"Bakespace Takes a Bite out of the Myspace Market"






Myspace's overwhelming success has inspired countless spin-offs, some more successful than others. I've recently become a member of Bakespace, a website blending the concept of myspace networking with the passion of cooks and bakers, whether professional or amateur. With over 5300 members, you can create a page and profile of your own, sharing recipes from around the world for dishes like cashew crusted chicken, sauteed spinach with lemon, or unique twists on the simple classic, hot chocolate.
Check it out at:

www.bakespace.com

And since it is Halloween, I've included an excerpt from Babette's (founder of Bakespace) latest Bakespace newsletter detailing some of the diverse traditions for celebrating Halloween around the world.

HALLOWEEN AROUND THE WORLD

Halloween is one of the world's oldest holidays, dating back to pagan times. In many countries food plays a central role in how the holiday is celebrated. Here's a sample of how the world is celebrating tonight:

* Ireland
In Ireland, a traditional food eaten on Halloween is barnbrack, a kind of fruitcake. A muslin-wrapped treat is baked inside the cake that, it is said, can foretell the eater's future. If a ring is found, it means that the person will soon be wed; a piece of straw means that a prosperous year is on its way.

* Austria
In Austria, some people will leave bread, water and a lamp on the table before going to bed on Halloween night. It was once believed that these items would welcome the dead souls back to earth.

* China
In China, the Halloween festival is known as Teng Chieh. Food and water are placed in front of photographs of family members who have departed.

* Mexico, Latin America and Spain
Among Spanish-speaking nations, Halloween is known as "El Dia de los Muertos" -- the day of the dead – and is celebrated over a three-day period that begins the evening of October 31. A feast is held that includes loaves of bread called "Bread of the Dead." Inside the loaves are sugar skeletons or other items with a death motif. This gift is more prized if the skull or skeleton is embossed with one’s own name.

"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all."
Helen Keller

I've become addicted to Youtube and, in an effort to keep up with the digital age, I've created a new podcast section for my writing and photography website. I've just posted a short slideshow of my adventures (with Mama Chihuahua) travelling through North Vietnam as well as a short music video of the rock n'roll band, "King Bee," that I play with. The Vietnam slideshow is one which I've presented at the "What Color Is Your Jockstrap?" travel anthology booksignings in California, Indiana, and Arizona over this past summer.

If you view the "King Bee" video on Youtube, please take the time to rate it. The higher the rating we receive, the higher its status will be in the Youtube search engine. Check the videos out on my...

Podcast Page

I've also organized my travel blog links on this site so you can browse previous blogs by country instead of by date. You can find them alphabetically by country in the margin to the right.

Thanks again and stay tuned for more website developments this month.

Haven't been posting much this summer through the whirlwind of traveling to Arizona, Indiana, and a recent sailing trip out to the Channel Islands for some R&R. The Vietnam Slideshow and "Jockstrap" Booksigning parties in Flagstaff, AZ and Santa Barbara, CA were a smashing success and I'm having lots of fun creating multi-media presentations with the added elegance of my new Epson multi-media projector.
Mama Chihuahua and I are planning our next trip over the winter to either North India or Morocco. In the meantime, I'll be hunkered down working on several magazine stories of the culinary persuasion. I'll be updating here once a month this fall.
Several of my Vietnam photos are posted now on my website's

Vietnam Page.

Some great news this week. For the past five years, I've wanted to get a travel story into a Travelers Tales anthology (you can find a ton of them in the narrative travel section at local bookstores) and now, after opening my veins up at the keyboard, staying up late into the wee hours of the morning, and enduring years of writers' conferences, critiques, and revisions...the literary genie is delivering!

The book is hot off the press... My story "Mama Chihuahua: World's Fiercest Travel Partner," is featured in the newest humor travel anthology "What Color Is Your Jockstrap?" along with stories by Susan Orlean (author of "The Orchid Thief") and Tim Cahill (award-winning travel writer and founding editor of "Outside Magazine"). This is an excellent and hilarious collection of stories by some heavy-hitters in American Travel writing....Rolf Potts, Elliott Hester, Doug Lansky, as well as several other literary wanderlusts.

