Summer Travels, Part 1: What does traveling mean for me?
Plus, a vegan cookie recipe!
For Another Time: Food, Care, and Grieving
Hello, it’s been a while. I know I don’t need to justify myself, but I have been feeling guilty! My self-mandated responsibility to write about food, care, and grieving for y’all has not been lost in the ether. I will be putting this post in the parking lot. I hope you like what I had to write about this time instead. I feel immense gratitude for your patience as I craft a more routine and loving writing practice for myself, and at the same time, I do not get paid enough here yet to be able to prioritize it. So, if you can, I hope you’ll subscribe to a paid plan and help me pay the bills. Love you. Thanks for being here.
What Traveling Means for Me
What I really feel like writing about in this post is my fascination with other people’s fascination with how I travel. I want to explore and talk about it a little more so I can understand it. Hopefully, if you ever think to yourself – “I want to travel with V!!!” – this either meaningfully cements or deters your decision. Or maybe it helps you think about what it means for you. Either way, thanks for humoring me.
I feel very strongly about how I intend to move around the world when I travel.
I accept, every time, that I am a green, wide-eyed, stranger that is stepping foot into a place that other people call home. Yes, even if you are camping in a “remote” location, that is someone else’s home and you should treat it as such.
I am also pretty strongly in opposition of the idea that I vacation or visit another place to recharge, reset, or come back energized to become more productive in whatever configuration of work I find myself in. That’s just not how it works. As a person with multiple illnesses, the idea of going somewhere else to catch up on sleep or rest is ridiculous. With unfamiliar spaces comes new beds, the fear that I forgot one of my supplements/meds at home, and the oh-too-familiar pains of sitting too long, or new allergens in the air, or walking too long and triggering achy/stiff muscles. I don’t travel to rest. It’s not an option for me, and I don’t need that. If I wanted to rest, I’d sit at home. Instead, I travel to learn. I travel to connect with people and cultures I know that I know nothing about in hopes that it will make me a more competent human being. I travel to fill my cup. And that doesn’t mean I don’t find respite and leisure along the way.
My Guiding Principles of Travel to a New Place
If I had to boil down a few key, guiding principles for how I travel, I think they’d be:
Be present. No hustling to move from place-to-place-to-place with a packed itinerary. In the pursuit of chasing what the next thing is, I fear I lose sight of what is right in front of me. When I first get to place, I like to sit there and just observe for a little while. It’s amazing what I’ve taken in from just doing that.
Do your research, mind the intersection of identities you hold, and question your own biases. Take the time to read up on the history, demographics, and power dynamics between people that exist in the places you are going. How do you take up space? How do you intend to show up knowing what you know? What colonial/biased worldviews do you hold, and how can you challenge those views in a new place? What things do you want to learn, and unlearn?
Eat well, find pleasure, and be conscious of where you spend your money. Maybe you don’t know this yet, but I find that tourist-forward establishments are often places where the ugly parts of capitalism/exploitation tends to thrive. I often think of the times I’ve traveled to systematically exploited countries in Southeast Asia or Latin America and see Americans (of all races) feasting on the local culture as if they are royalty. The locals, who are treated as lesser people/a means to an end, are often servicing them and making literal pennies to feed their families. But you don’t have to travel that far to see that. We do that here in the United States. People are pumping out attractions and food for minimum wage while tourists come in droves, only seeing the plates magically appear on the table, or the art, magically draped onto the walls. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but if we can’t get rid of evil, I do believe in practicing harm reduction under these conditions.
Listen to the locals. This one seems obvious. But if you happen to get in the good graces of a local human being, maybe they will talk to you. And I don’t mean siphon them for information on where the cool place to listen to live music is, or where you can see where “real people” actually kick it – I mean listen to them. They might tell you about what they feed their chickens, or what kind of art they’d like to create, or what neighborhood they’re from, or what drew them to the place you’re in if they’re not originally from there. I count myself pretty lucky to find myself in these situations often, and, yes, I do get that magical food spot recommendation often.
I hope this doesn’t seem like a lot. And, of course, I am not perfect. But maybe you’ll find this way of traveling very rewarding if you try.
Many people expressed to me that they’d love to visit Detroit after seeing my travels. In my next post, I’ll talk about the places we went to in Michigan.
To be continued…
In the meantime, I wanted to gift y’all a little cookie recipe as a way to thank you for staying in community and conversation with me through this platform while I took some time to figure out my multiple existential crises.
I have to preface this with the fact that the cookies are not the simplest or quickest to make by any means. But they were a huge hit at bake sales in New Orleans, and I still love to eat them. They can be made nut-free or gluten-free very easily.
Olive Oil Chocolate Chunk Nut Cookies (vegan)
Makes 12-14 cookies
⅓ c chopped and toasted walnuts or pecans (33 g)* (omit for nut allergies)
1 c organic extra virgin olive oil (125 g)*
⅓ c non-dairy milk (80 g)*
⅔ c brown sugar (130 g)
½ c granulated white sugar (50 g)*
2 tsp cornstarch (5 g)*
1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract (4 g)
1½ c all-purpose flour (180 g)
½ c whole-wheat or rye flour (60 g)*
½ tsp baking soda (2 g)
½ tsp baking powder (2 g)
½ tsp kosher salt (5 g)
⅔ c vegan ~70% bittersweet chocolate chunks or chips (115 g)*
Flaky sea salt for topping
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Lay your nuts out in a single layer on parchment and toast them in the oven for 5-6 minutes. They should have some color on them but not look too brown when you take them out. Turn off the oven and let the nuts cool while you continue to the next step.
In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment on low, mix together the olive oil, non-dairy milk, both sugars, cornstarch, and vanilla until combined. Then, turn the mixer to medium and beat until the mixture looks thick and dark. This should take about 2-3 minutes. You can also do this by hand, but it will take longer.
Sift together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and kosher salt until combined. Add half of it to the liquid mixture and mix everything until it is just combined. Use your spatula to incorporate anything that is stuck to the bottom and sides, then add the other half of the flour mixture and turn the mixer on until everything is just combined.
With your spatula, fold in your chocolate chunks and cooled, toasted nuts.
Necessary step! Refrigerate the cookie dough for 1-2 hours, preferably overnight. If you don’t do this, the cookies may spread too much in the oven.
When the dough is nice and solid, preheat your oven to 375 F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Measure out dough in 2 tablespoon scoops and add a pinch of flaky sea salt on top.
Bake for 6 minutes.
Lower the temperature to 350F. Rotate the pans, then bake for another 6 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow chocolate to temper and cookies to cool, about 15-20 minutes.
Notes:
If you can help it, grab a nice quality olive oil that tastes good on its own. The better your olive oil tastes, the better your cookie will taste. I like the Kirkland organic extra virgin oil oil at Costco.
I prefer soy, macadamia, or oat milk to almond milk. Almond milk has a lower fat content, which means it contains more water, which means the milk has less body/flavor.
If you have cane sugar at home, it will work just as well as granulated white, and will impart a richer, molasses-like flavor to your cookie. White sugar will yield a smoother dough. Cane sugar will yield a more textured dough.
You can use tapioca starch/flour in place of cornstarch. Just make sure to double the tapioca starch content.
If whole-wheat or rye flour is not your thing, feel free to replace it with all-purpose flour. You can also replace the flour with a gluten-free flour of your choice.
I am a firm believer that chunks or chopped chocolate are better than chips. They look prettier in the cookie and have a nicer melt. But no shame to the convenience game!