The Perk Puzzle

Hello all ye readers,

As most, maybe all, of you know I got a new job. This is a very good thing and I am excited about it. I was afraid that a steady source of income might take the edge off my thrift, but I am confident that my innate cheapness shall ensure the life of this short column of sorts for at least a few years.

More immediately distressing, however, is the abrupt loss of my free lunches. It is somewhat ironic that the source of my emaciated bank account, Berlitz "billions and billions taught," was also the source of my biggest daily meal on weekdays. Total immersion students are sold all day classes with one period of the day being lunch (12-12:45). Teachers in good standing are often thrown this bone as a perk, and a lovely one it is indeed. Some schools are more generous with their lunches than others, but I must say that despite its unconscionable compensation in this most pricey metropolis (once referred to by the director of another school as Namibian gold miner's wages), the lunches were substantial, and good. Ordered from local restaurants in Rockefeller Center there seemed to be no limit. On some occasions when I knew I'd be teaching through dinner I'd order extra to ensure leftovers (make that salad entree size please). They seemed to rotate between three restaurants: Mangia, Tuscon Square, and a third which does not get mention as I forgot its name (this may be amended at a later date so check back if you have the slightest interest). Highlights include the pork loin with mashed potatoes and broccoli and the creamy pesto cheese tortellini (both from T.S.) as well as the calamari sandwich and the shrimp scampi (Mangia). I think we usually ended up with 30-40 dollars worth of food between teacher and student. The eloquent Doug remarked: "you wanna know what a real perk would be? An extra 200 bucks at the end of the week."

My perk meter was off the handle last Friday though boy. Two Germans who'd signed up for separate total immersion courses decided they'd prefer having class out and about with a teacher. I was asked if I'd like to be their guide. Though shuddering at the thought of having to put up with German witticisms all day I jumped at the opportunity. They paid me double since I was doing the time that would normally be filled by two teachers, and we went to the UN and took a tour. That was followed by lunch at a Sushi restaurant in mid-town and a trip to the natural history museum. In the picture you can see me and one of the two Bernts drinking Kirin Beer and polishing off our Sushi lunch platters.

But its on to (hopefully) greener pastures. Though the perks were nice it just didn't make up for being paid the lowest rates of any school in the city to teach students who were paying the highest. They just didn't compensate for getting your schedule at 7 pm the night before, which you were expected to call and ask for every night. It wasn't worth the extremely low morale, widespread incompetence and corporate inhumanity that pervaded the school. I will miss the students though, they were by and large a truly lovely lot.

New slang word everybody: I was talking to a Russian student (Rumoured to be Lenny Kravitz's girlfriend) about slang terms for money. I noticed that a lot of them were food related such as bread, dough, cheese, and cheddar. Ekatarina informed me that in Russia, the slang word for money is kapusta, or, cabbage. I thought this was simply marvellous and made note of it immediately. It's crisp, green, and necessary for survival, what a perfect metaphor. I want to launch a campaign to incorporate it into the common English vernacular, but I haven't decided if we should call it by the translated name, cabbage, or bring in the original, kapusta, which is really fun to say. Go on, try it, ka-pu-sta!

So it's time to say good-bye to Berlitz and to you, my friends, for now, alas. So lets have it: goodbye, arrivederci, adios, auf wiedersehen, sayonara, vaarwel, au revoir, αντίο, adeus...

God's Dinner Plans

NEW YORK-
"Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouses nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!" Luke 12:24

I am a man in need of deep spiritual nourishment. Alienated and angst ridden, corrupt and vain, my soul cries out for the solace of religion. Here in this city of anonymous faces I have sought out the house where I am always welcome.

The Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas, in the heart of Bushwick, is where I spend my Sunday mornings. It serves mainly people of the Caribbean. But as well as providing the spiritual food of His precious body and blood, Saint Thomas is a source for the transcendentally delicious food of the West Indies.

My third Sunday there, about three weeks ago, was "homecoming Sunday" that marked the end of split summer services. Everyone was supposed to bring something delectable from their country of origin. I remembered this late that Saturday night and stayed up until 3 a.m. baking an apple pie. After the service (which featured a steel band playing the communion music) the congregation went up to the church hall where a feast was awaiting us. There was Dominican food, Panamanian food, Guinean food, Barbadian food, Jamaican food, sorrel (a drink mulled with sorrel seeds and high in antioxidants), fish cakes, rice, beans, rice and beans, rice and beans and chicken, sweet bean pudding wrapped in banana leaves and on and on. It was an ethnic food-lovers paradise. Tables from more than a dozen nationalities heaped with food cooked by natives in traditional family style. All you can eat and the only price of admission was a little spiritual enlightenment. I went home that Sunday feeling truly filled, body and soul.

The refreshments today were not as full-on as on homecoming Sunday, but filling and free none-the-less. There were sandwiches, tasty little bite-sized empanadas, fish cakes and coffee cake. But what sent me home inspired to write was that all three readings this morning mentioned food.

The Old Testament reading from Isaiah was a foodie's eschatological dream text: "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever." Isaiah 25:6-8. Having forgone breakfast this morning I found myself yearning for this mountain-top banquet with a view of the apocalypse. I think that if I were translating this text I would have replaced sheet with table cloth.

The second reading was from a letter of Paul to the Philippians. In it he makes an especially poignant statement as far as this blog is concerned. "I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now as last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Philippians 4:10-13.

