6 Nov 2018

Southern Indian Culinary Extravaganza – Kochi, Kerala – October 29…. Til now

by | posted in: Adventure, Cooking Advice, Love, Relationship, Sabbatical | 0

After staying with Reeta Gupta’s family and her home in Varanasi I’ve learned to appreciate what it means to stay at what they call a “homestay”. In a previous writing I mentioned how much I felt welcomed into their home with their gracious hospitality. Well… I found something similar here in Kochi, India. Following my intuition in using AirB&B, messaging the hosts with what I’m looking for and relying on previous guests’ feedback on their listings, I feel like I’ve had pretty good success.  After spending about 5 weeks in Varanasi and Rishikesh, I wanted to make my way south to the beaches and to experience southern Indian cooking.

There is so much to see and experience here in India and in everything I want to learn in life. My typical way of being when I have traveled is to see as much as I can in the limited about of time I have and that wound up not allowing myself to have enough stillness, to meditate, to write and integrate and to just be with what is… because I was always on the move. I can still feel that way of being in me. India is a HUGE country and there is no way in 60 days I’ll be able to see what my mind thinks I “should” be seeing. I’m contending with myself when I make myself rest and be still while my mind pulls me into life’s grand adventure. Love’s extension knows no limits, only my mind thinks so (Right, Sharon?).

I arrive here at Kochi at Midnight and make the hour drive to Fort Kochi and was greeted by Linda and brought to my really clean room which I have learned to appreciate here in India as things aren’t as clean as we are used to in the USA. I didn’t sleep all that well even though I had A/C. The climate is very different that from where I came from. It’s hot, sticky and humid here with powerful thunderstorms almost daily.

I wake up and get my first cooking lesson from Linda who is a passionate woman in what she is doing to create this homestay here in Fort Kochi. Let’s get something straight first… there aren’t kitchens here with all the sparkly stainless-steel ventilation systems and fancy equipment. People mostly cook on a 2-burner stove run on propane gas and refrigeration is a luxury and not a necessity. The food that is being cooked are for the guests who are staying here, the members of the family and for some of the workers that show up.

Linda

Linda is a powerhouse… you know when you stay here who runs the show. She doesn’t stop. From building her own home down the road which is in process, to shopping at the market, to cooking, cleaning the house, caring for her family, her spiritual practices and helping guests find their adventures here in Kerala. She’s well networked in the area with taxi drivers and the local sights to see so people can find their way around and to experience the amazing places here in Kerala. She’s been extending her heart and offerings to me so I can see and experience all the beauty of what Kerala has to offer… and I’ve needed to be intentional to make sure I take the time I need to restore, meditate and write. I’ve been treated so well here and I’m grateful to be welcomed into her home and family.

After being here about a week now… I’m trying to put together a cultural and culinary tour for students at the college. Kerala is one of the spice capitals of the world known for growing turmeric, cardamom, pepper, clove, cinnamon, tamarind, nutmeg, mace, cumin, ginger, curry leaves… Has many pineapple, palm tree, rubber tree and tea plantations. Produces coconut and palm oils. A product called “jaggery” made from sugar cane. A big fishing port and fish farming industry. Kerala makes amazing flower essential oils. Let’s not forget the amazing beauty just a short distance inland from the coast where you can find elephants, tigers, beautiful birds and waterfalls. It really would be a perfect place for a culinary adventure.

I’ve been cooking here every day. Sometimes three meals a day and there sometimes have been multiple items in a single meal. I’ve been documenting things pretty well and transcribing things from my hand-written notebook to electronic format. I want to share with you one (of MANY) of the recipes I’ve loved…

Beef Vindaloo ready to cook.

Beef Vindaloo… you will see in the picture that there was a little too much oil for my taste as it is separating on the plate… and that’s how they wanted it here.

