Carey Jane Clark

Our China: Food

March 4, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

As most people know, Chinese cuisine offers a wide range of foods to enjoy, but mostly one style of cooking: stir-fried. And most people know that what you buy in a “Chinese food” restaurant in the West isn’t much like what really graces the table in a genuine Chinese home.

What many people don’t know, is the Chinese food mostly available at real Chinese restaurants in the West mostly comes from Hong Kong, since historically, that is the part of China most people were acquainted with. Occasionally, people are familiar with Sichuan cuisine, but that too is from further south.

So many people have never enjoyed real northern Chinese food. Generally speaking, Chinese food follows the universal rule that those in warmer climates eat spicier foods, so real northern cuisine isn’t always spicy, but it’s always delicious–and of course, as people have become more mobile, Chinese food isn’t just localized anymore. It’s possible to go to a restaurant anywhere in China and enjoy the foods from all over the country.

One of our favorite dishes from the north is hot pot.

The dining party gathers around a table fitted with a burner, and a pot is brought out containing broth (spicy or non-spicy or a divided bowl containing some of each) and some seasonings. Then you begin to order what you want to put in. There are the thin slices of lamb that I mentioned in another post, as well as similar slices of beef, a variety of different kinds of mushrooms–our favorites are the “needle mushrooms,” some seafood, and plenty of vegetables: sweet potatoes, potatoes, cilantro, spinach, and plenty of other greens. And noodles. Our favorite restaurant has fresh noodles, but since these contain white flour and gluten, we usually opt for glass noodles and/or buckwheat (soba) noodles.

Once the order is placed, diners go to the sauce bar to pick out their favorite dipping sauces. I usually fill my little bowl with the traditional sesame sauce, plus minced garlic, cilantro, garlic chives, and some red pepper oil.

When the ingredients have been added to the pot, and everything is boiling nicely again, it’s time to dig in your chopsticks, pull out your food, dip it in the sauce and eat! Yum!

What’s in a Name?

March 2, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

This week, I’m naming characters. Maybe you’d like your name written into my next book? Read to the end of the post to find out how you can nominate yourself into literary history. :)

I’ve begun work on my next novel. It’s been percolating away in my head for some time now. I’d done some research into the subject matter, and thought through some of the possible scenes, and especially hashed out how I wanted the story to end. I seem to need to know that right from the start.

But first scenes often seem to drop into my head in a flash of inspiration, and this one was no different. I believe it was around 3:00 a.m. that it crashed into my brain. I was, of course, just closing my computer. I opened it back up again, cranked out the scene, and then tried to go to sleep in the glow of the words.

And amazingly, it still looked pretty good to me in the morning.

Character Names

So this week, I spent some time on names. Some authors don’t see names as all that important and go ahead and write without them, but I need to get to know my characters a little first, and a name seems like a pretty basic first ingredient. For a minor character or place name, I don’t mind throwing in a blank (I usually type ***) as I go along and come back to it later, in order to keep the words flowing, but I need to know the names of my central characters.

I usually check on the meaning of a name before I use it, and sometimes I name a character according to the meaning of his or her name. There are a couple of tools I like to use for that purpose.

A good tool is http://www.behindthename.com/. This site permits reverse look-up using the meaning of the name, but the database isn’t extensive.

The best tool I’ve found is http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/. At this site, you can:

perform a reverse lookup for meaning
check popularity of the name
discover the ethnic origin of a name or filter for it (For example, if a story was set in Finland, I could limit my search to Finnish names)
search for either boy or girl or unisex names
eliminate names that don’t pair well with a family/last name (Clark Kent, for example would be eliminated because there are two “k” sounds together at the end of the first name and beginning of the last–imagine how much further Superman might have gone if someone had just checked the baby name directory before naming him!)

Below are some screenshots from the site. The only negative for this site is there are ads which autoplay in the sidebar. Each time the server refreshes when a new option is chosen, they start over again, so they need to be paused multiple times (or mute your speakers while you view the site).

Once I have the character’s name, other parts of the personality seem easier to fleshed out.

Naming the Setting

It’s less important to me how I name places in my story. It’s not something I feel I must do before I can begin to write, for example, but I do put time into figuring out names of significant places in the story. I like to pick a real place to set the story, but call it by a fictional name. I did this in After the Snow Falls. I wrote a post last year about the inspiration for the fictional town of Point-du-Fleuve.

So how do I find fictional place names?

Well, I made Point-du-Fleuve up. I knew the setting was on a river. Fleuve means river in French, and the town was in Quebec, so that worked.

My new story is set in an Ontario town. So I Googled for a list of towns in New York state, right across the border, and found a place name that doesn’t appear on the map of Ontario.

I think I’m pretty happy with the names I’ve come up with for two of the main characters, but if you’d like to nominate your name for another character, or give me an idea for a fictional town name, please let me know by leaving your name suggestion in the comments, below.

