Rebecca Henderson

A little update on the Quinault Community Garden here in the Tri-Cities…

You can read previous essays from “God in the Garden” at these links:

God is Good

God is Faithful

God Works in His Time

God is in Control

The days are growing longer, and our community garden is at the stage for planting seeds. Spring seemed so distant when we first began work on the garden space last October, but now the land is cleared, the boxes are in place, and the soil is full of rich nutrients from our compost bins. All is ready for the seeds and starters we’re going to plant — the main attraction of this garden we’ve been imagining since last year.

Many people have put in a lot of work to make the garden possible to this point — we’ve had donations of supplies, discounts from local businesses, gifts from members of the church, an immeasurable amount of labor and sweat to dig holes in rocky ground and move, literally, tons of soil. Who knew dirt was so heavy?

The reason we’re willing to go to all this is effort is that we expect an abundance of produce in summertime. We trust that getting this ground ready for little seeds and little green shoots will lead to cucumbers and lettuce and watermelons and tomatoes and peppers and cabbage. A lot of it. Enough to help local families who might not otherwise afford it be able to have fresh produce for a change, this year and in years to come. It’s hard to know right now what all the implications of those vegetables might have in the lives of those who eat them, who might experience the goodness of Jesus because of this garden, but we pray big prayers that God would draw people into His community and help them to know Him through our lives and work. We believe the truth in the Psalm of Ascent, Psalm 126:5-6:

Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!

He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,

shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

As the seeds go into the ground at Quinault Community Garden, may we also join in prayer that God will give us opportunity to plant seeds of His Word in the hearts of our neighbors and friends. He has wonderfully provided everything we need in the form of material goods and services to make this garden a reality — we can trust Him also to cultivate relationships and provide the seed that will bear good fruit in the lives of our community.

Chinese New Year is January 23 this year, and since I’ll be in Texas doing research at that time, I decided to celebrate a little early with my friends here in Washington. We’re entering into the Year of the Dragon, the year I was born in, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a ton of food and a pot of eight treasures tea and enjoy the evening with my friends. The celebration was a bit inauthenthic in that we didn’t set off a barrage of firecrackers outside the neighbors’ doors, but hey, we’re within city limits in the U.S., what do you expect?

When I made nacatamales with my friends for Christmas Eve a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d been wanting to teach them how to make dumplings. You can buy them frozen at Costco or wherever, and they’re really pretty good — but I still have a mental block that assures me anything I buy in a bag from the freezer section can’t be as good as what I make from scratch. It just can’t be. Yes, it’s time consuming and labor intensive to put together 120 dumplings for a dinner party, but what’s a little time spent in the afternoon compared to the yumminess of homemade dumplings?

Here we are, filling the wrappers. You can buy packages of the wrappers at the grocery store, usually in the section where you’ll find tofu. If I were a good little Chinese grandma (which I’m not, on several counts), I would roll out my own wrappers from flour and water. But that would be just silly.

We made dumplings with two different fillings: pork and cabbage in one, beef and carrot in the other. The filling also has all sorts of other wonderful ingredients, like garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and scallions. A small spoonful of filling is lovingly nestled in the center of each wrapper, before the edges are sealed and the tiny pocket of deliciousness is tucked in its spot in the row to await the pot, where it will fulfill its dumpling destiny.

Some of the dumplings went into a large soup pot. Once the water comes to a boil, you put several dumplings in, bring the water back to a boil, and then cool the water off again by adding a cup of cold water. You bring the water to a boil again, add more cold water, boil, add cold water, and by the third time the water comes back to a boil, they should be done. Adding cold water keeps the outside of the dumpling from cooking faster than the inside, which would result in a tough wrapper.

We also did a few dumplings in true potsticker style by pan frying them. It’s a less healthy cooking method, for sure, but who doesn’t enjoy a little oil now and then?

Thank you, Jane and Andy, for letting me take over your kitchen to make dumplings! (Jane and Andy aren’t in this photo, but this is their table and place settings with our dumpling feast.)

My first Christmas in Washington, but not my first Christmas away from home. I’m somewhat used to being away from family at the holidays — although, do not hear me say that I don’t miss my family when I’m away at Christmas. I do. I just can’t always be there with them, and I’ve made my peace with that.

