Reading notes: "seasons by rice"

There is something magical about staying in one place long enough to watch the seasons change, getting that chance to notice the gradual changes as they happen, day by day.  Since I read it almost a month ago, I have been wanted to share this particularly beautiful account of watching the rice fields around Gaselo  a village in Wangduephodrang come to life over the course of a year. It comes from  Brick in Bhutan a blog by an expat teacher. The post includes some wonderful pictures of the rice fields in different season as well as some very evocative descriptions of the changes. Here is one of my favorite paragraphs just to give you a taste:

" Very soon, what appears to be random paddies turn a dense almost emerald green, vivid in the evening light against the brown winter backdrop of the empty fields. As it turns out these were densely planted with rice seeds and seedlings sprout very close together forming a thick carpet of a new green growth."   

Reading notes: Beer in Switzerland

I just wrote about beer from Southeast Asia when this interesting article on the beer industry in Switzerland popped up in Feedly.  For a brief couple of months in my early twenties when I was between ideas about "what" or " who" I wanted to be when I grew up, I worked as a waitress in a small town restaurant in Switzerland where I served a lot of beer and learnt that names for the different size glasses that the beer could be ordered in. At the time you could get a glass of beer, a glass of red wine or a glass of coke or a cup of coffee for the same price. Considering very little coke got ordered during my days as a small-town waitress I wasn't surprised to learn that Switzerland has the highest concentration of breweries per capita. Below is the great little graphic from the article ( which has several other very cute beer graphics-- worth checking out)  to demonstrate this fact, I suppose it is somewhat surprising that the Swiss beat the Germans on this.

However as the article also points out Swiss beer drinkers are not very adventurous when it come to what they drink, they tend to stick with what they know. In fact that restaurant I worked at only served one kind of beer.  The article is basically bemoaning the lack of craft beer in Switzerland but it doesn't really sound like the Swiss feel like they are missing out. Perhaps this is why its so telling that the main point of comparison for the article is the US which tends to be so novelty hungry.

Reading Notes: The Matsutake Mushroom Festival

My job keeps me tied down to Thimphu for large chunks of the year ( thought admittedly for now I get a lovely long winter break) so I am always grateful to be able to read about other people's travels. All year I have followed this blog by an Australian teacher living in Bumthang with her family. She recently wrote about traveling eastward to attend the Matsutake Mushroom Festival in Ura.  Bhutanese collect Matsutake or Sangay Shamu ( Buddha Mushroom) to sell on the lucrative Japanese market where this particular mushroom apparently heralds seasonal change.  Her post on the festival is delightfully rambling ( its a little like listening to a work friend talk about their weekend over Monday morning coffee) so not all of the post is focused on mushrooms but  its worth a look for the absolutely wonderful photos of the festival in general and the mushrooms in particular.

Low tech apple harvesting

It apple season in our garden and unfortunately the birds are getting to the applies faster then us. Below is a sample of the damage.

My father ( a bit of a bird watcher) has been known to  comment that he wouldn't mind sharing the apples if the birds actually finished  an apple instead of leaving half of them uneaten! 

Sadly we have no tree climbers living in the house at the moment so apple harvesting has not been as smooth a process. This year we low-tech-ing  it. 

Allow me to demonstrate: 

Brother on a ladder using a long stick to shake the branches .....

...plus sister and father below holding a sheet to catch falling apples ....

 .....equal limited success. Far too many apples miss the sheet and land up bruised and smashed 

Still to have a couple of these tasty beauties ... it's worth it!

Happy Blessed Rainy Day

Today is Blessed Rainy Day in Bhutan or Thure, a nationally observed holiday that marks the end of the monsoon (or rainy season) and the beginning of the fall. For farmer ( which according to most statistic would describe most Bhutanese) it means the growing season is behind them and the harvest is not very far away.

On Thure all natural water  is considered holy and everyone is encouraged to take an outdoor bath in order to cleanse themselves of their accumulated bad karma. Some people will leave a bucket out to gather rain overnight and then bathe with it in the morning. 

Its also an important family holiday and when I taught in the east of Bhutan, where the holiday is considered particularly important, many of my students made a huge effort to travel home for the day.  As it is with many family holidays sharing a meal is an important part of the celebration. Many families will start the day with a bowl or two or three of rice porridge or Thup is particularly important 

My sister's inlaws ( who are easterns) invited us to join them for  breakfast which of course turned into a regular feast. 

As with many visits in Bhutan  the meal started off with sweet milk tea and biscuits  ....

 quickly followed by steaming bowls of thup...

I ate three bowl full of the rice porridge  before realizing that another rice dish, shamdey ( a mixture of rice, butter, meat, eggs and sometimes a little spring onion) was waiting to be served!

This time with a little suja or butter tea....

At the end of the meal my sister's father-in-law insisted that my brother, Sonny, join him in celebrating the day with a glass or ara or home brewed alcohol. 

Another reason to raise a glass? This post mark an anniversary for this blog! One year ago one of my very first posts was about Blessed Rain Day and the thub we ate!

Reading Notes: Asian Beers

A former intern recently wrote to "blame" me for her fondness for South-east Asia. I encouraged her to apply for a scholarship to spend a summer in Laos and she has wanted to return to that part of the world ever since. She recently took up a teaching position in Vietnam and has been blogging about her adventure there including this recent post about all the different Asian beers she has tried since she arrived.  As a firm believer that context and atmosphere plays a huge part in how we enjoy food and drink  her final piece of advice is spot on, she writes " If you decide to try one of these beers back in the states and think its horrible, don't blame me. Book a flight to Southeast Asia and grab a Beerlao in Laos, I promise it will taste a whole lot better."  

As well as inspiring a little jealousy and wanderlust, the post definitely also encourages me to consider writing about Bhutanese beers in the near future!

Reading notes: NPR 's dumpling week

All week the NPR food blog, The Salt, has been sending out great dumpling stories, many of which include fabulous recipes that I don't have the time to try.  Perhaps the most interesting post was one in which they attempted to document all the many, many,  many kinds of dumplings, what they are calling their "Global Dumpling List." And yes, momos are on the list but more interesting is their list of " disputable dumplings" that includes everything from empanadas to samosas. Why disputable? Because NPR put together a panel of "Dumpling Experts"  to help them decided what should actually be considered a dumpling!