Life is like a box of plastics...

People with taste buds know that cooking is an art. Good food entices all the senses, not just taste. Good food emits an aroma to titillate our noses, arouses our tongues with varying textures, tantalizes our eyes with multifarious hues and shapes and sizes, and yes, even pleases our ears with a sizzle or a crunch.

I've never quite excelled in the kitchen arts, yet I have some sense for it. I know what flavors go together and how to make a salad appealing by the addition of a red or green food. But I'm terrible at timing and quantities. I use too much oil or not enough basil, or I overcook something while waiting for something else to finish up. I don't know how long too cook a chicken and I'm never quite sure when the pasta is done.

But I know how to cook eggs. I got up this morning and cooked a full breakfast. It all started with chopping up zucchini, jalepeno, and sweet onion into very fine pieces. Those went into a bowl. Next I fried up some sausage patties. After that, I chopped up some black olives and cilantro and put those to the side. When the sausage was done, I covered it and fried the zucchini, jalepeno, and sweet onion mix in the grease. While that was cooking, I mixed the black olives and cilantro with eggs, Frank's Red Hot Sauce, garlic salt, dried basil, and black pepper. After draining what grease I could from the other veggies, I washed up the pan, mixed in the veggies with the egg concoction, and poured the eggs into the skillet. Oh yeah, there was PLENTY of cheddar cheese.

I never eat breakfast, so this was a new experience, this waking in the morning hours and chopping things with knives. I guess I'm a fan of those kind of "kitchen sink" dishes when you just dump whatever you have into them. In Beirut I used to go to a little market every day and buy a couple of potatoes, an onion, a green pepper, and usually some other veggie, whatever was in season, all for about two dollars. The market was a tiny place stuck between two high rise apartment buildings and run by a Shia family in the mostly Sunni Hamra district. They were open in the mornings by the time I'd walk the block to the coffee shop across the street from it, which was often at 7am (for some reason I was always able to wake up early in Beirut when I struggle to get out of bed before 10am in Washington). They closed in the evenings when they felt like it, sometimes shutting up at 7pm, sometimes staying open until 9 or even 10pm. Such is Beirut, where people aren't so robotic about their daily routines that they can't stay open past posted hours when there are still customers to serve. They don't have that luxury, for there is nothing routine in Beirut. Aside from the traffic.

The potato dish was my usual dinner, mixed in with garlic (always!) and an array of spices. Sometimes I'd spend three or four hours on homemade tomato sauce for some pasta, another food I actually know how to cook. On occasion I'd have the good fortune of having some homemade pomegranate molasses or homegrown dried peppers or some other labelless food given to me by the generosity of the Lebanese.  I miss that.

Anyway, I don't know why I got up and cooked breakfast or why I'm writing about doing so, but I started thinking about parents who feed their kids processed foods in the mornings when there is so much wonderful and easy to throw together real food. It took me all of twenty minutes to put together an egg dish that was chock full of veggies, most of them locally grown. And then I started to wonder what if local farmers advertised their produce on television as much as Toaster Strudel or Frosted Flakes show their ads? I've never seen a commercial for zucchini or tomatoes, but beef (it's what's for dinner), pork (the other white meat), and milk (does a body good) have all run memorable campaigns. Does it work? Do people buy that boxed crap because they see it on television? Can't we spend an extra ten minutes in the mornings preparing fresh and nutritious breakfasts? How do we as a society convince each other to stop buying so many processed foods? When people like Michelle Obama try to push for healthier food choices, they are mocked by overweight talk radio hosts and the minions who listen to them. When laws are passed banning junk food in schools, a certain segment of the population is outraged at the "attack on freedom." When our health care system is breaking down because people don't know how to take care of themselves, those who try to fix it are labeled "socialists." Why has healthy eating become a political stance?

