Pork Shoulder in the Distance?

Could it be? Is it? According to RobertoDonna.com, Galileo will be back in late Spring 2009. Does this mean the Grill will be back? Dear God help us all. The best lunch option in DC's Golden Triangle may just be making a reappearance.

Much to my chagrin, of course, since I won't be there. Or maybe this merits the use of an R&R? Seriously folks, this is some fantastic eating. Simply prepared sandwiches, soups, pizza, and more, ordered and handed over at the counter of a teaching kitchen in the back of a fine dining establishment in the heart of our nations capital. Granted, they've apparently been serving similar stuff from Bebo's Trattoria in Crystal City, but c'mon, it's not the same.

So, for those of you who know what I'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about. But for those of you who don't, imagine one of the best chefs in DC (ok, so it took a second try to get the food out, but he put the smack down on Morimoto on Iron Chef when he did), standing there whacking apart a pork shoulder that's falling apart tender, fragrant with rosemary and thyme and all kinds of other aromas just knocking you over, splashed with "green sauce" and nestled with marinated green peppers and onions on a freshly toasted (and in-house) italian long ciabatta roll. Or if you prefer you could have in-house italian sausage with the same. Imagine perfectly browned, thin crust pizza with nothing more than mozzarella and broccoli rabe. Or how about house-made hot dogs with home made ketchup and relishes.

Roberto stands there like a general, shouting to the cooks for more bread, more sausages, more shoulder ... wiping the sweat from his brow with paper towels from the roll in front of him, the same one from which you're going to tear off a piece in a few minutes. You're there standing in line, shuffling your feet, chatting with friends, waving to people you know, or people you see there every week who are also in on the secret. Then it's your turn to order ... God forbid you aren't looking at Roberto when he says, "NEXT!" ... he gets louder and louder and you get a serious glare, not just from him, but from everyone in the room, and in the line that snakes out the door and down the hall to the back of the restaurant. Shout your order and it's put together right there on the cutting board, four or six or eight sandwiches at a time. Or you say, "Just the pizza today," and you get a shrug and a, "NEXT!" Once you've ordered, you just drop your money in the cash box in front of the chef, making your own change. It's honor system and who the heck knows if it's on the books, but who the heck cares?? Just as long as I get the email next week that tells me whether I need to be there on Monday, or Thursday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday.

Are you kidding me?? My mouth is watering right now and I would run through Kandahar City naked right now for a pork shoulder sandwich from the Grill. Guy, Nick, you know what I'm talking about.

In homage and intense anticipation, I'm including the recipe for Roberto's Green Sauce. You could bathe in it it's so delicious. We should all be so lucky.

Salsa Verde (Green Sauce)

Ingredients

4	Anchovy fillets
½ oz.	Bread, torn into pieces (any type except sourdough)
3 tbsp.	Red wine vinegar
1	Clove of garlic
½	Egg white, hard boiled
1 tsp.	Capers
1	Gherkin
2 oz.	Fresh parsley, stems removed
1 cup	Olive oil

To prepare the sauce:

Place the bread in a small mixing bowl, add red wine vinegar and set aside. Combine all other ingredients in a blender; add the bread. Blend the mixture on high speed for approximately 30 seconds, until smooth.

To store, place sauce in a sealed container covered with a thin layer of olive oil.

Refrigerate.

Picture this:

Does anyone else get squeamish and excited at the thought of spending a large chunk of cash on something? Plane tickets to India, computers, cameras ... ?

I just dropped a chunk on a new camera ... can't wait to get it here to Kabul (I've got a mule). That's it on the left above.

With all the necessary accessories (lenses, bag, battery, memory cards, etc.) it came to almost as much as I'd spend on a snazzy new laptop. Although I guess these days cameras are just highly specialized computers with fancy lenses anyway.

So here I am, crossing my fingers that shipping dates and the mule departure are in alignment and I get my new toy(s) soon. I'm excited to be getting back into photography beyond the point-and-shoot snapshottery that I've fallen into in the last few years. It was a sad day when I found that my trusty Pentax ZX-50 had died of neglect. I took some good pictures with that guy ... *cue fond memories of shooting slides in the jungles of Ecuador*

Here in Afghanistan, although there aren't tons of opportunities for getting out and wandering with my camera, I'll do my best. My friends Mikael and Walied have started a photo project ... Eyes of Afghanistan. In their own words ...

Eyes of Afghanistan is an international project that seeks to share images and views of Afghanistan through the eyes of local Afghans and expatriates who have lived, worked and traveled in the country. These images represent their experiences and tell their stories of life in Afghanistan.

Sounds like fun, right? I encourage anyone reading here to check out their site and stay posted for updates and the culmination of their efforts.

Shakes the Tectonic Plate

About a week ago I bought a new carpet. I wasn't planning on buying one, but my friend suggested I join him and another colleague for a visit to his carpet guy and I figured, "Why not?"

So of course I ended up buying a carpet. It was more than I was thinking I would be willing to spend, but it's nice and I like it. So there. For those of you who are dying to see it, here's a picture. It's about two meters by three meters, and it's a Mushwari (mixed kilim and carpet) made from camel-hair with natural-colored wool and naturally dyed wool ...

Now then, two nights ago at 12:53 am I was pulling staples out of my recently-bought carpet when I heard a boom and things in my room started to rattle. It felt like a Mack truck going by. Then my wardrobe started to rattle and I stood up, put my hand on it, and realized that EVERYTHING was shaking. It only lasted for about 15-20 seconds, and afterward I got my shoes on and went outside. One of my colleagues was wandering around:

"Was that an earthquake?"

"Yeah! My heart is pounding."

