Morimoto in Philly

morimoto

At long last, I am posting my pics and comments about a fabulous dinner I had this summer at Iron Chef star Morimoto's self-titled restaurant in downtown Philadelphia. I had the pleasure of eating with two old pals (Amy and Elizabeth) and one new friend (Michelle) -- all attendees of the Council of Writing Program Administrators' annual conference.

When we walked in the place, we were greeted by big, black art (above) and ultra hip people. This is the most hip place I visited in Philly. Admittedly, I was at a conference of English Professors, so my hip-o-meter was pretty low all week!

After the appropriate amount of deliberating for a group of English professors, we decided to order the prix fixe dinner, which consisted of six courses and dessert chosen by the chef -- a bold decision, financially and culinarily!

first course: yellowfin tuna cake with crunchy shallots in dashi sauce
This was so yummy! We ruled it our favorite right away (after all, it was the only thing we had eaten thus far!). I did not get the smart idea to photograph the food until this delicious morsel was already making its way through my digestive system. It was like a crab cake only better. We all loved the juxtaposition of the chewy and the crunchy.

second course: tile fish seared in hot olive oil with mint basil and citurs soy sauce

As I hopped out of the cab in front of Morimoto, my ex-chef husband (not ex-husband, just ex-chef) urged me to "try something new." Whenever we got to a Japanese restaurant, I always order the same safe thing: California roll. I never go for the raw fish like most sushi, sashimi, and seared tile fish.

Well, I branched out and loved it! This was seared perfectly, not the rubbery sensation I was expecting. The citrus sauce was also a delight -- I got over my raw-phobia with this course and was ready to dig into more treats from the land of the rising sun.


third course: skipjack tuna salad with micro greens and chive oil and soy-onion vinaigrette with sea salt
The salad course was just like the rest of the dishes so far: perfection! We were all feeling intoxicated by the mix of flavors in our mouths, and we were not even drinking sake! Our public higher education salaries did not allow for food and drink, so in this case, we chose food.


palate cleanser: apple blackberry balsamic soda:
We were split on this. I, for one, was scared to drink something called "balsamic soda," but I loved it, blackberry residue at the bottom of the glass and all. Some of my braver dining companions, however, did not like it. Here's a pic, nevertheless:

My new pal Michelle from Auburn with exotic Japanese soda

fourth course: alaskan halibut with black bean paste and shallots steamed twice in sake and sealed with hot oil
Again, loved by all. This was our only taste of sake all evening! You see Amy eating it with the blue fiberglass wall behind her. These walls slowly morphed from red to pink to a purplish violet. At first it was unnerving, then it became mesmerizing, and finally it seemed normal. I was surprised when I got home to my own kitchen not to be dining next to a color-changing wall.

When we saw the sizes of the plates (small), we thought we might not get full from this meal, despite the wallet-emptying price. But, we were feeling satisfied at this point in the evening, and there was more to come . . .

fifth course: peking duck in madras curry sauce and a side of foie gras on a peach
I love peaches but I never got to eat mine . . . . . . because it was smothered in foie gras. Yes, I have had foie gras before, and, yes, I knew I did not care for it, but, yes, I gave it a go because I had challenged myself to become Adventurous Eating Woman (da-dat-da!) for the evening. Sorry, couldn't finish it. And, despite my (crooked) smile in the picture, I did not care for the curry sauce either.

sixth course: THE SUSHI!!!!
We were served five selections on a traditional wooden sushi board, some ginger, and real wasabi. Not that stuff at most restaurants (even the fancy ones) that is made from a powder mix, but the real deal. We agreed on the excellence of the wasabi, but had varying opinions about the sushi. . . You see here: tuna, baby herring, red snapper, hamachi, and squid. The tuna was the overwhelming favorite, and the squid brought up the rear. I was really jazzed about the red snapper; I was predisposed to like it, though, because I know it is my father's and my son's favorite fish (obligatory random TMI comment -- this is a blog, after all).

dessert: tea-soaked peach cake with raspberry dark chocolate sauce, white chocolate/buttermilk mousse, and a molasses crisp
Once again, I could not get to the peach -- it was smothered in things I do not like. However, everyone else loved this dessert. It was light, yet sweet; small enough not to stuff us, but generous enough to make us feel like we had dessert. For those of you like me who dislike white chocolate and mousse and molasses, pass your plate to your tablemates. They'll love it, mine did!

