University of Sussex 2017

I confess, I took some. Well, not completely. I snagged some leaves from succulents in the student’s union—not the whole plants. I rescued spiderplant “pups” from the Global Studies office, preventing their eventually death or pruning and discard. I grew up with gardens, and houseplants make me feel at home. The need to feel nested around plants did not subside during my semester abroad at University of Sussex in Brighton, England. I can nurture something, watch it change, and be surrounded by green. It helped that the view out my windows was an industrious shrub growing out of the brick garden wall. Within my first week at Brighton, I bought a small fern from the hardware store up the road. I found a framed print of one of Monet’s water lilies, to match a similar piece my mom just purchased back in Indiana.

University of Sussex is a public research university with no horticulture curriculum. I wanted to take the opportunity to learn about different things that horticulture and agriculture, especially at a university well-known for global studies and life sciences. Having lived in other non-English-speaking areas, I also wanted to attend somewhere with the primary language as English since it was easier to overcome a language barriers and start noticing differences in culture. The eco-minded culture and organizations in the university and in Brighton were a huge pull for going to Sussex, and provided some “green-thumb” opportunities to get my fix for horticulture. I joined the student garden allotment group called Roots, who was in transition and being established at a new location since the former site was allotted for development (seems a bit like the transition going on at the Purdue Student Farm). Allotment gardening culture is strong in England, with the U.S. equivalent being having a private garden plot in a community garden. There were allotments in parks, by the cemetery or on hillsides, throughout the city. They provide people who do not have large yards – a pricey luxury in dense towns with wall-to-wall terrace houses—a place to garden and grow whatever brings pleasure.

The "green' culture is strong and permanent in the city of Brighton: there’s a center based on sharing ideas which link arts and the environment, a permaculture institute, and much more (ONCA). I had plans to travel more while within reach of the Continent (I did go to Munich), but ended up wanting to settle down in Brighton and be involved with the community projects. Most of these organization were present at or at least advertised at the Seedy Sunday event in February. Seedy Sunday was an event hosted by Infinity Foods, a cooperative, organic grocery store. Vendors came for gardening enthusiasts across the country to sell seeds, transplants, and other gardening products. I bought a kit to grow a few flushes of mushrooms in the shady shelf of my room, and was delighted and puzzled at rainbow of tuber varieties for purchase. The event hosted speakers, events for kids, catered food from local restaurants, and hosted a seed exchange. People bring seeds they kept from their garden last year, and trade or sell the seeds. The exchanges act as way to keep the varieties of vegetables, and their genes, alive through their active growth year after year. Hundreds of plants producing thousands of seeds could have a better chance of survival than seeds stored under carefully controlled conditions. Seed exchanges promote living seed banks. There is some risk involved that the plants might not survive, either through neglect, bad weather conditions, or disease, but overall enough seeds survive so that they may gradually adapt to the local conditions where they are grown. For example, the kale seeds I bought from gardeners in Brighton will, over time, be the best candidate for survival in Brighton's unique climate.

[if you’re into bin diving for free food and/or to make a statement about food waste, the compost bin for produce from Infinity Foods was a good pick].

Putting my life away included taking a box of vegetable scrap compost I’d collected over the semester to a bin. We hiked it up the hill and around the corner to a park’s community compost bins – not even my roommates new the park existed it was nestled to well between the houses on the hill. I was amazed that Brighton even had a demand for a community compost bin. It was great to be a part of a community where many more people than I’d normally been around before acted on their values for more sustainable, community-level ventures. Besides international regulations, plants won’t fit in my suitcase. The avocado tree and a few succulents stayed with my roommates, and other Chlorophytums and spider plants were distributed to friends and neighbors. I still can’t believe how I managed to create a community which would be happy to have my plants, to take care of them for me, in just a few months. The key was being involved, being friendly, and worry about studying just enough.

While physically uprooted myself from Brighton, the life I made in Brighton during my few months grows on--through plants and people.

