Almost Fearless: Full Feed

The One Thing No One Really Says About Travel

Christine Gilbert — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:34:14 +0000

It’s really hard to stay fit. At least for women. Or at least for women like me. Let’s dive into to some gross generalities here. Drew travels around India for three weeks and loses 15 pounds. I travel around India and gain 15 lbs mostly from the heavy curry dishes that I become addicted to, then I lose 15 lbs from dissentary, which I regain in Greece from the heavy foods I become addicted to.

Drew has basically stayed the same weight, maybe about twenty pounds lighter than when we started. I’ve slowly been gaining weight — at a clip of about 1 lb a month. I also had two kids, yes, but something about this lifestyle doesn’t agree with me.

Maybe it’s recipes like this.

In Thailand, the food is so delicious and so fresh, but there’s no such thing as a salad street vendor. They use oil and fat and fry everything, because most of them are much more active than me, a writer who’s either tied to her laptop writing, or editing photos, or tied to the bed with a nursing baby. In Beirut, they eat lots of veggies, of course, but also pate and cheese and breads and oh god the fresh baked goods. The number one ad I saw online when I was in Beirut was for weight loss. China? Forget it, I don’t really know when I’ve eaten more oil than our winter in Beijing last year.

Ooh street food!

I am hardly complaining. It was all delicious which is part of the problem really. How to you manage your weight on the road if you’re not blessed with a teenager’s metabolism and you’re traveling and this literally might be the only time in your life that you get to eat this thing, this horrifyingly decadent thing, whatever it happens to be?

This is the year I figure this out. How do you eat healthy and reasonably (read: let’s aim for JUST 2000 cal a day, shall we?) and maintain some kind of fitness program? How do you go jogging everyday when there’s no where safe to run? How do you eat healthy when you don’t have a kitchen? How do you count calories when you can’t even read the labels?

Last week, I was talking a bit about having the baby blues, with my now almost three month old, and I have been changing my diet and trying to get some activity in (I’m still healing from my c-section, so there’s some rebuilding there) but one thing I’ve noticed is that maybe I’m not even eating enough. I felt sleepy and sluggish then I drank a big mango / strawberry / oatmeal smoothie and I felt great. Renewed! Fortified!

Could half the problem just be the bad habits of travel? Not eating regular meals, skipping breakfast, not getting enough fruits and veggies and when I do eat, too many heavy dishes?

OMG tacos!

I know I can’t be the only one. My facebook, twitter and instagram feeds are filled with pictures of what other travelers are eating. Yeah it looks really good, but real human beings can’t eat like that every day, can they? And who is doing cardio in their hotel room or running through the rice paddies in Bali? I want to know.

Stay tuned, I want to talk about this more. But first, I want to hear from you… how do you stay fit on the road? Or do you? Have I just lost all cool points for even admitting this? I am seriously not 21 anymore, on so many levels.

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The Perfect Pico de Gallo (Salsa Mexicana)

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:46:13 GMT

I’ve been cooking a lot of Mexican food, most of it doesn’t make it onto the blog — because I don’t measure ingredients, I just do a dash-of-this a dash-of-that which makes for terrible recipes. However with all that cooking, I have noticed one thing — the key to the Mexican Kitchen, in my mind, is Pico de Gallo (or Salsa Mexicana as it’s called here). It’s the starting point for week. You make a big batch, you put in the fridge and as you’re making tacos, quesadillas, burritos, rice and beans, asado, or pretty much anything, you pull out your pico and throw a little in. Besides corn tortillas, it’s basically the most important staple you can have in your kitchen.

There are a few things to get right on Pico de Gallo. First, it should be red, green and white. There needs to be enough cilantro (I used to use too little) and not too much onion. I like spring onions because they are milder, but you can use a half of a white onion instead. Your tomatoes have to be ripe. The quality of your produce makes all the difference, it’s one of the best parts of living in Mexico because there’s tons of fresh produce and it’s all really cheap. For example, two pounds of roma tomatoes cost about $1.

I like to make a lot of it, because I use it everyday and it’s a pain to make pico every night. There’s a lot of things you can do with it, which I listed on the bottom of the recipe. This recipe makes about 3-4 cups.

Ingredients:

9 roma tomatoes diced

8 spring onions diced (two bunches)

1 bunch of cilantro finely chopped (1/2 cup firmly packed leaves)

1 large clove of garlic very finely chopped

3 limes

1 habanero pepper very finely chopped (optional)

All you do is chop everything up, mix it together in a bowl and squeeze the lime over it. The most time consuming part is the chopping.

For the tomatoes, I take out the seeds and mushy bits on the interior and just toss them.

I do a really rough chop of the green onions and remove the stems.

Then that’s it, if you’re gotten the mix right it should have a balanced amount of red, green and white (like the Mexican flag, which I’ve been told that’s why it’s called Salsa Mexicana here in Mexico, when it’s Pico de Gallo everywhere else).

It will keep in your refridgerator for up to two weeks.

Yum.

Things to do with your Salsa Mexicana:

Eat it with tortilla chips
Eat it with a soft fresh cheese and warm tortillas
Combine about 1 cup of it plus three fork-smushed ripe avocados for instant guacamole
Add one tomato plus 1 cup of it and cook it on low heat until everything is soft, put it in your blender for instant salsa.
Take that salsa and add 1 roast dried chiptole pepper for chiptole salsa
Roast 3-4 tomatillos and cook 1 cup of it on low heat and blend for salsa verde (add a little more cilantro to taste)
Use it in quesadillas, burritos, enchiladas, tacos, tortas, tostados, tortilla espanola, eggs/omelets
Put some in with cheese on low heat and make a cheese dip
Mix with plain low-fat yogurt for a healthy veggie dip
Add some mango or pineapple for a quick fruit salsa

Welcome to the Off Season in Puerto Vallarta

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:21:09 GMT

It’s not a surprise to us, we knew it was coming, everyone has been talking for months about the off season. But seeing the town clear out so thoroughly, not just the expats and tourists, but many of the Mexicans who travel into the area to work the tourist season, it’s a little unsettling.

There’s no lines, anywhere.

Shops are closing. The beaches are empty.

Not everyone leaves, of course.

But there’s a definite shift.

I think it will be a nice way to experience this otherwise tourist-packed beach area. Cole spent the afternoon the other day at Entre Amigos, a non-profit for the children in San Pancho.

And next week I’m starting what I hope will be a regular volunteer gig at the orphanage up the street from us. I’ll help clean and Cole will play with the youngest kids while the big kids are at school.

And of course, there’s always the beach. And throwing rocks.

And learning Spanish.

If we’re not too shy.

It’ll be a good summer.

Tequila-Marinated Shrimp Grilled Pizza with Cilantro Pesto, Roasted Red Peppers and Mango

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:00:54 GMT

I first learned about pizza grilled directly on the BBQ during one of those marathon Food TV watching sessions I had when I pregnant with Cole. I can’t remember if it was Bobby Flay or Top Chef Masters (or maybe both) but I always wanted to try it. It’s the closest thing you can get to wood smoked pizza without investing in a clay fire pit for your home, and despite the fact that you’re flinging wads of fresh dough at your roaring BBQ, it’s actually kind of fool-proof. I couldn’t get the pizza dough to make anything like a circle as I prepared it for the grill, but no matter what shape you toss on there, it comes out looking good. Rustic, even. Amazingly it doesn’t stick either. Just plop the dough on, let it cook, flip it with a fork, apply your toppings, let the cheese melt a bit, and you’re done.

You can do this with any kind of pizza, obviously, but I went a bit crazy and marinated shrimp in tequila and lime, made a batch of homemade cilantro pesto (delicious, make a double batch, you’ll want more) and threw on grill-roasted red peppers and fresh mango, because that’s what I had in my kitchen. The mango was actually a happy accident, it really pulled everything together. The only thing I would do differently next time is to use larger shrimp. Even with just 15 minutes marinating, the tequila and lime cooks the shrimp so you can’t grill it for long. This would be even better with just a few large prawns, if you can get them. That being said, the shrimp were still great.

This is one of those dishes that everyone is like: “You are a genius,” as you’re pulling personal pizzas off your grill for them. The dough is a little smoky, it has that hand-crafted feel, and it tastes really good.

The first thing you’ll want to do is make the pizza dough.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 bread flour (crispy) or all-purpose flour (more chewy) (plus another 1/2 cup or so if needed)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 envelope instant dry yeast (or 2 and 1/4 teaspoons if you’re measuring it out)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 cups water, 110 degrees F
3 tablespoons olive oil

Combine the 3 1/2 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt in your mixer.

With the mixer on a slow speed, add the water bit by bit, scraping down the sides as you go. Continue with the olive oil one tablespoon at a time. It should look something like this:

(If it’s too wet, add some more flour as needed). Then put a little oil on your hands and pull the entire ball of dough out and round it as best you can, then leave it in plate with a clean kitchen towel over the top of it for one hour.