I'm glad farmers markets have made a comeback in cities big and small across America. Locally grown, pesticide free vegetables aren't a political ideology, they are common sense building blocks for life. We have one of the highest cancer rates in the world, and our health care system is overburdened because we don't take care of ourselves. We poison ourselves with "food" products made of plastics or petroleum or other chemicals we can't pronounce. Isn't it time we, supposedly the most intelligent species on the planet, go back to the natural order of things?

By the way, the sausage wasn't my choice. But it's ok to eat something like that every now and then when you are mostly responsible about the things you eat. It's no secret that moderation is the key to healthy living. Or is it?

To Music with Love

I went to see Woody Allen's new film To Rome with Love last night with Mr. Opera. Good lord, was it funny. I was glad that Mr. Opera has taught me a thing or two about opera because some of the jokes would have gone over my head a few months ago. Perhaps the funniest subplot of the film is the mortician with a beautiful voice who can only sing in the shower. Woody Allen plays a retired man who had worked in the music business producing operas in rather unusual ways (Rigoletto in white mice costumes, Tosca in a telephone booth). When he overhears the singer belting out an aria in the shower, he becomes determined to make him a star, but when he goes in for an audition, he can't sing. So Woody Allen's character comes up with the idea to put him on stage in a shower, where he sings beautifully. That sets up the funniest scene in the film, when the mortician sings Vesti la giubba from Pagliacci while putting shaving cream on his face instead of clown makeup, and when he murders his wife and her lover, the actors have to come up to the shower so he can stab them. It makes a mockery of the whole tragedy.

(Here is Pavarotti singing Vesti la giubba. Everyone will at least recognize the line at the 1:56 mark.)


Viewers need not know Pagliacci to appreciate the film as a whole, as there are many other subplots going on, and seeing an aria performed in a shower is funny in itself. The film is loaded with stars: Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penelope Cruz, that chick from Juno, and some famous Italian actors.

But why can't most Americans get the opera jokes? Why was I never exposed to opera as a child? Why is opera considered an elitist type of music? Mr. Opera is a sports loving, beer guzzling funnyman who grew up in a modest home, far from the stereotype that Americans hold of opera aficionados. But he is from an Italian family, a nation that has a healthy appreciation for all things beautiful, and music is no exception. (Somewhere along the way he found that his propensity for loudness was a gift and his voice could rattle houses, and he became opera.)

These days I cringe at the thought of the music I liked as a child and wonder how I ever found rock bands like Winger and Warrant appealing. Fortunately I discovered U2 in high school and moved on to better rock bands. But it was still rock, and rock singers, well, anyone can do it. They sing easy melodies. Many can't read sheet music. Few are talented singers. Opera, now that takes talent. It takes years of training and is physically demanding, requiring the same level of maintenance of the body and voice as an athlete would care for his muscles. The masseuse is a part of the opera world, and warming up and stretching is vital to one's career. The risk of injury is great, as Mr. Opera can attest to.

So why is this art despised by so many Americans? Why do we no longer appreciate music in this country, the land of jazz and blues and rock and roll? Why are music programs in schools always the first to go in budget cuts? Why do we not expose our children to Puccini and Verde and Bach and Beethoven? Why do so few Americans know how to play an instrument or sing a harmony? Why do people limit themselves to one music genre instead of appreciating music in general? Why does today's popular music seem like it's more of a fashion accessory?

In the autumn of 2007, I was standing on the balcony of a guest house in Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria with a group of Bulgarians who had grown up in communist times. I'd always thought it funny that Eastern Europeans listened to pop music that was a decade or two old, never quite grasping the fact that they had missed out on it when it was originally popular. These Bulgarians were somewhat different, though they were big fans of ska, which had been popular in the States in the nineties. But they were musicians. They could pick up a guitar or a trumpet or a tabla and play whatever you asked of them. Well, that day when the sun was shining over the valley stained with autumn and the hearts of citizens were preparing for another winter, we heard the reverberations of a brass band from somewhere within in the city, and the souls of those Bulgarians who'd been bounded by the shackles of communism during their childhood were set free. "It's music!" one of them said to me, and we stood on that balcony and listened to a brass band playing at a ceremony for the university and I thought, wow, the power of music over the human soul is incredible.