With eager anticipation, I have several booksigning events arranged over the summer:

-Book signing on the 4th of July in Cataract Falls, Indiana. (Actually, this one will be small but mighty...a crew of my father and stepmother's friends will be gathering...)

-Book signing and a slideshow (on North Vietnam) on Thursday, July 13th at Red's Cafe in Santa Barbara, CA from 7-11 p.m.

-Book signing, party, and Vietnam slideshow with the Thurston Girls (Mama Chihuahua and yours truly) in Flagstaff, Arizona on July 22nd.

-Book signing with Tim Cahill and editor Jen Leo at Book Passage Bookstore in Corte Madera, CA on August 16th.

Lots of good stuff coming together this year!
If you've read the book, please give us a good plug on Amazon.com. Jen Leo, the folks at T Tales, myself, and all of the other contributors would love to see this book continue with great success. The other books in this series have all been best-sellers...keeping our fingers crossed with sweet anticipation!

For more updates on other booksigning event and juicy info about the contributors, check out Jen Leo's sexy site:

What Color Is Your Jockstrap

Thanks always for all of your support!

Photos of North Vietnam and North Thailand will be posted here and on the photo page of my main site by July 1st.
In the meantime, if you'd like to receive my occasional travel blog emails and literary updates, please click on

subscribe

.

Vietnam/Thailand Part IV: "The Fifteen Funniest Moments Traveling With Mama Chihuahua"
June 1, 2006
Bangkok, Thailand



In an effort to condense the raucous and most unexpected moments of our trip, here's a list of our top fifteen funniest moments:
*Warning: Obscenities, Catholic references, and sexual allusions are plentiful in the following text.

1) Most back-handed compliment: Our Thai B&B hostess tells mother one afternoon, "My auntie wants to tell you that she thinks you must have been really beautiful...when you were young. And I told her that you probably look much better when you dress up."

2) Most sacrilegious t-shirt on an Asian: A young Thai woman wearing a lime green t-shirt and a drawing of the Virgin Mary with a finger held to her lips as if to "Shhh." The text above her reads..."Mary Was Only A Virgin." The text below her..."If You Don't Count Anal." I don't think the woman had a clue what the English words meant.

3) Most OCD moment for Rachel: Watching the gloveless Thai salon woman scraping under Mom's fingernails until they bled with metal instruments she had just used on a previous customer.

4) Worst possible occupation: Women stand downstream of elephants bathing in the river and collect their warm, green dung in giant plastic baskets as it floats by. (I'll complain about a story deadline again. At least for a week or so.)

5) Funniest use of English by an Asian: The young H'mong children in the mountains of Vietnam swarming me as they thrust tiny little hands filled with charms and embroidered cloths...."BUY ME! BUY ME! BUY ME!"

6) Angriest Mama Chihuahua moment: Nice Vietnamese lady who shares tea with us along the lake in Hanoi transforms immediately into angry, Vietnamese Hulk Lady who gets in Mom's face (BIG MISTAKE), demands that Mama Chihuahua buy her postcards and her fans, and then says, "Me have NO MONEY! Must buy!" (BIGGEST MISTAKE.)
I pull Mama Chihuahua away from the crazy (and stupid) woman before she lets loose. She's pissed about it for at least ten blocks. Meaningful Mother-Daughter Conversation follows:

Mama: "You know what really pissed me off is when she said she doesn't have any money. I wanted to punch her."

Rachel (as diplomatically as possible--even though I hated the lady, too): "Well, compared to us, she doesn't."

Mama: "Well, too bad. She can't have mine."

7) Dumbest Thurston Tourist Moment: When we arrive in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on a Saturday, we can't figure out why the Sunday Market has already started and we spend the rest of the night questioning every Thai person we meet about the logic of having a Sunday market start on a Saturday. We secretly make fun of them for the rest of the night...what kind of idiotic people have a Sunday Market on a Saturday night? It's 11:30 p.m. when we catch sight of a calendar and realize that it IS Sunday.

8) Grossest Food Moment: Watching a man carry an upside down skinned carcass of a dog...deep-fried chicken feet...and gelatinized intestines.

