Mr. & Mrs. Nomad

Hello loyal bog fans! Wait, is that the sound of crickets chirping we hear? Okay, okay, so yes, it has been like ten months since we last posted, which, yes, we agree, was a lousy way to treat our readership that had stuck with us through flooding and intestinal parasites and all sorts of other adventures and misadventures on our journey. But we have tried to make up for it some by publishing the following three entries (SF Nomads take on NYC; Eat, Eat,Eat; and A journey of a thousand miles…), which were written in January, just never edited and posted. We stayed true to our feelings at the time, and didn’t adjust any of the substance on rereading them now. So enjoy!

To our credit, though, we have been busy! For one thing, we got married. Yep, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Nomad to you now. The wedding in Hawaii was wonderful, and the perfect way to reunite and celebrate with everyone we had missed so much over the last year+ of travel. We could do a whole other blog just based on the wedding planning process and industry, so we’ll skip it and just say contact us if you are planning your own and have questions! Ours would absolutely not have been possible without the help and talents of our friends, families and guests, so thanks to all of them!

Awesome custom wedding card from artist/friend/guest Matt Leunig from scrapedknee.com

It was obviously a very formal ceremony

Also, we started working…. well, some of us more than others, until recently. Eric started his job in January, which was a major adjustment. The first few months of transition back to 9:00-6:00 life at a desk was a serious shock to the system, and he would return home every night and say, “well, I guess that wasn’t so bad, but where do we get to go next week?” He has gotten more into the rhythm now, though, and while ergonomic office furniture may not be his life’s passion, it is generally a nice place to work, with cool people, so as far as a job goes, it ‘aint bad. Doesn’t hold a flame to traveling, though, of course. Clara cringed a bit when re-reading the A Journey of a Thousand Miles post because reentry into real life has turned out to be a little more financially difficult than we had anticipated, or than that entry portrays. We still certainly wouldn’t have traded the travel experience for anything, but if you are planning your own trip, be sure to save some room in your budget for the scenario that you are job hunting for six months upon your return. Woops. After a series of both frustrating and hysterical job interviews and offers, Clara is back working remotely for her old organization in San Francisco. Ha! It is not the outcome we would have predicted, but after some really stimulating contract work with them while she was hunting, the August offer for full-time strategy and research work from her Brooklyn living room sounded pretty good compared to some of the alternative opportunities. And it isn’t a terrible thing to be back interacting with familiar people and issues you care about when everything else has been unfamiliar and new. Plus, it will include working trips to Nepal, India, and Cambodia, so all in all, it has still been a fairly soft landing into the working world.

And we’ve been cooking! As the Eat, Eat, Eat post indicates, food was a major takeaway from our trip, and cooking has played a big part in our new Brooklyn lives as we try to practice the lessons we gained on our trip. Okay, let’s rephrase – cooking has played a very big part of one of our lives, while eating and reading about food has become a very big part of the others’. Eric in particular has become an expert in some very random food-related topics, thanks to the marvelously well stocked New York Public Library. He has read books on sustainable fishing, the tomato industry, and wine production, to name a few. We also joined the Park Slope Food Co-op here in Brooklyn, an institution that is both lauded for having the freshest, cheapest produce in the city (an unfortunately low bar, by California standards), and derided for their dictatorial communist regulations (only members with an active card can even walk in the door, and all guests must present their IDs, and wear a badge so that people can keep a watchful eye on these nefarious characters that might attempt the unforgivable crime of purchasing a low-cost organic cumquat.) In exchange for our right to purchase cheap organic and sustainable food (as in, the exact same stuff as Whole Foods, but half the price) we work for a 2.5 hour shift every four weeks. Our shift involves walking empty carts back from people’s houses or cars within a 10 block radius, which is a pretty good gig, actually. We have gotten to know lots of local characters and neighborhood history in the process, and mandated exercise is never a bad thing. But the shift is at 8:00AM on a Saturday, which is a bit hard to get motivated for, and can be downright miserable in rainy/cold/burning hot weather. We are always on the verge of cancelling our membership, but then walk out of the store with five huge bags filled with local produce, artisan cheeses, exotic mushrooms, fresh bread, and gourmet jams for $40, and reconsider our decision. We received some great cooking-related wedding gifts, and Clara has had a really fun time using all these fresh ingredients to replicate some favorite meals from our trip, including homemade tomato and pesto sauces, Vietnamese chicken claypot, Kerela fish curry, and Spanish Paella.