 

 

 

 

Beef Vindaloo, Theeyal, Brown Dal (Cowpea), Gouaka

Vindaloo… Can use beef, chicken, mutton, pork…

Grind together in blender until smooth
2-3T coconut oil
1T vinegar
1.5T ginger
1.5T garlic
2ea green chili
2T chili powder
1T bl pepper
1T mustard seed – crushed a little
1T garam masala

Brown meat in pan (or not)
add 2 chopped onion
curry leaves

Add ground mixture

Cook in pressure cooker until meat is tender
adjust vinegar – maybe 1T more (or not)
should taste a bit tart depending on your taste.

Don’t forget the salt

 

Fish (Barracuda) Vindaloo

Fish Masala Spice
Coat ½ kg fish with…
1T chili powder
½ T coriander powder (for hard fish use a little coriander) optional
1t turmeric
1t black pepper
25-30g Shallot,
25-30g ginger, garlic, green chili, curry leaves –
For a total of… 60g total including shallot

Grind together in blender
1-2T coconut oil
1T vinegar
1T ginger
1T garlic
2ea green chili
1 – 1 ½  chili powder
1t bl pepper
1-2t mustard seed – crushed a little
little water to loosen in blender

  1. Fry fish in pan with hot oil until brown
  2. In separate pan, reduce ground spice mixture until thick
  3. Add fried fish and cook breiefly
  4. Add curry leaves
  5. Salt to taste
Fish Curry on left Vindaloo on right

Coconut Fish Curry

Grind in blender…
50g coconut
scant 1t turmeric
2t chili powder
little water to grind smooth

2-3 pieces Kokum – (dried brindleberry) – hydrated in water – USE THE WATER TOO
1-2 green chili
curry leaf
4-5 small shallot pieces
sm piece ginger

Put all into pot and simmer and reduce until proper consistency…

Add cleaned fish and poach until done
Salt to taste

4 Nov 2018

Rishikesh – Mussoorie – Dehradun – October 23-29

by | posted in: Personal Growth, Relationship, Sabbatical, Spiritual | 0

I realized that I forgot to write about my time in-between the sadhana mandir ashram and my trip down south to Kochi.  To be honest… I’ve been so busy here in Kochi staying at LeLinda homestay cooking and exploring that I needed to slow down and rest the last couple days to transcribe recipes (more on that later) and write some more. I haven’t even done my meditation practice because I haven’t been feeling so great…  ugh! I am on the mend though.

Jwalamukhi Temple of Devi / Shakti in the form of Parvathi in Mussoorie

 

 

  After staying at Sadhana Mandir Ashram I met a new friend “V” who I’ve been communicating with since about June who lives in India. We decided to meet in Rishikesh and hang out there for a day before we head into the foothills of the Himalayas of Mussoorie. We had many conversations about our work as teachers/coaches/facilitators and using that work to help others find the depths of their spirit, passions and personal growth. We really hit it off with lots in common.

 

View of Himalayas from Mussoorie from the telescope – Elephant Peak in the center

 

One of the intentions I had for this travel was to be generous. I know I’m entering a part of the world where the US dollar will go a long way. I offered to pay for food and lodging which was graciously accepted. In turn, I received the ability to travel in their car, have someone with me that spoke Hindi, someone to cook with, and companion to share beautiful times and conversation.

V has dedicated their life to being of service to humankind through working for the United Nations and doing other human potential work. Now V runs her own training workshops around the world through “currency of trust”, “sole to soul”, and “joy of gratitude”. I got to learn a lot and was inspired to continue my own growth as a teacher as I got to participate in a “sole to soul” workshop. Truly a gift to receive.

Downtown Musoorie

During our time together, we got to travel up into the foothills of Himalayas into a small town called Mussoorie, India. Mussoori is about 6500ft in elevation and offers respite from the heat from the nearby low-lying areas.  The end of October was at the end of the season and it wasn’t so crowded and businesses were getting ready to close down for the winter, which I liked. I found there is great diversity in terms of lodging facilities and just because it may cost more doesn’t necessarily mean that it is clean or had the modern amenities. At this point all I can hope for is clean. The place is really beautiful and full of life as people are coming on a little vacation from their lives to this place. It reminds me of Colorado a little bit. We were there for one night and that was plenty of time.