At Christmas meals on both sides of my family last year we had tamales, and I decided that I want that to be a holiday tradition. Apparently my family didn’t stick with it this year without me, but that’s ok, no worries, I can keep traditions by myself.

My friends Abner and Laura invited me to spend Christmas Eve with their families in Grandview, Washington, about 45 minutes from where I live in the Tri-Cities. Abner’s family is from Nicaragua, and they always make nacatamales for Christmas. Making the nacatamales takes most of the morning, and then they have to cook for a few hours, so there’s a lot of sitting around and talking and hanging out while you wait.

Like Mexican tamales, the key component of nacatamales is masa. But there are a lot more fresh ingredients that go into nacatamales than the Mexican tamales you may have eaten.

You don’t just make a couple of nacatamales at a time — you make a few dozen. So you have to have a big pot to cook the masa, along with onions and bacon grease and potato and garlic and a spice called achiote that the Solanos get on trips to Nicaragua.

Once the masa has thickened, the assembly line starts putting together the nacatamales. Unlike Mexican tamales wrapped in corn husks, nacatamales are wrapped in banana leaves and are a few times bigger. First, you spread a generous amount of masa on the center of the banana leaf. Then you add the rest of the goodies: pork rubbed in achiote, rice mixed with achiote, slices of potato, carrot, bell pepper, tomato, a few raisins, a green olive, and a sprig of mint.

At the end of the assembly line, you fold the banana leaf over the ingredients, and you wrap the entire thing in foil, making sure it’s sealed good enough to stay together when you boil it. In Nicaragua, where banana leaves are abundant, you wouldn’t need the foil. Banana leaves are pricey in Washington, though, so you have to make do with one layer of banana leaf and the outer foil layer.

Somehow I ended up at the end of the line and got to learn to fold the nacatamales — which was fun, but also a bit nerve-wracking because I worried that not sealing it properly would ruin the entire nacatamale. When I learned to make Chinese dumplings, I had the same concern about not sealing the dough and letting the contents escape during boiling. For dumplings, though, you’re only ruining one bite if it comes apart in the boiling water — a loosely sealed nacatamale could ruin a meal for one person. So much pressure!

We made over 40 nacatamales in all, and the Solanos will eat them for several days. The foil packets were boiled in a huge pot on a burner in the back yard.

Here’s a nacatamale on a banana leaf after they were cooked. So very yummy! Lots of fresh ingredients and good flavors all mixed together. And I love anything in a banana leaf — reminds me of Sipsongpanna.

So, my new Christmas tradition will continue next year with tamales once again, Mexican, Nicaraguan, or otherwise.

All this earth

Could all that is lost ever be found?

Could a garden come up from this ground at all?

from “Beautiful Things” by Gungor

If ever a patch of land needed redeeming, this is the one. It is tucked away in a corner of our church’s property — a very sad little corner that could use some love and revival.

A couple of months back, a discussion came up about this little patch being the perfect size and position for a garden. Why not make it a community garden, where we as a church can invite people from the community to have a space to grow vegetables? It’s something we could work on together, get our hands dirty together, and then enjoy eating the harvest together. Not to mention reflect together on all the gardening, agricultural, and food metaphors in the Bible while we live those metaphors out.

The first planning meeting is tonight, in preparation for our first work day this weekend. I thought I would post a before shot so that you can see the progress we make on the garden. Hopefully the next shot will show the land cleared up and pruned and ready for building the garden boxes. The concrete slab will have a pergola (yeah, I didn’t know that word either — it’s wooden latticework that can be covered with climbing vines) and seating space. The dream/plan is to be ready to plant in the boxes next spring and be sharing a harvest with the community next summer!

As a follow-up to the story I posted yesterday about learning to cook while in China, I thought I should mention a few of my more commonly used resources. I found myself wanting to mention them in the previous post, but decided not to interrupt the flow of the story by including too many details.

For breads and cakes, I have worn out my Betty Crocker’s New Cookbook. I learned a while back that if you can start to get a feel for the right proportions of dry and wet ingredients in a recipe, you can adapt it to your own flavor preferences, and this standard cookbook has some solid, basic recipes that I’ve tweaked over and over again to make breads and cakes with my own flair. Betty Crocker is also where I tend to turn for basic information about meat and vegetable preparation—it’s just a solid resource book.