I have a lot to learn about music, but there is one thing I do understand and have known for a long time. Music is the language of the divine, the translation of emotion into something tangible. That we as a nation seem to have discarded it for pidgin pop is indeed a tragedy worthy of any Italian stage.

Adventures in salading

One of the few drawbacks to buying your produce from farmers markets is that you will on occasion find some creature with too many legs crawling through your purchases. This type of horrifying occurrence is so rare that all but the most severe of entomophobes can deal with the risk. But there it was as I was shaving red onion into the bowl, a small movement in the lettuce that I thought I had washed pretty well, a green worm writhing in what I would soon be putting in my mouth. I somehow managed to get it from the bowl into the garbage disposal, not a fate I would enjoy, that's for sure. After washing each leaf individually, I went ahead assembling my fresh summer salad, about the only thing one can eat on a 101 degree day. First went in the fresh cilantro, at least as fresh as one can buy from a grocery store. Next went in some capers, a fairly recent discovery of mine, salty little things they are, and then their cousins, black olives, both ingredients bought from the same deadly Giant grocery near my house.

Giant. The bane of Columbia Heights, one of the worst grocery experiences from which one can suffer. Whether it be the statues they have as cashiers, the patrons who seemingly have nowhere else to go, or the utterly rude employees, a trip to Giant is a thing to be avoided as much as possible. But they have the cheapest beer prices and sell it until midnight, so a trip was in order. Literally. In fact it was the second trip in two days, the first being for the olives, capers, and cilantro. That was when I slipped on the wet floor in the produce section. No wet floor sign, of course. The fall was more embarrassing than anything else. I cursed Giant and went about seeking some ingredients for a salad.

The second trip was for beer so Mr. Opera and I could drink it while enjoying the Fourth of July fireworks on the Mall. Even entering the store was annoying, as the people of Columbia Heights like to stand around in front of the doors with their shopping carts and bags or nothing at all, blocking the entrance for those of us who don't wish to make a trip to the grocery store an adventure. Already annoyed, I headed straight down the corridor of cashiers towards cold libation when I got behind a congregation of folks who had seemingly never used their legs to get anywhere. I tried to go around them. Who would expect that the area in front of a cash register with no wet floor sign could be a pool of pain? I slid on that invisible patch of wetness, right into a wine display. Funny thing is that my first instinct was to save the wine, which I did. But I hurt my knee. Five days later it still hurts to walk, and it's mighty purple.

No, I did not try to sue. One of the massive problems with our society is the litigious mentality that clogs our courts and ruins lives. I simply got up, cursed Giant again, grabbed some Yeungling (our compromise beer), loaded up my Nationals promotional six-pack cooler, and headed down to the Mall to meet Mr. Opera for the fireworks. Probably won't do that again; the mass of people and the overbearing police presence to celebrate "freedom" was too stressful to really enjoy the explosions, and we couldn't even drink the beer because, well, "freedom."

But back to the salad. Next ingredient: fresh jalepeno. Oh yes, jalepeno. I loooooooove peppers of all varieties. Gave the salad some bite, it did. Yum. Went well with the black pepper, feta, garlic salt, basil, and oregano I added to my concoction. And the tomato, oh the tomato. Mr. Opera and I go through tomatoes like Ted Nugent goes through ammunition. He grew up in a large Italian family who had the big Sunday dinners that us non-Italian folks think only happens in the movies. It makes you wonder how Italians survived before the discovery of the New World and its beautiful fruit, The Tomato. I can't even imagine Italian food without them. Well, there's always pesto. Mmm...pesto.  That reminds me...

