Spices Galore!

I was a bit taken aback yesterday when I opened my kitchen cupboard that contains all my spices, canned food, and general baking/cooking ingredients. The entire bottom shelf is completely filled with spices! Now I know this shouldn’t come as a shock; after all, I have commented about my expanding collection of spices. I am also the one who purchased them and arranged them just that way in the cupboard. Be that as it may, I was still a bit overwhelmed by all the little canisters sitting in neat little rows, staring back at me. How did I ever reach this point, especially considering my culinary training?

Growing up, I believed the only spices you needed to have a well stocked spice cupboard were: 1. Salt - mostly so Dad had some to put on his popcorn. It never appeared on the dinner table unless we were eating corn on the cob
2. Pepper - for the very occasional scrambled eggs and hamburgers
3. Minced onion – once again for the hamburgers
4. Italian seasoning - for our weekly ground turkey spaghetti sauce
5. Sage – for our holiday turkey dressing
6. Chili powder – for my brother to dump, and yes, I do mean dump, on his chili
7. Cinnamon – for the crumbly coffee cake I loved to make at least twice a month
8. Nutmeg – for apple crisps and our Thanksgiving pumpkin pies
9. Cloves – same as above

These nine spices, and there may have actually been one or two more, would suffice for any and all cooking needs. I didn’t even consider a recipe that required any more than two or three spices, and it certinaly didn't recieve a second glance if it required things like “fresh ginger” and “cloves of garlic.” Very occasionally, I would get adventuresome and try something that called for a more unusual spice, and Mom would have to make a quick run to the grocery store to get it. (This is how Five Spice made it into my mom's kitchen cupboard.) Overall though, I passed a happy childhood eating foods flavored only by the above.

I remember once in high school, I contemplated jazzing up our everyday chicken and pasta dishes by experimenting with different herbs and spices. But then it seemed much too complicated to actually get the right combinations without having a specific recipe to follow, so I didn’t contemplate this idea for very long.

When I left for college, I began building my spice collection. I had cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and Italian Seasoning. (You can also see from this list that I liked baking much more than cooking!) Then I moved into my own apartment, and my little store of spices began to grow a bit. I added things like salt, pepper and garlic powder to the mix. They all fit into a little corner of one my cupboard shelves.

Then I became roommates with Clarissa. She loved spices. She was the spice expert. Her spices filled an entire shelf of one of our kitchen cupboards. Whenever she was cooking, or we were making something together, she knew exactly how much of which spice to dump in to add just a little more unique flavor. If Clarissa used a recipe, it was just the basis to which she added or omitted various herbs and spices as she saw fit, with very successful results. She inspired me, and I endeavored to learn as much as I could from her.

The second contributing factor to my current level of spice ownership was Clarissa’s and my decision to give Indian cooking a try. We both loved Indian food, and since we loved eating it so much decided it would be a great idea to try making it. We got a cookbook and discovered that we owned very few of the spices needed to make any of the recipes. Not only would we need fresh ginger and garlic cloves, more of a shock to me than to her, we also needed things like cardamom pods, turmeric, and coriander. So these spices were purchased and added to the neat little rows in Clarissa’s spice cupboard.

After Clarissa got married and I moved into my own apartment, I, of course, had to purchase my own of all the spices we had been able to share while roommates. We continued to be cooking buddies and frequently tried new recipes, some of which required various spices, which one or the other of us would have to buy. Then there were also the times we’d be cooking at Clarissa’s apartment, and I would comment while digging through her spices for the fenugreek, “Oh, I don’t have this spice.”

“What?!” She would exclaim, “I can’t believe you don’t have it! Allie, you really need to get it. It’s amazing.” and I would make a mental note to pick it up at the store the next time I was there.

So, I suppose that is the long and the short of my spice journey, and why I own all the dozens of spices I do. It comes in handy, having such a stash, because now as I look at recipes, I am more likely to eliminate a recipe that only calls for three spices and uses powdered garlic rather than garlic cloves. I love the layers of flavor that come from all the spices melding together, and I love the variety of the textures and colors of the whole spices! I think that is actually one reason why I love Indian cooking – just look at the whole spices needed to make a wonderful dish of Royal Chicken cooked in yogurt! I get the feeling that I am actually creating something as I cook.