A few years back, a roommate introduced me to More-with-Less Cookbook, by Doris Janzen Longacre. For someone living overseas, this book is a must. So many simple, yet delicious recipes. I love that the recipes don’t start with a can of cream of mushroom soup or a block of Velveeta or any number of other American recipe staples that I can’t get here (and really shouldn’t be eating on a regular basis in America, anyway).

My favorite online resource is allrecipes.com, in large part because of its ingredients search function. I can search for recipes that include ingredients that I have on hand, as well as excluding ingredients that aren’t available to me—a big deal if I’m trying to find a recipe that, say, uses cocoa powder instead of baking chocolate. And, again, if you get a feel for how to use the right proportions, this site is a good place to read through several similar recipes for ideas and then strike out on your own.

Several people have asked me over the years about writing up some local recipes, and I just haven’t had time to do it in addition to my other work (with the exception of a blog entry I posted last year of Lydia’s mom’s steamed fish). Chinese cookbooks abound, if you’re in the mood for Cantonese or Sichuan or some of the more popular cuisines. But recipes from Yunnan are a bit more hard to come by, so I was quite excited when a friend gave me a recently published cookbook called A Taste of Shan by Page Bingham, with recipes from the Shan State in northern Myanmar, just across the border from where I live. The Shan of Myanmar have ethnic (and therefore, culinary) ties with the Dai of China, so this book will be a treasure to me in days to come, when I need to whip up something to remind me of southern Yunnan.

(Thanks, Emily, for More-with-Less, and thank you, Erin, for A Taste of Shan.)

Next in the “Finishing Well” series:  ”What to do with our talents”

In college, I cooked with a coffee maker. I cooked a lot of coffee, but I also cooked a lot of hot water for instant oatmeal and ramen noodles in my dorm room. On days when I was feeling exceptionally adventurous on a culinary level, I might make Pillsbury cinnamon rolls in the kitchen on our hall.

To me, the epitome of being a grown-up was cooking. So when I moved from the dorm to an apartment for my last semester at school, I made the grown-up purchase of a rice cooker that would also steam vegetables. I couldn’t have known at the time that those were the forerunner of many meals to come for me—I was just thrilled to fix dinners that required something slightly more involved than dissolving packets in boiling water.

My first few years in China were marked by suitcases and care packages full of cake mixes and Martha White muffins. Man, I love Martha White. Just add milk and you’ve got muffins in 20 minutes. Eventually I realized that I could bake a much greater variety of breads and cakes, as well as never run out of ingredients, if I went local. Flour, sugar, yeast, baking powder, salt, butter–all of these can be purchased locally, so why not begin experimenting with baking from scratch? My first attempts weren’t very successful (i.e. appetizing) because Kunming and Lincang are both at high altitude, but by the time I got to low-lying Jinghong I could make a batch of muffins using only local ingredients and fresh fruit in just a few minutes more than it would take to mix up a package of Martha White.

In due time, entrees followed. With a crock pot and a wok, a world of endless possibilities opened up right there in my kitchen. I began using fresh ingredients to make spaghetti sauce, vegetable soup, chicken curry, and other standards that now populate my repertoire, including my own fried rice that I find tastier (and less oily) than a lot of what I can buy on the street.

My proudest achievement, I must say, has been to make enchiladas completely from scratch, including rolling out the tortillas, peeling and boiling tomatoes for the sauce, cooking and shredding the chicken. It’s an all-day affair, and I’ve only done it a handful of times, but it is worth it. Totally worth it.

When I look back at my progression in China from a box of mac and cheese mixed with a can of Rotel mailed from home to chicken enchiladas with my own tomato sauce, I can do so with a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to learn these skills. Preparing a meal and serving it to guests brings me satisfaction, and I’m not sure I would have discovered this unless I’d come to a place where the convenience of mixes and packages was removed from me to a great extent. Though I may not cook completely from scratch as much back in the States as I do here, at least now I have the confidence to try new meals when the fancy strikes.