The year was 1997. I was studying at my university's branch campus in Luxembourg. The program is designed to allow students to travel throughout Europe on weekends, and on the first weekend of my travels, a large group of students and I headed down to Cinque Terre, Italia. Oh, it was a large group, full of inexperienced travelers and horny college kids who had read in a guide book somewhere that hiking through the five towns perched on the cliffs of the Mediterranean Sea was the experience of a lifetime.

And it was.

We took an overnight train and eventually arrived at Riomaggiore, the city farthest south of the five, and spent the day hiking up to Vernazza, four towns away. The day was simply breathtaking. We reached Vernazza in the evening and found a tiny restaurant with an outdoor terrace. That was where I first tasted the divinity of pesto during one of the greatest meals I have ever eaten. It's no wonder the pesto was so wonderful - it originates from that region, as does the Chianti we drank. As we were finishing our entrees, but by no means our wine, a storm rolled in, and we took cover in the tiny confines of the restaurant. A guitar sat in the corner. A guy with a Polish name played Pearl Jam covers as we continued to imbibe the wine. The storm eventually passed and we watched the remnants of it on a beach along the Mediterranean. We slept outside that night beneath a covered passageway and hiked to the final city in the morning, catching an overnight train and rolling into Luxembourg just in time for our first Monday classes.

By the way, today's salad was wonderful, despite its wormy beginnings.

Why "From Beirut to Jupiter?"

I woke up this morning - well, this afternoon - feeling well-rested for the first time in quite awhile. Strange, because it was an interrupted sleep peppered with nightmares. In the first I had been kidnapped by some murderer who wanted me to be his assistant. I escaped into New York's Union Station (that's what it was in the dream), which had been turned into the New York Times' building. In the second dream I went to Atlantic City with my family, which was located on the mouth of a river and the ocean. Somewhere down the river toxic chemicals had been dumped and human beings weren't supposed to use those beaches, but my mother ignored the warnings. Meanwhile, my youngest sister and I decided to go to the clean ocean beaches, but a wicked storm came and I had a tough time convincing her to stay inside. There was something on TV about Bono being pissed about not being allowed to play at the concert hall that was located along the river. When I checked an actual map of Atlantic City this morning, I was stunned to see that it is, indeed, located along bodies of water arranged just like in my dream.

Anyway, back to being well-rested. I decided to try to write a blog about everything as opposed to a single topic as I did in Church of Baseball or Travellingrox. I simply woke up and felt like writing. I created this blog quite awhile ago that was supposed to be about civil society in Lebanon, where I was living and working at the time, but I never quite got that off the ground. Then it was supposed to be about media development, a field in which I was employed. But we started an organizational blog about that topic, and I couldn't maintain two blogs on the same subject. So it sat. This blog is a companion to Twitter and Tumblr accounts of the same name. And why the name? Why Beirut? Why Jupiter?

Ah Beirut...my love for Beirut is a curiosity, the same curiosity that is experienced by most Westerners who dare to venture to this land of contradictions, where beauty and ugliness, enchantment and apathy, and good and evil mingle. I've written about my love for Beirut many times, but perhaps this post sums it up best. It is a place that feels like home to me, where all my idiosyncrasies and eccentricities fit right in.

And why Jupiter? Quite simply, Jupiter is Zeus, the highest form of being of the Romans and Greeks, the god of the gods, for whom a temple was built in Baalbek, Lebanon atop the site of a temple to the sun god Baal, the highest form of being of the Phoenicians and the Babylonians, the god of the gods. Ba'al is a Semitic word for "lord" or "master." If people who claimed to be of one religion would learn a thing or two about religious history, they'd realize how similar are all religions, how they all come from the same ancient stories. Quite frankly, I'm tired of people clinging to their bibles and guns because they are afraid of the boogeyman beneath the earth. And so, Jupiter, the largest of the planets in our solar system, a tiny speck in our infinitely expanding universe. If people want answers to existence, they should look to space, look to mathematics, look to the chemical makeup of our bodies and our brains, leave the wars and religious conflicts behind and look to the promise of the future, go from Beirut to Jupiter.