P.S. The Organizations

• Scoop – would vend bulk dry goods at no upcharge on campus during the Tuesday market
• Roots—Student garden allotment
• Language Café – links native speakers to language learners
• Brighton Bike Hub! Bicycle shop and repair cooperative. The Naked Bicycle Ride every June, for cyclist safety awareness (public nudity is acceptable in the UK if it’s for protest)
• Real Junk Food Project – rescues supermarket food waste, converts into pay-as-you-feel meals
• The Garden House –met with Bridgette at the garden to talk about horticulture in the UK.

P.P.S. My courses

• Environmental Perspectives on Development
• Marine Biology and Ecology Field Course (spent one week in Wales at the Dale Fort Field Centre)
• Comparative Animal Physiology and Morphology
• Advanced French
• Intercultural Learning (Online via Purdue)

Daily Bread (lots of it)

           Beginning my 90-day (maximum for my visa) tour around Europe with a week-long stay in Italy, I had become accustomed to "going with the flow." After four weeks of classes in Toulouse, France, at the PURPAN agriculture engineering university, I began to master taking each day at a time. The four weeks of classes were packed with activities: two weekend trips (Cirque du Gavarnie in the Pyrennees mountains; Barcelona), four vineyard tours in two weeks, a trip to a dairy farm, and a tour of Roquefort natural cheese caves and one of their ewe dairies. Compounded with a limited number of nights to explore France’s fourth-largest city, the beautiful canal-striped and pink-bricked Toulouse on the banks of the Garonne river, we managed a pretty busy and somewhat sleepless schedule. By the time I went to live with my host family for the four-week vineyard internship at Château Boujac, just a 50-minute drive north of Toulouse, I had prepared nothing besides packing my bags and verifying the first and last names of the monsieur (M.) and madame (Mme.). 

Gavarnie Falls in the Cirque du Gavarnie in the Pyrenees
Spain lies just behind this ridge

          I arrived at the house with the rest of the family almost finished with lunch. I had known that French cuisine occurs in courses, but having only eaten in the student residence’s kitchen with other non-French students, I did not realize that courses continued at home. The meal had already started, and after basic introductions to the two daughters (I had been informed there would be one, and at a younger age), the other intern, and the madame’s father who lived with them in the house, I spooned some of the simple red cabbage Ala reached to examine the main dish, pheasant with a pasta that I would call linguini, was reassured that it could be reheated if needed, and was interrupted mid-ladle because the cabbage was cold and the pheasant was hot. Dishes come one at a time, hot and cold do not mix on the same plate, and I realized that eating here would be different.

Cafeteria lunch- "crunchy" lamb, cooked veg, salad, and apricot tarte

While living in the residence, students went to a central cafeteria to eat lunch, and I could hardly understand how the diners could eat so much for lunch until I knew what was a typical French breakfast. My daily fare before starting four to five hours of tending the vines or labeling bags of wine consisted of three or four buttered biscuits, store-bought pieces of crunchy toast, and a coffee. When a topping is added, the biscuits are referred to as tartines. Eventually I added some confiture de figues “fig jam” to include some sweetness and more flavor. I started eating more fruit after a while, and put an American twist on breakfast by topping the biscuits  with peanut butter, which I dearly love and missed. Another common breakfast food eaten in the house was a buttered baguette, slightly stale is fine, dipped in hot milk mixed with a powdered chocolate equivalent to Nesquik or Ovaltine. Coffee breaks were taken occasionally in the mornings as well, like on days where the work was tough (bottling slightly over 2,000 bottles on the first day) or on days when work was lighter and only simple labeling or inventory tasks were needed. Cups would be taken out from the coffee machine in the house, or we would use the espresso machine in the storage loft between the second level of the office and the chai,where the tanks held the steadily fermenting wine. The loft was much cozier, and reminded me of a secret clubhouse for grown-ups, equipped with caffeine access and a small dishwasher. 