Next in the “Finishing Well” series:  ”A Few Cooking Resources“

“Relaxing beach getaway” isn’t a phrase generally associated with Burma, but we decided to give the Indian Ocean a try. During our two days at Chaung Tha in the Irrawaddy River Delta, we could count the number of Westerners on the beach on two hands—and there’s a reason for that. Southeast Asia has an abundance of easily accessible beaches and islands, and Chaung Tha is not one of them.

Serene, paradisical, restful after a week on the road (plus all the weeks of work preceding that). But not easily accessible. It took eight hours one way on a wretched excuse for a road, in a bus that should have been put out of its misery when I was in elementary school. Erin said that throughout the bus ride, she kept repeating to herself, “Crab and lobster, crab and lobster,” as a way of remembering that there would be something worthwhile waiting for us at the end of a long, hot, dusty day of travel.

And indeed, the seafood at Chaung Tha was delectable. Local fishermen walked up and down the beach, carrying buckets of still struggling sea creatures for sale. A lady pulled out a huge crab and dangled it before me as I sat on our bungalow porch the first afternoon at the beach—we opted to eat in breezy outdoor restaurants, though, rather than buy straight from the fishermen. Calamari with garlic and lime, crab in a masala curry, massive shrimp with a sweet and spicy Thai sauce. We made each meal on the beach count.

The morning of our second day, we took a small ferry out to an even smaller island that claimed to have whiter sand than the beach where we were staying. As we buzzed along in this tiny and probably overcrowded boat, I thought of all the times you read headlines reporting the number dead in ferries sunk in places like the Indian Ocean and hoped we weren’t about to become one of those headlines. The more I thought about it, however, I decided that while we might be overloaded, we were too small of a ferry to make international headlines if we sank. Then we reached the little island, and I became too busy scouting out a nice stretch of sand to take a nap on my new batik cloth to worry any longer about drowning.

There would appear to be a national ordinance in Burma that one stupa be built per every certain number of square feet of land. You could probably pick this little island up and plop it down inside my parents’ house with room to spare—but they still managed to build a gold stupa smack in the middle of it. Erin and I were the only Westerners on the island that day; the rest were Burmese tourists and families out for a morning in the sun. While some of the local men might wear swim trunks or fold their longyi up into something resembling shorts when they go in the water, the ladies go in dressed as they are, in jeans and t-shirts or in their longyi. Erin and I were the only women wearing swimsuits.

I had a good nap that morning on the island, before going back to our bungalow for lunch and another nap on our not-white-sand beach. I probably needed another three or four days of napping to be completely satisfied, but we had a plane to catch in Yangon. Chaung Tha Beach was a delightful two days of respite, but unless they widen the road and get new buses, look for me in Thailand or Malaysia on my next ocean-side vacation.

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Why I Travel“

So many people we met in Burma spoke such good English, I didn’t have a chance to learn much Burmese on the trip. I survived with only two Burmese words: hello and Shan noodles. By the last day of the trip, I could walk up to non-English speaking strangers on the street in Yangon and say in Burmese, “Shan noodles?” And they would obligingly point us in the direction of the nearest shop where we could grab some noodles for lunch.

Fortunately for me, one of our airplanes had a recipe for “Spicy Shan Noodles” in the in-flight magazine—now I can recreate my favorite Burmese dining experience at home if I so choose. Here is the recipe, as it appears in the magazine, for anyone who would like to try it. (I am not sure how much a “tical” is, and I don’t know when I’ll ever be cooking noodles for twenty, but it’s a fun recipe to have, regardless.)

Ingredients: (serves twenty)
Shan rice noodles, 1 bundle
Pork, 40 ticals
Cooking oil, 15 ticals
Peanuts, sesame seeds (roasted), 15 ticals
Colouring powder, 2.5 ticals
Onions, 10 ticals
Garlic, 5 ticals
Seasoning powder (monosodium glutamate powder), 1/2 teaspoon

Directions:
First, slice the pork, into pieces. Next, pound garlic and onions together, until it becomes a paste. Heat oil and add the paste. Stir until the paste begins to brown and add the colouring powder. When you get nice aroma put the pork into the pot. Then continue to cook until tender. Add the seasoning powder. After that, soak a bundle of dry rice noodles into the water, then boil.