"Mine too. Whoah. That was my first."

"Yeah me too."

"Ok, well, gnight."

"Yeah, gnight."

And that was that. I had lived through my first earthquake. According to the USGS it was 5.9 on the Richter Scale, epi-centered in Badakhshan, South of Feyzabad. I was a little worried about the angle of my eight-foot wardrobe that sits at the foot of my bed (it tilts away from the wall about 10 degrees), but I managed to sleep.

Did I say that was that? Oh right. Well, last night I woke up from a deep sleep at 3:45 am or so to my bed vibrating like Magic Fingers. Only I didn't have any quarters and it wasn't Magic Fingers. This one lasted about 15 seconds ... should have been long enough for me to jump out of bed and run downstairs and out the front door, right? Well, I didn't do that. I just made sure my wardrobe wasn't going to fall on my bed and then just rode it out. I think my heart rate was up, but that didn't stop me from rolling over and going back to sleep once the bed stopped shaking. Five minutes and I was out. This second one was slightly less powerful apparently: 5.7 on the Richter Scale according to the USGS, and less than 10 kilometers from the previous night's epicenter.

I had survived my second earthquake in just over 24 hours.

Today I'm not taking any chances. I had our logistics office shim my wardrobe up from the floor so it's flush to the wall (actually leaning towards the wall now since of course the walls aren't straight). Tomorrow they are installing brackets to anchor it to the wall. I also packed my grab-bag, just in case: warm clothes, shoes, first aid kit, passport, money, headlamp, Leatherman, duct tape, and a few other essentials.

Like I said, I'm not taking any chances.

Been here a while ...

Right, I've had this blog-thing since April 2007 or so and have only made one substantive post. Disgraceful, I know.

Anyhow, it's now 2009 and while it is NOT one of my resolutions to start posting here more, I'm going to start posting here more. Let's give it 90 days and see if I can form the habit.

Resolutions I do have: learn Dari, exercise five days a week, go to sleep and wake up early. Everyone who knows me will know that the last may be the most difficult for me ... the going to bed early part. That only happens these days when I'm exhausted. And when I don't get on Skype.

Like now. I got a Skype at ten after 11 from Nicaragua and have been talking for the last 45 minutes. Oh the perils of living halfway around the world from friends and family.

Tomorrow: get up early, get on the treadmill, eat breakfast, get a haircut (?), buy groceries, buy a camera, post here about what I've been doing for the last six months. Ha!

Listmaking

Rumor has it that I'm leaving for Afghanistan in less than a month. Supposedly. I'm not sure I can imagine it's real until I actually get on that plane. I remember when I left for Honduras and the Peace Corps. I didn't mentally come to terms with it, even as my Dad honked from the alley when he picked me up to go to the airport. I think it finally sank in then when I was in the hotel in Miami, although now I feel as though I've made so many farewells that they all blend together. It occurs to me that I can divide them all by this century and the last, roughly, since at some point (9/11? before?) they stopped letting people go to the gate without a boarding pass.

Funny how my next stepping stone is connected to that moment.

Anyhow, I think I am better equipped to deal with this latest move at this stage in my life. Of course it helps that I'll have help to pack and ship and store my life (or at least the things part of the equation ... Life = things + people + action). But it's the same in many ways ... I'm saying goodbye to the relationships I've collected and am moving on toward the next phase. On to accumulate more attachments and to limit the loss of those I've left behind.

Sometimes I really feel this way, that my life is compartmentalized into phases, from several in childhood in Chicago (before I went to school, then Bell, and Parker), to Bowling Green, to Centre College (with micro-phases from winter in Ecuador, the summer of '97, London, DC in summer '98, Ecuador again in fall '98 and '99), to Chicago, then Honduras, then back to DC and graduate school, and now my work at Chemonics. This new assignment is my next phase. Rarely have these phases overlapped, except for during college, but they all feel like distinct lives that I have lived, different people that I was.

It's funny, these moments of goodbye have a sort of wistfulness, where you really need to disbelieve that it's a final Goodbye, but deep down you know it could be the last and want to have your words and thoughts be meaningful--just in case. Or perhaps, for me, it's because I know that it will never be the same. Maybe this is why there is also a sort of reckless abandon to the leave-taking, and in a way it's freeing to lose the restraint with which I walk through life on a daily basis.

And now I am trying to busy myself with sorting and listmaking. What do I want to take with me now (pack), what do I want to send to myself (ship), what do I want to put away (store), and what do I want to divest myself of (sell or donate). This distracts me from mourning the loss of Life. So my current occupation is making these lists (and at this point, I use the congnate-ive form of the word as it in Spanish), but I haven't yet written anything down.

Maybe once I do that, my leave-taking will start to become reality.

Whisper

For a whisper in a room
Brings memories of what once was
And will never now become.
Dissolute, now reimagined,
As only the past can be.

In the slanting pale light
Stopping to think is all that there is.
A cigarette burns slowly in the crowded ashtray.
The scent of loss and regret lingers,
Dancing with the illuminated dust
And smoke that floats across the room.

For a whisper in a room
Reminds us only of the screaming silence that follows,
Where the scrape of a chair
And the sigh and squeak of bedsprings
Are incongruous interruptions of a reverie.

Layers of paint peel and chip,
Their edges rough with worrying.
Colors muted by the passing of time and sunlight,
A spreading mandala stains the ceiling,
And the walls click and groan
As they stretch their old joints and taut skin.

For a whisper in a room
Sparks memories of joy,
Squeals of delight, and deep throated laughs,
Playful moments--passionate and dear--
And unending nights
That outshone the stars.

Procrastination ...

... is my current occupation. Hence, this.