More Than Just Salsa

There has been a strange trend as of late that when I meet people for the first time their first response is, "Hey you're the guy who sells salsa right?" Yes I am the salsa master, well at least according to the business cards that Kim had printed for me. It's not a bad thing to be known for as it is usually followed up with something like, "My room mate bought it and we both loved it so much we were eating it with a spoon." Which is a nice compliment, especially considering I don't even eat it with a spoon....well maybe the pomegranate.

This last weekend though my brand of Enlightened Salsa was no more, I'm rebranding and expanding into a wider array of food. If this first weekend was any indication, then it should be a success as I sold out of almost everything that I cooked up for the markets. The new items expand on the Mexican theme, providing things like; veg. chili, refried beans, and south west style pulled chicken (soon to be chipotle chicken when I get my peppers from Harilo). The larger expansion is into other American styles of cooking offering everything from Italian style pasta sauces to Tennessee style BBQ. This weeks items included BBQ Pulled Pork, Marinara sauce made with roasted red peppers, Mushroom Garlic pasta sauce, Bruschetta (which to be fair is just a slightly altered form of my old Greek salsa), Tzatziki, and Greek style triple strained yogurt.

Really the dairy products may be one of the largest areas I could expand into. The yogurt and tzatziki sold out about half way through the first day at the market. I've already been making my own butter, and butter milk but really haven't had any suitable packaging to sell it in. I'd also like to possibly move onto selling sour cream and possibly flavored cream cheeses if I can get the process down a bit more reliably, as I think those items would sell very well for the breakfast crowd. The problem with dairy is that it really needs refrigeration on site, and coolers here are absurdly expensive. My next order through Harilo will include a collapsible cooler which will make my expansion into dairy products possible.

Harilo also offers some room for further expansion, as you can get quite a few items from the States that aren't available here or items whose quality is vastly superior to what is available locally. Corn products for instance are a real problem here, and there is nothing worth using. Making BBQ mean you really want to have corn bread, and making Mexican dishes you really want corn tortillas. So in my shipment that is on the way I have a 4 pack of 20oz bags of Bob's Red Mill Cornbread mix and in my shipment I'm putting together now I'll have a cast iron tortilla press and a 10 Lb bag of Masa Harina so I can actually make tortillas. Beyond just corn products though I'm also able to purchase certain spices that you can't find here like the previously mentioned chipotle peppers, American style chili powder (which has a very different flavor than the local stuff) , the best BBQ sauce in Sweet Baby Ray's gallon containers (which is cheaper through Harilo than buying inferior quality stuff at Bhat Betini), and kitchen utensils like whisks which are apparently unavailable in Nepal. Who knew? But then what Nepali food would require a whisk to make? Once I have a whisk here I'd like to make home made mayo...possibly some flavored stuff, as my food processors whipping attachment just isn't capable of making it. Sure you can buy low quality brands of mayo here, but it's very expensive compared to the ingredients.

All of this is part of an expansion that I'm planning to do as a way to move into catering and hopefully a restaurant if the stars align for me. I'm putting together a business plan and a mock up menu for the restaurant idea, but as one can imagine getting hard numbers here is a bit tough. The idea though is to have a place/person that people can go to to get authentic North American style food, which is currently completely lacking in this city. I think there is a ton of potential for this, but there are some good sized hurdles too. Getting quality beef cuts in a Hindu country isn't as easy as walking down to the local butcher...I think it's still a crime to kill a cow. Cheeses such as Monterey Jack, Colby, Sharp Cheddars, Provolone, Swiss and Blue Cheese will all have to be imported (by the way I compared prices and it's half the price per unit weight to import through Harilo as it is to buy at Bhat Betini). Fountain drinks aren't the norm here and most people use bottles, but figuring out how to get fountain drink machines running here could mean a good size reduction in price and that would allow for free refills, which is something that is lacking and drives me crazy here. Then there is the whole planning prep in a country that is often lacking electricity and thus consistent access to refrigeration.

It's the difficulty though that I find attractive, because if you can solve the puzzle it's almost sure to turn a profit. It's a design and tuning issue, a combination of balancing numbers, creativity and quality. That kind of thing I've always found attractive, and it's the kind of thing I can throw all my time into and be perfectly happy doing so. So if you happen to be in Kathmandu, I'll be having more than just salsa available in the future. Hopefully soon I'll have something put together for catering, and I'll post all the info here. Until then may we all dream of six different kinds of Buffalo wings.