Now that I cook with all these different spices, my next goal is to train my tongue to discern all which specific spices were used to make my food whenever I go out to eat – just like Clarissa. Now I can pick out some of the more distinctive flavors, but not as many as she can nor as quickly. I have many great memories of us eating somewhere together, and she’ll have taken not two bites of her meal before she is saying, oh, I think it has this in it and that as well. Now I think it might have this; she’ll take another bite, chew thoughtfully and then state her final opinion. Once she names it, I can taste it too. After a bit, she may say, “I like it, but I wouldn’t put as much turmeric in it. Or, I think it would be better if they had added more coriander.” I always believe her, even if I can’t quite taste it, because she is still the spice expert, and although I’ve come a long way, I am still learning.

Colorado Vacation

It is hard to believe that just a week ago I was in Colorado, playing Dutch Blitz with my friend Halley and her husband Joey. Now I’m back in Des Moines, having just finished two days of work during which I made toilet water (Victorian perfume) with 100 local 7th graders!

My trip to Colorado was a well-timed break from the busyness of LHF. The season truly transitioned from summer to fall while I was away, and I am thankful for the slower pace that we’re now in for the next month. My trip was relaxing, rejuvenating and quite eventful. All in all I traveled approximately 1,350 miles and slept in four different beds as went from place to place visiting family and friends! What follows are just some of the highlights.


I spent most of Sunday and Monday with my good friend Clarissa, who moved from Des Moines to Ft. Collins in August. It’s the first time in eight years we haven’t lived in the same town! Sunday night we cooked together once again and tried several new recipes from one of our favorite cookbooks - Quick and Easy Indian Cooking. While we chopped onions and garlic and made sure the milk didn’t boil over, we discussed my latest work happenings and the articles she was reading for her grad classes. In keeping with an unintentional tradition, we didn’t eat until about 8:30 pm. As usual, the meal was well worth the wait. I will certainly be making the dill rice with peas and the mushroom curry again!

Monday Clarissa and I went exploring. She took me on a tour of the CSU campus. Things were pretty quiet since it was Labor Day, although we did have to dodge a few runners participating in some sort of road race. Then we were off to Whole Foods, one of the most wonderful grocery stores in the world! I saw foods there that I’ve only read about in cookbooks but never been able to find in a more typical grocery store. The loaves of bread piled along the counter were baked to perfection; their tops perfectly crusted along the lines slashed into the dough before they were baked. The pastries and cakes were too beautiful to even think about eating! Unfortunately high prices accompany such delightful foods, so I would never be able to actually do much or any of my grocery shopping there, but it certainly was fun to browse!


After this we went searching for All Sweets, an international chocolate shop family friends, who also live in Ft. Collins, told us about. It is a very small shop. Chocolate bars labeled with their country of origin sat on the shelves lining the perimeter of the shop. Bright wrappers stood out against the white walls and shelves. Clarissa exclaimed when she discovered the chocolate she ate when she was in Russia, and I was happy to see the chocolate bars I ate when I traveled in Europe. We were most excited, however, by the bowls and bowls of konfyeti sitting on tables in the middle of the shop. (Imagine individually wrapped Russell Stover chocolates and you’ll get the general idea of what konfyeti is. Clarissa ate lots of konfyeti in Russia.) The owner let us try any two we wanted, so, of course, we ended up buying 2 lbs. worth of them! I was able to read English descriptions of each piece when I picked out which ones I wanted. Unfortunately, now that my konfyeti is at home, I can’t tell what anything is! I can’t read the Cyrillic on each wrapper and Clarissa isn’t here with her Russian-English dictionary to translate for me. Each one is a surprise – and very good surprises at that!


Monday evening to Thursday morning I stayed with Halley, Joey and Alivia. What a delight it was to finally meet little Alivia, who just turned four-months-old. She has an infectious smile and light fuzz for hair. She spent a good deal of time playing with her toes, which she had only recently discovered. I made her a quilt and was happy to see it fit the décor of her nursery perfectly. Livi actually pit up on it the first time she laid on it, which seemed fitting somehow. While I was there Livi sucked her thumb by itself for the first time. Being a former thumb-sucker, I said it must have been due to the quality time we had spent together and my good influence. Halley and I also had some knitting lessons while I was there. I was thankful she got the hang of it before I had to leave.

