Cook a Homo

It's been awhile since I've had a chance to sit down and just write. Between teaching all day long and the 3 classes of dog obedience 3-nights a week, I feel like I've been doing at least 2 jobs and not one.

And in between there's been some interesting fillers:

Last weekend, for instance, we went to a friend's party put on by her financial planner as a "thank you" for she and her partner's business for many, many years. (I'm sure it helps that this friend of mine is rather well-off...) We felt honored to be invited though the announcement of the event made me a bit nervous...

Vegetarian Cooking Class

I am not strictly a vegetarian. I enjoy vegetables and I don't enjoy red meat much (anymore...after a long time of not eating it), but I will eat chicken and a good bratwurst (the German side of me) as well as occasionally much on some bacon, which technically isn't red meat...right?

Vegetarian sounds like a good idea, but I've never been enamored with much of the food or the amount of time it takes to prepare things or the funky texture of tofu (like the slime on the bottom of swimming pools) and so I am often at a loss about what to cook and how to get my proteins and so I stick to my regulars -- Boca Burgers or Garden Burgers or pasta with some kind of sauce.

Boring.

I was intrigued by the idea of taking a cooking class, but worried that I might not like any of the food and therefore be hungry and I don't do hungry well.

But I've lived to tell you that IF you know what you're doing, and have the menus that we had, vegetarian food can be damn good.

But it wasn't the food that was the most interesting. Rather, it was the chef. A small, Italian man with a very heavy accent assumed, I think, that everyone in the room was straight. There were 6 men and 6 women, hence, as most of the world might presume, 6 x 2 equals 12, but he got the twos in the wrong pairings.

No one corrected him. In fact, I don't think any of us really paid that close attention, though it was rather obvious to me when he called all the women "sweetie" and slapped all the men on the back. At one point, as I was cooking with my gay male new friend, Mark (an Episcopalian minister), when the Italian chef, named of all things Tiberius (though he insisted we call him "delicious") asked if Mark and I cooked together at our own house. Mark and I just stared at each other and continued chopping onions and basting eggplant. "Yes" was the answer though "our house" was a separate -- his with his partner, Mike, and mine with my partner Ann, who were, ironically, also teamed up together for this class.

Delicious floated around the room at a frenzied pace imploring us to "cooka on higha, yes?" because it would get done faster and to "justa do ita like thees" skipping whole steps in the recipe and ending up with a finished product that tasted pretty damn good.

But the highlight of the evening was when Delicious thanked us for our interest in his cooking school and for our enthusiasm in the kitchen. "I hope this will inspire you to cooka homo!" And with the clap of his strong hands, he made his exit.

We all sat in silence for a moment and then laughed out loud. "Yippee, we now know how to cook a homo!"

Who knew vegetarian cooking could be so fun!

Tuesday night of this week was the only night I had to just relax. With dog classes on Monday and Wednesday nights, usually Thursdays and Fridays are free as well, but this week as well as weekend, was filled to the brim.

Thursday night we went to watch the UW women play volleyball. This may not seem that interesting, but since I made my athletic career playing volleyball and running track at the UW, it was an intriguing venture back into my past. A parent of one of my students gave us the tickets and we sat in the student section feeling old and behind the times sans a cell phone or some such device with which to text message...as everyone around us was doing just that between the volleys.

The game has changed. It's faster, more powerful and the rules are radically different. Who knew that when the served ball hits the top of the net and still makes it over it's still a ball in play? The players are taller (at 5' 9" I was one of the tallest players on my team) and if at all possible, the uniform shorts are shorter...and the women much, much skinnier.

We had a great time watching, though at one point, I had to turn my back on the parent who gave us the tickets as I was unintentionally party to her conversation with another mother sitting next to her. It was appalling how they vied for position..."well, my daughter went to camp for two weeks there last summer"...."well, my daughter did their survival camp there last summer for a month!" and on and on..."I can't believe that lot is so small...only 15,000 square feet, and the house, well the house is a good price at 1.5 mil, but I worry about that small yard."

The joys of teaching at a private school.

Friday night was again rubbing elbows with the wealthy, but we also rubbed elbows with some of the geekist scientists I've ever met. My dear friend Janice at the Seattle Aquarium got us tickets to hear one of my idols speak. Sylvia Earle is a dynamo at 71 years of age and I would have stormed the doors to hear her speak, but luckily we got complimentary tickets for 7 o' clock at the Aquarium.

There is a great deal to say about this event, but I shall hold my tongue. In the end, it was an event of great irony -- we arrived at 6:45 for a 7:00 start time only to be escorted into the touch tank area where we were served appetizers (nothing with seafood, mind you...it would have been too weird eating salmon by the salmon tank) and milled around amongst the governor's staff, the weatlthy benefactors, and these pods of geeky scientists who hovered around the appetizers like gulls around a fishboat.