Next up, make the cilantro pesto. If you have a food processor, great. I used a blender and just proceeded carefully to pulse blend for a few seconds, then scrap down the sides and keep stirring it around so everything gets hit.

Ingredients:

2 cups tightly packed fresh cilantro leaves (In Mexico that was two bunches of cilantro)

1/4 cup walnuts (or pinenuts)

1 teaspoon chopped garlic

1/4 cup grated cheese (I used some queso fresco I had on hand)

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons olive oil (feel free to add more if you’re using a blender, it helps to blend everything)

If you’re using a food processor, it’s really easy, you just toss everything in, except the olive oil, then turn it on and slowly add the oil until it’s done. For me, with my blender, I first chopped the walnuts:

I pulled the cilantro leaves and put those aside:

I chopped the cheese:

Then I added things to the blender: walnuts first (blend a bit), garlic, cheese, pepper, salt (blend some more), then finally the cilantro (added last so it didn’t get over blended). Then I slowly added the olive oil as I blended and scraped down the sides. Worked surprisingly well:

Next up: start your grill. You’ll want to time it so that it’s not super hot when you’re cooking the pizza as it’ll cook it too fast.

Then: prep the tequila shrimp.

Ingredients:

20 medium raw shrimp, peeled, deveined
1/2 cup tequila
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
3 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro leaves, plus extra for garnish
1 teaspoon grated lime zest
1 teaspoon chili lime powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt

For some reason the limes had so little juice I had to mangle a million to get enough lime juice:

You basically just stick everything into a bowl except the shrimp:

Then when your marinade is ready and the grill is heating up, throw the shrimp in the marinade for 15 minutes before grilling.

So the grill is on, the pesto is done, the shrimps are marinating, it’s been about an hour since you finished the dough, so you go back to your dough and get it ready for the grill. Just cut it up into 5-8 balls, depending on how big you want each pizza and put them on a plate with the kitchen towel over them. They’ll be ready for the grill when you are.

Toss some red peppers on the grill. I like to cut them just on one side and throw them in like that, but it’s up to you:

Peek at your marinaded shrimp. Looks good:

Skewer them and put them on the grill for few minutes:

Next up the mango:

Chop one mango into cubes:

Prepare some cheese for the topping. I used Oaxaca cheese, which is like mozzarella, but it’s what we use in Mexico for quesadillas.

Okay so you’re ready to cook these guys! It’s really easy, just gather all your ingredients (you’ll want to take the red peppers off the grill now and slice them up and remove the skewers from the shrimp), and take each ball of dough and stretch it out to about 4-5 inches across and gently place it on the grill. Do 2-3 pizzas at a time, because more than that you’ll be too slow getting the ingredients on while it’s cooking.

After about 3 minutes, that dough is done! Watch your grill temperature because some spots are hotter than others, and it will all depend on how hot your grill is running.

When they are done on one side, flip them, then quickly add the pesto. Then add the shrimp, mango, red peppers. Then top with cheese. Close the cover of the grill and let them cook for about 3-5 more minutes.

You can see the various stages below. The dough cooking on the right and the half finished pizza still trying to melt the cheese on the left. In the back is an almost finished one.

When you pull them out they look something like this:

And everyone says, “ooh!”

And it’s really, really good.

This makes me happy. Really I think I could just eat the cilantro pesto, roasted red peppers and mangos all day.

The Big Things: Love with a Chance of Drowning

Christine Gilbert — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:51:56 +0000

It’s extremely rare that I recommend a book on this blog, but today I feel compelled to share with you Torre DeRoche’s Love with a Chance of Drowning, which I think is one of those timeless travel narratives that if you don’t end up reading it now, you’ll end up reading it eventually. It’s basically required reading for anyone who has ever taken a leap of faith.

It just came out today.

Several other books also came out today, thanks to my habit of pre-ordering books months and months in advance, Dan Brown’s Inferno (in Spanish! um, yay) and The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue (which I have zero memory of ordering but apparently I ordered while eight months pregnant and dreaming of BBQ — for a second though I thought my Kindle account had been hacked).

Anyway, the point is, those books are probably really good. Torre’s book, I can almost guarantee is much better. Unless you really love BBQ and you’re growing a tiny person in your belly.

The premise is simple: Torre is an Australian graphic designer living abroad in San Francisco for a year. She’s promised her family two things: no men and she’d return after a year. Of course she proceeds to meet a guy in a bar, fall in love and when he announces, “oh by the way I’m about to sail around the world, do you want to come with me?” She doesn’t let something like a fear of water and some of the worse sea sickness I’ve ever heard of, get in her way.

Her book trailer gives me the chills:

I asked Torre for an interview, and then I made it all about me and basically picked her brain on how to best approach my book. Wee! Oh and then I asked her the most burning question: is my sailboat with kids idea crazy?

Torre! Thank you for talking with me tonight, where are you right now?

I’m in Melbourne, Australia in a very glamorous location: my parents’ house.

It must be nice to be with family right now, with everything that’s happening, your book just launched last month in Australia and it’s launching today in the US.

Your dad is a screenwriter, what does he think about all of this?

Yes, it’s nice. I’ve been away from home for a while, living in Thailand, so having some family time (as well as my mother’s cooking) is precisely what I need right now.

My dad’s hilarious. He’s very quiet and low-key in person—indifferent, almost—but he shares every small success of mine on his Facebook page. Thanks to social media, I know he’s absolutely thrilled.

He is a writer, so it makes sense that he portrays his joy in writing.

So you have writing in your family but you weren’t always a writer.

Do you think this experience of sailing around the world made you want to tell this story so badly that you had to write it, or was writing something you did before this?

I suppose I was always a writer, but I didn’t really know it. When I was little, I would write obscure stories on the blank sides of dad’s script drafts. My side would be covered in children’s chicken scrawl and crayon illustrations, and his side would be dialogue involving gory horror scenes.

The passion has always been there, and I considered pursuing writing when I was selecting my university courses, but I chose design and visual arts instead.

Flash forward several years: Sailing was a lonely experience, and I longed to feel connected to people. Writing became my tool for communicating, and I kept a small blog to connect with family and friends. Through that, I discovered how much I adore writing. It’s a lot like painting or designing, but with words instead of shapes. You can say a lot more.

Well one thing I can say about you based on reading your book and other things that you’ve written is that you have this highly focused eye for story. How do you do that?

Thank you. You know, I’ve never really made a conscious effort to focus on storytelling. I don’t really think about it, I feel it. I can only guess that this comes from watching 48-hour movie-fests every weekend throughout my childhood. While other children studied maths and science, I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street for the 155th time.

When I start writing something—a book, a blog post, whatever—I have no idea where it’s going. The story kind of unfolds as I go. If I get to the end and find that there’s no cohesion or no purpose to the piece, I go back through it and weave in story or an objective. I ask myself, “What are you trying to say here?” It has to be about a bigger purpose, a universal dilemma—something that everyone else can relate to. Sometimes a story gets unravelled back to front.

But that’s a lot of words to explain something that’s really quite simple: The end needs to somehow satisfy whatever dilemma is created in the beginning. The middle is all the stuff that leads up to the catharsis in the end.

I feel like I write that way on my blog, feeling my way through, but I think it’s really difficult to keep that flow through an entire book.

Speaking of which, you have a blog… having gone through the book publishing process and writing online, do you have a preference for one format?

Do you think certain stories can only be told in a novel? Will we be someday tweeting our memoirs out? (Okay that was a joke.) But seriously do you think it’s more books for you or more blogging or a bit of both?

Book-length is a lot more fun for me. It’s a slow, deliberate process, and nobody gets to see it until it’s done. That means there’s a lot of time to develop rich themes and flowing story.

It is extremely hard to keep the story’s momentum throughout a whole book, but it’s not done in a linear format—it’s woven in over time. Halfway through, you may discover a new thread or theme to exploit, and you can go back to the start and weave it through to the end. You have to read it again and again and pay close attention to the flow.

On the other hand, blogs are quick and dirty. They’re designed to be consumed in a beat, and there’s not a lot of point in obsessing over rich themes or craft. Blogging is a much more neurotic, self-absorbed process too (“Will anyone ‘Like’ this post? Why isn’t anyone commenting?! OH MY GOD I MUST SUCK!”). I find that a little bit soul-destroying.

And yes, certain stories can only be told in 300+ pages. Even at that length, you have to cut every superfluous word to make it all fit in.

Yes, exactly, it puts the writer in constant jeopardy, at least with a book you get some reprieve between deadlines. Which reminds me, I have a writing deadline coming up, then I’m free to do an entirely new and different thing. Do you think I should get a sailboat?

I think a sailboat will be ideal for your family. (Christine’s note: Ha! Yes! Telling this to my in-laws) It’s such a beautiful, symbiotic existence. You’re free to go anywhere at all, and you don’t have to pack bags anymore. Your home is always with you. As long as nobody gets horribly seasick (like I did!) it will be perfect.