Serving Suggestions:
Put handful of rice noodles into a bowl. Add the gravy pork curry. Then sprinkle with half a tablespoon of pounded peanut and sesame, together with thin strips of crispy fried tofu. Then mix the bowl with chopsticks. It is now ready to eat. Pickled radish is a tasty accompaniment and may be added to individual bowls as required. For those who like it a little bit hot, just add as much dried chilli powder as you need.

(Thanks, Erin, for the photo documentation of Shan noodles in Yangon.)

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Chaung Tha“

A while back I was asked about recipes for local dishes from where I live, and I’ve thought about putting some together in a little cookbook—but many of the ingredients would be difficult to find in the States.  I decided to post the recipe for Lydia’s steamed fish.  If you can get the ingredients, it’s a worthy dish to try at home!

For this dish, Lydia brought home two live fish, so that we could learn how to clean and prepare them from the very start.  I asked her to teach me how to do it, but found out later that she had actually never cleaned a fish on her own until this day, so we learned together.  The fish accidentally died in the bucket, which turned out to be a good thing because neither of us wanted to have to kill the fish.

So—we bought two tilapia, and we each took one and cleaned the scales off and took the insides out.  We left the heads in tact, though, because local people consider those quite tasty.  After they were completely cleaned, we cut them into large chunks, bones and all, and placed them in a large bowl.

We then prepared all the seasonings:

2 Tbsp of ginger in julienne slices

diced chili peppers for as hot as you want the fish (Lydia used 5 small chilies)

3/4 tsp ground numbing spice

2 Tbsp whole coriander seeds

1 1/2 tsp salt

a handful of cilantro torn into pieces

another handful of an herb called “Wa people cilantro”

a handful of green onions cut into strips

2 Tbsp of oil

So after the pieces of fish were in the bowl, we added the ginger, numbing spice, coriander seeds, chili peppers, and salt, and we mixed it up to coat the fish well.

Then we placed the fish pieces in a ceramic plate or bowl and drizzled the oil on top, and then we put the herbs and onions on the very top of that.  We then made a steamer by placing chopsticks in a pan so that they would hold the plate up off the bottom of the pan.  We filled the bottom of the pan with water, put the lid on, and steamed the fish for 13-15 minutes until it was done.  (If you have a steamer pan without holes in the bottom, that would work too.  We just had to engineer the chopsticks and plate because my steamer pan has holes and all the juices and seasonings would drip out.)

The finished product tasted really great, and it’s pretty healthy.  We ate it with stir-fried corn and peas, a local fern stir-fried, and spicy cold rice noodles.

你们慢慢吃！

After hearing the news that Lydia is considering moving to JH after college graduation, her mom decided to pay us a visit and check the place out.  Lydia and I both were excited to have a house guest, and we planned ahead of time what meals we should have while she was here and what places in town were must-sees on her first visit.

She was only able to stay for two days, too short of a time for us to do everything we had planned.  She also had a bad toothache and didn’t feel like eating much.  And when she did eat, she made no pretenses about how she didn’t like the food I cook.  On her first night in my apartment, I made a chicken curry and aloo gobi, both of which turned out very nicely and were given abundant compliments by the other three girls I’d invited to dinner.  Mom, though, complained that it wasn’t spicy enough, needed more salt, and wasn’t sour (which, in my mind, made it a success, since I didn’t intend it to be sour).  She then went to the refrigerator and got out a bottle of spicy pickled vegetables she had brought with her and added a generous serving to her bowl.  I decided not to be personally offended, though I secretly wondered why I make such an effort at her house to be polite about eating food I don’t like.

On the second morning of her stay, I got up before it was light to make homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  Again, they turned out wonderfully, and I was quite proud to present my delicious creation before Lydia’s mom at the table.

While Lydia and I savored our cinnamon rolls with cups of coffee, her mom picked at hers and said her tooth hurt too much to eat.  I felt bad for her having to miss out on such a delightful breakfast.

Lunch made up for it, though.  Lydia ordered the steak fajitas for her mom at the café, and that meal was declared a success—the salsa was spicy enough and the sour cream was sour enough.  I felt vindicated to an extent, not because I had anything to do with the preparation of the fajitas, but because the Chinese translation for “fajitas” on the menu is literally “Texas wraps.”  If she didn’t like my cooking, at least Lydia’s mom liked the wraps from my state.