Our picturesque Brooklyn neighborhood. Ironically, we do not live in a brownstone, but instead in a San Franciscan-esque blue victorian

We have been doing our best to stay warm/cool/dry. Okay, so what is up with weather on this coast? California boy Eric, who was so excited to experience seasons when we first moved here, is over it. We moved here in January in the middle of a snowstorm. Winter lasted forever. Spring lasted about two weeks, and then it was suddenly 95 degrees and humid. For three months. Lately we have been doing our best to dodge hurricanes (only sprung a leaky roof from Irene, but nothing major) and rainstorms. This week, Mother Nature apparently sent out the call for fall to start, as the temperature dropped 40 degrees overnight, and has hovered in the 60s all week. Um, whatever happened to sunny and 75, New York!? Don’t you do that here?? Although, 60 and drizzly is a much more comfortable climate to these former San Franciscans than 100 and humid or 0 degrees and sleeting.

Hand-pulled Noodles in Queens

We’re still exploring! It has been said before, but we agree. New York is an amazing city. We have absolutely fulfilled our goal of maintaining our spirit of adventure by living here. It is an adventure just riding the subway everyday, where we probably hear more languages than our entire year of travel. Every weekend we try to pick a new neighborhood to explore. Since we didn’t really know much about New York before moving here, this has been really fun. For example, TriBeCa – sure, we’d heard it referenced in Sex and the City, but what the heck was it? Clara has the added luxury of being able to pick cafes in random neighborhoods to work from – either the East or West Villages being her favorite destinations so far. But by far our favorite part about living in New York is the diversity. This is unequivocally the “salad bowl” of the world, and we love being a part of it. Our favorite adventures in New York are those that transport us to the pockets of culture that form the patchwork of New York’s identity. Caribbean soul food in Harlem, spice shopping in Indian markets, local Brooklyn St. Patty’s day parades. We recently spent a day wandering around Flushing, in Queens, where we were transported to the streets of Beijing – and spent the day snacking on dumplings and hand pulled noodles from basement food centers. Except, wait – the guy slurping noodles to our right actually speaks with a strong Brooklyn rather than the anticipated Chinese accent, and the girl to our left is having an animated conversation about Mets vs Yankees. And, wow, the lady selling empanadas near our apartment just told us in Spanish that her daughter is a stockbroker. And that guy in a turban is a NYPD officer. And the peddler on the subway is actually an amazing poet. This is probably the best thing about New York. It has a diversity that is constantly challenging stereotypes and forcing redefinitions of what it means to be a New Yorker, or yes, an American. It is something that everyone in this country should experience, and we feel extremely lucky to be here living it now. Well, that and the pizza. This city does make some damn fine pizza.

NYPD officers

Nothing epitomizes NYC better than its subways.

Cao lao – another fantastic noodle combination from our favorite food country, Vietnam

So for those of you just stumbling across our blog, we like food. A lot. There would be a lot more eating and a lot less angst for Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem in our movie version. For the rest of you, it will come as no surprise to you that sampling the culinary delights of the world was a highlight of the trip, and not just for the obvious reason that there is some damn delicious food out there. Food really does provide a fantastic window into a people’s culture. Everyone takes pride in sharing their cuisine with you, no matter where you are, and since love of food is universal, it provides an excellent conversation starter and way to connect with people. Food also provides great insight into the history of a country as various waves of migration bring in new flavors and techniques, so that the various representations of cuisine on display at the sidewalk vendors gives a good clue to the cultural fabric of that society. Learning about food and cooking techniques is also a great way to be a humble traveler and help balance the power dynamics of tourism, because here is something valuable that even the grandmother living in the simplest hut can offer you… she knows how to make excellent curry, and we, with our seemingly infinite resources and opportunities, do not.

All this eating, thinking, discussing, and growing of food on our trip also made us examine our cultural relationship with food in the United States, because it is really in stark contrast to the way most of the world understands and interacts with meals. One of our biggest realizations was that America’s abundance of cheap, easily accessible food has not only resulted in us becoming more unhealthy with our eating… we have also become less creative in our cooking, and less appreciative of the results. Many of the world’s most inspiring culinary innovations emerged out of attempts by societies to get as much as they can out of a limited amount of ingredients. Curries and clay pots, for example, were created so that the nutrition from a small supply of meat and vegetables could be stewed down and released into the tasty broth so it could be extended and shared among many people. The same is true of beloved Italian sauces like Bolognese. In this way, families were able to feed their families complete nutrition, even though meat and proteins were a luxury, and add it to cheap and plentiful staples like rice and pasta. This mix of frugality and creativity still exists in many of the cultures we visited, and results in great pride by the cook when they can present a masterful, delicious meal using only the ingredients readily available and affordable for them.