Do you still get seasick?

Very! It’s so frustrating. I even get sick on huge catamaran ferries traveling across flat seas. Often I’m the only one on the boat who is ashen. It’s a curse! If anyone has any magical solutions, please tell me (and no, ginger is not the answer).

And yet you still keep getting on boats!

I’ve only been on a sailboat one time since the Pacific adventure. With friends, we sailed to Catalina off Los Angeles, and I was struggling to keep my lunch down the entire time. Everyone else was drinking beer and champagne. Bastards.

So what’s next for you? I read about your adventures motorbiking around Thailand, do you plan to keep traveling?

Absolutely! But with Ivan, it’s always challenging negotiating adventure plans because we have wildly different comfort zones. He wants to fly planes in Alaska during winter. I want to… um… live.

Oh! Drew and Ivan need to get together, because Drew’s dying to do something terribly stupid in freezing cold temperatures (last idea: traverse Siberia in winter). Is this a guy thing?

Must be. And yes, let’s send the men off together, and I’ll meet you in Mexico. We can play with the kids in the sun and create things, and the men can go off and grow giant, rugged beards, kill things, and do all of those other activities that only make sense if you’re flooded with testosterone.

Well, Torre, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me during what must be a whirlwind week for you. I hope it’s okay but I’ve totally been bragging that I read your book in 2011 and KNEW it was awesome, before your agent or editor found you! I guess what I’m saying is if you get Oprah rich, you’re buying me a sailboat, right?

Oh yeah. Sailboats for everybody, baby! Thanks so much for the interview, Christine. It’s always fun talking with you.

Love with a Chance of Drowning, $14.99 released: May 14, 2013, Hyperion

Images, book cover and book trailer all copyright Torre DeRoche. Amazon links are affiliate links.

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Weekend Reads

Christine Gilbert — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:14:09 +0000

Thank you to everyone who contacted me after yesterday’s post, I’m a little shy now about what to write about… hmmm do I post that BBQ tequila-shrimp pizza recipe I’ve been sitting on all week?

Okay to break the ice, here’s Stella. I figured out today that I can post iPhone videos directly to Youtube, which is, as you can guess, not necessarily a good thing. “Look my daughter is ah-mazing! She’s, um, sitting there, but very cutely!”

This video however is my husband making Stella laugh at his very terrible (and probably incredibly offensive) British accent (and for that we’re sorry):

For what it’s worth I do feel a little better, although I know I have to keep at it. I ate so well yesterday, it was awesome. I drank 10 glasses of water. I played in the sun with my son and let him drench me with the hose (and I surprised him by jumping in the kiddie pool fully-clothed, which delighted him to no end). So life is good, even though I’ve been sort of overwhelmed with two babies.

Since this is not a real post, here’s some links for your weekend reading pleasure (these are all really good):

What a week’s worth of groceries looks like around the world

10 TED talks from inspiring teachers

22 Unbelievable Places that are Hard to Believe Really Exist

The Most Beautiful Cherry Blossoms Around the World

31 Days of Creativity with Food by Hong Yi

Have American Parents Got It All Backwards?

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Just a Little Depressed (and what I’m doing about it)

Christine Gilbert — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:41:21 +0000

One of the sneaky things about depression (and this is mild depression, maybe it’s post-partum, I’m not sure) is that it doesn’t hit you like you think it will. Or at least for me. I’m totally functional. I’m kicking ass even. Yet, there’s these little things, signs that a lifetime of battling what my friend Alison Gresik wisely calls walking depression that show up and while it might take me a while, eventually I think, “uh oh”.

Okay let’s just say it: I’m a little depressed.

I realized it this week because I had a call with my editor and agent and thought, “oh god, I suck”. That’s called negative self-talk and it’s insane. Here are two people who are heavily invested in me, and yet I’m self-shaming and worrying about everything that comes out of my mouth. Why? Because depression is sneaky. It seems like it should be about laying around in bed and not taking showers, but sometimes it’s about just hating on yourself for no reason.

Another clue? I have been fantasizing about staying at a hotel. Alone. Big bed, crisp white sheets, and perfect silence. Okay I admit this may just be a new-to-being-a-mom-of-two-kids thing. I’m also really tired. And sad. And unhappy. But just a little. It’s weird. I used to live like this — I spent a decade under the mildly-depressed cloud (I called it overworked at the time) but now I can’t get away with that. I have two kids. I was sitting on the bed with them and Drew and I was just DONE. I said to Drew, “Everyone wants my attention and they want me to be happy all the time!”

Drew, wisely, just nodded. But that’s the thing. When you’re a mom, you’re the center of the family. If you’re unhappy, even a little, it unbalances everything. Your kids look to you for guidance on how to feel — and it’s not okay to self-medicate with alcohol or food like I would in my twenties — I have to own it, and fix it.

A lot of stuff is going on with my body that could be contributing. I had a baby two months ago! I also lost 20 pounds in the first weeks after Stella was born. I also gained 20 pounds the month after that, wee, look at me, amazing, I know, tip your waitress, I’m here all week. I’m breastfeeding. I am recovering from major surgery (aka c-section). Yet, still, the creeping little feeling around the edges, like I’m over-touched, like I want to hide, like I’m not happy with myself — it’s telling me something.

So I have to get back on the program. It’s been a long time, but it works. Here’s what it includes:

1. Admitting that no, not everyone hates you, and yes, the reason you have to admit that is because you’re suffering from mild depression.

2. Be out. Depression is sneaky but talking about it blows away the demons faster than anything.

3. Drink water. 8 glasses a day, plus more if you’re breastfeeding like me.

4. Eat well. I’m not going on a diet, but I did go to the store any fill up my cart with tons of fruits and veggies. I tried to pick a variety and stuff I thought I’d really eat.

I got: watermelon, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, red and orange bell peppers, green habaneros, zucchinis, apples, bananas, romain lettuce, white onions, sweet red onions, limes, plums, mangos, cantaloupe, green onions, tomatoes, jicama and so on…

Then Cole jumped up on the counter and dug out the strawberries.

Because, yum, strawberries!

5. Do a fun exercise routine. I’m going to start doing P90X with Cole because when Drew did it, Cole loved doing the workout with him. I figure it’s good for both of us.

6. Get sunshine. You know I haven’t been leaving the house as much lately (another sign) so I’m redoubling my efforts to get out everyday and go to the beach, since it’s RIGHT THERE.

7. Dance. You can not be sad while dancing.

8. Listen to upbeat music. Please send me recommendations, my iTunes looks like a Goa Beach Party at this point, I need some variety to my upbeat music!

9. Cut down on sugar, fat and carbs. I don’t have proof but I think those things give you a short term lift with a long term crash.

10. Do something for myself everyday. Right now that means a little teeny tiny break from the kids and work and everything else. Maybe I’ll just watch Rick Bayless on PBS talking about Mexico & Food. (Two of my favorite things).

11. Ask for help. For me that meant asking Drew to speak in Spanish with me everyday, because it was weighing on me that we hadn’t made as much progress in Spanish since moving here — understandable with everything that’s going on, but it would be amazing to take that guilt away. So starting this week we’re switching to a 100% Spanish-speaking family, something that really lifts a weight off my shoulders.

12. Spend uncluttered time with your kids. Because they make me smile. And it’s only the distractions that get in the way.

13. Write. I bought myself a new notebook and three new pens.

14. Read Vogue: Mexico. Okay this isn’t an official thing, but I did wonder if the cute wedge sandals I was seeing everyone wearing were on-trend.

Turns out they are.

15. Working on this, but: get husband to buy you new strappy wedge sandals by writing about it in a blog post.

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10 Reasons Why We’re Considering Homeschooling

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:01:20 GMT

If we lived in Thailand and not Mexico, our three year old would be enrolled in school already (if he was a local) and most likely wearing powder blue uniforms with dark socks and a too-big-backpack. Trust me, it’s adorable. However, one thing travel has taught me about parenting is that there’s no right answer. Every culture does it differently, each family has their approach, and every child has their own needs. I have no idea what’s best for everyone, I’m just trying to figure out what’s best for us.

This sums up raising children these days: my son Cole using his old school letter board to hold up his iPad so he can play an almost identical app.

To be clear, I have a confirmation bias (and you probably do too, we all do). In my case, I live overseas, it’s easier to homeschool and probably cheaper too (if I don’t factor in my time as a cost, of course). We travel a lot, so anything that lets us do that more is going to seem more attractive. But I am concerned that I’ll filter all the evidence in favor of what I want to do anyway, so I’m trying to be careful to at least be aware of my biases. I would like talk about this more though, as I work through it, and I don’t know where to start, except where I am right now.