Finally, at 8 they let us into the auditorium where we were seated, finally. I was tired. It was Friday night after a long, long week and the last thing I wanted to do was stay out until 11, but Sylvia Earle did not come to the podium until 9. Ahead of her were the many "big names" at the event -- state officials, Billy Frank, Jr. (elder of the Nisqually tribe), and Aquarium sponsors. By the time Sylvia made it to the podium, I was exhausted.

She is a very small woman, hunched with osteoporois (deep water diving?) and spoke in a deep, sultry voice about the fate of the planet. "They say that the new red, white, and blue is green, but I say the new green is blue..." She flashes up the picture of the earth taken from space and yep, it's blue, blue blue.

(Sylvia Earle in 1988)

More blue pictures unfolded as she applauded all in attendance for "getting DC to listen, finally, to the warnings we've all known for years...the ocean is dying and when it dies, we will die as well."

Not an upbeat message, but from her mouth, it was a call to action. "90% of the big fish in the ocean are gone. They are not coming back, but to feed the hungry mouths of humans, we are now catching fish from the middle of the food chain and selling it as a delicacy. You want to know how to kill and ecosystem in seconds flat? Eat from the middle of the food chain!"

I have been struggling with this dilemma since I began working with the Aquarium. Each spring we take our students out to learn to be Beach Naturalists and the more I learn, the more I feel compelled to make a change in my life in an attempt to save the oceans. Ann thinks I'm ridiculous, but I've limited our fish intake dramatically and have even considered going back to eating red meat. "Cows aren't wild," Sylvia Earle says, "but fish are. Eat the cows, eat the cows. We've learned to grow them like wheat. They are a replenishable food source, but the fish are not! You're clearcutting the ocean forests and no one seems to care!"

But I can't bring myself to eat red meat. Ann says I should start slowly, but it's not just the texture or the digestion of something so undigestable or the threat of mad cow or ecoli poisoning, it's the "industry" of it all, the "unknowns" of where the cow came from, how it was treated, how it was fed, how it was killed, and the fact that most people in the world do not eat meat because they cannot afford it...and all those left of liberal reasons that float around in my head.

And now they float around because of the fish and Sylvia Earle and all I've learned about our dying oceans...and ARRRRGGGGHHHH...what to do, what to do?

Despite the inner turmoil, Sylvia Earle was inspirational. She hasn't given up and she's seen it all -- plastic dumped out of dead birds and the expanding dead zones in the ocean -- and I've seen only a smidge and I even though I feel like giving up, I can't because Sylvia, all hunched and crippled, is still fighting the good fight.

And finally, on Saturday, I spend the day at Peggy's horse farm helping to run an Educator's Day when it hits me. I'm watching a teacher from Canada work with a horse and Peggy is telling her things I've heard a hundred times -- not just from Peggy, but from Dave and Becky the dog trainers -- it's your energy...where is your energy?

"Thousands of years ago, when horses roamed the plains with lions, they'd live together on the same piece of land." Peggy's story...I've heard it all before...but this time it hit home..."The horse is munching peacefully on the tall grass and the lion is sleeping peacefully by the tree. They know each other is there, but not until the lion thinks 'I am hungry' does the horse fear the lion. In fact, when the lion just touches the edge of his thought...'I am hu...' the horse has alerted the herd and skidaddled out of danger. It's all energy."

I'm standing at the edge of the arena thinking...My energy is wrong. I'm off balance. I must not think about what I can't eat, but what I can eat. I must not think I am alone in saving the planet, I must think I am one of hundreds, thousands, millions upon millions who right now are working to save the planet. I must believe it before I can see it.

Peggy tells her clients this all the time. "You must believe you can make the horse move towards the cone, then, once you believe, you must see it and every bone in your body must hold that intention."

Time and time again, people scrinch their eyes and focus their energy and I'll be damned, EVERY TIME that horse moves right to the cone, right to the place they are pointing.

Tonight we had a warm kale salad we learned to make in the cooking class with Delicious. Right next to the kale, bathed in pears, nuts, corn, vinegar and olive oil was a small piece of Wild Caught Alaskan King Salmon (on the safe list put out by Seafood Watch.org).

I am always coming back to a few lessons in my life. One of them is learning to be mindful. This week has taught me, in the oddest of ways, to be mindful of my energy. Even in training Rubin, my energy must be forgiving and patient, understanding and grounded or he will train me and not the other way around. My energy around transitioning out of teaching and into dog training must be patient and methodical. I must not rush ahead because there are important lessons to learn along the way...like how to enjoy warm kale salad and marvel at the strength and skill of young women in sport and how to learn from a wise older woman and how to cook a homo all in the same crazy, exhausting, and fulfilling week.