Shiva Temple

On the way down the hill we stopped to see the Shiv Temple and Sahastradhara Sulfur Springs before making our way to Dehradun, the capital of the state of Uttarakhand. The ride up the mountain is all windy and somewhat narrow roads. I haven’t seen many traffic lights here in northern India and not the rules of the road are very different than is USA. It’s not uncommon to find another vehicle heading in the opposite direction in the same lane you are in. That can be kinda scary. I was glad I didn’t have to drive and V is a great defensive driver.

The sulfur springs were really nice. Nothing like I had visioned in my mind or seen on a few pictures on the internet. I had this vision of something elegant and luxurious. That was hardly the case. There were floods in 2013 that hurt the area and it never really came back to its original state. I must say it was nice to be in the water. The locals say its medicinal qualities heal lots of skin conditions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also went to the largest stupa in the world in Clement Town. It is situated in a Buddhist Temple and Mindrolling monestary. We arrived at a time where the student monks were reading/chanting inside the stupa and we got to sit in there and listen to the sound vibrations. The interior of this place is magical with tons of paintings all done by hand that took 50 artists over 3 years to produce. After my 10 days vipassana course, this was fantastic.

 

 

This photo of Tibetan Buddhist Temple is courtesy of TripAdvisor


This is close to what we were hearing


I could post my pics… but this video is pretty cool of the place.

The best part of these several days were the conversations that were had between V and myself. We covered a lot of ground from facilitation techniques to spirituality to gender issues. One of the synchronicities that showed up was around Shri Sai Satcharita (Sai Baba). I just had a conversation with the office manager at Sadhana Mandir Ashram about this man and now having one with V. I don’t even know who Sai Baba is… so I downloaded his book. His teachings concentrate on a moral code of love, forgiveness, helping others, inner peace, and devotion… And then my first day in Kochi… I come across a business owner (Aarun) and had an hour-long conversation about Sai Baba and another Guru with him. OK… I need to see what Sai Baba is all about.

I really appreciated being with V for these days. We made great traveling companions, had a similar body clock, cooked food together, share about our teaching methods, and had great conversations about spirituality and philosophy. And I genuinely appreciated the company and look forward to more time together.

29 Oct 2018

Practice What You Preach – Never Take Things Personally – Everything Happens For Your Benefit

by | posted in: Adventure, Personal Growth, Relationship, Sabbatical, Spiritual | 0

10/29/2018 – I write this on the airplane traveling from Delhi to Kochi, India while 2/3 of the people on the airplane are a group of a “semester study abroad” college students from the US. I guess I needed to write this now. ????

  “Everything happens for your benefit” has been an expression that I’ve been challenged with as soon as it was introduced to me. That expression grew out of “never take anything personally”. “What if what is happening at this moment is perfect” is another one that falls into the same category..

Let me explain a little history first…

I’ve been teaching hospitality management and culinary arts for almost 20 years. During the course of my teaching I realized many years ago after reading Parker Palmer’s book “A Hidden Wholeness – The Journey Towards an Undivided Life” how much of a divided life I was living. I was living in my own self-created misery living this divided life every day I went into the classroom. There were some practical and spiritual things I was doing in my personal life where I was cultivating peace in my interior world and yet I wasn’t bringing some of these tools into my exterior teaching world to my students, so they could potentially be more peaceful and therefore be able to focus on their own growth and learning skills. How can I expect my kitchen classroom environment to be peaceful and a place for learning and personal growth if I’m not bringing this part of myself into the classroom?

I knew I needed to make some changes in my teaching by integrating more of myself into the classroom and I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate let alone successful… a grand experiment is about to take place…

One of my teachers (Diane Hamilton) says, “Modern day is paved by intention” and I happen to believe that is true. I have my own intentions every time a new class starts…

  1. To be the best service to my students as I can be based on THEIR needs and not what I think they need.
  2. To prepare my classroom with the supplies all of my students need to be successful, so they do not have to run around looking for much.
  3. To continue to soften my delivery methods by curbing my sarcasm.