I'll wrap up my review/reminiscence with one last photo of Elizabeth and Michelle in front of the lighting for the table (other than the iridescence chameleon walls). As you can see, Morimoto has re-purposed old dildos by turning them into small table lamps. What a decor choice -- he can be on the Food Network and HGTV!!!!

Bumped into two of my favorite students on campus today: Leticia and Mayra (Incidentally, these are the two fine young women who introduced me to Lady Gaga!).

They took English 1B with me -- Leticia took 1A with me, too. Neither of them are English majors - neither of them are in love with reading and writing, but we all connected that one semester. I love magical classes like that, when the students simply sign up to fulfill a GE requirement and become invested in the community of learners. That's what makes the college experience. It's tough to come by here at San Jose State, what with all of the budget cuts and canceled classes a student fee hikes. That kind of connection--an almost loving connection to a class--is much more common at small private colleges where students are privileged to attend. I was lucky enough to get such an undergraduate experience, and I overflow with joy when I hit upon a class in large, underfunded, urban university that happens to function like the small-liberal-arts-college seminar.

Yea for students!

Reviewing with my students

(Image from evan.prodromou.name/Journal/15_Germinal_CCXV)

Coming soon to this blog: a review of writing in a wiki, specifically the public (free) wiki option from pbworks.

I'm in the process of composing (more on this term later) two wikis:

1. A wiki for the Writing Program of San Jose State University
2. A wiki for Writing Partners (a community literacy service-learning pedagogy) developed by Write to Succeed, Inc., of which I am a member

The students who are in English 105 with me (see my blog roll)
are also writing reviews of writing technologies; I decided to do the assignment along with them.

(Image from www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/plains.html)

My Students are Smarter than Your Students, Neener, Neener, Neener!

No pics, no links, just a quick gush about the students in English 105:

This is the time in the semester I love the most: when the students in my class start blogging! I think I learn more about them from their blogs than I do even from their autobiographical essays. What I love about their blogs--and what I can't perceive from their autobiographical essays--is how they choose to represent themselves publicly. An essay for a teacher is one thing, a blog with a potential public audience (and a conformed audience of peers) is another.

I learn about them from the color schemes they chose, from the pictures they post, and from the directions they (feel at liberty to) take with their blogs.

It's also a nice signal to me -- how much do they trust me? How much do they believe that I am really looking for an expression of ideas? I want them all to jump right in and type up all of the intellectual thoughts swirling in their heads, but I know they are not all ready for that yet. What is so great to see (as the teacher of the class) is that a few of them do feel ready to jump into the blogosphere with a full swan dive!

Women of Color and Research

For the English 105 class I am teaching, we are reading Cindy Selfe and Gail Hawisher's Literate Lives.

The authors invited all of the human subjects they researched for the book to serve as co-authors with them. Each chapter lists Gail's name and Cindy's name as well as the people whose stories are told in the chapter. They talk glowingly (and convincingly, I might add) in the introduction about their desire to include the "objects" of their study as speaking subjects. Almost all of the people in the study accepted. Only a group of African-American women (three different generations of the same family) did not accept the invitation. This never struck me the first time I read the book (or the second time, actually). But, now, having completed some recent human subjects-based research myself, this stuck out to me prominently. I studied a class I taught last year, a Professional Writing class in which we used service learning as a means of fostering/teaching political engagement. And a similar thing happened to me with the women of color in my class/research study.

Per standard protocol, I presented my research to my students and asked them to voluntarily participate. I had 23 students. Nine of them declined to participate. That kind of hurt my feelings and dashed my spirits. Why not, I wondered? Of course, I could not ethically ask them that (I was their teacher as well, after all). What struck me was that most of the women of color declined to participate.