A few of the 20 or so wine tanks in the chai

Before the principle meals of the day, lunch and dinner, the table is always set. A routine gradually unfolded between the interns, daughters, and I to make each eater’s place. Reused Christmastime champagne bottles served as carafes for water. M. drank his favorite red wine, also given to the grandfather who diluted it with water, and Mme. had her favorite rosé chilled with ice cubes. Sparkling water was made with their carbon dioxide injection appliance in the kitchen, and coffee was prepared if there was none leftover from breakfast. Each seat had a plate, sharp knife, fork, and glass. Each course was shuffled on and off of the table—we ate outside for the first two weeks before the weather turned too hot— and hot plates were set in a central location. Mme. served the main dishes which were too hot to pass around the table. Essential to the meal is the bread, which would be bought almost daily, the crust re-crisped at times with a few minutes in the oven, or stale bread softened with a few seconds in the microwave. The bread board, a checkered grate of wood with the square spaces beneath the cutting service serving to catch crumbs, was brought out and set at the table. The first to slice bread cut enough for each person at the table to start with one or two slices, and “passe-moi du pain, s’il te plait” was the simple phrase to receive another slice when more was needed. 

Tool used to cut off the useless vines, "pampres"
 I did a lot of "épamprer"

The largest differences between lunch and dinner were that one drank coffee after lunch, and generally had a shower before dinner. Lunch began between 12:30pm and 1:30pm (usually heading back to work just before 3pm to finish around 6pm), and dinner around 8pm. Both had the rhythm of an appetizer, main course, salad, cheese, and dessert (entrée, plat, salade, fromage, dessert). Many different dishes can be eaten as any of the courses, but I will list several of the more memorable dishes I experienced.

        Entrée- Canteloupe melon with French dry-cured ham jambon, sliced so thinly it is almost transparent. Olives and pickled lupin beans. Pâté (reminded me of better cold meatloaf). Mini biscuits topped with tapenade. Italian fare of carpaccio or caprese salad. Simple tomato wedge salad with oil, vinegar, and salt. More traditional pickled pig’s feet. Radishes from the garden, sliced long-ways down the middle just enough to sandwich a small pat of butter between the two halves. Bread.

        Plat (almost always a meat with a vegetable)- Veal steaks with cooked petits pois “green peas,” skewered pieces of lamb grilled with vegetables, shrimp skewers, blood sausage and potatoes, braised duck and canned white asparagus reheated, salted, and dipped in oil and vinegar. Bread.

        Salade- Some kind of butterhead or frisee lettuce, torn into large pieces, washed and spun, and served with olive oil, vinegar, and salt. I ate only two or three pieces typically. I wonder if it was for the vinegar taste, or to add fiber for digestion. Maybe some more bread. 

        Fromage- A wide selection of cheese, some soft or hard, from cows or sheep. The smelliest was a sheep’s cheese from the Pyrenees mountains, given to the family as a gift. I could still smell it across the table, and the odor lingered on my fingers until a thorough hand washing. It tasted incredible. Many of the soft cheese had flavors which reminded me of foods I could no longer exactly remember or describe. Many times I thought of honey. Bread.

        Dessert- Many ice-cream bars were eaten. A cup of yogurt, or pudding, a piece of fruit. There were cakes, tartes, and pastries for special occasions or weekends. Extra dishes and dessert spoons or a fork were brought out if needed
Cafe- Coffee with or without sugar. Small mugs filled with the strong liquid and small   spoons came to stir in a cube of sugar. 
(it's a joke that coffee in the US is jus de chausettes "sock juice," 
 like wringing out dirty laundry). 

The bread itself, typically baguettes, remain more or less a long, white loaf with a good crust which would go completely hard within three days, but almost never mold. While writing this report, my cravings for the good stuff have been awakened, and will be coming out of the oven by tomorrow night.

Araignee de mer

Oysters, snails, and the larger sea snails

Beyond the usual meals, special occasions or returns from vacation brought even more things to try. Typical escargot, and larger sea snails, eaten with plenty of garlic butter sauce. Araignée de mer "sea spider” crab. Mussels and oysters, and some kind of scallop cooked with eggs. The egg-seafood combination seemed a bit strange to me, but Mme. replied that it was just the way how her mother cooked the dish. For the eldest daughter’s finishing the French equivalent of high school, there was a “congratulations/going away” party with her future roommates’ families. We were graced with a gorgeous paella made in a proper, party-sized paella pan. Any meal with guests began with aperitifs, before-dinner drinks and snacks. 