The first thing I needed to do is bring this process into the classroom and have students write down and state their own intentions.

Most of my students have heard some rumors about me and my methodology of teaching. Chef Leavitt does have a reputation of being a tough teacher (to put it politely) and I want to get all of these stories out on the open and have my students write and state their expectations of what they want their kitchen classroom experience to be like and how they want to be supported by their peers and the teacher. It’s only fair they are given the opportunity to do the same. Clearing the decks right from the start.

I do the same thing with my students… stating my own expectations of them. Most of them are cookie cutter expectations like following due dates, doing their homework, showing up on time. One expectations I have of them is to “never take anything personally”. How can we evaluate products that students create, be critical and have students think that this reflects themselves personally? If everything happens for our benefit, then this needs to change. Students products they are cooking are not a reflection of the goodness in their hearts and their good intentions.

I collect these papers and then we review them on day 17 of each 32 day classes. What’s going well… what isn’t going well… and what changes in intentions and expectations are to be made. This was only one of the changes I put into place. Weekly writing reflections were another change….

A lot of us never reflect on our lives until something happens to our health or until we are critically ill, and we think of all the things we didn’t do that we wanted to or the things we resented doing that we need to clean up in our lives. I know this is on the extreme side of reflection and yet I knew I needed to bring it into my classroom. This has been one of the most challenging things to introduce into the classroom because students aren’t really sure what it all means to be reflective on themselves in the classroom environment.

Ok… now that I have given you a bit of history here as I journey towards an undivided life in my teaching world… I also made a realization also how I needed to practice what I preach on this travel journey I am currently on to continue to be less divided in my life.

The first stop on my journey is India… and Varanasi, India nonetheless. People that I’ve spoken with told me Varanasi is India on steroids and that I am starting this trip at one of the most challenging places and that it will get easier from there. Now that I’ve experienced northern India and am currently in transit to the south I think I can write a little bit more about my experience and how it’s changing or affecting me.

After 42 hours of travel from the US, when I got into the taxi after landing in Varanasi and on my way to the home-stay b&b, I first hand experienced several of the things I only read about… public defecation, a death ritual, extreme poverty and pollution, cows causing a traffic jam and a 40 minute ride turn into a 2 hour drive while getting lost and not being able to find the place and the host not answering my calls.

In my mind there were two different tracks running at the same time. The one that was the loudest was fear speaking, “WHAT THE FUCK am I doing and why did I decide to do this?”. The other one that I had access to was more peaceful and quiet and wouldn’t compete with the louder voice… what if everything that is unfolding is perfect and for my benefit… be patient Maurice and take this all in… you are going to find your way. And the latter was the truth… I eventually found my way to where I needed to go. If I told you the fear in me immediately went away after that I would be lying to you and to myself.

I would say it took me about a week to really calm down the fear inside of me. To get over my minds perceived language barrier. To deal with the dust, dirt, pollution and poverty. To make sure I am finding clean water and clean foods to eat. And most importantly, to continue to practice the vision that I have cultivated in seeing all human beings in their divinity with god inside of each of them no matter what their physical condition.

If I am going to continue to be a teacher and ask my students to not take things personally in order to be at peace with themselves and what they are doing in their lives to promote their growth… I better do the same right here right now. And opportunities continued to be presented to me that revealed this concept clearly over and over again. Here’s one…

I loaned a new friend my mobile phone charger and they accidentally took off with it. Holy fuck… the phone has become my lifeline, using maps for guidance, the internet to educate me on the places I’m visiting and a great translation tool. What was I going to do? DUH! Hullo, Maurice… go get another one. You are in a major city with lots of resources (1.3 million people). Once again… the fear snuck in with only 50% charge left on my phone. So, I got into a motorized rickshaw and got my ass into Lanka to get me a new charging cable. I showed the driver what I was looking for and he even stopped at a couple places before we got to Lanka and stayed while I went in and asked of they had what I was looking for. I made sure once I got to Lanka that I walked around and spoke with people on the street, so I could become more at ease with being there. What was this fear and why did I have this fear in me? I wanted to understand, and I knew I didn’t need to understand. All I needed to do was to let go and accept what was happening in the moment as being perfect.

