Trigger Words and Coconut Caramels

I'm sorry for forcing you to change your language around me.

Language is a means by which we are able to communicate our experiences to others, but in the same way we shape our language, language shapes our perception of the world.

I've changed my language around you. You don't know that I have. It's not a matter of walking on eggshells. It's a matter of growing with you and having you be part of my life. I won't give you examples. That's not the point. The point is that as of yesterday, we learned that SHOULD is my trigger word.

I used to use that word a lot. One day, I was complaining to a friend over coffee about how stressful my life was. My ex was complaining about how we couldn't move because I didn't want to and I was in the way of everything he wanted to do and that we couldn't do anything because my life and career were on the peninsula, but his was in the city. This wasn't true. I worked really hard to make sure he had everything he ever wanted or needed insofar as I thought reasonable. Eat healthier? I cooked. I packed lunches. Party in the city? I'd dress up and be designated driver. Or say, you go ahead. I have rehearsal. Drive safely.

I told her that he should do the work of finding an apartment and moving. I'd done it for us the last two times. I told her that there was no way I'd be able to live the life I wanted as a singer. That I should apply for programs, but that I wouldn't get into any of them and I was debating on holding off for another year until I could be better somehow. I told her that I should get a new job. And she told me to stop using the word "should".

I was annoyed that she'd ask me to change my vocabulary. It's just one word! And then I thought, she's really smart. She's done some amazing things out of nowhere that I haven't been able to wrap my head around. She's amazing. I trust her. So I tried it.

I honestly believe that by doing my best to remove that word from my vocabulary, I have been able to change my life.

I got angry with you for telling me I should post a recipe. 

 

By telling me you expected it, you removed any choice I had in the matter. Did I think the recipe was good enough? I mean, I SET MY OVEN ON FIRE. Did I want to try something different? Maybe add coffee? Did I want to focus on writing my speech workshop and hold off on blog posts for a little while? You forced a request onto my plate that I did not want on there.

You took away my ability to give this to you freely and as a gift. A gift can only truly be a gift if I have a choice not to give it.

It doesn't seem like it matters that much. People say "should" all the time. "You should download this app." "You should come out with me." "We should catch up." "You should try this exercise program/diet." "We should have left earlier." "We should have tried to meet up." "We should have gone elsewhere."

And yea, it's annoying, but people are annoying. I guess I can live with all that.

The worst part is watching how you use that word on yourself.

 Because you don't have to.

Think about it. Again, I don't care what words you feel you must use, but if you ever tell me I should do something, I will tell you to fuck off. With love.

Also, consider wearing blue lipstick (see illustration).

Coconut Caramels
This is a softer, sweeter version of one of my favorite treats from Guam.

1 cup coconut milk
1 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup shaved, dry coconut (preferably unsweetened)


Dump sugar, salt, and coconut milk into a stainless steel pan. Do not mix. Just turn on the heat to medium and step away. After 10 minutes, the mixture should be a bubbly and syrupy. Turn the heat down. You don't want it to burn. You also don't want to buy a thermometer, because UGH WORK. But you're smart. You know how to test candy without a thermometer.

While you do this, put the shaved, dry coconut into a dry saute pan and toast on medium heat until nutty and golden brown. DO NOT do this under a broiler. You will set your oven on fire. Go ahead and try it. I'll wait.

When your dried coconut catches fire, do not remove the pan from the oven. Place a larger pan or bowl or something over the flaming coconut to snuff the flame. You can remove the pan once the flames are out and get rid of your coconut ashes.

When your bubbly coconut syrup has reached firm ball stage, remove it from the heat and stir in the toasted dry coconut.

To cool, spoon the mixture onto a greased baking sheet or onto parchment paper, if you happen to have it. I never do. When it cools down enough to hold its shape, use a knife to cut the caramel into bite-size pieces or a spoon to spoon the caramel into small squares of wax paper that you can twist into individual candies. Keep in an airtight container in the fridge or throw into the freezer.

Give to the guy you have had a crush on forever and also your friends in common and I guess anyone else between you and him so your affection for him is completely undetectable from how you treat everyone else, so he's never truly aware of the fact that you are so into him that one time, when he walked past and tossed his hair, you almost fell over, because you are a Tex Avery cartoon.

How to make real chicken soup for your lover, a step-by-step process

Buy the whole chicken. You've decided to mother him, so buy the good organic chicken, though it's overpriced at three-days-before-Christmas prices, so moved were you by the sniffles from his little red nose and his despairing glances at the snow, which decided to fall just now, just as he's walking you home, like a zombie clinging to his chivalry. Toss a bunch of vegetables into your basket, along with the naked bird you will sacrifice in the name of your love.