The paello dish, filled with the unfinished paella

Soon to meet their fate with the rest of the masterpiece

So why does one eat snails, homemade vanilla ice cream after BBQ ribs, buttered bread dipped in hot milk, peanut butter and grape jelly between two soft pieces of white bread, or drink espresso before leaving the dinner party at 11pm*? During my travels after the program, I asked a farmer why we say à vos souhaits “bless you” after someone else sneezes. He returned the simple answer, “Because we were taught to.” My grandmother taught me to love PB&J every time she handed me one as she picked me up from swim lessons. The French eat snails because they were eaten with family and friends as children—the petits escargots represent the moment with loved ones when the meat was first tried (at least, that's what I'm going with for now). I did not realize how much picking black raspberries in my grandparent’s woods to eat with vanilla ice cream meant to me until I missed their narrow availability in early summer. Traditions can change, things included and excluded, for better or worse, but it does not change that what we learn to love as children become what reminds us of home for the rest of our lives, for those of us fortunate to grow up in loving location long enough to form those attachments. Whatever one did not grow up with is different, potentially exotic and exciting (peanut butter on crepes was a stretch). Sharing a meal, especially our favorites or those that our parents’ used to make, shares culture. It shares a part of ourselves.

If it is the case that distance makes the heart grow fonder, I am looking forward to expanding my nostalgia tolerance. Ending the summer with four days in Iceland was the last cure for wanderlust. And certainly what forms culture, what truly sticks into later life, must include more factors than our childhood. I hope to explore these questions and more when I am back in Europe for a semester-long study abroad Spring 2017.

 Eating a goat cheese and tomato sarrasin (buckwhat flour) 
crepe at a festival in La Rochelle. Santé! 

*attempted to give French, American, French, American, French, examples

Traveling Houseplants

           Before embarking on my summer 2016 adventures, I wondered how to approach doing a travel blog. Could I possibly pick up a little plant friend to carry with me throughout Europe and leave with a friend before heading back to the U.S.? On my first day abroad in Rome, I went to Mercato di Campagna Amica "Friend of the Country Market" (thank you Google Translate) just around the corner from Circo Massimo. The one-Euro potted succulents were incredibly tempting, but most likely a total pain (literally for the cacti) to carry for one more week through Italy, and the rest of the trip. 

         
On a fairly spontaneous day trip to Pisa while traveling between Florence and Genova--by train I would be traveling through Pisa whether or not I stopped to see the tower--I wandered through the campus at University of Pisa while walking through town. I found a destroyed succulent plant. Sad and in pieces, I collected some of the undamaged leaves and planned to hang onto them and see if they could be propagated. I also picked some more Jade plant-like leaves, and I can't remember from where (I think Genova. At this point I "caught" something which yelled at me that this was a good idea. I have to be restrained at garden stores). 

It's amazing how confidently one can "tourist"
when everyone else is doing the same thing

Forgotten in my purse, and impressively undamaged except for one, the leaves lived outside of sunlight for about 4 more days, and then found a home in my window at the residence in Toulouse. At this point I had started the official study abroad with PURPAN, and was keeping the leaved moist enough by dripping water on their toilet paper "bed."

I was lucky to be paired with a culinary wizard of sorts (she made pistachio custard, octopus stew, and a Greek cucumber soup, and made she there was goat cheese and fruit for breakfast and enough rice pudding for dessert) who gave me a leftover jar to transport my little ones to the next stop of the summer, a month at an internship on a vineyard. 

In just two weeks time, the leaves had shrunk significantly in the hot, sunny window sill. I left three or so plants with my host family at Chateau Boujac, just 50 minutes north of Toulouse. Plants were then gifted to a friend I visited in Brussels after the internship was completed. The Belgian propagations were officially reported dead, as the housecats loved them so much they ate them. The final home (but hopefully not "final resting place") of the plants is in Uppsala, Sweden, where they were left with another friend I was fortunate to visit. Yes another friend hosted me while in Milan, but the plants were merely leaves yet then (Hey friends--once again, thank you!)

