Fruity-herby muffiny goodness

I rubbed my fingers against a head of lavender and then brought them up to my nostrils. A sweet, elegant aroma. In a stroke of genius, I said to myself, "Imma gonna make a muffin out of that."

Just in time for late spring, with the garden overflowing with fresh lavender and the farmer's market abounding in bright red sugary strawberries, I've formulated a recipe that brings these two things together in the form of a vegan breakfast pastry. These muffins have a sweet but delicate flavor and seem to beg to be consumed alongside a soy latte (which I haven't tried yet but I'm sure they would go together amazingly).

Muffins aux fraises et lavande 

(Yeah, I'm kinda into giving things French names now; deal with it.)

Ingredients:

• 3-4 heads fresh lavender, rinsed and dried (I dried mine in the toaster oven for 30 minutes at 150°F, but air drying is fine, too.)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup sucanat (or brown sugar, or white sugar)
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup vegan margarine
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3/4 cup soy milk
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh strawberries

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease at 12-cup muffin tin.

2. Remove lavender blossoms from the stem and place in a food processor with sugar. Mix until the lavender seems to be broken up and the sugar takes on a purplish-greenish tint. Add sucanat (if using), flour, baking powder, and salt and pulse to combine. Cut in the margarine in pieces and pulse until well-combined. Empty the mixture into a large bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the applesauce, soy milk, and vanilla. Mix well. Add wet ingredients to the flour mixture and mix just enough to combine. Fold in strawberries.

4. Fill muffin cups almost to the top. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool at least 10 minutes before consuming.

Learning French in France

...is exceedingly different from learning Japanese in Japan. For one thing, I know not to expect any praise for my meager efforts to communicate in the local tongue. At best, Parisians respond to my lousy French patiently, but with indifference. They'll often just start speaking to me in English--a courtesy, I'm sure, but a bit frustrating when most of my reason for being here is to learn French.

At my language school the ladies who work at the front desk seem to have little patience or sympathy for people who can't communicate articulately in French. A bit ironic, if you ask me. Yesterday, feeling confident that I knew just enough vocabulary to communicate that I was not in possession of the list of activities put on by the school each month and that I would like one, please, I approached the receptionist and attempted to convey my desire. Without looking up from her computer screen, she listened to my broken explanation, furrowed her brow, and said, still without looking at me, "Je ne comprens pas." It took a little more scrambling for words before I was understood and told that I could get the schedule on Monday.

But the point that should be taken away from all this is not that Parisians are rude or that I feel I am entitled to a little more positive reinforcement. I would argue that neither is the case. Not everyone can be as liberal with compliments as Americans tend to be. The point that should be taken from this, rather, is that I am in fact learning French! With approximately five hours a day dedicated to disciplined study of the language, and much of the rest of the day spent reading signs, food labels, and menus and practicing basic exchanges with waitresses or people on the metro, I'm excited to find that I'm already experiencing results.

Who knows where I'll be linguistically when my course ends in two weeks? But I am thrilled to know that I am setting the foundation for a new skill that I can continue to nurture and develop in the future.

From Paris

Something wonderful happened today. But as much could be said of every day since I arrived in Paris.

For example, on Friday morning as I was sightseeing around the Notre Dame, I randomly spotted two familiar faces: a couple whom I recognized from my university. Though they didn't know me, we are connected by rather significant mutual friends and the three of us were appropriately amazed by the improbability of such an encounter.

Seeing fellow APU alumni had an assuaging effect on the creeping loneliness and slight homesickness that, mingling with my lingering jet lag, had managed to put me in an unfortunately unpleasant mood that morning. I decided to make this trip to Paris (consisting of a three-week French language course and homestay, to be followed by six weeks of additional travel in France and Spain) only about three weeks ago. And though this seemingly rash decision was actually preceded by several months of related "what if" conjectures, the short time that I had to prepare--practically as well as mentally and emotionally--made it easy for me to interpret the stress and fatigue I was feeling at the moment as possible indicators that the whole trip had been a mistake. This is, of course, probably not the case. If anything, it's quite possible that this trip will turn out to be one of the best decisions I've made in my life. Running into a couple of APU alumni in front of the Notre Dame somehow helped to remind me of that.

Another example of a wonderful thing: yesterday I visited the grave of Frederic Chopin. Though I had been looking forward to seeing the final resting place of the composer whose works I most adored as a teenage aspiring virtuoso, I had not anticipated the great and reverent sense of gratitude that overcame me as I stood before that lovingly adorned marble tombstone. Seeing the graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Molière was certainly interesting, but standing next to Chopin felt rather profound.