In this scenario, the mindset of the person eating the meal is different as well. Family mealtime is one of the highlights of the day, not only because someone has put time and energy into cooking it, but because it is not taken for granted. Good food is savored and enjoyed more, precisely because everyone understands that it is not abundant. We had a really interesting conversation with a fellow worker at one of our farmstays in Italy from East Germany. He could very clearly remember a time in his life, before the wall came down, when many foods, particularly meats, were still a luxury, and therefore used for special meals that were highly anticipated and savored. All that changed after reunification, however, as the East German’s had watched with envy the abundance of food in the West, and sought to adopt that lifestyle as a way of indicating that they had really “made it” in the world. Now our friend laments the meat-obsessed, processed food country Germany is becoming, with rapidly climbing rates of disease and obesity, and everyone eating their food on the go. Unfortunately, this is the trend among many countries today, as readily available fast food has become synonymous with Western style middle class success. The “Colonel” (as in KFC) may very well be the most recognizable face in Asia today. China, in particular, is seemingly obsessed with fried chicken, and fast food in general, to the point that a recent Bloomberg article identifies YUM, the parent company of KFC and Pizza Hut as “has become the most successful foreign company in China.” We won’t lie, we did enjoy an occasional McDonald’s chicken sandwich on the trip when we were feeling particularly overwhelmed by ordering unknown mystery meals by pointing at the “yummiest” looking set of lines and squiggles on the menu, particularly in China. There is some weird phenomenon that was recognized by many a traveler we encountered, where fast food you would never typically eat at home somehow tastes fantastic while on the road where everything else is foreign. But that certainly doesn’t mean we were happy to see them as ubiquitous and popular as they were in some of the greatest culinary countries of the world.

“In China, KFC has achieved such dominance that Colonel Harland Sanders’s image is a far more common sight in many Chinese cities than that of Mao.” Bloomberg.

Another major realization for us was just how important fresh ingredients are to creating a delicious meal. We took cooking classes in Thailand and India, and have included some recipes below, but we know perfectly well that we will never be able to fully replicate them at home. All the ingredients were either bought that day at the local farmers’ market, picked from a tree or bush in the backyard, or caught swimming or strutting that day (in the case of fish or chicken). Cooking becomes a lot less complicated when you are working with really fresh, delicious ingredients, and we were shocked at how great our meals turned out on first attempt. This was further illustrated while working on the farms in Ireland and Italy, where we picked tomatoes as sweet as apples off the vine. In most of these places, cuisine is dictated by the seasons, and what is fresh. Even though hothouse tomatoes are available for purchase in Italy in the winter, shipped in from Egypt, most home cooks would never dream of making insalata caprese, or anything else requiring fresh tomatoes, until the summer when they can pick them off their own vine or buy them from a neighbor at a farmer’s market. Instead, the fall and winter is the time for delicious concoctions out of squash, mushrooms, truffles, and chestnuts, as these are in season. Unfortunately, our expectations at being able to get any ingredient at any time has resulted in our consumption of some really inferior food. Probably half of what makes Italian cooking so great is that they make a meal only when it can be comprised of the best ingredients… otherwise, what’s the point?

Working on the farms in Ireland and Italy at the end of our trip also shifted our thinking on meat some, particularly for Clara, who has been a back and forth vegetarian for most of her life, and pretty much only liked meat that didn’t look like it once belonged to an animal (think chicken nuggets). Surprisingly, being closer to the source actually made her a more comfortable omnivore. Even though there was definitely some initial squeamishness at hearing the chicken squawking in protest out back when we ordered a chicken meal in rural China, or eating lamb in Ireland that the kids on the farm had named Parker and Posie, we soon realized these animals had enjoyed a far better life than most of the typical meat purchased at a grocery store at home. This really struck us when the family we were staying with in Ireland were looking to buy piglets for future consumption (after they had spent a year romping free in the garden, adding fertilizer and spreading seeds, and basically living in piggy heaven), and wouldn’t buy any further than a 30 minute drive away, because they didn’t want to cause them any extra stress of long car travel. It doesn’t take much research to discover how typical piglets from major meat company slaughterhouses are treated. Stress is the least of their worries. Eating local, farm raised meats isn’t just about a clean conscience, though… it has the added bonus of eating meat that is well, more meat-like, not pumped full of the antibiotics and hormones needed to sustain animals in an unnatural way. Sure, this meat is a bit more expensive to buy if you don’t happen to live on a farm yourself, but then maybe you just purchase it a little less often, and it is then viewed with the same “luxury” appreciation as it is in much of the rest of the world.

Our views on these issues were further solidified after reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma, based on numerous recommendations by friends, which touches on a lot of these issues. We highly recommend it as well. Whether or not it changes your eating habits at all, everyone should know and understand what your food is and what was involved in bringing it to you. Now, does this mean we’ll never eat another fast-food meal, or buy a Foster Farms chicken? Probably not. But we do really want to be a lot more conscious of where our food comes from, what we are are implicitly supporting with our purchases, and just how spoiled for choice we are in this country. So our goal now is just to exercise that choice just a little more wisely. Well, and just exercise more, generally to offset all the great new recipes from our travels, and all our new NYC food options to try!