Just before leaving, the final leaf--this one from Barcelona--was just pushing its new leaves and tiny roots through the callous formed over the wound. Some kind of metamorphosis takes place behind that light brown veil, a magic of sorts. 



If you are interested in propagating your own succulents, the internet is absolutely full of resources. I liked this blog post. Throughout my young life as a houseplant owner, I have learned a lot from the plants I have killed (by far not just a few plants). Don't be afraid, and keep trying. Sooner or later you can find the sweet spots for lighting and watering in your home. 

Produce Perspective (part two)

Durian Experience 

I first saw the infamous durian fruit at market stands in the neighborhood near our hotel in Beijing. Later on, they reappeared in stands in Kunming. Fruit were sold whole, and were usually the rinds were slices open to reveal the the edible fruit inside (I also often wondered how long they would keep them cut and in the open air before they were no longer food safe).

This photo was borrowed from Health Habits (http://healthhabits.ca/2014/06/03/the-best-tasting-fruit-you-have-never-tasted/) 

Finally, when venturing through Guilin’s downtown in search of dinner, I came across a vendor selling individual, pre-cut chunks of the flesh and not entire fruit. I hoped to sit down for the experience of trying the fruit, and caught wafts of its sweet onion scent from the plastic bag which held the to-go box in which my prize resided. Aware of its reputation for smelling and tasting very horrible (it is illegal to bring durians into some public places in parts of Asia), I was ready to taste the fruit. I had milk tea in hand to wash away the taste if I found it displeasing.

Opening the container, the smell was unmistakable, but not immediately revolting. When prodded, the ultra-soft and pale, yellow flesh creamed away from the large, tan seed inside. Plastic spoon transferred a cubic centimeter of meat to my mouth, and it tasted just as delicious as it smelled. I cared for none more, thought the fruit too smelly to bring to my hotel room and too disgusting to share, discarded the remainder, swished my mouth with my beverage of rid of the taste without immediate effects. 

I must have acclimatized to the flavor over time. However, brushing my teeth that evening must have disturbed what bits of the fruit were caught because I remember being revisited with hints of its presence once more in between sweet mint toothpaste. I purchased durian fruit candy while exploring a Chinese Walmart, and have yet to muster the motivation to learn whether or not sugar and a taffy texture improve the experience of durian consumption. I’ll be sure to have something with a stronger flavor that milk tea on hand to wash out the taste if needed. Drinking the liquid form of lime Jello gelatin comes to mind, as it was the rinse of choice as a child whenever I had to take particularly revolting medicine. Nonetheless, if the opportunity to try fresh durian fruit arises, I wholly recommend participating in the experience. And overall, if you’re a fan of the new and amiably unfamiliar, give some new fruits and flavors a try, or find something that reminds you of home but is slightly different. 

Produce Perspective (part one)

Having grown up in Indiana, I have not been exposed to many different kinds of warm-climate fruits besides the few standard varieties which make it to the supermarket. It was a welcome treat to have a familiar flavor come in a different form with greater freshness and easily peeled, as with any unwashed fruit or produce potentially rinsed with unclean water, we avoided eating fruits peel unless first rinsed with bottled water. First pictured is a mango, smaller and softer than the variety sold in the States that I have eaten.

However, the familiar fruit was simply warming me up to try more exotic fare.

The passion fruit’s rind is leathery and difficult to penetrate, like a cross between a thick grapefruit and a pumpkin rind which is just soft enough to be peeled away with one’s fingers. Upon removal, its insides reveal yellow-green jewels of seeds, but, rather than being rock hard, were suspended in a fruity slime pulp with consistency of caviar (or so I was told by my aunt who has experience both passion fruit and fancy fish roe), and easily scooped out with a spoon. The flesh was tart, with flavor like a barely ripe kiwi fruit matched with a the subtle sweetest of a peach, seeds breaking at bite and crunch and not unpleasantly hard. I recognized the flavor from a Welch’s brand “from concentrate” juice concoction of my childhood.

