A Frog, a Dog, a Cat and a Dragonfly

or

Paul, Larry, Priscilla and Sy

or

A June Afternoon

By: Beth Mulkins

My friend teaches English to kids in Rome, Italy and he asked me to make up some rhymes to use in his lessons. This is what I wrote.

There once was a frog named Paul,

Who, one fine day in June, sat upon a wall –

Until a dragonfly flew by,

And Paul (the frog),

Jumped off that wall (Getting that dragonfly NOT AT ALL!),

And landed on a big dog!

Whose name was Larry (short for Lawrence),

And wouldn’t you know – a cat called Priscilla then ran along a fence,

And Larry,

Who loooooooooooved to chase cats,

Growled, puffed-up, and looked kind of scary –

Ran and chased, chased and ran,

Until Priscilla (the cat) jumped behind a delivery van,

And disappeared between two houses and down an alley with a garbage can,

Overflowing with balloons and flowers,

Leftover from a baby shower.

On and on that cat raced –

Even though Larry had long ago given up the chase,

Until at last Priscilla arrived at the pillow she called home,

In the center of a large pink and white frilly bed, inside a house within the heart of Rome.

Paul, meanwhile, grew weary,

(And not to mention a bit leery),

Of his dog friend called Larry,

With the big teeth, and who like to chase cats and all things hairy –

So PLOP! He went onto the ground,

And whom do you think he found?

A dragonfly named Sy –

Who said he flew by,

And would Paul like to have a game of chess –

Because, he did confess,

That it would be a most splendid way to spend a lovely afternoon,

In June.

So Paul said yes,

And they played a lazy game of chess,

On that hazy June,

Afternoon.

The End

What's for dinner tonight?

Lately, perhaps due to recovering from a virulent, persistent and persnickety flu, I have been inexorably drawn to all things hot - any type of tea, coffee, soup, piping hot food. So, on Monday, I made a tomato sauce with olive oil, garlic and onions and added some large leftover meatballs that I had made on the weekend. Popped it into the oven to bubble away for an hour and boiled up some whole grain Barilla spaghettini. Oh man, was that hot and really hit the spot with some freshly grated parmesan cheese on top, black pepper and olive oil. Last Sunday I roasted a chicken - a Frankenchicken, the last squab left on sale at the grocery store - with lovely yellow flesh potatoes cut up with carrots, onions and garlic. The bird was stuffed with a bunch of my straggly kitchen thyme, onions, garlic galore, salt and pepper. I had read that roasting with the breast down makes the white meat juicier and for the final 20-30 min. turning it over to brown the breast skin. It worked rather well; the meat was flavourful and very moist.

On Sunday morning I made a huge batch of oatmeal, coconut, chocolate chip and raisin/cranberry cookies from a culinary mystery that I was reading (Gingerbread Cookie Murder, Fluke, J., Levine, L., Meier, L.). We have been eating these cookies all week and loving the texture and flavour of the coconut.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, rack in middle

1 1/2 cups melted butter
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar (I use dark), packed down
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large eggs, beaten
3 cups oatmeal
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups sweetened dried cranberries or Thompson raisins or a combination of both
3 cups coconut
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 cups nuts or less if desired - walnuts or almonds or pecans would be yummy - I omitted due to the nut rules at my son's elementary school

Melt the butter in a small bowl in the microwave and let cool a little. In a large bowl, combine the sugars and add the baking powder, baking soda, salt and vanilla extract - stir well.

Add the beaten eggs and stir. Beat the warm, not hot, butter. Gradually add oatmeal, flour and dried fruit coconut and chocolate chips (and nuts if including) and stir until thoroughly mixed after each addition.
I had to use my hands to finish incorporating all of the ingredients. I have a diminutive apartment size oven and it would take a month of Sundays to bake little cookies for a batch this huge, so I used a tablespoon to measure dollops onto moistened parchment paper to bake for 8 or 9 minutes. My method yielded 36 cookies and a 9x13 ceramic pan of 36 small squares. So many cookies, so little time...
I always love to hear what people are making for dinner or what they have been enjoying lately. It's wonderful to exchange food information and ideas. I think that food is one way we connect with each other from birth to death - every rite of passage, every day of our lives we have food for every situation or non-situation.

