Naomi Duguid's blog

Immersethrough.com

engaging with the world

naomi's place

A Kenyah woman just returned from harvest carrying a huge basket of rice, in February, after the end of rainy season in Sarawak, on the island of Borneo.

She is sitting on a bench on the verandah of the longhouse where she lives. Now that the dam on the Rejang River has been built, despite years of opposition, this place, which is well upstream of Belaga, lies under water.

harvesting vegetables in Casamance, west of Ziguinchor, in southern Senegal, at a locally run woman's co-op

Where there's water, the soil in Senegal's Casamance region yields rice (the Dioula, who are the majority here, have an age-old rice growing tradition), as well as millet, and a wide variety of vegetables, including dia-kotu, known as African eggplant.

FACES

a chomo, a Tibetan nun, I met at the nunnery in Labrang, in China's Gansu, in 1985.

BOOKS, READINGS

It occurred to me that I should keep a list of books here, just add to it when a name occurred to me, from past reading, or when I discover a book that speaks to me in some special way.

This column is narrow, and so the book list may end up moving to take space in the writing block to the right. For now it's here.

SPRING 2009:

AWARDS!!!!

BEYOND THE GREAT WALL won its category (International) at both the IACP and the James Beard Awards.

And Jennifer McLagan's book FAT won single subject both places, as well as being named Beard BOOK OF THE YEAR.

Do go out and buy Ann Mendelson's new book about MILK.

She is very special, and after seeing her again last weekend in NYC I am reminded of just how special. You'll be taken places you never dreamed of by her book!

Jennifer McLagan's cookbook FAT, engages with the myths and facts around animal fats. The the arguments and discussion about animal fats should get people rethinking their prejudices. Her latest book ODD BITS is due out later this year. Grab it!

And a wonderful classic cookbook that anyone interested in food will want to own is Dorothy Hartley's FOOD IN ENGLAND, first published in 1954 and reissued in soft cover about ten years ago. It has wonderful line-drawing by the author to illustrate details and is full of regionally specific English foods, a reminder that food there was generally wonderful until the end of the nineteenth century. Now once again England is a place of good food and fresh markets. The hundred year hiatus in between is what most people still think of when the phrase "English food" is mentioned.

Elisabeth Luard's book about European peasant cookery, called THE OLD WORLD KITCHEN is a must have: great writing, wonderfully interesting recipes. Another classic.

And to make a trio of English writers, there's Patience Grey's HONEY FROM A WEED, detailing with love and care the rural food tradtions of places she lived in the Mediterranean: Puglia, Tuscany, Catalonia, the Island of Naxos. Wonderful.

Leaving food for a moment, do engage with Karen Connelly's remarkable novel THE LIZARD CAGE, which won the Whitbread New Writer's award last year in Britain. Set in Burma, it tells a huge story by telling the intimate story of one man.

You might also enjoy her memoir, much less harrowing than the Lizard Cage, called BURMESE LESSONS. She writes so beautifully!

I'll be writing here from time to time, and posting some of my photographs too. But I'll be doing more writing and posting, blog-style, at my new blog. I realised it would be a lot easier to post at a blog than if I had to enter the website and publish this page freshly every time I had a quick thought, such as another book to recommend, or whatever. The blog is: naomiduguid.blogspot.com. I'm posting once a week, or sometimes more often. I'm enjoying doing it, talking about a recent trip, or a recent encounter, some of them food related, others very much not. I'm also tweeting, a recent thing for me. It's fun. I'm @naomiduguid on Twitter.

And as I head into new projects, I'm trying to remember to engage with each day with the same alert positive energy we see in the face and style of this Dong woman, whom I met as we were both walking to a rural market about an hour from the beautiful village of Zhaoxing, in eastern Guizhou.

Happy immersing!

- naomi

SUMMER 2011 -

And in anticipation of September: I am speaking at the Crandall Puvblic Library in Glens Falls New York on September 29. They have a very interesting cultural studies series there. I'm looking forward to being there. My subject? Rice and rice cultures around the world, with lots of photos to transport us as we engage with that deep relationship that rice-growing rice-eating people have with the world's most widely-eaten grain.

And a mid-August update: Now the first round of editing is done on the Burma book. I'm almost done sorting photos, and also near the end of writing the Burma Over Time history section, as well as the annotated Bibliography. The Glossary still needs to be finished. Next step is early September, when I'll get the copy-edits back and will need to srt through them. Each step brings a finished book closer. YES! Pub date is not set, but will be in September 2012.

The Kneading Conference was spectacular (see my blog for some more details). I urge you to think about going next year. It's in Skowhegan Maine in late July. For those on the west coast there will be a Kneading Conference - West, the first ever, this September near Seattle. I've been invited to speak at that conference next year, September 13-15. Can't wait.

A few months ago I wrote here: "I AM NOW DOWN TO THE WIRE: The deadline for my cookbook about Burma is June of this year. Yikes!"

But now I'm past that, with the deadline met (I sent the manuscript off a few days early, in fact!). Ann Bramson my wonderful editor has called with those first important editing suggestions, and that's what I'm now immersed in: editing. I've also been sorting my images, digital images, of Burma. It's a big job, for I hadn't done anything but copy them onto the computer and back them up. They were, as I wrote elsewhere recently, like a large uncombed head of tangled hair, needing sorting. I've been helped enormously by a friend N who has given me guidance with Lightroom and filed the images (by date).

Now I am going through them, deleting the rejects and adding stars and notes to those that are candidates for publication or printing. It's a big job, but fun, too. I get to relive the moments when I originally took the photos, to time-travel back to Burma.

The Burma book now has a title (all these things are tentative of course, but I'm attached to this one): RIVERS OF FLAVOR: Recipes and Travel Tales from Burma

Apart from book-work, this summer I'm also going to the fifth annual Kneading conference. It's in Skowhegan Maine, not far from the Quebec border (I'm driving there from Toronto) in late July. Here's the link, in case you'd like to read more and think about coming. It should be interesting and fun, and full of bread talk! On the Saturday there's the Maine Bread Fair. Dawnthebaker is coming too. I can't wait, for the fun of the excursion, the learning, and the chance to see good friends like Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Corby Cummer, and others.

And in the longer term: I head to Chiang Mai in the fall, in early November. Now that I've made so many trips into Burma (six in the last two years plus), I find I want to keep going back, to see friends and to learn more about the rich culture, food and more.

I'll also be getting some things in place for the next immersethrough sessions, scheduled for the last week in January 2012 (January 29 to February 4; and February 5 to February 11, 2012). For more on the immersethrough culinary tours in 2012, please go to the chiang mai page.