The Gospel lesson is what I like to think of as the Parable of the Wedding Crashers. The king invited all the illustrious people in town to his wedding banquet. Dinner was ready. He'd slaughtered his oxen and fat calves. But nobody showed up. When the king sent his slaves to round them up the people laughed at them and roughed them up. So after burning down all their houses the king makes an open invitation to everyone in town. Free food! "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand a foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen." Matthew 22:11-14. It reminds me of one time in Lake City when my brother and I were visiting my Uncle. We stumbled upon a wedding reception with a keg of beer and attempted to crash it. We were promptly expelled, for even in this Colorado mountain town, we were simply under dressed. Luckily our fate was not as bad as the hapless fool in the parable who forgot his wedding robe. The lesson to be learned? When showing up uninvited to a social gathering for the purpose of making off with as much free food and booze as you can manage, be sure to dress the part.

Pimped-Out Leftovers

NEW YORK-
My stomach was as empty as my wallet. There's another 4 days to wait until my troublesome bank makes my paycheck available. It's been raining steadily all day and it's not supposed to let up until Friday. Going out is really not an option. On a night like this, the temptation is to let depression get the best of you. The defeatist worm in your heart says to eat some toast and cereal and wallow in self pity. But a nobler impulse prevails. It is time to get creative.

Necessity is the mother of invention. One rowdy summer my pals and I came up with a drink called the aneurysm. But in all truth this is not so much a drink as a process, a philosophy. It started when we ran out of ice. Foraging in the freezer I came upon some peach popsicles and in a few minutes we had frozen peach margaritas. Soon, ice was the least of our problems. By the end of the evening we had really run out of options and clean glassware and found ourselves drinking Vodka and Mtn. Dew from Pyrex measuring cups. The aneurysm carried out to its final conclusion is not a pretty sight, but the road to degeneracy is an interesting one and can produce the occasional stroke of genius.

It was with this process in mind that I attacked the situation at hand. The cheapest food in the world is free and it's called leftovers. This word has a bad connotation. It basically implies old food that has been re-heated. But the creative mind sees leftovers as just so many raw materials lending themselves to elegant possibilities.

On an overnight stop in San Sebastian, a precious jewel of a town on the Bay of Biscay in Basque country, I left my pension in search of tapas, the delectable snacks served in bars across Spain. Legend has it that Rey Alfonso el Sabio decreed that no alcohol should be served without food to combat the adverse effects of peasants drinking all their money away on an empty stomach. Bars began serving slices of smoked cheese or chorizo laid on top of the glasses to comply with the law, keep bugs out of the booze, and to increase the thirst of their patrons. Over time the tapa became more elaborate in some regions, nowhere more so than Pais Vasco. Wandering alone through the winding stone streets past buildings splashed with separatist graffiti (eg: Gora Euskadi, Gora ETA) I discovered remarkable and exotic treasures hidden behind innocuous doorways. One tapa I ate consisted of a piece of bread on which was lain a stuffed pepper topped with a fat sauteed shrimp. Fried chicken wings topped with olives, slices of tortilla Espanola and fried baccalao were all laid out as a tremendous spread across the bars.

One thing the frugal cook must be aware of is the shelf life of the food in his larder. Food gone bad is a waste and waste is a sin born of under-appreciation of life itself. On this rainy night I spotted some mushrooms that needed to be eaten. I had bought the mushrooms to add to the croquettes I had made last weekend on a Russian food kick. Several of the croquettes I had frozen before cooking their brothers and sisters. I had also saved a large container of the Borscht I had made the same night. Thus the concept was born: Mushrooms stuffed with the chunky borscht and sprinkled with mozzarella cheese. This would go fine with the croquettes, but I needed a third to balance it all out. I eyed two biscuits left over from breakfast. I roasted a red bell pepper and put it in a paper bag. I chopped some garlic. I skinned the pepper, cut four slices of Gouda cheese and placed them on the halved biscuits. A slice of red pepper on each and the rest of it chopped with the garlic and mixed with mayo, salt, and pepper for a sauce. The mushrooms and biscuits went in the oven while I fried the croquettes. All this artfully arranged on a plate with some salad greens took me to Spain all over again.

Take that defeatist worm, a delicious meal had been born and the night was suddenly cozy.

My Hunger

New York-
I am writing this missive from Tri-Insula, the city state that never was but lives and thrives on the edge of the continent. Strange twists of fate and circumstance have left me marooned on Long Island in a place called Bushwick in Brooklyn, surrounded by millions who share my genus and species. Relying on sheer instinct and the will to survive, I hope to live and thrive here for a while, before casting my lot once more upon the waters. But thriving is a dream that for the time being is trumped by a preoccupation with the three basic necessities: shelter, clothing and food. But I do not see these goals as separate, for what better indicator do we have in regards to our well-being than the quality of these three material needs?

Hyperbole aside, I realize that my situation is far better then a staggering proportion of the rest of the world. But at age twenty-seven the pressure is on to figure out the question, "What do you really want out of life?" I am not prepared to answer this, but I can tell you what I really want right now. I want a cold Guinness and a medium rare buffalo burger covered in blue cheese and a side of fries. There are many kinds of hunger and most can be satisfied to varying degrees. Sexual hunger for example can be satiated in many ways from a night of passion spent with a lover to a quick jerk-off session in the morning before work.

For a person with unlimited resources, New York is the perfect city for experiencing sublime satisfaction. Luxury has no limit here. The opulent meals that other people are eating in this town make my head spin and my stomach growl. Not having unlimited resources, I realize that I will have to be very cunning to eat the way I want to. I'll have to do a lot of cooking, and a lot of searching to develop an eating plan that won't put me under, financially or spiritually. This is a record of that will to eat (and drink) well.