The Rainbow Garden

 

By: Beth Mulkins

 (This is another English as a second language rhyme for my friend in Rome.)

Red, purple, green

Red, purple, green

These are the beautiful colours that I have seen.

Tomatoes, aubergines, beans

Tomatoes, aubergines, beans

Red, purple, green.

Yellow, orange and blue

Yellow, orange and blue

I think they could be flowers, do you?

Dandelions, lilies and bluebells

Dandelions, lilies and bluebells

Fresh and pretty flowers for us to smell.

All of the colours of the rainbow are here then,

In this bright and cheerful garden!

The End

Rainbow Garden Garden

Rainbow Garden Aubergine or Eggplant

Rainbow Garden Beans

The Rainbow Garden Tomato

Teaching English in South Korea: Poised for Flight - Departure from Canada, Pearson Airport October, 2008

During the summer of 2008 my ex-spouse and I were working as archaeologists for a small company that was becoming unstable. We needed a solid plan B, and when an acquaintance lauded the financial benefits of teaching English overseas, we decided that this would be a good opportunity for us as a family in an uncertain economic time.

Within this blog, in addition to discussing the wonderful world of food, I would like to recount our two year adventure in South Korea. It has been a year since our return and I have distanced myself a little from some of the drama that we endured and hopefully in that time period have gained some perspective. I hope to communicate the initial culture shock, transition and adaptation over the course of two years living in three different apartments in three different cities (one was more of a village) on two ends of South Korea.

In 2008 my ex-partner and I were at a crossroads in our relationship and careers, and we were co-parenting our children. Our decision to list the house, pack our belongings into a storage unit, sell the car and fly to South Korea to teach English with our daughter and son in tow was fueled by several factors: partly by the tanking economy with a very uncertain future in Cultural Resource Management archaeology, a field that relied upon continuous land development projects; our venerable dog’s illness and subsequent euthanasia; and a desire to give our kids an opportunity for experiential learning to challenge and engage them.

It was a life-altering, incredible, and mind-bending experience and we have returned to Canada with many mixed emotions. My son, 3 years old when we arrived in Korea, is now at the time of writing, 6 years old. He spent two birthdays (his 4^th and 5^th), Christmases and summers in S. Korea and his first school experiences were within the Korean curriculum - he learned Korean and began to study Chinese and taekwando in addition to his other curricular subjects. He regards S. Korea as his home and misses his friends and teachers.

Our daughter was 11 when we arrived at Incheon International Airport and her first year in Bucheon was pretty wonderful, even idyllic as she was a grade 6 student in the classroom next to my English classroom at an elementary school in Bucheon. Her classmates (my students) had fairly high proficiency in English. She studied math, music, art, Korean, science and P.E., just like her classmates – the only subject she was spared was Korean Ethics due to the language barrier. 

We all learned to read and write Hangul soon after arriving – the wrinkle was in acquiring the language as we did not have scheduled lessons and the urban environment tended to encourage English language competence – meaning people really wanted us to help them with their English rather than the other way around! We naively thought that we would be in a predominately Korean language environment, ripe for an instructive immersion experience.

On the beach in Yeonggwang, South Korea

Food in Context

I have been interested in food my whole life.

I was a nightime sugar thief. I had a mouthful of fillings before I had even lost my baby teeth. I thoroughly enjoyed the candy that Streetsville's Red's smoke shop offered - that sorbet and licorice stuff, sweethearts, sweet tarts, double bubble, wax lips with liquid inside (!), Mackintosh's Toffee, chocolate everything and so on. In those days, kids could run wild and my posse of little friends from our street would play all day and walk to Red's occasionally. I was caught shoplifting with my fellow lawbreakers and there was hell to pay. My siblings (much older) wanted to keep the loot, but I was punished to teach me a lesson about being a law-abiding 5 year old.