Why? Is this a group (and I mean that loosely because I am referring to Black women as well as Far East Asian women) who has been so abused by systems and institutions, that they are wary? Is this a group who feels like they have no time (Are they working multiple jobs as well as going to school? Are they raising kids?)? Or is it me? That percentage of students not participating is much higher than I have had in any other qualitative research project I have done (as the teacher or not).

Aside from the self-centered emotional reaction that I had, I need to wonder how this abdication of women of color will impact my study. Will the dearth of information from these women make my data incomplete?

Another reason just occurred to me: several of the students who declined to participate also chose the least overly political group – so maybe they were already planning to have an apolitical experience and figured their reaction to service-learning and political engagement were going to be close to nil. Hmmm . . .that is an angle that I had not thought of.

I take solace in the 12 fine participants that I had . . .

Why Do I Do It?

Among other things, this blog is set up to track my research progress as I take on several human subjects research projects. I am working on analyzing data about service learning and political engagement that I collected as a Faculty Fellow for California Campus Compact and the Carnegie Foundation. I'm also continually working on fashioning research projects and collecting data on Writing Partners. Those two endeavors may be on the back burner in Spring 2010, though, because I have been asked to conduct a study of the impact of class caps being lowered to 20 students in all writing classes at San Jose State -- thanks to the wisdom of our Provost.

Why do I want to blog instead of keep a private journal? I am not sure. I have a few ideas: when I blog, I take time with my writing, revise it, try to make it good; when I journal, I just slap any old thoughts down there. So, for one, it may help me write sentences that are much closer to being ready to be included in an article or book. So that is the first reason: Efficiency.

The Efficiency reason is just a reality of my life: I have to find ways to work smarter not harder in order to fit in all that I want to do (parenthood, scholarship, teaching, service, citizenship, fun and friendship).

Another reason to do it is altruistic: my thoughts and musings and descriptions of my process might help someone else – a grad student or junior faculty member like me who is trying the make her way through qualitative research processes. This assumes that I will have an audience for this blog, which is unlikely. I could try to do things that would help me get an audience, like get more active in Kairosnews and link my blog there. OR I could just let it fly out there in the blogosphere and see what happens – that is sort of the Promise/Threat/Thrill of a potential but unknown audience.

A third reason to do it is far less altruistic and perhaps a bit linked to the first reason: so that I get credit for these ideas I am having. I used to swear that I’d never be “like that,” protecting my ideas so that only I can publish them. I still do not really believe in that model, but here is the problem. I am slow: I get ideas in my head long before I get them out there to publish, and I want some record that I have been thinking things for a while and not stealing them from someone who gets published sooner than me. It is less so that people do not steal from me and more so that I prove (to whom?) that I am not stealing.

Musings on Music

At my undergraduate alma mater Bethany College, I wrote my senior project on “The Poetry of Rock.” I have since shifted my attention to studying composition and rhetoric and writing studies. But every once in a while, I like to look back at song lyrics and have a go at them!

In David Bowie’s song “Young American” the word “American” is at the center of the song, yet “American” is othered in the song. Instead of an American being the unuttered norm, the American is named and in effect othered, pointed out as one among many. What I mean is that the song (a song) could also be about a Young Brit or a Young Chinese or a Young Iranian. Often “an American” is the assumed universal protagonist of the pop tune – at least in my perception due to my socialization as a (former : ) young American!

I tended to imagine an American person at the center of every love song I crooned to on the radio. I never imagined a person from Ghana or Germany as I played videos in my mind (before the age of actual videos – yes I am *that* far from being a *young* American). David Bowie points out the plurality of possible protagonists by naming an “American” in a way that Bruce Springsteen does not in his Born in the USA (even thought that cannot be read as a blindly patriotic song); Bowie can only sing about a young American is as outsider, whereas Springsteen can sing about the USA as an American himself. As such, they position “the American” differently (all of this brings to mind now-dim memories of Henry James’s _The American_ . . . ).

In my undergraduate days (my Young American days) this would be a great first draft for a paper explicating song lyrics, but now my scholarship has a different focus so I can use my blog as a sort of “essay germ” depository. This is fun!