9) Greatest # of old, pot-bellied, balding, white guys seen with pubescent Thai girls in one night of walking through Chiang Rait: 18+.

10) Most Naive Mama Chihuahua Moment: After passing the MILLIONTH! "LadyBoy" (the transvestites and transexual men who are cultural accepted and ubiquitous throughout the cities in Thailand) in a night market, Mom stops suddenly, pivots back towards an obvious example of a LadyBoy, her eyes the size of half dollars, and says with total shock: "Rachel, I think that WOMAN WAS A MAN. "
No?! You don't say.

11) Most Embarrassing Moment for Rachel: Discovering during dinner that my backside was completely slathered in baby elephant schmegma that had crusted over on all my black clothes...and it had been there for six hours of shopping, walking past temples, through stores, markets, and public transportation. I can only imagine what people thought it was.

12) Most Egregious Fashion Faux Pas: On a rainy day in the mountains of North Vietnam, Mama Chihuahua struts through town wearing...old-school velcro purple teva sandals WITH green and grey striped wool socks PULLED UP to just below her knees...navy blue crop pants, a lime green shirt tucked beneath a bright orange fleece (mine), a deep purple raincoat, a red bandana tied around her neck, and a hot pink umbrella to ward off the rain and stares.
And no, this wasn't a dare.
We went shopping together (to find her clothes that would match) shortly thereafter.

13) Most dreaded Lonely Planet phrase read on trip (after returning from two-day trek through the mud and water buffalo sh%t wearing sandals): "Beware of hiking through rural areas and ALWAYS wear covered shoes. Rural Vietnam provides ample opportunities to contract hookworm and multiple parasites."

14) Funniest linguistic faux pas: Vietnamese has six tones, which means that an incorrect pronunciation can shift the meaning of a word completely. After incorrectly calling our guide ("Khang") a "cave" instead of "prosperous" which is what his name really means when said properly, he spends an entire dinner trying to correct our mispronunciations to worse effect, this time, our pronunciation is more blunderous and we end the night calling him a "cavernous prostitute."
He gives up shortly thereafter.

15) Funniest Guided Tour: When guide picks us up at B&B to take us to elephant camp, the truck doesn't start so he has to jump start the truck. When we go to the gas station, he keeps the truck running while he fills up on gas. Mom and I hop out of back of truck and walk a hundred feet away while he fills up. During drive into mountains, we catch a glimpse of him reading the brochure directions to the elephant farm. On our return trip, it begins to rain and we find that all the windows in the back of the truck are broken so we ride with our umbrellas deployed INSIDE of the truck.
Good deal.

Here's hoping you all have adventures of your own!

Rach and Mama Chihuahua

Vietnam/Thailand Part III: Mango Sticky Rice and Baby Elephant Slobber

"Waking up as a "shopaholic" is much like it is for alcoholics and sexaholics, you don't really know the damage you've done until you check the bags at the foot of your bed...and your wallet."
RST, the "Morning After" in Chiang Mai

May 30, 2006
Chiang Mai, Thailand
10:00 p.m.

A warm breeze drifts in carrying the sweet smell of rain....
After doing lots of cultural shit the past couple of days and sweating like Ukrainians in the tropics, Mom and I spent this gloriously precious day in an air-conditioned mall shopping for clothes that I think will look better than the ones she brought, eating hot pretzels with fake cheese dip, and watching the X-Men III for two bucks.

Thailand, I've decided, is like the Hawaii of Southeast Asia. It's hot, it's humid, it's comfortable, economically strong, and it's filled with all sorts of tropical fruits and prostitution. Okay then, it's mostly like Hawaii.

For the first day or two, we stuffed ourselves with bowls of sticky rice, freshly cut ripe mango in coconut milk with toasted yellow rice, juicy chicken satay with peanut sauce, and pad thai made with flat rice noodles and sprinkled with chili pepper, lime juice, and crushed peanuts. On the street, each of these dishes costs around a buck.