The drive to and from Colorado was a highlight as well, which I think may surprise many people. When you live in Iowa and tell people you are driving to Colorado they tend to cast you a pitying glance and make some comment about the endless miles you will be driving across Nebraska. However, when you make the drive with your mom - at least my mom - the endless miles become an open space ready for great conversations and reading good books. Although I was happy to arrive at our destinations at the end of each drive, part of me wished we had had just a little bit further to go.

Saturday I was back in Lincoln and able to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday with my family. This was the first time since she and my brother started dating six years ago that I have actually celebrated with her in person! Every year prior to this I was either in school or working in Des Moines. I made her a brownie cake, which turned out perfectly. It can be a tricky cake to have come out right, and I was so thankful it did for this special occasion. Dinner was followed by a trip to their house to see Peter’s latest remodel job. Last time I was there, the living room and hallway were torn apart down to the studs; everything is now restored to order. The walls are dry walled and beautifully painted. Liz now has a large hallway closet and a tiled kitchen floor. I’m glad to have such a talented guy for my brother.

Now it is back to the quiet of my apartment in Des Moines and my familiar routines. As glad as I am to be away, I am always thankful to return safely home again. Now it is time to start planning the next trip! Where should I be off to next? Hmmm…you know, Boston has always been a place I’ve wanted to visit….

Pelmeny

Pelmeny – a Siberian dish of small pockets of dough filled with seasoned, minced beef, lamb, or pork and served boiled, fried, or in a soup.

I first heard of pelmeny about a year ago. A family friend was teaching English at a Russian university and received so many questions about what he was eating that he posted a short video series on his blog of him preparing his favorite meals. The final episode was dinner; the entree - pelmeny. In fact, he liked it so much that he wanted to figure out a way to export it to the US once he left Russia so he could still eat it!

I showed the episode to my friend Clarissa, who studied in Russia for a semester in college. She vividly remembered eating pelmeny and wished she could enjoy this Russian comfort food once again. We decided then and there to be on the lookout for a Russian grocery store so we could buy some pelmeny. She could eat it again, and I could see for myself why she and Daniel loved this little filled “dumpling” so much.

“There’s a Russian grocery store!” I exclaimed as my parents and I drove to church on a Sunday morning several weeks ago. Just a few blocks north of my parents’ house on the corner of a little strip mall was a Russian and European grocery store. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? “We should go there,” I continued. “We need to see if they have pelmeny.”

Monday afternoon before I left Lincoln for Des Moines, Mom and I stopped at the grocery store. Shelves lined the perimeter of the small room. Large burlap bags of something, I am assuming a grain of some sort?, sat piled on the floor in the center of the room. A small upright freezer stood against another wall. A tall, broad shouldered woman came out of the back room and greeted us. Her thick accent strongly suggested that she was indeed Russian, and I assumed she was also the store owner.

Mom and I began looking at all the bottles, cans, and boxes – clearly labeled in Cyrillic. We could figure out what most things were either by the bright picture on the front or the bits of food we could see in the glass jars around the labels. “We have to buy something you know,” Mom said. I was crossing my fingers they’d have pelmeny. “Oh look! There’s the box juice that Clarissa raves about. I wonder which was her favorite,” I said.

We finally made our way around to the freezer and there, filling one entire section were the bags of pelmeny. There was veal pelmeny and beef pelmeny. Hmmm…I wonder which the most popular kind is, I thought.

“Sorry I am out of pork pelmeny,” the woman said. “It should be in Wednesday night.” Pork - that must be the most popular then. Not having until Wednesday to buy any, I settled on veal and took it up to the counter to pay. The woman was in the middle of a boisterous conversation on the telephone – all in Russian of course, so I glanced at the bags of bread and little cooked pastries on the counter.

“Sorry about that,” she said, hanging up. She rang up my pelmeny. “Do you know how to cook this? You take it and” she started banging the frozen bag against the edge of the counter to break up the pieces! I am sure I must have looked quite surprised and startled.

“I am going to make it with a friend who lived in Russia for a while.” I managed to get out. “I think there are instructions on the bag too.”

She stopped hitting the bag on the counter and slid it into another sack, taking my money and clinking it into the cash register. “Thank you and enjoy!” she said as Mom and I left.

Two days later Clarissa and I had our biweekly cooking night. Pelmeny and tiramisu were on the menu. She was thrilled we were having pelmeny. We carefully read the instructions, boiled the water, dumped in the pelmeny, stirred until the little pelmenies floated to the top of the water, and then cooked them for twenty minutes.

