Food and Sex

I have caught a cold since the beginning of the week, the coughing is still unbearable. It is official that I am getting older :-(. In the past, whenever, I get a cold, I just let it be for two days or so and all returns back to the normal state. Now, I cough, my nose runs and the nights seem get worse with body temperature slightly goes up. I also need to take vitamin C at a high dose.

The last few months of last year, I had some minor issues with my health, it made me feel vulnerable and a bit depressed. It is like that is the only thing that you can't control. I don't usually eat junk and I am conscious of whatever I eat. Every year this seems to be a bit more serious, I wonder whether it's because of mom? In any cases, this is for the better of course, I have no complains. I am happy that a glass of wine at dinner with friends is now possible after several of months strictly restricted :-).

Anyway, I cook more often. I have recently cooked Mexican and then African dishes for friends. My intention is to cook more Italians in the coming weeks, the reason is that I plan to cook as many dishes as possible from the cookbook of Jamie Oliver. One of my friends asked why didn't I buy an Italian cookbook from an Italian chef, that to him makes more sense, maybe for my dear friend :-), yes, but not for me :-). I believe that if I don't know Italian foods, it is better to start learning it from a chef who- like me- is not Italian. When you have to learn something that is not what you usually do, the best is to seek answers/instructions from someone who have learnt and become expert on that. They will list out what they have learnt and what was neccesary in the process since they have gone through that. I have always cooked real good pasta or soup like minestrone...etc but this time I would like to dig deeper in pizza, and other dishes. My last year trip to the south of France has helped with knowing a bit more on good quality olive oil (yeah, went olive tasting, GREAT!). I think good cooking begin with good ingredients. In two weeks time, I will be in Tuscany, there will be more tasting to do :-), this time, wine, oil, cheese, hams YUMMMM. Can't wait!

Sex? :-) No, not about my sex life, it's something else although that subject comes up often these last days. On TV, they talked about sex-education to teenagers remains important, how the girls are afraid, how the boys turn to pornography to learn about sex, how girls are afraid that boys ask them to do stuffs that they do not want...etc. I or my generation or those before did not have any sex-education (I don't think my cousin has received any either, she is in her teen). The only thing I think was a sex-education was a session about the use of condoms when AIDS is a made-known in Vietnam as pandemic, an incurable disease. Even that was not well explained. Nobody talks about sex but adults make jokes related to it (they think teenagers would not understand, honestly!). My male colleagues told me that here they even had a Q&A session that made unanimously, that is brilliant! Well, of course, then because they go to Catholic school here that the questions they asked were " did Marie did it with something with the animal? how come she was pregnant without doing it?" ...etc (I wonder if they told me the truth or they were joking). I did receive a lot of info on contraceptives though from this bunch of men though :-).

Next time, maybe my discussion would be about Aphrodisiac foods :-), how exciting!

Passion, Life hacker...

I have been taking tango for several of weeks now and I really enjoy it. The first several times, it's all awkward because not only  it's like you are learning to walk all over again but also you have to let your partner lead you. Tango is all about playing it seems :-) and well, we like games, don't we?. Although both should learn the steps, the men are usually the ones to have to send the correct signals, to take charge so that women do what they wish them to do. Sound very sexist but that really is about Tango.

It is also such a passionate and sensual dance and honestly we could use a bit of passion :-) every now and then to make our lives a bit spicier and fun. The music, the touch and the way two people connect to each other, it is great.

That leads me to the subject of passion :-). Valentine was two days ago and for a lot of people here, it is a pretty much commercial event. I agree for a valid reason, we can all spoil our loves any time, any day, it does not necessary need to be on Valentine. However, when you think about it, how often do we actually express love? Maybe the main point here is that we do not need to buy something to make the other person feel special or loved on that special day, maybe just a simple gesture of caring, of saying love, of making a joke to make someone laugh. Besides, if you do love a lot, who care an extra day where you can actually say how much you love :-). Love is great and it is absolutely wonderful to be in love, so no matter how commercial Valentine may have sounded, I still think it is nice to do something a little crazy that day :-).

Anyway, life hacker, nothing to do with passion of course :-). I have recently been familiar with this term, it appears that there are professional life hackers who get paid to help you organised your life or organizing someone's else is a strong statement, maybe to help you to get rid of those little things in life that bother you. I think we are quite inventive specie. Nowadays most people are all the time connected to Facebook or other social networks, all of these have just somehow make us overwhelmed, we are marketed differently, selling has just gone up to a different level of channel...So, you need to organize your social network profiles (if you have any). There comes adviser, trainer, life hacker for this sort of things, people who have solutions to make your profiles, your company, your products...a bit more appealing. I could be one if I spend my day on those networks :-). Honestly, is it the next step? All my friends start using those networks more often than I see them...I begin to worry that soon I will see them online more than their faces. Maybe one day we will even forget to use our senses and our entire life is linked to a machine and no, no space attack, only we do that to ourselves. This is scary!