Favorite Food Countries

1. Vietnam: Noodles and spring rolls and fish – oh my! Vietnam’s delectable combinations of really unique flavors and the quality of food to be found at simple market stalls places Vietnam at the top of this highly competitive list. We loved the billions of varieties of spring rolls and the combinations of fresh herbs and mint and greens with the sour, sweet, and spicy flavors of noodle and clay pot dishes. Yum!
2. Italy: It’s almost not even fair to include it, the food is so good, but since food was the undeniable highlight of our time in Italy, it really must be mentioned. It would make the list for the pizza alone, not to mention the truffles, pastas, paninis, gelato and fresh seafood we consumed with gusto there. That country simply knows how to eat.
3. South India: Yes, obviously South India is not a country. But the cuisine was different enough from their northern neighbors (and in our opinion preferable) that we thought it deserved to be distinguished. Unlike it’s heavier, curry and ghee based northern food, southern India enjoys simpler, lighter cuisine that is based more on lentils, fresh seafood, and an abundance of tropical coconut. We adored the dosas and thalis not only while in Kerela, but while traveling around much of Asia, where when in doubt, you could always rely on the South Indian food. In fact, South Indian meals were some of the food highlights for us in Singapore and Malaysia as well.
4. Thailand: When we embarked on this trip, this was the food we were most excited about. And it pretty much lived up to expectations. Cheap pad Thai, panang curry, and mango with sticky rice… how can you complain? It only ranks fourth on this list because there were so many surprises along the way that really exceeded expectations.
5. Singapore: This is a city that loves to eat. Just as it is a cultural crossroads for Asia, it is also a culinary one. Consequently, we got fantastic dumplings and dim sum (after fruitless searching in China), delicious Indian dosas and chaat, great Malaysian curry rice, and some combinations that were purely Singapore. In a relatively expensive country, it was great to see that hawker’s centers (basically cheap food courts) were ubiquitous, and consequently, we munched away to our heart’s (and stomach’s) delight.

South Indian Dosa. Yum.

Favorite Meals
These meals were not just great because of the food, but the total experience. These are some of the meals we will look back on most fondly. Alas, we were not those people who took photos of all of their meals, so you will have to use your imagination here, and view the representative photos stolen from Google Images.

1. Pizzeria Mediterranea:This pizzeria in Perugia was indeed fantastic on its own, but it also represents all of the wonderful pizzas we enjoyed in Italy. A good Italian pizza is indescribably delicious, and a completely different genre from how we imagine pizza here. We happened upon this particular establishment because we figured the crowd of locals congregating outside was a good sign. It was. I think we spent most of the meal with our eyes half shut in pure bliss. We ordered a roasted vegetable and “Mediterranea Special” pizza (fresh arugula, local cheese, parma ham, buffalo mozzarella) plus a carafe of house wine, and whiled the rainy afternoon away in cheesy heaven, even toasting the crew who sat down together for their own lunch at the end of shift. The key to true Italian pizza is apparently a really hot brick oven, and this one was flaming away right next to us, and each pizza was fully cooked within 2 minutes. We later learned that this place was so good that our travel buddy Laura brought Dustin to Perugia almost for the sole reason of returning to her favorite pizzeria during her college days in Italy. We understand why. When we left, there was a great rainbow over the city that matched our contented mood.


Pizza Medeterranea – so good there were numerous Google Images to choose from for this exact restaurant in Perugia.

2. Bun Cha Gio Chay:We were first introduced to this street vendor concoction of fried vegetable spring rolls, fresh rice noodles, fresh mint and “leaves”, and sweet chili vinegar dressing with crushed peanuts on our first chaotic day in Vietnam. We entered a market looking for dinner, and were completely overwhelmed by the options in a new language, and some of the frightening looking meats (we hadn’t learned the word for dog at that point, and how to avoid ordering it). So we ordered the only thing we could find with the word “chay” (vegetarian). It was so delicious, we sighed and relaxed with a relieved sense of accomplishment. It’s no wonder we liked it, it was really a combination of our favorite food things in the country… spring rolls, noodles, and sweet/sour/spicy/fresh flavor combos.


Bun Cha Gio Chay – best food for $1.

3. Kampot Pepper Crab: We’ve already discussed this wonderful combination (even on pizza) at length in our Cambodia post, but what really made the experience was watching the women wade out into the sea to haul in our meal.
4. Fresh Coconut Curry: We loved food in Kerela, and the standout meal was the one we helped prepare during our “cooking lesson” with the grandmother of the family we were staying with. All the fresh coconut and spices were fantastic, and she was such a character, it was a lot of fun. This was, after all, where we were told that the secret to a good marriage was good curry, so we paid close attention!
5. Dumpling Extravaganza: The standout meal for us in China was one of our first, in Guilin, mostly for the sense of accomplishment and comedic value. After wandering the streets helplessly trying to decipher signs, we walked into a little dumpling restaurant in exasperation simply because it had a recognizable picture of a dumpling on the sign. We pointed at a couple menu items that had characters we recognized as chicken and pork, and nervously waited. What arrived was two heaping plates of over 50 delicious pork and chicken dumplings and two large beers. We thought for sure we had done something wrong when ordering, and the waitress had taken us for a ride by bringing us way too many for two people to make an extra buck. And then we noticed how much everyone else was eating. Not only did every other table for two have the same leaning tower of dumplings to share, they also had plates of noodles, chicken, and rice… and they just kept coming! Our plate of dumplings started to look measly in comparison, and we got quite a few sympathetic stares. So we settled in and did our best to put a dent in the mound, copying the various sauce combinations concocted at nearby tables. We were wincing when the final bill came, expecting a hefty price, and couldn’t believe we had eaten enough for a small village for less than $3.
6. Honorable mention – Cooking Class Thailand: Okay, so it is kind of tacky to list a meal you cooked yourself as one of the favorites, but it has to be said, it was definitely one of our best in Thailand… not least of all because we had gone to the market and purchased everything fresh ourselves that morning.