This is the crossroads we’re at, an embarrassment of choices: we could go back to the US for our son’s education. Or we could continue traveling. We could enroll him in an international school. We could homeschool. We could “unschool”. We could sign him up for a bilingual private school in Hawaii (I just threw that in, I love Hawaii). It’s wide open.

However as we look at our options there are some things that might be deal-breakers when it comes to schools and specifically living in the US:

1. Zero Tolerance.

Earlier this year a six year old was expelled from school for telling her friend that she was going to shoot her. With her Hello Kitty gun. Which only shot bubbles. Expelled — not scolded, not held for detention or put on leave, but kicked out of school. Permanently. Who is this helping? This week a teenager was expelled for her science fair project exploding. No one was hurt but they are also bringing charges against her. I don’t know what the tone is like in the average school, but these kinds of stories that have been hitting the national press in the last few years seem to point to a frenzied desire to not just keep our children safe but to adhere to these draconian rules for appearance’s sake.

2. Lack of childhood freedom.

I used to read the Free Range Kids blog, but Lenora’s writing was infuriating me, specifically the stories she posts about the increasing number of cases where the police are getting involved for such offenses as letting their 15 year old walk home from the library without their jacket or allowing a six year old to play unattended for any amount of time. You could always argue perhaps that’s not the choice you’d make as a parent, but surely CPS doesn’t need to remove the child from the home, right?

Between the zero tolerance policies in schools and the police involvement in the community, it seems to me, that not only are children being hyper-protected, but your ability as a parent to choose to do things differently is shrinking. It’s that second part, the over reach, that makes me wonder if I return to the US would I be forced to helicopter parent my child in ways that didn’t align with my beliefs?

3. ADHD.

This is a hot topic for us, because my husband suffers from adult ADHD, so I’m very familiar with the disorder and it’s also genetic, so my kids could get it. A few years ago we got Drew’s transcripts from kindergarten to 12th grade — they started back in the early eighties when they didn’t have ADHD. The transcripts were so sad to read because here you had this bright boy who was labeled as “chatty” in kindergarten and his grades slowly dropped and teachers over the years started labeling him as “unfocused” and a “poor student”. The thing is, my husband, even as an adult, still needs to shape his life around his ADHD, not the other way around. There’s no way that a school can really accomodate ADHD students — for example, letting them get up and move around or having lots of music or white noise in the room (which is actually calming and helps my husband focus). Which kind of points to the over-diagnosis as well — are little boys really best suited to sitting still at that age? Would a program that allowed them to move around and get their wiggles out lead to more productive bursts of learning? I understand why schools can’t do this, it’s a numbers thing, they’ve got 30 kids in a room, what can they do? But that’s one reason why homeschooling is particularly attractive to us because we have that option.

4. Art, Music, Phys Ed.

I’m a writer and photographer. My husband is an illustrator and animator. We love the arts, it’s what we do everyday! So, while we could supplement with art classes or music lessons or karate school, I also feel like little kids are way over-scheduled these days, and I’d rather not have to use our evenings and weekends to squeeze in a second curriculum to compensate for the gaps in public school — or at least not when the option to do a more balanced approach exists.

5. The value of a college degree.

When I was growing up, it was drilled into me that I had to go to college. It was the stepping stone between being poor and being middle class. These days, I’m not so sure. It’s a huge opportunity cost. Kids at 18 are perfectly capable of starting their careers if they want, and four years of not working — even if it’s interning or apprenticing for someone else — is a lot of missed time. Plus you come out of school in debt. Of course college graduates seem to do better in life, but it’s a self selected group — they would probably do better in life anyway because of the same ambition and talent that lead to university in the first place. It’s a huge cost: $40,000 – $120,000 plus four years plus a lack of practical skills (who uses what they learned in college in their job these days, anyway?). So while high school is hyper focused on getting into college I wonder if it’s better to be hyper focused on figuring out what you love and getting hands on experience.

(Note: obviously some careers definitely require a college degree, but I’m less convinced you need to prepare for the potential of becoming a scientist by forcing everyone to take advanced calculus, when it’s easy enough to catch up if that’s a direction you want to take. Sort of like most careers — like programmers, we don’t learn C++ in high school but then again maybe we should…)

6. Becoming an entrepreneur.

Drew and I are entrepreneurs. We’re self-employed. We did the whole other side — heck I worked for GE, literally the largest company in the US. So as we’re thinking of education options one thing keeps coming up for us: are we raising employees or entrepreneurs? It’s entirely different skill sets and I do think that public school is wise to prepare children to the real world, which for most of them will include working for other people. But is that our goal? And since we loathed that life so much, and love the freedom of what we’re doing now, wouldn’t it be sort of hypocritical of us to put our kids through a system that made us unhappy?

7. What school doesn’t teach you.

There are three things traditional school doesn’t teach you: 1) how to manage your money 2) how to find what you love and 3) how to make money doing what you love. I didn’t have a clue on credit cards, or how to be a freelancer. I didn’t know the difference between picking a career that was safe and picking one that I enjoyed. I spent 10+ years of my life trying to figure out what I could have learned in a year of courses. I can’t remember anything significant from high school biology (we dissected a frog, that’s all I remember) but I could have really of used a course on doing my taxes. Which makes me wonder, why can’t school prepare you for life, at least just a little bit? Is getting into college the only goal?

8. Languages.

This is big for us, obviously, I’m learning three languages right now, and I’m hoping this immersion leads to our kids picking up a bit. The crazy thing about languages in public schools is that kids are natural language learners. Their brains are geared towards it and this doesn’t change until they are about 13. It’s called the critical period. So what do we do in the US? We wait until kids are 14 to start teaching them a second language. What a waste! After so many years of trying to learn languages, I know how hard it is, but we’re squandering the one opportunity we have in life to pick them up easily because of scheduling? Madness.

9. Learning how to learn.

I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly learning new things online. But I think about how I learn now verses how I tried to learn in school and it’s completely different. I read, yes, but I rarely memorize. I don’t focus so much on retaining everything I learn, but figuring out how to access it later. I think this is huge for the next generation and the school systems haven’t caught up — we live in a digital age, where it’s better to know how to use Google well then to cram specific facts and dates. It’s more important that you know how to find answers, than knowing the answer themselves. I think a lot of people would argue that this is a terrible development, but we’ve already gone through this once. Before books, people used to memorize everything! We don’t do that anymore. We have books. They would have argued that we’ve lost the great art of memory, and they are right, but so what? Books! Easier! Same thing, to me. We have the internet. The world of knowledge is right there, and for kids coming up, their education should embrace this fact.

10. Creativity.

I watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk about creativity the other day and everything he said rang true to me but especially this:

“My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”

When I was in Beijing, there was a symposium where they talked about how they couldn’t compete because they weren’t creating enough creative thinkers. We seem to be moving more towards the Asia model (standardized tests, heavy workload for kids, penalized for errors) when Asia is trying to figure out how to be more like us. It’s critical.

Watch the full talk here:

I’m still trying to figure out where I stand on all these things. Maybe we’ll homeschool for a few years when the kids are younger, then go to international schools when they are older so they can do a bilingual program and learn to read and write in a second language. Or maybe we’ll figure out some kind of homeschool co-op with a group of like-minded parents and make our own mini-school. Or maybe we’ll just head back the US because whatever we try doesn’t work. I’m open to anything at this point, although you can kind of see where we’re heading. In two years, Cole will be entering kindergarten, what exactly that will look like is still open. Soon though, I’d like to start some kind of preschool, even if that just means me buying more art supplies.

I would love your thoughts on this, if you’re so inclined!

Drew Gilbert, Daddy Blogger (it happened!)

Christine Gilbert — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:47:03 +0000

We used to call our abode, where ever we lived, Casa Gilbert, but now our casa has a name, and it’s Beanpot house (the name Casa Ollas de Frijioles came with it, when we rented it). Anyway, right now, life looks like this at Casa Beanpot (click on the image to see the 6 sec video clip):

Stella is at this stage where she’s making lots of faces. And we coo at her. And dance around with her. And sometimes she looks into my eyes and smiles. And it PHYSICALLY HURTS. I love her that much. But also life looks like this too (click to view):

Which may be why our recent house guest said he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to have kids. Now. Because he’s seen too much. (To which we laugh, this mirthless, knowing laugh, that only parents get to make).

I don’t write a lot about our day-to-day parenting experience so I’m really thrilled to announce that my husband Drew is picking up the slack in that regard. He’s finally brushing off the cobwebs on his much neglected blog drewgilbert.com and re-emerging from the ashes (I think I mixed metaphors there) as a daddy blog. Well sort of. He’s also an illustrator so his art, photography and videos can be found there too. And he has a penchant for moustaches. And extreme sports. But other than that… babies! Babies and Hulk Smash!

Today he drew this:

Obviously there’s a context to this, but I’ll just let you go to his latest post to find out what. Great work Drew, welcome to blogging!