I really want to write about how all this fear has to do with the fear of death and our own mortality which I think most things (if not all) stem from. It wasn’t about my mobile phone charger or the foreign country I was in or the language barrier. I think I’ll leave it at that for now and maybe write about this topic another time.

If I am going to be at peace with myself in all this travel I am doing through multiple foreign countries I better continue to practice cultivating my own peace of mind. Didn’t I just do a 10-day vipassana noble silence meditation course that is all about cultivating peace? Didn’t I just stay at an ashram learning about creating a peaceful life?

I am going to practice staying in a peaceful state inside of myself when others are expressing negative feelings within themselves towards me in the form of criticism or anger or disappointments, so they can be free and at peace as well… isn’t that the true meaning of enlightenment? I am committing to continue to grow as a human/spiritual being/teacher/coach/facilitator/lover/son/brother/neighbor/friend and will practice what I preach and minimize the separation (hierarchy) between myself and others because we are all the same regardless of the country I am living in or the educational environment (home, classroom, workshop, any created sacred space, etc.) I am teaching or learning in.

 

25 Oct 2018

Mystery/Uncertainty

by | posted in: Adventure, Personal Growth, Relationship, Sabbatical | 0

Having been in India for over a month now I have learned so much about this country, the culture and the people. A couple of the things I have learned are how much the people do not think they really lack anything even though they may be poor… and how much they are not affected when things don’t work out as they plan. People here have such a spirit for life that’s so amazing to witness and participate in. This is very different than in the USA where a lot of the culture’s values are based in the outside world… in “stuff” that we can accumulate, our homes, our cars, our money and what the outside world can do to provide us comfort, fulfil our desires and attempt at eliminating suffering.

Living here in India has taught me that I need to be ok even more ok with uncertainty and the mystery of life. Traffic jams can happen anytime because a bunch of cows are immovable in the middle of the road. Mobile phone network infrastructure is inconsistent, and you won’t be able to access your data or get disconnected regularly when talking to someone. Internet connectivity is the same as well. As I was making my way from Sadhana Mandir ashram to Ram Jhula there was a parade that closed the road and I needed to walk a couple kilometers to my destination. As I sit here writing this at a coffee shop the power goes out, which happens regularly.

And people here all seem to be fine with all of this. Going with the flow. Not getting upset. No road rage. It’s pretty awesome!

Of course, we all have our desires for life. To find our soul mates. To have a full bank account. To travel the world, etc.. To live healthy lives and prolong our lives if that’s even possible. Yet there is so much we don’t have control over. When I was 16yrs old my uncle was struck and killed by a Chicago Transit Authority bus. How’s that for life’s uncertainty?

When I was staying at Swami Rama’s ashram he was talking about the unknown. We are born from the unknown and how the mystery of life creates life and we die into the mystery of what happens when and after we die? Humanity has tried to understand this for our entire existence. Uncertainty means that we do not know and yet we spend so much time in the quest for knowledge because knowledge is power because it is certain, and certainty means strength. People in India here devote themselves to the worshiping of idols which are shrouded in mystery and kept apart from those that worship them.

We need to develop a relationship with uncertainty and the mystery of life which is difficult to do. We like to think we have the answers to life and project our own judgments thinking we have the wisdom and knowledge. In some cases that is true as science has proved some things. In most cases it is not and we think we have the knowing of our paths and when there is an obstruction in our path we develop our own misery.

The body is the way we seek for power through our relationships. It’s the ego chosen weapon to get power, and love doesn’t seek for power… love seeks for relationship. How we develop our relationship to the mystery of love and the uncertainty of life will allow us to be at peace with our lives and ultimately be at peace with our mortality.

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