Fit2B, Yoga and Eastern Religion

March 1, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

In last week’s Mom Learns Too post, I introduced the journey I have begun to heal diastasis recti and finally get my body back after pregnancy and miscarriage. Before I began the Fit2B program, I had some questions for Bethany about the connection yoga may or may not have with Eastern religions. I was concerned about these issues for myself, since I have always associated yoga with Eastern religions and mind-emptying meditation. But I was also concerned for my readership.

Bethany reassured me in our interaction together, and directed me to some reading on the subject. After doing my homework, my questions were answered, I was satisfied with her responses, and I was ready to start the program. But the issue came up this week with a reader, so I decided I’d share here what “Mom” learned this week about yoga and Fit2B.

Yoga Moves?

First, Bethany is aware of the school of thought that condemns yoga for its roots in Hinduism. But while she admits some of her workouts do contain poses borrowed from yoga, and she acknowledges the facts of the origin of yoga, she says yoga is not her focus. Instead, she says, “I pull from many schools of movement to help my members make a healthy start…I do not practice any mind-emptying in my videos, nor do I subscribe to hinduism. The way I look at it, a move is a move is a move. Yoga happens to have actually named many movements with better terms than Western cultures. Sitting cross legged or ‘criss cross applesauce’ or ‘indian style’ or ‘potted palm’… It’s all the same position. But I like ‘Potted Palm.'”

A Move by Any Other Name

Bethany renames things too, when it suits her purposes. A move common to yoga and Pilates with a “big fancy long name,” she calls simply, a “hip hinge.” She argues that throwing out movements because they can be associated with yoga is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. “We don’t stop doing lunges because the Indus call them warrior poses. And we don’t stop doing kegels because Sanskrit calls it mula bandha (which means ‘root lock’ which is much different than a kegel and much nicer around little ears).”

She further points out that the earliest weightlifters were Celts who “were pagans in kilts tossing rocks in fields.” And throwing out yoga for its roots is equally silly.

A reader specifically asked about the music used in the workouts, and Bethany responded that she uses stock music applied after the exercises are recorded, and her only objective in choosing it was to find something that sounded relaxing to go along with the workouts.

She sums up her ideas about this with the words of a familiar song, “Every move I make I make in you! You make me move, Jesus! Every step I take I take in you!”

At the Heart of Things

Her heart for her program is to give women their bodies back after childbirth. “Birth is supposed to be a sacred, joyous time in a woman’s life, but trauma and injury during delivery can shadow a woman’s recovery and haunt her body with unnecessary hindrances. Many moms have resigned themselves to being broken, and my heart aches to share the truth of simple healing through loving movement to every woman, everywhere.”

As for me, I’m already seeing progress.

Please leave your comments below. I’d love to hear what you think about this issue, and join me in sharing what you learned this week. Your kids have been schooling, and certainly they’ve learned, but you have too. So share what “Mom Learned Too,” by linking up your post below.

Our China: Serendipity

February 25, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

Weird things happen to us here. And I don’t mean just the normal weirdness of negotiating life as a family with three expat homeschooled children in a country of one-child families, compulsory government schooling and people who speak very little English, by and large.

I mean serendipitous weirdness.

One thing we’ve had to get used to here is that many things (dare I say most things) happen without much advance planning. Advance appointments are made only by those who know Western culture well and understand that we Westerners like our plans. Often, we’ll receive a call inviting us to some special event.

“When?” we’ll ask.

The reply? “In an hour.”

Friends still “drop by” here without calling ahead. And things can be called off just as easily as the arrangements were made in the first place. This year, the city’s Chinese New Year fireworks were cancelled (not that you couldn’t see enough right in your own neighborhood).

Last week we had one of those last-minute kind of days. JavaMan received a last-minute call to join his friend on a trip to the countryside, after which they’d have a chance for his friend to introduce him to a man who worked for the government and could advise JavaMan on some business matters.

He came home with this:

So at least one night last week, we didn’t eat vegetarian! (It’s a pheasant, for the uninitiated. Note the unplucked, ungutted state of this bird. We’re getting more adventurous all the time!)

According to instructions we located on the internet, pheasants should be hung for three days, after which they can be skinned, and prepared for consumption. JavaMan used the following recipe and cooked dinner, after he skinned and prepared the bird for cooking:

Cream-Roast Pheasant

1 young pheasant
Salt
Butter
2 thin slices bacon
1 c. sweet cream or sour cream
1 c. water
2 tbsp. flour

Draw the pheasant carefully; wash and dry. Rub inside and out with salt. Put the liver and a piece of butter in the pheasant. Fasten bacon across breast. Bake at 350 degrees, basting frequently with 4 teaspoons butter. After it has cooked about 30 minutes, baste with cream and water, a spoonful at a time. Pheasant should cook about 1 1/2 hours. Remove bacon before serving. Stir flour into drippings, brown and add water as needed. Cook 5 minutes. Serve gravy with bird.

Has serendipity found you lately?

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