Faith as Virtue in Buddhism

As someone who is very interested in virtue based ethics I've always found it odd that Buddhism, a philosophy that by everything I have read holds skepticism in high regard, would hold faith as a virtue. Faith is one of those ideals that some people claim is a good thing, but I most often completely fail to see how this is the case. Faith by definition often asks us to hold a belief about a thing on which we have next to no evidence and cannot verify by any quantitative means. Sometimes faith asks us to hold positions that are in direct opposition to each other and ignore the inconsistencies. In short faith often acts as a lazy way to believe what we are told we should and ignore any evidence to the contrary.  On these grounds I usually respond to the concept of faith with a fairly negative view and am highly skeptical of it's value when I see it listed as a human virtue. So while reading some Pali texts recently I was a bit dismissive at first of the attempts to frame faith as a human virtue.

The problem with reading much of these older texts, be they Greek or Buddhist, is that I'm reading English translations. While English is a very diverse language there are several concepts that it often fails to accurately capture or convey. At other times, many of our words carry a certain amount of historical or social baggage that distorts the actual connotation in which the original author was conveying the concept being discussed. This is, in my opinion, what seems to be the case with Buddhist faith. Because really faith isn't the right word, and this slowly became apparent as I read more into the sutras. A much better translation would be trust, not unfounded blind faith, but a trust that is gained through reason and deduction, observation and analysis.

The Long Hard Slog: Jiri to Lukla

A couple weeks ago Donnie and I set out to walk in to Everest from the old starting point of Jiri. It's old because most people fly into Lukla these days and the walk in from Jiri makes the trek longer by almost a week for most people, and that is if you plan on flying out. The views over this portion of the trail can be nice, but it pales in comparison to what you see in the upper Khumbu, the valley that is home to Lhotse, Nuptse, Ama Dablam and Everest. On top of this, instead of heading up a large valley this route is hard slog that takes you up and over several passes as you cut across four different valleys before reaching the Khumbu valley itself. In fact you gain and lose so much elevation that by the time you reach base camp you have climbed more than the equivalent elevation as if you had gone to the very top of Everest from sea level, almost 30,000'. Still despite the difficulties and the lack of breath taking snow covered peaks walking in from Jiri is in my opinion worth it and offers some things you just don't get on the rest of the trek.

Packing for a Tea House Trek in the Himalaya

 Recently a reader asked me how I possibly got my pack down to 8.5 KG (just under 20 pounds) including water and I realized that I have never really gone over what I pack when I go trekking in the Himalaya. That said I'll take this opportunity to correct that oversight and go over some basic things I do and bring to keep my pack weight down on the trail. Of course there is some variation on what you will bring depending on the season, if you need cold weather gear, or if you actually need a sleeping bag because of the scarcity of blankets due to peek season. What follows are mostly general rules of thumb. I am not one of these ultra light people who spend more time on forums discussing the advantages of drilling holes in your toothbrush to reduce its weight than actual trekking, I try to strike a decent balance between comfort and getting my pack down to a manageable weight that has minimal effect on slowing me down on the trail.

Rule # 1- pack end of the day clothes in a separate watertight container like a Sea to Summit bag. This is the biggest luxury I afford myself on the trek, I always pack one set of clothes that I never actually wear while trekking and they never mix with the sweaty dirty clothes that fill the rest of my bag. I find I can trek through any conditions as long as I know at the end of the day I have something I can change in to and feel like I'm something resembling a civilized human being. This set of clothes includes one pair of comfortable socks, lightweight synthetic pants like wind pants or imitation zip offs, a tee shirt, light weight fleece, and a pair of boxers.

Everest, Moving, Cooking

So I got back from my trip to Everest Base Camp a few days ago but haven't had a chance to post on here. While I was gone we moved to a new apartment a couple blocks away from where we had been and the internet isn't quite hooked up yet. We have been using these nifty USB connection things put out by Ncell, but they get used up by the amount of data you download, so I've been rather sparing with it. Should have our internet connection back up and working today though, I think.

So the trip up to Everest went really well and I'll have photos and some more detailed posts soon. We walked from Jiri to Lukla in four days, had some pizza at Khumbu lodge, and then made our way to base camp after a rest day in Namche and a few shorter acclimatization days on the way up the track. The upside of this trip was crystal clear skies, the clearest weather I've had up that way. The downside was that it was quite cold, and on the day we planned on heading toward the Cho La we got hit with a decent snow storm that kept us from crossing the pass and even made the high trail to Phortse questionable so instead we just headed back to Kathmandu. Still, I got some of my best photos of Ama Dablam, Everest, Lhotse, Nuptse and others that I've ever been able to get. Donnie even got to drink his Everest Beer at Everest Base Camp.

While we were gone, as I mentioned, Kim got us moved into a new apartment. This ones a two bed, two bath, with a full living room dining room and a nice kitchen with a pantry. In an attempt to move to something that comes closer to resembling the first world we even bought a washing machine, so no more laundry by hand. This place is on another dead end street so it's still quiet for Kathmandu, which is a big bonus. Marble floors, moldings on the ceiling, and a bedroom almost as big as our last apartment has me feeling like we moved into a palace, but the electricity black outs sure enough remind you that we are indeed still in Kathmandu. Still we've been able to run the projector off the inverter and have been watching the first few seasons of Dexter at night while munching on whatever food I've been experimenting with. Hellfire wings a couple nights ago, various pasta sauces the night before and a blue cheese based yogurt dressing with a huge salad last night.