And today's wonderful event? As I arrived at the apartment building this evening where I will be staying with a French family for the next three weeks, I passed by two women who appeared to be mother and daughter an who looked like they could be Japanese (I always keep an eye and an ear out for Japanese people; I can't help it). Sure enough, I overheard a few Japanese words and noticed that the daughter was holding a piece of paper that I recognized as the letterhead for the French language school that I will be attending, starting tomorrow. I approached them and spoke to them in Japanese. It turned out that the girl was starting a homestay that evening with a different host in the same building, and she and her mother were struggling to little avail to communicate over the phone with her host family, to let them know that they were outside, waiting to be let in. Happily, they handed the phone over to me and I was able to convey the message in English. Jubilation! The mother remarked that God must be looking out for them. I didn't tell her so, but I'm absolutely certain that this is the case. And that the same goes for me.

Disaster in Japan

This morning I awoke to the ring of my cell phone, Josiah calling to make sure that I had heard the news: Japan had been hit by a massive earthquake, magnitude 8.9, the largest earthquake in their recorded history. My mind, somewhere in REM sleep only a minute earlier, snapped into gear. Josiah and I spent the summer of 2008 to the summer of 2010 living and teaching in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan--only two prefectures south of Miyagi Prefecture, where the devastation had been most concentrated.

I opened my web browser to BBC News and turned the t.v. on to CNN. I scanned Facebook for updates from any of my friends who are in Japan. One friend had changed his status to say that he was okay, just without water or electricity. This was reassuring. But the video clips flashing across my parents' high definition television screen provided less comfort. Image after image of great walls of sea water rushing forward to take out entire towns, businessmen stumbling about swaying office buildings, people running terrified out of their homes. But never a word as to where these videos were captured. In Miyagi? In Tokyo? It was several hours before I was able to get in touch with friends in Tochigi and get an idea of what the situation was like in my once-hometown of Moka.

In Tochigi, people were scared, but fine. Many spent almost a day shivering in their homes without water or electricity, but hardly anyone--as far as reports have shown--has been seriously injured. Tochigi prefecture is completely landlocked, far enough inland that tsunamis do not pose a threat and--as anyone who has been following the news today is now well aware--buildings in Japan are specifically engineered to withstand violent earthquakes, so the damage to homes in and around Moka has been relatively minimal. I heard a report that a friend's parents' roof was significantly damaged, but her parents, physically, are fine. They are fine!

But my joy at knowing my own friends have been spared is put on hold in the face of the devastation that has taken place in the coastal prefectures to the north of them. Japan is my second home. It is part of who I am now. I am reminded poignantly of the truism that inviting others into our lives means sharing not only their deepest joys, but also their most painful sorrows. As the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz empirically reasons, "Now I know I've got a heart, 'cause it's breaking." If I had any doubt before as to how significantly my time in Japan had impacted me personally, it has been wiped out of my mind by the aching of my heart as I watch the tragedy unfold on the news.

I was deeply impressed by a certain video clip that they have been repeatedly showing in the mainstream television coverage of the story. On t.v., they only show a small portion of the video, but a longer version is available on Youtube. We watch as, in a supermarket, workers forgo running to safety in order to help one another hold the wine shelf in place and to rescue some of the store's most valuable merchandise.

The video reminds me, first of all, of how shocked I was when I first felt (what I then considered to be) a big earthquake in Japan: I momentarily "freaked out" and looked for a place to duck and cover; but, in looking around, realized that everyone else in the room was ignoring the quake altogether! It occurred to me then that earthquakes were so much a routine part of life in Japan that it was not worth it to even acknowledge the relatively small ones.

But, even more than that, these video images remind me of the pervasive sense of "team" that runs throughout Japanese culture. Americans working in an American supermarket during a natural disaster would sooner be concerned with protecting themselves than protecting the merchandise of their employer, I think. (And here the American side of me wants to chip in, "And rightfully so!" But the veteran gaijin side of me sympathizes with a mindset in which duty always comes before self.)

The hardships that Japan and its people face today and will continue to face in the months to come are unimaginable, but I know that this culturally embedded sense of dedication to the group over the individual will play a vital role in their rehabilitation. Somewhere, several months from now, healing will happen. But today, my heart aches alongside hearts in Japan and throughout the world. Please, now, as you finish reading this, pray for Japan.

Let's Get Skilled

I'm calling it. The results are officially finalized. I asked readers to vote for the skill that they thought I should acquire during the month of February (hereafter to be referred to as "Skills Month"), and this is what they said:

And so it is, according to popular demand, I shall commit myself to learning the basics of quilting over the next twenty-five days.

I've been tweeted!

This evening, while checking my page's stats, I was perplexed to find that a great number of the pageviews I'd received over the past few days had been referred through Twitter. Upon further investigation, I found that my very own chocolate cake recipe had received a mention on Whole Soy & Co.'s Twitter page. I'm deeply honored. My cake is practically famous now!

Married, Married, Married!

At last! They're hitched!

Here are just a few of many beautiful moments from Michael and Lindsay's wedding weekend.