When I was 7 years old, my family moved to 3/4 of an acre that had been severed from our neighbour's 100 acre farm in rural Milton. We were promised a dog and a cat if we moved from our 50's bungalow in Streetsville to the country. I attended a tiny rural school called Percy W. Merry and was bused daily, except when the winter wind howelled across the fields and drifted snow onto Derry Road. When the power went out and the roads were treacherous  - a snowday. On those days, we would fire up the woodburning stoves and cook French Toast and make hot chocolate. I loved the adventure of "surviving".

Anywho, eventually, my parents established an apiary, then other ventures crept in - firewood, wood burning stoves, water distillers, maple syrup, maple sugar, bags of loam, sandy loam and ultimately the honey business prevailed while the rest fell away. I was a willing taste-tester for all of the interesting and delicious honey and maple products. It really is a wonder that I did not develop diabetes when I think about the fine food shows that I visited and sampled joyfully in addition to my daily honey consumption.

We had raspberry canes, grapes, a greenhouse with strawberries and asparagus, and all available land planted with peppers, tomatoes, carrots, peas, beans, herbs and I cannot remember what else, but all organic and available to this food thief. My best friend's family had a greenhouse business on 8th Line and a Pippy Longstcking-esque treehouse that overlooked their neighbour's garden... We loaded up a 6 quart basket raiding the garden and dragged it up to our tree lair and ate the bounty unwashed. My garden criminality was rewarded with a fascinating case of worms.  I was later informed that the neighbours were well aware of our marauding and that they were not worried at all - thankfully this pretty much ended my life of food crime (except for some later kitchen creation disasters).

I worked at various jobs in the summer and on the weekends - in the kitchen of a local country club/golf course and for my parents' business of course. It was when I worked with the many Scottish golfers that I discovered my embarrassing habit of picking up accents. I have no idea what people thought when they asked me how long I had lived in Canada and after this had happened quite a few times, I realized that I had unconsciously assumed the accent of the person with whom I was speaking. This was very apparent when I lived in England for a year and upon returning to Canada, was uncharitably accused of putting on an English accent. It's a mimicry affliction, nothing more!

When I was in high school I began a summer job at the Ontario Agricultural Museum as a costumed historical interpreter that I returned to every summer until I finished university. I demonstrated 19th century domestic skills, including cooking and baking over an open hearth and baking in a brick oven. I acquired my favourite cookbooks around that time - Food That Really Schmecks: Mennonite Country Cooking by Edna Staebler, and The Harrowsmith Cookbook: Volume Number 1. Oddly, just lately I covered an historical interpreter's very short maternity leave at Joseph Schneider Haus in Kitchener-Waterloo and found myself on hallowed Edna Staebler ground - a Mennonite home built in 1816 and affiliated with the community Edna Staebler cherished in K-W. The annual Edna Staebler Fellowship is awarded to a researcher through the Museum. I am so sorry that I did not make an effort to meet Edna before she died a the age of 100 in 2006. The Mennonite thread in my life connects me to my grandmother, raised by her Mennonite mother and my mother feels that I am just like my grandmother who constantly cooked and baked (not suprising as she had 8 children) and had a reputation during the Depression for never letting anybody go away hungry if they came to her door looking for a meal. I wish I had known her too.

Well, when research positions were thin on the ground, I began a baking business that did not take off at that time. I wrote and illustrated children's stories and submitted them to a number of Canadian publishers without success. Over the years, I have worked as a field archaeologist in cultural resource management and from 2008-10, taught English in South Korea with my partner and two children for two years. South Korea is beautiful, the people were warm and kind to us, and the food was amazing. We lived in the bread basket of South Korea, Jeollanam-do, for the second year and were surrounded by stepped rice paddies, red dotted pepper fields, sweet potatoes, cabbages, persimmons and seafood from the nearby Yellow Sea coast at Beopsong-po. Mountains and sea - absolutely gorgeous and difficult to leave. It is a feast for the senses.