Although not a soup per se, Clarissa dished the little puffs into bowls with some of the broth. The traditional way to eat pelmeny was with sour cream, which seems to be a staple of most Russian soups, and dill. Not sure of what to expect, I scooped up one pelmeny and slid it into my mouth. The dough casing was thicker than ravioli. Suddenly, hot broth and peppered seasoned veal filled my mouth as the pelmeny broke open. “Hot, it’s hot.” Clarissa warned, waving her hand in front of her mouth. I nodded; it was soooo tasty.

“Now imagine eating this when it’s freezing cold outside and you’ve been working in an old cathedral turned car factory all morning,” she said when she could talk again. I could understand why she ended up loving it so much. As we ate one pelmeny after another, Clarissa reminisced about other times she’d eaten pelmeny in Russia, and we planned our trans-Siberian railroad trip that we dream of taking someday when we are famous and someone will pay us to go write a book about our experience.

When Clarissa and her husband were coming and going from Colorado two weekends ago, they stayed with my parents, and my mom bought several bags of pelmeny to have for Clarissa to bring back to Des Moines with her. And now, I think, a trip to the Russian and European Grocery store will become a mandatory stop on any and all trips I take to Lincoln.

A Time to Write, Part 2

In retrospect, I had a valuable time at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival this last weekend. I say retrospect because while I was there, I wondered if I truly was benefiting from my time at the festival. It was so different from last year. Six sessions of workshop spread over six days compared to four sessions of workshop crammed into two. A very general brainstorming workshop versus a more specific genre workshop. Entire mornings and evenings to work on assignments compared to one evening and barely part of a morning. No expectations verses expectations.

And yet, as I continued to talk with my mom yesterday about my workshop, I realized that I did glean small nuggets from my workshop that should prove quite useful as I continue to grow as a writer. In fact, it is okay that I didn’t have monumental breakthroughs or learn all sorts of new things about writing anecdotes. So, here briefly, are some of those nuggets:

1. Anecdote is a slippery word to define. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, anecdote means “a short account of an interesting or humorous incident.” And yet, it can be hard to pin that word on a piece that you are reading or writing. Some anecdotes we read were one paragraph in length, others were three pages or so. Overall, I think an anecdote can best be summed up as a story you would tell a friend over the phone: “You’ll never believe what happened to me today!” Or a story you would share during family gatherings: “Do you remember the time when?” with perhaps a little or a lot more detail thrown in!

2. The spaghetti must be in the back of the boat, meaning, one must give enough clues in the first few paragraphs, so that the last paragraph or two are as powerful as can be. Set-up, set-up, set-up! The piece should be structured like an arch with secure beginning and ending points.

3. Sometimes one must write 30 words and then eliminate all or almost all of them in order to find the precise phrase to capture between the lines the word or description that is precisely right.

Attending the festival always reminds me of how much I love language. Here are a few of the phrases spoken/written by my fellow writers that stood out to me:

“beef fed Iowa boys”
“attitude short of beautiful”
“ghostly traces of my wisdom from yesterday”
“talking way too loudly about way too little”
“my kids may be sick, or my husband may be sick of my kids”

So, all in all, the weekend was different than I expected, but valuable and fun nonetheless. I had a great time with my mom. There were several instances when we just about died laughing recounting stories both from our growing up years and from the weekend itself. Mom loved her workshop, “The Art of the Interview,” and passed along all she was learning to me. She took me out for my birthday Saturday night to a wonderful Indian restaurant in Iowa City. And by wonderful, I mean that their naan was just a half point shy of being as good as the naan at India Star, which serves the best naan of any of the eight Indian restaurant I’ve been to!

Now that I am home again, the real work of the workshop begins. I began several pieces in my workshop that must now be developed and revised as I move them toward publication – even if it just means posting them here!

A Time to Write

Hooray! Just four more days, and my mom and I will be in Iowa City for the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival! Mom and I are just going for the weekend, and that means I will get to write all day Saturday and Sunday! (I will be returning in July for a week long workshop, but I’ll write more about that next month.) Mom is taking the Art of the Interview workshop while I will be in The Art of the Anecdote. We decided to divide and conquer, so it’s almost like I’ll be taking two workshops at once.