Which brings me to the final part of this update, new food and cooking. I'm planning on expanding what I sell at the market by a significant amount. The plan is to include the south west style pulled chicken, pulled pork, at least two different pasta sauces and a marinara sauce if I can get my hands on any red bell pepper, along with a hot sauce, some Greek style yogurt dip, and maybe a few other items. I'll also expand to pesto, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, and possibly a Buffalo pulled chicken with blue cheese once I get some supplies from the states. The aim of all of this is to not only produce a bit more income, but to gage interest in a few items as I possibly start working toward putting a restaurant together. The big question mark is of course the up front financial investment, let alone figuring out how to get fresh beef in a Hindu country, how to keep prep refrigerated in a country that is without power more often than it has power, where to get things like fryolators, fountain drink machines and the gas that goes with them as well as syrup, and how you could motivate a staff of south Asians to run an American style restaurant. Starting the process of looking into all of it anyway, and in the meantime putting together some new recipes. 

Everest- Going the Long Way

On Sunday morning Donnie and I will be heading to Ratna Bus Park and taking the bus to Jiri or Shivalaya, and from there walking all the way to Everest Base Camp, Gokyo and then flying out of Lukla. In a previous post I mentioned that in my opinion this is the best single trek you can do in Nepal. Although this will be my third trip into the region, I have not done the part prior to Lukla since 2002 and I'm very interested to see how it's different. The last time I was in this region the insurgency had really just started to heat back up after the royal massacre the summer before. I'm interested to see what's happened now that the insurgency is over.

Another opportunity will be to get up and over the Cho La pass. My last trip had me going up and over this pass, but as fate would have it, we were unable to get across the Ngozumpa Glacier. Even after heading south it turned out due to the excessive amount of glacial melt that the bridges to the village of Nha were up forcing us to take the southern route through Phortse and then over the high trail to Pengboche. This time we will be heading up to Everest Base Camp and Kala Patar first then heading south and heading over the Cho La pass from the east, a route that by all accounts is the better crossing anyway.

We will on the return be flying out of Lukla again, which is always an adventure. as cited numerous times on this blog, that steep graded runway ending essentially with a very steep drop is an interesting airport to fly out of. Really it's more frightening flying into that airport, so I guess we're dodging the really sketchy part. Still the morning flights coincide with the thermal ups which can cause you stomach to hang around in the same vicinity of your throat for the duration of the flight spent in the Khumbu valley.

So again for what I'm guessing will be roughly two and a half weeks this blog will be quiet. I'm sure on my return I'll have plenty of stories to share and more than a few posts to write.

The Revolution Doesn't End When Figureheads Come Down

There was a good article in Republica today about some Maoist leaders catching hell from supporters who had lost family members during the struggle of the insurgency (Maoist Leaders Speechless Before Martyr's Kin). Now I'm not sympathetic to the Maoist cause, but I am sympathetic to people who fought for what they thought would be a better world and had their trust betrayed by people who used their sacrifices to attain power and then discarded them. Politics in Nepal is not a game of appeasing the electorate, as next to no tax base comes from the people, it's a game of appeasing foreign interests and aid agencies that funnel tremendous amounts of money through various state and just as often non-state but politically connected entities. The result has been that it is very lucrative to maintain the status quo, of not making any political progress and certainly no social progress, or none at a meaningful level beyond what can be advertised as feel good programs for the various concerned entities.

Cynicism aside there are many people, and to some extent even foreign governments, acting with the best of intentions here, but the consequences of their presence and the general lack of any sense of civic virtue among Nepali politicos has created the political doldrums that Nepal now finds itself in. Public apathy, a political sector where corruption is not the exception but the rule, and a government machine that is not dependent on its citizens for funding has created a Nepal very different than the ones most had envisioned when the king was ousted in the mass protests of 2006. One where the words "load shedding" are used to cover up the fact that the government has mandated blackouts for most of the day in the dry season and waking hours with power are rare. It's a Nepal where politicians who achieve high office can't list a single thing they've done for their country, only rattle off ways in which they manipulated internal power struggles to achieve their new position. The revolution, by the real people of Nepal, not just the Maoists, lost its fire after the King a figurehead of the country came down, but then it was back to the usual. It's a lesson that the revolution isn't about just removing the figurehead, you've got to clean house and adjust policy to reality.