I picked up the passion fruit while heading back to our hotel after exploring downtown Yangshou, a sort of Chinese Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Feeling a little homesick, we found a pizza restaurant near a street featuring international (well, just western-style really) foods, like a beer garden, tapas bar, Texas steakhouse, and English pub. Next time I make Hawaiian pizza, I'll be sure to use fresh pineapple instead of canned. It made all the difference. 

^Hey look, that's me. We went for a bamboo raft (deemed "bamboodala") ride while in Yangshou

Blurry quick pic of the Italian restaurant

Lychee and mangosteen have flavors uniquely their own, and are difficult to describe.

The mangosteen’s rind was leathery like the passion fruit’s, but thicker and pink throughout. The fruit inside broke away from itself like cloves of garlic. The flavor I found indescribable, and the texture was like a firm peach and slightly more fibrous or stringy inside, but the experience much different as I peeled away segments of the fruit rather than biting into it. I gained no great attachment to the fruit, and was satisfied with the one I tried. If I encounter the fruit again I will be glad to try it again, but it was not a favorite of mine.

The yellow residue on the rind I supposed is leftover of some kind of spray, pesticide/fungicide. 

On first glance, a lychee fruit seems scaly and prehistoric. The bumpy exterior, however, easily peels away from the white fruit. The texture of the lychee was like the flesh of a firm grape, barring the “pop” of breaking through a grape’s skin. Inside lies a dark brown seed. 

                                                                          I borrowed this photo from Melissa's/World Variety Produce 

                                                              (http://www.melissas.com/Green Lychee-p/661.htm) 

Our first day in Beijing, and my first day in China, we spent the evening in the neighborhood market near our hotel, where everything one could need was readily accessible: pharmacies, groceries, moped repair, phone accessories, restaurants, and a back-alley pool hall. The small street had numerous produce vendors, each one selling green lychee fruit. I was still too apprehensive to brave the language barrier and purchase anything without the help of a Chinese speaker (five were in the study abroad group). I watched one student with the skill of Mandarin buy lychees, and this other small, globe-shaped red fruit about the size of a cherry. The new exotic fruit turned out to be only cherry tomatoes, and not unlike ones grown in home gardens in the states. According to this student, eating too many lychees at one time can cause a nosebleed. Disregarding the old wives’ tale, I snacked without worry, and enjoy the taste best when hungry or when the fruits are not so ripe.

On our last day in Beijing, I mustered up the courage to approach a vendor and purchase some fruits. The vendor was presumably the shop owner’s daughter, aged around 16 with a short, spunky hairstyle, and with a turn of hip and fingers in a peace sign stating “two two,” she said 二十二 (“èr shí èr,” twenty-two) for the price. Incredibly grateful for learning numbers words before coming on the trip, I gave her the money, earned my lychees, and enjoyed the dragon-skinned fruits of my growing confidence in operating outside of my native tongue.

Unfortunately, during the second week of the trip, I’d forgotten to use what bartering skills I’d picked up along the way. I do not recall by what metric the lychees were being sold, but they were being sold for a higher price per unit than in markets previously since we were in a tourist-dense portion of the Yao village. The attraction were the rice terraces, and their interest brought with them construction of up-scale hotels, trinkets for purchase, Coca-Cola in glass-door refrigerators, and expensive lychees. Not only did I not try to take down the price, I let the saleswoman sell me two units of lychees, rather than only the one which I had wanted.

Rice terraces

Walkway/roads, and construction project

When one lives a village of stairs, pairs of legs make much more sense as transportation than pairs of wheels. 

Two Yao women, mother and daughter, were negotiating with some potential
 buyers over the price of a textile the daughter had embroidered. 

These fruits were riper than the ones before, and were more difficult to peel since the inner membrane was more filled with juices and easier to break. The jewels successfully crossed the border into Hong Kong, but the remainders were unfortunately abandoned as they would not be allowed to travel back with me to the States, and probably wouldn’t keep as long.