Recipes:

Panang Curry

Yummy Panang Curry

(This is our favorite of the Thai curry varieties as the flavors are richer and more intense, due to the use of coconut cream instead of milk)

Ingredients:

• 1200 ml coconut cream*
• 4 teaspoons red curry paste**
• 320-400 grams chicken – cut into small chunks
• 2 teaspoons palm sugar (find at Asian grocery stores, or substitute with brown sugar)
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 120 g eggplant – cut into small chunks
• 4 long red chillies (thai chilies) – discard seeds and stem and slice into thin strips (use less chilies for less spice!)
• 8 kaffir lime leaves – discard stems
• 40 g Thai sweet basil

(About 5-8 min cooking time, until chicken is just cooked through)
1. Heat coconut cream in wok, until the coconut oil and cream separate out.
2. Stir in red curry paste until well combined.
3. Add chicken, then palm sugar and soy sauce.
4. Add eggplant and red chilies and fry until the coconut thickens (Use low to medium heat)
5. Add kaffir lime leaves and sweet basil, then turn off heat.
6. Place in a dish and serve with steamed rice.

To make fresh coconut cream, use warm water and mix with fresh shredded coconut (NOT the sweetened bagged stuff!!). Use 1 kg of grated fresh coconut with 400 ml warm water and then let sit for 30 min – 1 hour. Then, using your hands, squeeze the grated coconut to release the cream. Repeat two or three times to make sure all of the milk and cream is out before setting the shaved coconut pieces aside (delicious toasted!). Then set aside the bowl of coconut cream/milk for one hour. The cream will separate to the top. Skim it off, and use for recipes that call for coconut cream. The remaining coconut milk can be used for other recipes. Or for those of us that likely do not have access to fresh shaved coconut, buy the canned full-fat coconut milk, let it sit and settle, and very carefully open the can without shaking it. The coconut cream will be at the top.

** It is easiest to buy the jars of red curry paste, but if you would like to make your own, here’s the ingredients. We’ve noticed the generic brands have been way diluted these days in terms of spice, so add some extra chillies to spice it up.

• 8-13 small dried red Thai chillies (soak in water for 20 min and discard the seeds)
• 4 shallots – finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 100 g Siamese ginger – finely chopped
• 200 g lemongrass – finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons kaffir lime peel – finely chopped
• 100 g coriander root – finely chopped
• 20 white pepper corns
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds

1. Roast coriander and cumin for about 5 minutes, and grind to a powder.
2. Put the remaining ingredients in a blender and blend well
3. Add cumin and coriander and blend again.
4. Can be kept in a sealed jar in the refrigerator for up to 4 months.

Pad Thai

(By far the most requested recipe – this one was from our Thai cooking class – we’ve decided the secret is tamarind.  Can’t do it justice without it!)

Ingredients

• 8 tbl oil
• 4 cloves garlic – peeled and finely chopped
• 80 g tofu – cut into 1cm cubes
• 200g narrow rice noodles – soak in water for 2-3 minutes
• 12 tablespoons water
• 4 eggs
• 4 teaspoons palm sugar
• 4 tablespoons soy sauce
• 20 g Chinese chives cut into 3cm lengths
• 100 g beansprouts
• 40 g ground peanuts
• 4 tablespoons tamarind juice

To garnish:

• 8 lime quarters
• sliced cucumbers
• 240 g beansprouts
• 80g Chinese chives
• 120g ground peanuts

1. Put oil in wok and on low heat garlic, dried shrimps and tofu together for about 1 minute
2. Drain the noodles and put them in the wok. Add the water.
3. Beat the egg and stir into the noodles and allow to cook along the edges of the wok.
4. Stir in the sugar and soy sauce.
5. Stir in Chinese chives in and bean sprouts.
6. Add the ground peanuts, fry for another 30 seconds then turn off the heat.
7. Stir in the tamarind juice and serve with garnish!

Backwaters Coconut Lentils

(from our Kerelan “cooking class”, which was more about throwing in various fresh ingredients… thus, we never got any measurements! So season to taste.)