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Comments

We do have our dogs… it's true though we don't take that many ... by Christine Gilbert
Do you guys not have your dogs anymore? I never see pictures of ... by Heather
Good to have him back!! by Sarah Somewhere
Just had a proper belly laugh at Drew bouncing Stella to sleep. ... by Emma
I agree. More Daddy blogs! Love the hulk smash photo! Shared! by Patty
Awesome! We need more daddy blogs. I keep a daily journal of ... by Kevin Collins

Then this happened: Chocolate Avocado Pudding

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:12:50 GMT

We were eating out this weekend and my friend noticed that they had Chocolate Avocado Pudding on the special’s board. He tried to order it, but the staff were like, “um, the guy who makes that isn’t here, but we could try?” To which my friend wisely passed.

But it got me thinking. Obsessing maybe. Chocolate. Avocado. Pudding. WHAT IS THAT?

When we got home I googled it, and found the first recipe here. Oh holy crap, it’s really easy. In fact it’s probably faster than making regular pudding from scratch because it requires no cooking. And except for the chocolate, there’s no dairy in it. You just need four ripe avocados (we’re practically drowning in avocados here in Mexico) and chocolate, a little coconut milk, some honey and bam! You have the weirdest, most awesome pudding ever.

It’s really rich.

It’s really good.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

4 ripe avocados
1/4 cup light coconut milk
4 tablespoons unsweetened dark cocoa powder
3 tablespoons honey
2 ounces of dark chocolate (72% or higher), melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
Topping: whip cream (just whip it enough to make soft peaks) and a dusting of cocoa powder

Steps:

Cut open the avocados, remove the pit and scoop out the insides into your food processor or a big bowl.

Blend until smooth.

Add the coconut milk, cocoa powder, honey, chocolate, vanilla and salt. Blend until smooth.

Put the pudding in a separate bowl and toss it into the freezer while you make the whip cream.

Top with whip cream and cocoa powder. Serve chilled.

You can taste the avocado but just barely. It’s so decadent. So intensely creamy. It’s too much. It’s addictive. It’s really freaking good. Thank you Mexico and thank you Google.

Brunch with Friends – Cielo Rojo

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:56:56 GMT

This weekend we had brunch with our fellow travel blogging friends — Dave who is staying with us, and Shannon, who lives up the road in San Pancho (aka San Francisco, Mexico). We had breakfast at an organic restaurant in the Cielo Rojo cafe (really good, if you’re in town it’s here), and like any good bloggers, we spent way too much time taking pictures of our food.

Dave and Shannon, documenting our Kapomo tea.

Of course, I took a picture of my tea too. It’s called Kapomo and it’s a little like bark. Okay, it’s nutty and not too bad with milk and sugar. It’s caffeine-free which is totally unacceptable.

Drew got the vegan chorizo:

I got the huevos rancheros with sprouts!

It was all really good.

I ordered this for Cole, because OMG yum:

And he thought pouring the honey on it was fun, then lost interest and ran around the restaurant the rest of the time.

Shannon is so good with kids. Cole asked for Shannon on the ride home like 4 times. (We love Shannon).

Obligatory flower shot:

The place is really nice, half of the restaurant is a walled outdoor courtyard, so there’s tons of natural light.

Stella slept the entire time.

Cole explored every nook and cranny.

And afterwards we went to the beach in San Pancho, which I think is the prettiest one in the area. Shannon helped me talk through a few things I was stuck on for my book. We all drank limonadas under the straw umbrellas at the beachside bar. It was a beautiful day.

We love it here so much, but the season is ending, it’s getting hotter, soon the rain will come, and everyone is leaving. But right now, we’re enjoying these last days as limited as they are.

Pineapple Salsa

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:45:16 GMT

This is my favorite salsa. The sweetness of the pineapple plus the spicy habanero kick is amazing on meat or fish. It’s super easy to make too.

We get the sweet pineapples, here in Mexico it’s piña miel (honey pineapple). You dice it up into little cubes, about dime-sized. One pineapple will make about 6 cups of pineapple.

Then you chop up 1/2 of a red bell pepper, one habanero pepper and 1/2 of a red onion. Mix it together with the pineapple, chop about 1/4 cup of cilantro and mix that in and let the whole thing sit in the refrigerator over night. (You can eat it straight away, it’s just much better the next day). And voila! The best salsa ever:

Ingredients:

6 cups chopped fresh pineapple (or one whole pineapple)

1/2 red bell pepper chopped

1/2 red onion diced

1 habanero pepper diced very small

1/4 cup cilantro

Tip: if you like the salsa less spicy you can remove the seeds from the habanero first — that’s where the real heat comes from.

It will stay fresh for at least a week, if not two.

Enjoy!

Two Months with Stella

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 05:09:31 GMT

Stella turned two months old today. She has started saying “unga ugna” which I think means, “eat me, I’m adorable!”

Lately, she watches her brother very closely.

Sometimes she smiles at him too. Other times she gets very serious.

He’s kisses her and she kicks her little legs. He’s so sweet with her.

I really, really love my kids together. Good stuff.

An Education in Bribing

Christine Gilbert — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:52:11 +0000

It’s a fact that bribery happens all over the world. In Mexico, it’s no different, and for tourists it’s most often seen in the form of an officer from the Transito pulling you over for some minor offense. Then making you a fantastic offer: they will not give you a ticket if you just pay right now.

We’re terrible at all things haggling, bribing, black market and law-breaking. We suck at rushing the queue and cutting people, even if that means standing there, like an idiot, while everyone around you muscles their way past. In the heat. With a crying toddler. Yet, we still do our patriotic duty, as Americans and stand in the stupid line — common sense be damned.

Of course, that’s one of the biggest complaints I hear about Mexico is the corruption of the police. So I share this story with a little hesitation because I don’t want to feed into that, because this kind of thing is pretty common around the world. It’s pretty harmless. Like that one time we crossed into Cambodia via Thailand, and the Thais had set up a fake Cambodian border office and convinced all the tuk-tuk drivers to take all the tourists to them, instead of the real border, where they did process your visa, but at a huge mark-up.

That was awesome.

If you can’t laugh at that and love Thailand anyway, then I don’t know what to say.

They wrote a sign on cardboard that said, The Cambodian Border.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Anyway here’s the thing: we normally suck at this stuff. Drew and I both have this rage problem when it comes to being ripped off. While we laugh about it later, in the moment, if that “oh this is some bullsh*t” switch gets hit, then we’re out. It’s really bad.

Drew has been pulled over four times in Mexico so far. The main highway between Bucerias and Puerto Vallarta is full of traffic cops and they love pulling people over. The first two times were because Drew took a left from the main highway, instead of going on the “lateral” that runs along the highway. For both of those the cops just gave Drew a warning.

See, Mexico isn’t so corrupt!

Okay so the third time was for his brake light being out. Which Drew didn’t believe but offered the guy 120 pesos (about $10) and he let him go.

Look at us, bribing our way out of traffic tickets!

Then a few nights ago, we go pulled over again. Brake lights!

Drew’s pretty much pissed now. He’s not going to give them money for fake brake light issues. Damn corrupt Mexican cops!

So he gets out of the car to talk to them. They say, “Oh well, we could give you 1/2 off the ticket if you pay now.”

“How much is that?”

“It’s normally 600 pesos but we’ll give it to you for 300 pesos [about $25]”

By now Drew is over it. He’s at that stage we refer to as “F*CK IT”.

“Yeah, I’m not going to pay that.”

“Well we will have to write you a ticket.”

“Okay, write me a ticket.”

They stall. You see, there’s absolutely no money in writing tickets. The pay is crap. They may have misjudged Drew.

Drew talks to them some more then hops back into the car.

“So what happened?”

He’s got a ticket. They’ve got his license. They KEPT his driver’s license!

Drew says, “I was like, no I’m not going to pay 300 and you know what, not only are you going to get zero money from me, now I’m going to make you do paperwork. So go ahead, fill out that ticket for me, I want to watch. you. write.”

“You did not say that.”

“No, but that would have been awesome.”

The next day we went to pay the ticket and retrieve the driver’s license.

It took less than 3 minutes. It cost 103 pesos.

“HAHAHA! Vindicated!” Drew says when he comes back into the car.

Later he realized his brake light was in fact out and he got a new fuse. We’re idiots. Sorry mildly corrupt Mexican transit cops. We’re kind of jerks. Also 300 was way too much, you should have gone lower.

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By: My run-in with the Mexican police | Adventure Blog | Travel Journal Blog | WanderingNotLost by My run-in with the Mexican police | Adventure Blog | Travel Journal Blog | WanderingNotLost
Ha! That sounds like us, too thick to just pay our way out of ... by Christine Gilbert
This made me laugh. It's not too far off that here in the ... by Tasha Hacker
By: Kate Convissor: My Run-In With the Mexican Police | Tour4Travel by Kate Convissor: My Run-In With the Mexican Police | Tour4Travel
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Plus 5 more...

