mouth” or perhaps more aptly, “flower without a voice.”

From his diary…

‘The Japanese are very sentimental. It is quite convenient for the dictators. The idea that one is patriotic and thus would sacrifice oneself is a thought for the stupid masses. It is a type of narcissistic mania…I advocate free contacts and exchange among the peoples of the world. I hate the rise of nationalism…According to my view, the nation now takes absolute control over individuals. Turning around 180 degrees from the Romantic to the Realist, I am looking at the moon and smiling.

With the rise of nationalism, people start to emphasize their superiority. The Germans do so. There is no way to judge the superiority of one people. That is nothing but self-deception or self-indulgence…

To the other world where my mother lives all alone,

I shall bring the honor from the battlefield.’

Photo: Female students waving blooming cherry blossoms as tokkôtai planes take off, April 1945.

The diary entries and photos (yesterday and today) all come from the outstanding book by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2006.

Point of No Return

October 25, 1944, off the coast of Saman Island in the Philippine Sea, the American escort carrier, St. Lo had a flight deck full of just landed planes, with more being loaded out for flight. For a few minutes captain and crew were confident they had remained invisible to Japanese planes. Their optimism was premature. Five hundred yards out, coming in low as if for a landing, kamikaze pilot Yukio Seki released a bomb that smashed into the St. Lo’s flight deck a few seconds before his plane made a slow roll and plowed into the ship. Forty minutes later what remained of the St. Lo disappeared beneath the water, reverberating still with underwater explosions. That October morning was merely a prelude to the horror the US Navy would face from Japanese kamikaze pilots over the next ten months.

During the last year of the war in the Pacific, Japan struggled in a last ditch effort to halt the American advance, an ever tightening noose around the islands of Japan. The concept of a special suicide attack force was the brainchild of navy vice-admiral, Takijirô Ônishi. First presented to officer graduates of the military academies, not a single officer volunteered, all of them knowing well that such tactics would be meaningless, ending in death. The necessary manpower was therefore sought among student soldiers drafted from higher secondary schools and universities. The candidates were all well-educated young men, the intellectual elite of modern Japan, men more comfortable with poetry and philosophy than bombs and self-sacrifice. All were extremely well-read, with an idealism that included a determination to combat the egotism growing out of capitalism and modernity. Asking them to volunteer to crash a plane into enemy ships was calculated to appeal to their moral principles and their sense of comradeship.

Americans were puzzled over what kind of society, education and culture produced not only the tactics of kamikaze attacks, but produced fighting men to carry out these suicide missions. Some of the answers to this question have been found in the diaries of kamikaze pilots.

Life for the tokkôtai (special attack unit) in the final ten months of World War II was a time of living life at its most intense, and during these last weeks of life, the young pilots filled their diaries with anguished confessions of fear and profound ambivalence toward the war and their nation’s imperialism. None of these diaries reflect the caricatures that paint them as reckless people, fanatical patriots and untrustworthy suicide bombers, but rather provide great insight into the minds of young men under the extreme conditions of warfare. The diaries reveal young soldiers who could not resist volunteering because they could not bear to embrace their own lives while watching friends and comrades offering theirs. Quoting lines from a famous poem about falling cherry blossoms, 23 year-old navy ensign, Yasuo Ichijima believed that like other pilots who had fallen, so would he—the falling cherry blossoms symbolic of life’s transience.

Ichizô Hayashi 1922-1945, was a graduate of the Imperial University of Kyoto, drafted as a student soldier in November 1943, assigned to be a tokkôtai pilot in February 1945. He died in April of that year off the coast of Okinawa, with the rank of navy ensign. He was 23 years old. His diary was titled, A Sun and Shield: Diary and Letters to Mother, Writings Left by Hayashi Ichizô. The Sun and Shield part of this title was taken from Psalm 84:11, ‘For the Lord God is a sun and shield.’

From his diary…

‘It is easy to talk about death in the abstract, as the ancient philosophers discussed. But it is real death I fear, and I don’t know if I can overcome the fear.

Even for a short life there are many memories. For someone who had a good life, it is very difficult to part with it. But I reached a point of no return. I must plunge into an enemy vessel.

To be honest, I cannot say that the wish to die for the emperor is genuine, coming from my heart. However, it is decided for me that I die for the emperor.’

Photo: kamikaze pilot, Kazuyo Umezawa, April 1945

MORE FROM THE DIARIES TOMORROW…