I pulled my registration and letters out thte other night in order to refresh my memory on the exact details of what exactly I signed up for way back in March. Yep, still excited about this workshop! Shannon Olson, my instructor, writes in her introductory letter that she “built [The Art of the Anecdote] on the premise that a lot of great writing has come from small sources, those brief anecdotes that we share with friends and family,” and I will learn how to “bring to life small personal moments and shape them into something that means more.” I will be reading pieces by Erma Bombeck, Garrison Keillor, Jim Heynen, David Sedaris and others to learn just how the anecdote can work.

With all the little interactions my co-workers and I have with our visitors and each other at Living History Farms, I figure I should have enough little incidents to write about for a long time! Speaking of little incidents, during my two and three-year-old Sunday school class this morning I learned that one of my little guys only wants to be called Super Man and wont answer to his actual name. Hmmmm… I wonder what I could turn that into! I’ll have to keep it in the back of my mind for this weekend.

Des Moines Snapshot

The balmy weather and my antsy legs propelled me outside after I got home from a busy day of helping people make copies at Kinko’s. Needing laundry detergent in preparation for Monday’s laundry, I decided to take my walk in a productive direction to Family Dollar. I had driven by the store several times and thought I could walk the nine blocks in a decent amount of time.

University was filled with the closing activities of the day, the street crammed with cars commuting home from work or out for a night on the town. The gentlemen who sell rugs from the back of their large white “moving” truck in the auto parts parking lot were rolling up their merchandise and stowing it away on the shelves lining the inside of the truck.

An elderly woman climbed down from a brightly illuminated bus, clutching her purse and shopping bag. A teenage boy ambled by a sagging house in need of paint and new windows to replace the plywood coverings.

Family Dollar sat back from the street; its parking lot providing a buffer zone from the speeding traffic. I walked into the store behind two Hispanic teens who picked a bag of Cheetos from the rack sitting right next to the door. Easter candy, curtains, children’s cloths were crammed onto the shelves and scattered around the store helter-skelter. I looped around the side of the store and wandered my way back to the laundry detergent.

As I was comparing the unit prices of the four different sizes of Extra laundry detergent a voice began making announcements in Spanish. Feeling slightly guilty for not having kept up with my Spanish, I tried to pick out a few words, understanding “gracias” and “Family Dollar.” After a half-minute lag, the announcement began once again in English.

“All your activities in this location are being monitored for your safety. Thank you for shopping at Family Dollar.”

The announcement repeated several times in the ten minutes I was in the store always beginning in Spanish and ending in English. As I glanced around at my fellow shoppers, I noted that the majority were Hispanic. What a contrast from my stop by Hy-Vee after work, in which I was not a minority, all the announcements for dinner specials were in English, and everything was stocked and displayed in a tidy manner.

As I walked West down University back to my apartment, I felt as if I were walking through a different community entirely, although 801 Grand, which is the tallest building in Iowa, illuminated against the darkening sky, reminded me that was still in Des Moines.

How many Des Moinesians understand that this community exists in their city? Of what benefit is it to me to live in this part of my city? How should it impact my view of my community and world?

This year I am listening to the Daily Audio Bible podcast each day with the goal of listening to the entire Bible by the end of December. I read through the Bible in a year while in college, but I always seemed to get behind and had to catch up at some point in the year. Listening to the Bible has erased this problem for me because I can always listen as I am brushing my teeth in the morning or cooking my supper or doing my dishes! Listening to Brian read from the Old and New Testaments, Psalms and Proverbs on the Daily Audio Bible is actually one of my favorite parts of the day. It is so interesting to see how the different readings link together, illuminating each other and the larger story God is telling throughout His word – a story I am apart of.

Today I was struck by the relationship between Matthew 26:47-68 and Psalms 32:1-11. In Matthew 26 Jesus is betrayed and arrested, sent to trial before Caiaphas the high priest and then beaten and mocked. It is a sobering set of verses. Psalm 32 begins with David exclaiming, “How blessed is he whose transgressions is forgiven, Whose sin is covered!” It is only because of the suffering and death of Jesus, which is just beginning at this point in Matthew, that I can make this statement with David and experience this blessing. What a profound, humbling and impacting truth it is! Saying I am thankful for this truth doesn’t even begin to adequately convey the depth and intensity of my thoughts and feelings to this reality in my own life.

“For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” ~ Hebrews 9:13-14