• Chopped spinach (Indian spinach, chard, kale, etc) Could also use okra, broccoli, etc.
• Cooked lentils
• Shredded unsweetened coconut
• Curry leaves
• Onions
• Shallots
• Coconut oil
• Mustard seed

1. Heat coconut oil in wok, add handful of mustard seeds. When they start popping, add shallots and curry leaves on medium heat.
2. When shallots are golden brown, add onions and cook until soft.
3. Add coconut and spinach, cook covered until soft (5-10 min), stirring occasionally.
4. Add lentils and mix well.

Homemade Irish Cheddar Cheese

Our Irish Cheese – we called it a "cheddar/blue cheese fusion". Because we were totally going for those blue spots intentionally.

You will need 4 gallons or about 14 liters of whole cow’s or goat’s milk. To start the process of making cheddar cheese, bring the temperature of the milk to 86 degrees F or 30 degrees C. Now stir in ½ tsp. of mesophilic powder, (slightly round the ½ tsp of powder if the milk has been pasteurized).

Let the milk rest for 45 minutes, keep the temperature the same.

Add 1/8 tsp of annatto coloring, (optional). First mix coloring with ¼ cup of cool water before adding it to the milk.

At this time, add 1 tsp of rennet. Again, mix the rennet with 1/4 cup of cool water before stirring it into the milk. If you are using homogenized milk, you will need to add 1 tsp of calcium chloride as well. Be sure to thoroughly mix in each ingredient as you go along.

Now let the milk rest for 45 minutes to set the curds.

Once the curds are set, cut into ½ inch cubes.

Over a 40 minute period of time, slowly bring the temperature up to 39 degrees C or 97 degrees F. Continue to gently stir.

Keep the curds at this temperature for 30 more minutes. Stir every few minutes to keep the curds from matting.

Don’t stir for the last 5 minutes so the curds can settle and you can drain the whey off. Line a stainless steel strainer or colander with a cheese cloth and drain the curds. Keep the curds in the strainer and reserve enough whey to fill the pot 1/3 full. Set the strainer over top of the whey in the pot and cover. Keep the whey in the pot at the same temperature mentioned above for 1 hour. If you prefer a moister cheese, you can reduce the time from the 1 hour to 45 minutes or even 30 minutes.

Now remove the slab of curds from the strainer and cut into long strips about the size of a pencil. Stir in 1 Tbsp of course salt. Many people like to eat these curds just as they are. But if you wish to make a wheel of cheese, place the curd into a cheese press and leave for overnight using moderate pressure.

Remove wheel of cheese from the press in the morning and allow to dry. Cheese may then be waxed. Allowing the cheese to ripen for up to 4 weeks will give it a mild cheddar flavour, but it can also be eaten right away too. Allowing the cheese to ripen for three months will give it a medium flavour, and you can leave the cheese longer for an older taste.

The result – we decided to play it safe and cook the cheese up into a pear and blue cheese sauce to top homemade sweet potato gnocci. Yum!

See, no one was poisoned!

Our literal first steps of our journey. And yes, that is all we took with us. For a year.

…and often that first step is the hardest. So here we are, roughly 45,000 miles later, and that is one of our greatest lessons from this journey. Well, that, and we apparently have a serious carbon footprint to now offset. But it is true, even amidst all of the difficult and stressful times on this trip, the toughest decision was simply to go. Life has inertia, and it takes a lot of force and resolve to stop it from simply rolling along once it is headed a certain direction. But once you have successfully shifted it, it starts gaining momentum again towards your new direction. We won’t sugar-coat it – deciding to spend a significant chunk of money in the middle of the worst economic crisis in decades was seriously scary, and more than a few people looked at us like we were crazy. Luckily, more of them looked at us with respect, encouragement, and envy that we didn’t lose our confidence, and miss out on an opportunity that will forever impact our lives. Sure, it seemed like a lot of money, but we had been saving and setting aside specifically for this purpose, so it doesn’t feel like a loss now that it is gone, and in the grand scheme of things, it was less than the cost of a basic new car, and not enough to significantly alter our life or lifestyle had we spent it for any other purpose. And while it was hard to say goodbye to friends and family, in some ways we have stayed connected/reconnected with people better through this blog than during our busy work lives. Reunions are so much sweeter when you’ve been apart for awhile and traveling is as great way to gain appreciation for the important people in your life.

One of the most common things we heard/hear in response to our trip is “I wish I could do that”. Well, you can. Now, the reality is not everyone would actually enjoy this kind of tight-budget, fly-by-the-seat of your pants travel, and that’s fine. Plenty of people probably would have been miserable, and it’s important to be honest with yourself about that. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just a matter of preference. However, for those people who genuinely wish they could take the time to see some of the world? You can. Seriously, if you have the desire and resolution, you can do it too. There wasn’t any special secret that allowed us to do it. We had/have career and family concerns, student loans, etc, but once we really decided to make it a priority to happen, it did. We saw people from all walks of life on this trip – everyone from San Francisco cabbies, to Canadian families of five, to new parents living off food stamps at home, to 80 year old new widows, to Tanzanian college students, to laid-off stock brokers, who all made it happen for themselves. Sure, it takes some planning, sacrifice, foresight, and supportive friends and family, but most of all, it takes the courage to take that first step. Part of what gave us that courage was all the people around us who had taken similar steps themselves and served as models of what was possible. Eternal thanks to all of them, and here’s hoping we can be those people for others out there.

