Cooking with Compassion

Some may know that, while at MIT, I ran our version of "The Moth"-- a time for students to share a personal story with their peers. In December 2016, I shared my own story.

I've often been asked why I love to cook so much. For me, cooking is not just a means to an end, but has given me a tool for living my life fully.

Conversations with my Grandfather: In Defense of Facebook

One of my favorite things to do, especially as my grandparents get older, is to learn more about them as people, not just as my grandparents. To understand their emotions and feelings on particular topics, their likes, dislikes, and passions. Social media, particularly Facebook, has been getting a bad rap recently, and a lot of the criticisms are definitely valid. There are certainly issues that need to be addressed around how news and posts are shared and from where, and how we self-select into echo chambers. However, I remain passionate about social media as a tool for connecting people and bringing our world together. Besides the evidence I've seen in my previous digital marketer life of these connections, I will always be grateful that Facebook revolutionized my relationship with my 93 year old grandfather.

First of all, my grandfather is a boss on paper. He’s 93, and does 2 hours of yoga every morning, plays 18 holes of golf 3-4 times a week (no golf cart for him), and still sits on several boards of companies that require regular overnight business trips across the country. His handshake will leave your hand throbbing for a good minute, and he doesn’t speak much, but when he does he’s thoughtful and authoritative in equal measure.

I love and respect my grandfather and am immensely proud to be his granddaughter. But, until a few years ago, our weekly phone conversations fell pretty flat. Past the usual “how are you, what are you doing,” we didn’t have that much to say to each other. There was no real insight into how each of us viewed the world and how our experiences shaped our perspectives.

Then, a couple of years ago, we gave him an iPad. He was immediately totally tech-savvy, reading all his newspapers and magazines online and even streaming video. He also downloaded Facebook and friended all his grandchildren and grand nieces and nephews. Now, our our phone and rare-in person conversations are full of our thoughts on current events, news articles, and my activities of the week (all faithfully documented online, like a true millennial). We also regularly comment on each others' Facebook posts, creating a true, ongoing dialogue. I give credit to Facebook for giving me insight into my grandfather and allowing us to share stories with each other. For bringing us together virtually, though we are 7,000 miles apart. 

The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell

Originally published on EverydayeBook.com

With The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Mark Kurlansky once again stuns with his unique talent for so comprehensively capturing the larger history of time and place through the history of one very small object. In this case, Kurlansky takes us through the history of New York City by zooming in on the rich history of New York’s oyster. As Kurlansky says so perfectly, “the history of New York oysters is a history of New York itself—its wealth, its strength, its excitement, its greed, its thoughtlessness, its destructiveness, its blindness and…its filth.” Kurlansky begins with the Lenape and Munsey Native Americans’ consumption patterns and with the history of the oyster in general. We’re then taken to the early Dutch settlements of New York, where Manhattan was no more than a village in the southernmost tip of the island—Harlem was a village 3 hours away.  This was a time when the beauty of the Hudson River and it’s surroundings were extolled by both the Dutch and vistors. Oysters were no exception—friends and family back in Europe received “rhapsodic descriptions” of huge, delectable oysters. The expansion of New York and the expansion of oyster consumption continued to be inextricably linked, each feeding the other and weaving into the lore and culture of New York. The first restaurants in New York all started as oyster houses—we learn particularly of Delmonico’s rise to fame and introduction of the French style of raw oysters to New Yorkers. As the city grows and becomes more of the mass consumption hub it is today, oyster recipes get more lavish and mass quantities of oysters are eaten in a single sitting. Kurlansky particularly spends time on the Gilded Age, which was the height of New York’s grand living, and the height of oyster consumption. Through his tracking of oysters, we get a richly developed picture of the culture and politics of New York in the 19th century.

Of course, all this consumption comes with a price. Kurlansky gets somber towards the end of the book, detailing the horrifying pollution that slowly killed off oysters in the New York area and made the once vibrant estuary a poisonous pool of gunk. He cites the Clean Water Act of 1972 and does note that the Hudson around NYC is slowly filling with wildlife again—even some oyster beds are returning, though no one would recommend eating them. Still, The Big Oyster is as much a cautionary tale as a fun romp through the history of New York. Kurlansky impresses the importance of preserving the wonderful bounty the early Dutch extolled, and the price we now pay for violating these lands for so long. But The Big Oyster never scolds—entertaining and chock full of information, it simply opens your eyes to the beauty and history on your dinner plate, and the importance of keeping that history alive. Some food for thought, next time we sit down to eat.