America- Realm of the Devas

Most of the time I'm rather dismissive of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology, most of it seems as absurd to me as when Christian theologians mapped out the heavens, hell and assigned names and  hierarchies to the inhabitants of those places. One always wonders where such insight and knowledge came from, what special divination do these folks have access to that the rest of us don't? So it is then that I have never really taken the whole Buddhist wheel of life too seriously; it talks of the world of Devas who are always warring with demi-gods, of a realm of hungry ghosts, hell, and it populates these realms with the same kind of fantastic beings. While I was in Bhutan though something our guide said made me take a second look at the diagram. 

A Buddhist Wheel of Life

Bryan Adams Can't Save Nepal

So there is a Bryan Adams concert in Nepal tonight. One would think that a concert by a man whose last song you can recall on the radio happened back when you were in middle school wouldn't be that big a deal. This case might gain further relevance when you consider that the song in question wasn't even that good and was attached to a very bad film featuring a very bad Kevin Costner playing Robin Hood. But I suppose if you happen to be a Bryan Adams fan it's your lucky day if you're in Nepal- good for you.

The problem is that the way this concert is being billed you'd think Kurt Cobain rose from the grave and Nirvana was having a reunion concert in Nepal. He's being touted as a legend of rock as if the Rolling Stones or someone with- you know immense talent that didn't sing cheesy soft rock love songs that people stopped listening to almost twenty years ago. This event has been watched with more enthusiasm and worry for national pride than the writing of the national constitution (I only wish this were hyperbole). People have deemed the day of his arrival D-Day, and the Nepali press has followed every development closely.

Newscaster: "This isn't the first bad thing to come out of Canada. Let us not forget about Bryan Adams!"

Canadian PM: "Now, now, the Canadian government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions!"

-South Park

As the above quote indicates, to some extent, Bryan Adams was a bit of a joke back home even when the South Park movie came out back in 1999. That was 12 years ago. I'm not really writing this to rip on Bryan Adams, again if you like him or even just want to have fun at a concert than have at it. What is sad is listening to people in the press who equate this concert to economic growth or increased tourism. Look your country isn't going to head out of the gutter because Bryan Adams plays a concert there. Hell it doesn't improve even if someone who really was in demand played in Nepal, economic development isn't stimulated through music concerts.

The sadder comment I've heard is that this concert is the unofficial highlight to Nepal Tourism Year 2011. Look, to be honest, if Bryan Adams was playing at the next town over in most of the west, very few people would bother to drive over to see him, thus it seems a little crazy to suspect that people would come to Kathmandu in order to see him. It would be embarrassing for most people, even if it was true due to a questionable taste in music, to admit out loud that they traveled all the way to Nepal to see Bryan Adams. In short this is not an event for tourists, or one that will increase tourism. If people in Nepal love this guy and are excited to see him, then that's great, but it is also the limit of the impact. 

On another level I get it that Nepal wants to show that it can host an internationally known artist, can provide a venue where he can preform, and provide a high level experience without messing everything up. Yes even in the land of load shedding no electricity we can still hold a major concert event. Logistics, not being south Asia's strong point, has been a nightmare for India as of recent- see the Cricket World Cup or the even more botched Commonwealth Games. Everyone knows its difficult as hell to organize and do anything here, so props to Nepal for pulling this together, I do understand the difficulty. That said, nobody from outside of Asia that doesn't understand the inherent difficulties of doing anything here is going to be impressed. Putting on a concert for a "star" like Bryan Adams is something that even small towns or sea side parks do on a regular basis back home. 

In the end Bryan Adams won't save Nepal- and he sure as hell won't boost Nepal Tourism Year. The amount of national pride and interest that was focussed on this would be better focussed on other national endeavors. Maybe completing hydro power dams so that Kathmandu isn't the only capitol city on the planet that is regularly without power for half the day, or completing a constitution and creating an actual representative government. But maybe that's just me.

Surpassing Expectations- Why Bhutan Shouldn't Be Missed

The only thing I knew about Bhutan prior to going there is that it had within its borders the very famous Taktsang Monastery, better known as Tiger's Nest. Very few people go to Bhutan, on account of the fact that it is rather hard to get to (it's a small country in the eastern Himalaya) and that going there as a foreigner is very restricted and compared to neighboring countries quite expensive. Last year only 27,000 dollar or euro spending tourists arrived in Bhutan, compare that to Nepal which is also a small Himalayan country that received over half a million tourists and you begin to understand how few people visit this nation. This small nation stands apart from its neighbors from its unique form of Buddhism to the fact that they measure development in terms of GNH (gross national happiness) as opposed to the normal GNP (gross national product). It is also a very small country in population having just over half a million people, a very small number when you consider both its neighbors count billions and even Nepal has around twenty million. These peculiarities and its inaccessibility to most of the outside world have led many people to declare Bhutan as the last Shangri La.

Bhutan is a little different from everywhere else.