So what were our other big lessons and conclusions, now that we’ve had time and distance to reflect? Well, a big one relates to food (you’re shocked, I know), so we’ve made a whole blog entry about that topic. We have some more reflections and wrap-up thoughts below:

Top places to return

So there isn’t really anywhere on this trip that we wouldn’t go back to, but there are a few that are much higher up on the list of places to return to in the not so distant future:

• China: China was the dark horse of this trip… we just didn’t know what to expect. And it turned out to be one of the most interesting places we visited. However, we have barely scratched the surface of the country. Inner Mongolia, Xian, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Sichuan province are all on our list for (probably multiple) return visits.
• Indonesia: Like China, this is a massive and diverse country that we barely saw. We would have loved to get to Borneo, Java, Sulawesi, Lombok, and Flores.
• Italy: Unlike the others, we actually have seen a fair bit of Italy now. However, we love everything we see, and there’s still so many places we want to experience. Plus, there’s the food…
• India: Some of you will be surprised by this, after our hasty retreat from India… however, with some distance, we have a serious affection for the subcontinent (kind of like that mischievous child that causes you nothing but headaches, but somehow always leaves you both exasperated and amused at the same time) and we will definitely return someday. Mysore, Hampi, Ellora, Assam, and returns to Kerela and Ladakh are on the list.

Top regrets:
So due to time, budget, and visa constraints we weren’t able to get to these places that we REALLY wanted to see and had always hoped to make part of this trip. So they make it to the top of the next list, I suppose.

• Bhutan: Everyone who has been there rates it as a highlight, and given what we’ve learned about our travel style, we probably would have as well.
• Mongolia: We tried to make this affordable and fit within our China visa constraints (entering and leaving the country) like five different times, but just couldn’t make it happen.
• More of Indonesia: We really really wanted to get to more of the archipelago, but were only able to get a 30 day visa, and had a ton of logistics to deal with at the time, so limited oursleves to a wonderfully relaxing time in Bali. But it was really hard to hear about everyone else’s amazing stories of orangutans, deserted beaches, and jungle adventures.
• Nepal was always on our list to get to on this trip. It wasn’t until we went to get our visas in Malaysia that we learned India had recently changed their visa rules so that you couldn’t reenter the country without waiting three months in between entrances, which totally put a wrench in our Nepal plans.
• Philippines: We investigated this heavily as well, lured by lovely beaches and diving, but just couldn’t make it work.
• Morocco: Once we decided on visiting Andalusia, we really wanted to add on nearby Morocco, and a lot of people who visited loved it, but after being spoiled with time on this trip, we decided we just wouldn’t be satisfied with the three days we could cram in.

Favorite Experiences
While we enjoyed a lot of places, there are certain experiences and interactions that will stick with us as highlights of the trip.

• Really, the whole time in Burma stands out to us as a highlight, but in particular, exploring Bagan’s isolated roads by bicycle, and our nighttime political conversation with our bicycle rickshaw driver stand out to us as some of the most memorable of the year. Burma was really the standout that won our hearts this year.
• Village trek through rice terraces in Laos. We particularly smile over the memory of lunch and our “nap” in the chief’s hut, with all the village children staring at us.
• Beng Melia temple in Cambodia, letting loose our inner archeologist/adventurers extraordinaire.
• Stumbling across the throat-singing monks in the Tibetan temple on the border between Tibet and Yunan in China.
• Playing with baby elephants at the elephant preserve in Thailand. We giggle uncontrollably just thinking of them.
• Rambling in the Burren by day, and getting our jig on at the pubs by night in western Ireland.
• Hiking a nearly deserted stretch of the Great Wall in China.
• Picking and sampling garden fresh tomatoes under the Tuscan sun.
• Wandering amongst five hundred year old Longshen rice terraces in China.
• Being serenaded by Humpbacks while diving in Hawaii, and then snorkeling with a pod of pilot whales.
• Getting engaged on a Granada rooftop with the Alhambra in the background.