I agree that at some points, we grow, we develop eventually, so just a step to take but to what limit? Most teenagers do not pass French as a language and it is their mother tongue, really? soon we can't even write in our own language!

Let's twit!

Dreams

It snowed since the last time but it is still cold. I have for the first time seen people walking on the lake near my place. When I took a walk early in the morning during weekend, it is really enjoyable, the streets were so quiet that you could hear the cracking noise of the ice. Everything is white, too white that blind my eyes. I missed the colour of the winter season.

I thought I should put this strange dream that I had yesterday night before everything became blurred in my mind. In my dream, I sat in the theater while a little girl was singing, I was the person who wrote the play! I remembered telling myself when I was haft awake that maybe that is what I should be, a screen writer, I even thought that if I was going to do that, I would be writer scripts that promote stories of culture clashes or something that give more insights of my culture... It must have been that program on Chinese children who was pushed so hard in gymnastic to win medals at the Olympic that is the result of this dream. When I actually put more thoughts into that now, I think this is a dream that I can definitely make true. I mean I love movies and I love conversations in movies, I love locations, stories...etc, so absolutely a project/plan that I will need to start looking into...So, I guess if I quit job, that is what I want to do next.

I have to admit that my dream is a bit blurred now, and it is less concrete than it is when I was in the dream. I should have just waken up and jotted the idea down before I dozed off again. That's what writers do I think. They might have spent plenty of time thinking, dreaming, the percentage of the writing should not constitute a small part of the job, no? Hmm, maybe research as well but really what a nice job, I wouldn't mind getting paid just to dream and to think :-).

Anyway, let's talk food now! Exciting, isn't it? I have not talked about this for a while now. One big reason is that since my mom arrives and lives in Belgium now, I don't have to much cooking (or any other house chores for that matter). I miss cooking though but it is just that mom and I can't be in the same kitchen or at least either she cooks or I do :-). However, I have recently figured a better solution to this. Mom cooks really good Vietnamese foods, some of the stuffs she makes are not the usual dishes that you can find in home cooking. So, I don't cook Vietnamese now. I do ask mom for tips when it comes to cooking methods in making amazingly good Vietnamese dishes. Mom's Pho is by far the best I can find here in Belgium, no kidding, it's not because she is mom. I cook other stuffs :-). To be honest, it is more exciting to discover new ingredients whether it is fresh veggies or new spices...The other day, I discovered a root, it tastes like artichoke but looks like potato. Absolutely gorgeous! The guy at the market told me it is called Jerusalem artichoke, cool name for a veg.

I bought a Jamie Oliver's cookbook (for the record, I did not buy it because he was kinda cute :-). Yeah, I have not had one and the title says "Jamie's Italy". When I open it, it contains stories of his trip, his encounters with local people, each recipe has a story. That is what I like about it. I did not regret buying it. Italian is one of my favorite cuisine. It varies much and one thing Jamie is right is that Italians from each region are proud of the local/regional dishes, each family is proud of a dish marking that region and they always think theirs are the best. Another thing that I also agree that because Italians are very much family oriented, so eating always is a feast. C'mon, watch the Godfather (one of my most favourite movies), even at time of crisis, eating is with family. When my uncle still marries, his ex-wife uses to cook and I remember every time she makes Pasta, it was both I and my uncle who ate the most. Other than what I love watching Saturday kitchen on BBC on Saturday, a lot of dishes I recently cooked for my friends come from this program. I surely will cook a lot more this year though.

Other than the normal cooking, I have decided to give baking a try and have started to do a bit of baking. It is no big deal for a lot of the gals here,  but baking is just not my thing. To be fair, I have not actually put my head into it. First of all, I don't like cakes, cookies...etc. Yeah, what can I say I am not into sweets, I am more into the hot and spices :-)...well, don't let your mind wonder, I was talking about making pizza!. Second of all, when I cook, I like to invent, I never follow a recipe in details, and I think with baking, you almost can't do this as the measurement is important. Having said that, I can say that in Vietnam we have a complete different repository when it comes to desserts. I love desserts where there are beans and coconut, cansava cake, buns, sweet sticky rice balls...etc. I can at least make those very good. To me, it must have been the lack of ingredients which is the main reason of why we, Vietnamese do not bake a lot. We do not have wheat flours or at least those we have are not as good, even butter is imported as long as I remember. Maybe nowadays you can find those in VN given the number of foreigners who settle there but in the past, these things cost and you can't find good ones. I can say that I can make really good blueberries muffins, at least a lot of people love them and I can agree that they do taste delicious.

My next challenge is really to make the crust of  pizza successfully, have been trying but they are not to the level that I would like them to be. Maybe I should buy a wood oven or something...

Yeah, you might have noticed, I have been able to bring back peace to my mind. I have been sleeping (very good) and have been able to figure out a lot of things. I booked my short holidays (finally), going a week to Florence,Tuscany (yep, all the inspiration of foods). I have not been there but always want to go for the arts and the people, the foods, the landscape...I also plan a long haul this year to Myanmar in Oct. I am pretty excited!

Stay tuned!