Immersethrough.com
engaging with the world
welcome to immersethrough.com
grilling tomatoes for nam prik in Chiang Mai, at the market
photo: NAOMI DUGUID
TECH NOTES:
You may find that the website doesn't work as smoothly as it should. Please write to let me know about any glitches and I'll see what we can do about them.
ISLAND IMMERSION!!
A new project has taken shape, an immerse course on Grand Manan Island. I'm very pleased to be working with a good friend, Lianne, to bring people to Grand Manan. We'll cook together, go dulsing, head out on a boat to see the island from the sea, and more. Details are on the Grand Manan page, and soon photos too.
The dates are September 16 to 19, 2010.
AND A REMINDER:
Please visit my blog:
I'm posting new comments weekly, or almost weekly, often with a recipe note as well as other ideas about the world.
ploughing flooded paddy field in central Bali
photo: NAOMI DUGUID
who am I?
This site originated while I, Naomi Duguid, was still working with Jeffrey Alford; we've written six cookbooks together, books that engage with culture through food and photographs. But now we are working separately and are happy to be doing so. It's an interesting and in many ways liberating change.
The initial immersethrough idea, an immersion food and culture experience based in Chiang Mai, flowered in February 2009. A second, smaller group, came in January 2010 and we had a fabulous time.
In 2011 I'd like to aim for two sessions, with a maximum of seven people each, the first from January 23 to 29 and the second from January 30 to February 4, 2011. Again I'll be working with Thai friends in Chiang Mai and in the country north of there. Please go to the Chiang Mai page for more details.
(You can find out more about my past work with Jeffrey, about our cookbooks and other projects, at our original website, beautifully designed several generations ago, in web terms, by Lynne Heller. You'll find it at the head of the list of links, on the food page.) Or just go straight to it: hotsoursaltysweet.com
Immersethrough.com is an idea. It's an idea about a place where people can share with others their passions, research, questions, and observations on the particular subjects within which they find themselves IMMERSED.
A good friend, Jon, is passionate about barns, about their social history as well as their construction, and has written books about them, built them, restored them. He's now becoming an expert in the post and beam temples and houses of northern Thailand.. and from there I'm sure he'll move into other parts of Southeast Asia.
Another friend, Astrid, works with endangered species, and is at the moment living in Spain and working with Iberian lynx, helping to breed and raise them in captivity so that they can be reintroduced into their natural habitat.
Steppe magazine, launched by two imaginative and know-no-limits young women in England who are passionate about Central Asia, immerses its readers in Central Asian culture and landscape.
All this is immersion...
Immersethrough.com is all about the concept of immersion, of immersing in something so entirely, that every once in a while we must "come up for air."
For me, immersion is almost always associated with travel, with crossing borders and crossing cultures, and with making myself vulnerable.
Morning market noodle stand in the Dai town of Menghan, southern Yunnan
photo: NAOMI DUGUID
And because I have spent the last twenty years writing cookbooks for a living, the prism through which I most often immerse myself is food: flatbreads made by semi-nomadic pastoralists, the Tajik, in the Pamir mountains; aquaculture among the Dai people in the southernmost tip of China's Yunnan province; the spring run of Arctic char fished by the Inuit in Ungava Bay; the rice-growing traditions of the Dioula of Senegal's Casamance region...
Please check out plans for the next immersethrough food "culinary tours" set for winter 2011 in Chiang Mai ... The first is from January 23 to January 29 2011 and the second from January 30 to February 4 2011 (please just go to the chiang mai page for details about immersethrough). And have a look at naomi's place, photography, and food.
I'm also embarking on an immerse project closer to home. Please go to the newest page on this site Grand Manan Island, for details about a Thursday to Sunday immerse session this September on beautiful Grand Manan. The dates are September 16 to 19, 2010.
Most important of all, start communicating, by writing your comments, or passing on news of cross-connections to other immersers! Write to: immersethrough@gmail.com
You can also find me at my blog:
I post about once a week...