Red Rock Canyon, NV

(Originally written in January, 2011)

Well, it has been a long eight weeks since we stepped off the plane in Las Vegas and back on American soil, and it has been weird, wonderful, and overwhelming. We’ve hiked desert canyons, visited family and met new family members, caught up with friends (though not nearly enough!), and started planning for what’s next. First things first – as the title of the blog suggests, we are moving to New York City! Although, on second glance, it actually sounds like a billing for a wrestling match up… hopefully not indicative of our future relationship with the Big Apple. So how did we end up embarking on this latest adventure? Read on…

In October, our return tickets and dwindling bank accounts looming ominously before us, we were driven into a panicked frenzy of job searches while on the farm in Italy. We knew we wanted to keep some of the sense of adventure going by trying out living someplace new. So, based on a fairly random set of criteria, we ended up narrowing our search to Seattle, New York City, Boston, Honolulu, Portland, and Boulder. We set up automatic email alerts from the most interesting sounding companies and organizations in these cities, and then put it aside, because we now felt like we were at least doing something. About three weeks later, Eric got an alert for a Mechanical Design Engineer position advertised at a company in NYC that designs ergonomic office furniture. The company and position sounded interesting, so he sent off his resume. About two weeks after that, while we were enjoying flamenco and tapas in Spain, Eric got an email back requesting a phone interview. Thus, we spent the next three days hunting for a place to make a phone call in Granada. The good news was locotorios (phone/internet centers) were abundant, but the bad news was nearly all were closed for siesta at the interview time. Eric finally found one open at the last minute and conducted the interview while trying to ignore the loud construction crew outside and the flamenco music inside. All went well, however, as they invited him to NYC for an in-person interview when we got back.

Fast forward to the first week of December, after a week of car camping in Red Rock Canyon and Joshua Tree National Park with Clara’s parents and Thanksgiving catching up with family in LA. Our brief week in San Francisco ended up including nearly 10,000 miles of airplane travel for Eric – first to an interview in Seattle, then another flight 12 hours later to New York for an overnight and interview there, before flying back to San Francisco and boarding the flight for Hawaii six hours later. Needless to say, he was very relieved to get off (and stay off) the plane for a few weeks. Our whirlwind return to our city by the bay also included some brief reunions with friends, many a beloved mission burrito, and the most authentic Italian pizza we’ve had in California at a little North Beach establishment, courtesy of Eric’s dad, who helped us with the transition back more than he could have known with some simple pizza baked by a family newly immigrated from Lucca.

Human SFNomads, plus canine AKNomad, Maizy, Clara’s parents’ dog

About a week after arriving in Hawaii, Eric was offered the New York job, which he happily accepted, as he really liked the vibe at the company and the work seemed interesting. So with that worry out of the way, the rest of our time in Hawaii was surf, sand, and wedding planning (which is at least as much work as planning a year of travel, even for something as low key as we’re imagining!) One of the highlights was learning stand-up paddle boarding (a Christmas present), which turned out to be really fun and an excellent workout. But now we have one day to pack up as much as we can carry with us on our Jet Blue flight (heavy on the coats and sweaters) before we officially move to New York! So the adventure continues… and thank goodness!

Maizy the surfer dog

Although our return has been wonderful in many ways, seeing friends and family sorely missed, wearing different clothes (we barely recognized each other out of the three shirts we’ve worn all year!) and some serious relaxation, our trip seems like a long time ago, and we find ourselves looking back over our photos of the year just to remind ourselves it really happened. It’s amazing how quickly you can get swept up into the logistics of life, both good (wedding planning, apartment hunting, etc.) and bad (student loans, insurance, etc) and start to feel detached from the amazing year we’ve just experienced. Sometimes it feels like a movie we’ve just watched, and now we’ve exited the theater back to our real lives, instead of a year we’ve lived. So we are really looking forward to New York, someplace we’ve collectively spent less than a week of time total in, because it means we get to continue that spirit of exploration. We’ve already eagerly delved into New York and East Coast guidebooks and continued our pattern of highlighting key places to visit and things to do. It’s not that we’re tired of San Francisco. In fact, just the opposite. Returning was like greeting an old friend, and we still very much consider it “our city”… we’re still SF Nomads. However we really felt that we wanted to demarcate our life somehow upon returning from our life before. In our minds right now, time is measured by BT (before trip) and AT (after trip), because it was a fairly significant shift in our thinking, mindset, and relationship. But we feared that a return home right now would feel like too much of the same thing… like we were moving backwards instead of forwards, and our trip was just an outlier to our normal pattern of life, instead of the inflection point it feels like now. So bring it on, Big Apple! If we can handle flash floods in the Himalayas, strandings on the Mekong, and head-buttings by obstinate goats in the Italian countryside, we’re ready to take you on!

We may try to update the blog a little along the way about our adventures in New York, but in the meantime, see our wrap-up postings to come, covering some of our highlights and ponderings on the trip over the past few weeks. Finally, many thanks to you, our loyal followers for the support and inspiration along the way! We are really glad we have this blog as a memory of our trip, and we definitely would not have kept it up if we didn’t know there were people out there reading it and cheering us on. Now it’s your turn! Go have an adventure and update us so we can live vicariously through you!

Last sunset of 2010 in Hawaii, where our adventure began a year before. What a year!