Language Learning Hack: Start With What You Love

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:00:44 GMT

So I’m learning languages, with my toddler, but as we visit each country then eventually leave, I’m realizing: right, I have to keep studying these languages… forever.

That’s the thing. If you don’t use it, language slips away faster than New Year’s resolutions. It’s a never ending battle. You have to be constantly persistent! It’s — hey wait, a second.

That’s a really negative way of looking at it, no?

Anyway that was me before. I had a really bad internalized attitude about language learning. Whether I picked that up from growing up in a monolingual culture or because the deeper I go, the greater the challenges (and sometimes the frustrations) — it occurred to me in the past year that my conversation with myself about studying languages was all wrong. I don’t “have to keep studying these languages forever”. I get to study them. In fact, I decided to stop using the word “study” which had become so tied up with guilt and obligation that it wasn’t the joyful, amazing, interesting thing that had drawn me to want to learn language in the first place.

REBOOT

I used to watch movies in Spanish or Arabic or Mandarin, but I don’t know about you, but that’s way too passive for me. I don’t translate as much as I should and if I encounter something I don’t understand I’m less likely to look it up. Plus, watching a movie means sitting down for 2.5 hours. Which rarely happens anymore with a three year old and an infant. So I decided to change things up. It’s been absolutely brilliant.

TRICKING MYSELF

I made one big switch: I chose something I loved to do, something that relaxed me, something that I would do no matter what, even if it happened to be in another language.

For me that meant my guilty pleasures: I switched a good portion of my leisure reading… magazines, blogs and news from English to Spanish.

Reading about French cheeses in Spanish *mind blown*

It’s a little embarrassing my choice of free-time reading but often I like to curl up with a glossy mag that is totally packed full of beautiful photos of things I won’t buy or do or make, and just read the soothing, ever-so-helpful advice — even if it’s designed to sell ad space.

I am so making that raspberry tart.

Now I read it in Spanish.

I find out about celebrity baby bumps and the latest fashion, but completely en Español. If I’m surfing online, just taking a little break, I get my news from a Spanish-language newspaper online. It’s really awesome and strange to read about Jessica Simpson’s baby in Spanish, just as much as it’s weird to catch up on the situation in North Korea in Spanish as well.

Summer soup, yum.

But here’s the thing: I’m COMBINING my “studies” with something I’d do anyway. I’ve added no extra time to my day. And I’m incentivized to read in Spanish not because of some high-minded goal to become fluent but because, “OMG, What does that article on People Español say about Leonardo DiCaprio?”

It totally works.

I seriously need to get back to Greece.

Take the things you love, the things you’ll do anyway, then permanently switch them to the language you’re learning, so you’re passively picking it up as you go. The key: something you really miss if you don’t make the effort. In the beginning it’ll be slow, but even if you’re just skimming sometimes, translating other times, the net positive is that you’ll be using the language on a daily basis without the mental baggage of it feeling like “work”. In fact, at this point, for me, it feels like goofing off. I’m like, “Okay I have to stop reading Spanish celebrity gossip and get back to work!”

Okay this is now officially embarrassing. But it’s been amazing. Guilty pleasure? Do it in a foreign language.

I’m a total slacker.

Agua Fresca – Jamaica (Hibiscus Flower Tea)

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:58:44 GMT

Agua fresca is one of my favorite things about Mexico. It’s basically flavored water and you find it everywhere. There’s a rice version (they’ll just call it arroz for short) that has a little cinnamon in it, you’ll find tamarind versions, cucumber and pineapple versions, but my absolute favorite is Jamaica.

If you’ve never tasted Hibiscus tea before, it’s almost like cranberry juice but lighter and a little tart. It’s packed with vitamin C and it’s a natural diuretic, there’s all kinds of studies on the health benefits, but I just like it for how it tastes.

They sell big bags of dried hibiscus flowers in the grocery store, but if you’re not in Mexico, you might be able to find Jamaica tea bags (I believe Lipton’s makes them, we used them in Guatemala).

The recipe is really easy, but I just eye-ball it.

Ingredients:

2 quarts water
3/4 to 1 cup sugar (depending on how sweet you would like it to be)
1 cup dried hibiscus flowers
lime slices

Some places add cinnamon or ginger, but I just like a slice of lime. Really you can just grab a handful, about this much:

Or pour it into your pitcher until it covers the bottom:

Then fill it up with boiling water:

Let it steep for five minutes, strain out the flowers, mix in the sugar and serve, over ice, with your lime, on a beautiful day (or at least it will feel that way):

Almost all of my memories of Puerto Vallarta are tied up in this drink, I love it, and every time we go to the beach we get some. I was on a personal crusade to convince everyone back home to try this, but then I heard a rumor that Panera Bread is introducing hibiscus iced tea this summer. To which I say: aha! my work is done.

Five Years

Christine Gilbert — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:20:21 +0000

Our kitchen table today… the tequila was for cooking, but I feel like a margarita is in order!

In April, 2008, I started this blog to chronicle what I thought at the time was the biggest thing I could do: quit my job and travel. At the time, I couldn’t even see past what would happen when I turned in my notice, never mind five years down the road. I was sweating and shaking like an over-bred Pomeranian on a road trip. I was a mess. Drew thought it was hilarious, and suggested I name the site “Almost Fearless” — a recommendation I took, and that spring, I did become almost fearless, because I left GE, I packed up our Boston apartment and shipped myself, my husband and our two dogs over to Madrid, where I began my career as a freelance writer and photographer.

That was the scariest thing I had ever done.

Then life moves on. I traveled to 35 countries, stopping to live in many along the way, I took thousands of photos each year, I wrote several books worth of blog content, I studied Mandarin, Spanish and Arabic, I had a baby… then I had a second baby, I sold my book idea, my husband and I filmed and edited a documentary and then…

Suddenly I looked up, holding my six week old daughter, living in Mexico, my toddler running around with a Hulk mask on and yelling “Agua! Por favor!” (don’t ask) and realizing that — holy crap — not only has it been five years since I started this site and pressed the reset button on my life, but I really have no idea how I got here. Seriously, it was just supposed to be a little travel, some writing, I’d take a few pictures. That’s it! Yet, somehow that one moment, not just saying I wanted to travel, but actually chucking everything to make it happen — the leap that I took — it changed everything. It opened the floodgates.

Five years ago, I didn’t think I wanted to have kids. Amazing what a little jaunt around the world will do — 16 months later I was pregnant. I always wanted to learn other languages — for YEARS I said this — but I finally got down to business and seriously started studying not just one, but three. I learned about food — it blew my mind what I had been missing — and cooking local dishes has become an integral way that I learn about a place. It’s shaped my thoughts on raising kids, especially when you see how different cultures do it, but also when you consider the kind of creative, risk-taking and independent life we have now, how can we not give our kids the same thing? It’s made me want to travel more, but slowly, to never ever go home, to have lots of babies with my husband and to create art and play with the kids, and learn about the world.

If I talked to my pre-almost fearless self, she’d probably say, “Oh god, you’ve become such a hippie.”

Yeah, I know, right?

So five years in, I’m not looking back, I’m looking forward. I created this site as a totally different person, so I felt like it was time to catch up to where I am now. I did some things on the backend to make this easier, I broke a lot of stuff (mostly fixed now, I think) and I’m kind of thrilled at the result. If you’re reading this post from your RSS reader or email, go to the site real quick and check it out.

The big changes

There are four main sections of the site now: Life, Kitchen, Photos, Kids.

Life – This is the main blog as you know it now. I didn’t call it travel because, well I LIVE in Mexico. In six months, I’ll live in Asia. I’m not really a traveler, I’m more of a serial expat. I tried to think of a succinct mashup to describe it, like “flashpacker” but for traveling where you have a fully stocked house yet change travel plans so often that your three year old still talks about places in Thailand like they are right down the street (“Sorry sweetie, we can’t go to Kad Suan Kaew because it’s on the other side of the world…). Expat-flash-slow-packer? Okay, I’ll stop.

Kitchen – It’s my new food blog — I’ll be recreating the dishes that I find in my travels, using local ingredients as much as possible and finding out fascinating things like “What’s the difference between corn and flour tortillas” and then finding out it’s LARD, which apparently is delicious. As in “I don’t know what it is about these tortillas but they just TASTE better.” Yeah, honey that’s the lard.

Photos – I created a separate section for photo essays, which usually are from my travels, but might include anything. Of course there are photos all throughout the site, but I’d like to explore more photography-based story-telling and now I have a space to do that.

Kids: I’ll never really be a parenting blogger, I just don’t get into my kids’ day-to-day like that, but I am finding learning languages with Cole to be really interesting, and I’d like to talk more about raising bilingual/multilingual children. I’m also on the cusp of Cole’s school years (in some countries they start kids at 3, so perhaps I’m behind!) and I’m trying to figure out how to do that. Homeschool? International school? Playful art curriculum like Reggio Emilia? Unschooling? I don’t know where this will lead, but we want an emphasis on languages, art, music and play for those first few years.