At your apartment, free the chicken from its plastic bindings. With your biggest and baddest kitchen knife in hand, rotate that chicken around on your cutting board, attempting to find the easiest point at which to bisect it. Take a deep breath. Imagine the chicken taking a deep breath too. Congratulations, you are weird and kind of gross. Prepare, ye two, for the inevitable. 

Shank the chicken right between its breasts. The raw meat and skin jiggle awkwardly. Notice how the chicken, jiggling its naked wingtips toward the sky looks like the hapless victim of a violent mugging.  "Nah, man...please don't cut me man..." you can almost hear the chicken pleading. Curse.

Turn the damn chicken around on its back so it can't see The End. Give it a good hard whack on the butt to prove your dominance, for you mean to make real chicken soup, and this requires sacrificing your innocence. 

This is the chicken soup your mother and her mother before her, and her mother before her, and the cavewoman who birthed your entire ancestral line made when your great grandfather^10000 convalesced from smallpox or from hunting a wild boar or something. No thin-ass broth made with one sad defrosted breast ever saved ANYONE from smallpox and certainly, you will not feed your future husband some sub-par soup, you vow, while simultaneously planning your wedding, which will be on a boat, and who are the most important to invite since the maximum capacity is 40? 

Only the best!  Chicken soup from scratch, chicken soup made from a whole chicken! "Oh, do you want to try my chicken soup, the one I make with cilantro? Or the Greek kind, with lemon? I can make all kinds of chicken soup, you know. It's just about what you prefer," you said, with the shrug of one who thinks she can dismember chickens in her sleep just because she used to be a food critic. 

Ah, how easy it was to brag. Now you press all your weight down on that dull knife, the one you got in a $12-for-three deal on amazon.com. Saw away, foolish girl, slowly but surely, through the layers of muscle and yellow fat and pale goosepimply skin. Rue the day you didn't pack a proper Chinese meat knife, the kind of heavy duty death cleaver your grandma uses to get business done. Swiftly. 

Oh god. THERE'S BLOOD EVERYWHERE INSIDE. IT'S CONGEALED AT THE JOINTS, LIKE A PUDDING. 

WHERE'S THE SINK???

***

10 minutes later

Wash the chicken parts under running water. 

Place the chicken parts in the pot with a good amount of salt. 

Realize that your pot is too small to fit all the chicken parts. Curse. Freeze half of the damn chicken. 

Wait patiently for the first boil. You need to skim the scum that comes to the surface, give it a change of water and salt that dirty bird down again, like your foremothers before you have done. Atleast you didn't have to pluck it.

Oh no, you remember something. Only a few weeks ago your lover was disturbed by sudden disappearance of the rooster living next door. The rooster started out as an annoyance, with his 5AM cockle-doodle-dooing, but then your lover had quickly gotten attached, with his big soft heart and trusting eyes. He started peeking over at that rooster. He felt for that rooster which had no hens to chase around and was all alone in its cold rooster house, in a barren backyard on an especially crime-ridden neighborhood block of Bed-Stuy where Jay-Z once worked as a chicken fryer at Crown's Fried Chicken before he married Beyonce.

The fattened rooster had been neatly murdered on Thanksgiving day. He kept looking for it days after the fact, hoping to see it alive and well.

I'm a monster, you realize with dawning horror. He's going to think I'm a monster! We'll never have our boat wedding. I'll never wear that red qipao-inspired wedding dress that I'm going to get made in Shanghai for much less money than all those silly hags spend on their dress at that snotty shop on Say Yes to the Dress!

But the chicken is bubbling. And it smells tasty. You must add the green onions. Despite all your shortcomings.

Sigh. This is the human condition. 

You want to nurse him with the life-giving chicken soup your immigrant mother makes for you when you get sick. How you eagerly wanted to offer a taste of home, a drop of love. 

After this fairly exhausting existential struggle, you know which soup must be made. No Greek or cilantro soup for him, no. It must be the proper double-boiled Chinese chicken soup: clear and rich with golden oil floating atop, elixir-like from half a day of boiling. Sprinkle of green onion before serving. A delicacy. But then, as a still-kinda-young person you like to flout tradition and remembering he likes vegetables: add crunchy rings of fennel and turnips for sweetness. Throw all the vegetable skins like a sexy hobo who wastes nothing. 

---

To make double-boiled chicken soup, hobo Joanne version, you'll need:

A whole chicken to be slaughtered dfor love

Aromatics (green onion, an actual onion, garlic, shallots, etc.)

Vegetables, sliced or diced into bite-sized chunks

Salt and/or spices

Cook over low heat for as long as possible, or until the smells become too tantalizing and/or you run out of patience. Eat with your legs intertwined with your lover's legs, so he can never escape.