We've had absolutely no agenda here which is exactly why this part of our trip has been so good. I've taken a break from all the photos and the drive to see all the tourist sites. We're nearly over-shopped, over-"watted" ("wat" means "temple" in Thai) out, and over-saturated with cultural stuff. I've put my camera away for a day or two just to relax and enjoy each moment we have together before our trip comes to an end. Mom and I have come to amuse ourselves with the most urbane things...making fun of each other's fashion choices (mostly I make fun of hers) or of our tireless drive to buy every possible piece of silk in plain view (mostly, that would be me). We've even invented our own language and jokes. After all our travels together, it's scary how closely alike we think. Often, we only have to say a word to the other and we both start cracking up.

Our newest game is to count the number of balding, pot-bellied, old white guys we see traipsing around town with their peri-pubescent Thai "girlfriends," a long-term version of prostitution. We lost count last night after the eighteenth "couple" we spotted before we realized we were walking through the Red Light District of Chiang Mai and past a bunch of prosititutes and "lady-boys."

Aside from our intense cultural experience at the mall shopping this afternoon and all the meals of sticky rice and mangos, our most magical moment was visiting an elephant "camp" yesterday. We mostly expected it to be a circus-like event in which the elephants are living in these awful cramped quarters, being fed scraps, and paraded about in tutus (okay, really big tutus), and mocked in classic and bastardly anthropomorphic style
.
We were shocked at what a lovely place it was...we stood just feet away from a rushing river where the elephants bathed themselves (the "mahouts" or trainer/drivers) scrubbing behind their ears) and watched a show in which the elephants played soccer (blocking the ball at the goal post from another elephant), threw darts at water balloons, played harmonicas, and most amazingly, PAINTED on easels. (and yes, this is "anthromorphizing" but the entire place and the tone were respectful, more so than any other I have experienced and sadly, this is a way that elephants can be "protected" as their natural habitat continues to be wiped out throughout Asia).

The painting was fascinating. The "mahout" dipped the brush in different colors and the elephants began to paint, gingerly holding the paint brushes with their trunks and running the brush along the "canvas." We thought the art would just be scribble marks but were astounded when we saw one elephant painting a bonzai tree and another painting a vivid purple inflorescence of wisteria blooms perfectly proportioned and more graceful and evocative than anything I've painted in my life (not that I'm Georgia O'Keefe but you know what I mean).

Afterwards, the elephants came up to us and "bowed" to us all. One young elephant wrapped its trunk around me like a giant, prickly-haired but affectionate boa constrictor. Another young elephant placed a hat on my head, took it off, and put it back on again with three taps.

When the show was over, Mom and I walked freely through the camp past the village where the "mahouts" live with their families and on to a grassy field where the nursery resides. Aside from two young German girls, no other tourists had ventured this far and we had the place to ourselves.
In the last enclosure (really only a wooden fence about four feet tall) was a mother elephant and a two-month old newborn elephant that stood only about 3.5 feet tall. We couldn't believe our luck.

The baby elephant wandered about between its mother's legs and would then amble over to check us out...sniffing my toes and tickling them with its trunk. It was the most divine sensation to be rubbing the ears of this baby elephant as it tickled my ankles...to feel its warmth and curiosity and to be so close! We couldn't believe our fortune. Mom and I had a very special moment with elephants in South Nepal many years ago and I continue to be amazed by their energy, intelligence, and sentience whenever I'm around them. When we left, I felt this ecstatic high and blissful happiness to have been around them...

Last night as we ate chicken skewers with peanut sauce at the night market, Mom stopped eating and looked at me funny. "Don't get upset or anything but I think you should know..." she pointed to the back of my black shirt and skirt which had been crusted over in elephant slobber for the whole afternoon and evening. It looked as if I'd just rolled in a bunch of oatmeal and the clumps had dried and crusted over in big globs of spit and mucilaginous stuff.

"That's so damn cool," I thought. "I'm covered in baby elephant slobber."

I cleaned most of it off right away but, just for sentimental sake, I did leave a little bit of it on my backpack.

Hope you're all living your dreams...off to a Thai cooking course in the next day and then headed home this weekend...

my love to you all-

Namaste,
Rachel



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