Other things

In each section you can sort through my posts by the number of comments or ‘likes’ (new feature: that’s the little heart on each post, click the heart to ‘like’ it, which is like saying ‘worth reading!’ or simply, “yay!”). So you can very easily navigate around the archives of my site, check out what posts caused the most controversy over the years or what people liked the most. There’s also a new search page that lets you search the entire site. Hopefully this makes it easier for you to find older content, because that was some feedback I had received about the site… it was too hard to find things!

I’m also working on translated versions of the site, but that will come in a few weeks after things settle down. I’ll be translating select pieces in Arabic, Spanish and Mandarin, mostly as practice for myself, but also I would like to connect with readers who speak those languages! When a post is translated, there will just be a little link on the bottom to the translated page, if there is one.

So that’s it! The new structure of the site lets me do some cool things, like in the life section, you can filter by country but in the kitchen section, you can filter by cuisine. Little things like that. And big things too. Like it makes me extremely happy. I hope you guys like it!

Happy Five Years!

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Excuse me while I break my site…

Christine Gilbert — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:51:36 +0000

Update: the new site is live! It’s still really buggy as it can take a full 48 hours for the DNS changes to propagate and we’re still fixing things. But it’s getting better. Thank you for hanging in there! XOXO ~Christine

–

I’m making some big changes. Like freaking huge, oh my god, seriously, what am I doing, I just had a baby and who’s idea was this anyway changes.

We will launch soon (like a week?). Everything will look different. We’re super excited. Until then, I’ll be googling CSS tags that I’ve long forgotten and Drew will be putting on his rusty graphic design boots (they have thick soles for crushing it) and we’ll be breaking the ever-living hell out of this site. It’s going to be mess. Then it’s going to be awesome. But first: really, really messy.

Hang on. We’ll be back. Here’s some zen-photography from our backyard in Mexico. Wish us luck.

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Yes, Mexico is Extremely Dangerous

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:40:06 GMT

Birria: The Mexican Stew That Cures Anything

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 06:44:02 GMT

Mexican food has baffled me. Beyond the tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, burritos and empandas – there’s this whole other world of Mexican dishes that are all new to me. I know how to make most standard Mexican fare, the comfort food I’m used to ordering as take out back home — but what I’m really curious about is everything else.

Tonight I made birria.

There are signs all over town for it, and usually there’s a big clay pot on a stand, perhaps with some plastic chairs and assorted accompaniments. It’s street food that only comes out only in the mornings. Birria reminds me a bit of a savory beef stew, but spicy and with a hint of cinnamon, cloves and cumin. Here in Puerto Vallarta, the meat is usually beef (res) or goat (chivo). The stands open up first thing in the morning and by noon or 2 pm at the latest, they shut down. No more soup for you.

What I couldn’t figure out is why birria, which is a hearty spicy stew, is served in the mornings, but pozole (another dish I have to cook one of these days) which in Puerto Vallarta is usually pozole blanco, a clear broth with chicken or pork and hominy (giant corn soaked in lime) is only served at night.

Interestingly birria is also well-known as a cure for hangovers (or the common cold). File that away for later.

Ingredients for Birria de Res

They didn’t have goat today at the butcher, so I went with beef. You can just swap out the 4 lbs of meat for whatever you like, beef, goat, or lamb.

4 lbs beef (I just went with a very cheap cut because the slow cooking will tenderize anything)
6 guajillo chiles
6 ancho or mulato chiles
12 cascabel chiles
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground thyme
5 whole allspice (Note: the recipe calls for this but I skipped it. Long story… in Spanish allspice is pimiento de jamaica, or literally hibiscus pepper but no one knew what I was talking about and tried to either give me pimento (pepper) or flor de jamaica (hibscus flowers) — so I skipped it. I’m guessing if Mexicans really included it in this dish it would be available everywhere, but feel free to correct me in the comments if I have that wrong.)
10 garlic cloves
3 bay leaves
1 onion
Salt to taste (I used 4 tbsp of coarse sea salt)
1 cup of water

Sides
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped cilantro
Radishes
Limes
Corn Tortillas

First make the soup base. This recipe calls for three types of peppers but first a word on that. The Spanish name for dried chiles is different than the fresh chiles. So our recipe calls for:

-dried guajillo chiles which are known as mirasol chiles when fresh <– medium hot

-dried ancho chiles which are known as poblano chiles when fresh (mulato is another version of this) <– mild heat

-dried cascabel chiles which are known as bell chiles when fresh <– medium hot

(I mention this because I’ve been completely confused by the world of dried chiles but knowing this helped).

You don’t have to use all three, just use what you can get. It’s better to mix different chiles for depth of flavor but if all you can get are say, ancho chiles, no worries!

These are the guajillo chiles, I see these most often in Mexico:

These are the mulato (or you might use ancho, same thing):

And these are the cascabel chiles:

You might want to use gloves for this next part, but whatever you do, don’t touch anything if you use your hands. To make the paste you have to remove the seeds and veins and spread them out on a cooking sheet or tin foil to be toasted in the oven for 3-5 minutes.

I used my hands to do this, just ripping them open and shaking out the seeds. Then I washed my hands vigorously several times. Two hours later I touched my eye and almost died. Seriously. It was like my eyeball was on fire and I hid in the bathroom, flushing my face with cold water and wondering if I was going blind. Then I posted an update on Twitter. Because that’s what you do when you’ve blinded yourself with chiles.

Anyway, it should look like this:

And the big mess you made in your kitchen is like this (those seeds are super spicy. just toss them):

After you’ve toasted the chiles, add about 1 cup of boiling water to them (in a bowl) and let them sit for 20 minutes. Then toss the water, the chiles and all of the spices (except the bay leaves) into a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Set aside.

Next you’ll take your 4 lbs of meat and quickly sear it on both sides, but don’t cook it all the way.

Put the seared meat into a big pot and fill with water to cover the meat. Add the onion and bay leaves.

Next, use a mesh strainer to refine the paste you created in the blender:

Just keep stirring it:

And the liquid will continue to stream out:

Until you have a goopy paste left, which means you’re done, you can toss the rest:

Add 4 tbsp of kosher salt or there abouts (taste as you go). Cover your stew, set it on low heat for three hours.

Then you go outside and take pictures of flowers. And your son. And more flowers.

Maybe edit them in Lightroom while telling everyone on Facebook you’re making B-I-R-R-I-A!!!

Basically, you have three hours to kill. Do with what you will. But then there’s this…

Which is this really intense stew that is rich like the beef stew you know, but the chiles give it this mild under current of heat. It’s spicy, but only after a few bites. The meat is fall-off-the-bone tender and everything has the slightest hints of cinnamon, cloves and cumin. It’s really good.

I dressed mine with chopped cilantro and onion. I’ve seen radishes at all the stands. I also added a little extra salt. The best way to eat it? I like to use tortillas and fill them up with the meat, then dip it in the broth as I’m eating. Birria is also fantastic for tacos, quesadillas or just dunking tortillas.

And you know what? After I ate a bowl of this, I did feel like maybe it cleared up my sinuses. Maybe it is the miracle cure-all after all.

Nom.

Mama Habla Español

Christine Gilbert — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:45:12 +0000

What is it like for a three-year old to suddenly have their mother talk in Spanish to him?

Sometimes he doesn’t notice. He accepts sandía as the word for watermelon, especially since watermelon is a mouthful, and w’s are impossible for him. And after pointing and miming at the watermelon, saying sandía gets it into his mouth much faster. “Oh sandía?” We ask? He nods. He’s never heard the word before but he gets it.

Other times, he looks at me weird like I’m playing a trick on him. It’s usually when I say something longer, like “Que quieres comer?” and he has no idea and no context to translate. I let him off the hook. “What do you want to eat?”

Pizza! It’s the same in both languages.

I slip out of Spanish all the time. There’s so much I don’t know. Things I looked up today:

Squish the play dough.
Roller Skating.
Slice (the onion).
Dice it.
Don’t bite your tongue.
Knee.

There’s more I missed. Things I meant to look up but faded away before I could put down the baby or stop chasing my toddler. But I did read three articles on People Español — which entertains me to no end. I caught up on the North Korean conflict on the Mexico City newspaper El Universal. I told Cole that we Vamos a ir a la playa mañana.

That’s it. He has started asking for agua on his own. He says hola to people.

As I was putting him to bed, I called him loco, mono, mi amor, and cariño. At one point I must have gotten carried away with my Spanish because he covered my mouth. I switched back to English. He relaxed.

We have six months in Mexico and these baby steps are just the beginning, but it’s so fascinating to learn languages like this. To be honest, it scares the crap out of me, losing my easy ability to communicate with my son, stumbling over verb tenses and unknown vocabulary. I’m not pushing too hard, but still, there’s something so very different about immersion language learning as a family verses my experiences in 2008-2009, when it was just me, traveling alone in Guatemala, immersed but self-sufficient. No one depended on my ability to communicate for their well-being.

Yet, I’m slowly slipping in Spanish versions for his favorite movies. I’m unraveling his English life a little. I even discovered that if you go to youtube.com.mx it will let you only search for Spanish-language videos. It feels a little sneaky and I wonder if at some point he’s going to catch on. Wait a minute mama, you speak Spanish now!

Where will we be after six months of this? I can’t wait.

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One Month with Stella

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:15:13 GMT

Location: Bucerias, Mexico

Last week I posted her birth story, but it had taken me a few weeks to write it, so already, here we are, at the one month point. It feels that fast for me too. Three days after Stella was born we were home, going to the beach every day, sliding back into something of a routine. We’re sleep deprived (Drew becomes a zombie without enough sleep), grouchy (I’m so hungry all the time from breastfeeding, I keep yelling at Drew for being a zombie) and slow moving. Two hours at the beach becomes a most-of-the-day affair, but you know what? Screw it. I sit in my beach chair, under the Tommy Bahama umbrella we bought at Costco (it’s like we’re on vacation!), and Stella sleeps on my lap, soothed by the ocean. Cole runs circles around Drew the entire time. We’re all covered in sand. The baby too, despite my attempts to keep her covered, and after her baths I use a q-tip to clean errant pieces of sand that just won’t wash off — we’ll be cleaning sand out of ears and crevices for six months after we leave — but Stella, most of all, doesn’t seem to mind.

It’s chaotic, sometimes erupting into toddler meltdowns or momma ones — but other times it’s so blissful I want to write poetry to my children and convince all my single girlfriends to get married now and have as many children as possible. It has it’s moments. Other times, I want to strangle my husband but then he surprises me and does something so tender with the kids, while no one is looking, and I wonder if I could love him more. Rugged men with babies? What could be sexier?

Stella is getting fatter, her skinny little legs and arms are finally plumping up and when I pick her up she smacks her lips at me, because she’s always hungry. Cole has become incredibly sweet with me, holding my hand sometimes, giving me kisses, stroking my face with his hand and saying, “Oh Mama,” the same way I stroke his hair and say, “Oh Cole” when he’s hurt.

There’s a brewing storm in my mind, all the things we’re about to do: Spanish lessons, writing assignments, film festivals, photography I want to focus on, workshops in Bucerias, cooking classes, firing up the BBQ for homemade asado, teaching Cole how to swim, and perhaps, in a few weeks, picking up surfing again after a two-year break. Then I remember: gratitude, relax, enjoy. I like to be busy, too, there will be time for that soon. Right now, I’m embracing the mess, my hair uncombed, emails unanswered, dishes piling up — but there’s a little boy swimming in my yard, a warm baby in my lap and a quite distracted, almost-bearded husband making us lunch — what could be better?

Lean Way In

Christine Gilbert — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:01:58 +0000

Worth not having a 401k over? For me, yes.

Being overseas and self-employed means I miss out on most water cooler moments. I pick up hints on Twitter or Facebook so in the last few weeks I’ve been seeing articles pop up my feed about ‘Work and Life Balance’. Can you have it all? Should you? Are women dropping out to raise families? Or is it more like pushed out?

Notably the female CEO of Yahoo had a baby and returned to work two weeks later and then proceeded to revoke work-from-home arrangements company-wide. My feed boiled over with outrage.

At the same time Sheryl Sanberg, the former COO of Facebook, released her semi-biographical call to arms for upwardly mobile women called, “Lean in”. The New York Times accused her of being more concerned with building her personal brand than helping women. In my feed? More articles about what Sanberg didn’t say, than what she did.

So as someone who ostensibly ”has it all” meaning I kept my career, I had two kids, I stay-at-home, so does my husband, and we somehow made it all work — let me say one thing: life is messy. These questions about work, life, balance, happiness, meaning, family, kids, time management, inspiration — all of it — are really about a very big question we all must face: how do I want to live my life? The question never gets fully answered until you live all of your days and you’ve settled the what-ifs with what-you-actually-did. Then you’re dead. It’s literally the question of our lives, one we’ll answer in different ways at different times and just as soon as you have it all figured out, everything changes.

What’s interesting to me is that there’s so little room in the discourse for alternate points-of-view. I don’t expect many people to embrace what I’ve done — quit my corporate job, start a new career as a writer post-30, live overseas, have babies, be self-employed — but I’m still surprised at how narrow the discussion is even outside of my extreme case. Are women the only ones that struggle with balancing family and work? I think not. Or are people who choose not to have kids (or can’t have them) less valid or not allowed to bemoan their own work-life struggles? Or can a woman, like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer want to return to work two-weeks postpartum and not be a workaholic, but just, you know, want to go back to work?

If I take the articles coming out of this national conversation to be any indicator, it seems like having babies and working for someone else is the only option. It frames the discussion around a series of assumptions that seem sort of sexist in and of themselves. I know for me, I struggled with work-life balance as a twenty-something. Having kids clarified things for me, but I always knew there was a problem with working to exhaustion every week. I didn’t want to have kids back then, even though I married at 26 — I was terrified of the 60 hour work week + daycare + commute and it wasn’t until I dropped out of my career for other reasons that having children was back on the table. (These days, I’m baby-crazy, not the result of my biological clock, but of having the flexibility to raise my kids in a way that I find appealing).

That being said, what I’ve done with my life wouldn’t work for everyone — or even most people. Most people like living near their family and friends. Or having a community. Or owning more things than what they can fit in a suitcase. There’s a price we pay — happily I might add — but it’s too steep for most people.

What I would love to come out of this conversation about priorities is not a push for women at the highest levels to “lean in” (as if the inequalities in the workplace are because women in senior positions aren’t aggressive enough) but for all of us to look our basic assumptions:

Should we be working for someone else?

Where do we find meaning? At work? In our hobbies?

Is working extremely hard the highest virtue, really?

Do we have enough time off? Or do long breaks from work make us more creative?

Is workplace flexibility inevitable? In twenty years will we all “log-in” into work from home?

I’d like to think we’re at the point that a woman can choose to stay at home with her kids or return to work immediately after giving birth and both choices would be considered valid. Yet, there’s this push, especially in the ‘lifestyle redesign’ genre, for people who’ve “found” work-life balance to sneer at so-called regular folk, to condescendingly imply that if you do work a regular job and commute — or if you have kids and use child care — that you’re some how not doing enough, as if the only way to prove that you’re a thinking, creative person who is making conscious choices you have to make the same decisions that these authors made. It’s the worst form of smugness, as if the majority of people are blind, and conveniently, only those who make the same choices as you are actually doing it right.

On the other hand, as Americans we are obsessed with workplace productivity. We work more hours per week with less time off than any time before then we have babies and we keep going. We feel guilty, that’s right, actual guilt, about taking time off from our careers. Imagine what we could have achieved, we think to ourselves. We don’t view our ability to take time off as the luxury that it is or as equally valuable to work — that’s the fundamental assumption underpinning this entire discussion. For example, if raising kids was seen as equally valuable, there would be nothing to talk about! It’s a sort of sideways discussion because instead of talking about that, about our obsession with work as the highest good, we focus everything on how to raise children without ever taking our foot off the gas pedal of our careers. How insane is that?

Ultimately, I’m encouraged to hear Americans questioning their work ethics and whether their time might be better spent doing other things (and quietly I think many people are doing just that, prioritizing their lives with little fanfare) but we’re still so far behind our neighbors in Europe. We treat parents and the childless with equal disdain, it just depends on who you talk to — and we force people to defend their life choices while not supporting each other. It’s frustrating to read, because it doesn’t have to be that way. This is what I know:

Finding meaning in our lives leads to happiness. Important work is part of that.

Flexibility costs very little for employers

Not everyone wants the same thing as you.

Having kids — or not! — doesn’t change things, we should all live balanced lives.

There are no easy answers. You literally can not have it all any more than you can work and not-work at the same time. You have to pick. Information is good. Sharing stories is important, but in the end we all have to decide. Even not-picking is still making a choice.

For me, I’m leaning way in but maybe not in the way Sanberg envisioned. With this second baby, I’m loosing up. I can’t control everything. I can’t be perfect. I’m embracing the mess. I’m leaning into the discomfort, releasing the nagging feeling that maybe I should be doing more or the subtle tug on my heart that wonders what I’m potentially giving up. It’s not easy. But that’s the point. I think if anything Sanberg wants women to live just two degrees north of what’s comfortable. For her, that’s corporate life. For me, that’s a beach town in Mexico. We all have our ways.

(Note: Thanks to Pam for capturing the above photo of Cole at the beach.)

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