"Vushka" Means "Ears" and So At Christmas I Listen

At Christmas, little ear-shaped and mushroom-filled dumplings called "vushka" swim in the red borschts upon the elaborately embroidered tablecloths of many Ukrainian homes. 

"Vushka" are a special food for a special day - whether it's celebrated on December 25th or, like most Ukrainians, on January 7th, which is it's date on the old or "Julian" calendar. Special because:

• "vushka" are only eaten once a year at the "12 courses for 12 apostles" Holy Night supper that starts with the first star in the sky;
• "vushka" are often made from the finest dried mushrooms - which at more than $300 per kilo could become the stuff of smuggling and packages Duct-taped to airplane passengers;
• "vushka" are small and fiddly and need great care and love in the making, and;
• "vushka" are shared with the people we are closest to. 

Like my Shanghai-based sister. She recently sent me a reference claiming ear-named dumplings may have come from ancient China where a charitable emperor fed them to the poor to ease a disease of their ears. If they heal ears I know not, but can attest to them helping me use my own.

At my childhood Christmases on the Shawangunk ridge of upstate New York, with cousins, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, neighbours, and uncles who weren't really uncles but had nowhere else to share the meal, the specialness of "vushka" was respected and recognised through their rationing.  To remind ourselves that goodness can be fragile and is to be cherished, each bowl carefully got an allocation of three. You ate them slowly and well - or at least that was the idea.

If you somehow got one more than the quota, it was almost as good as the presents delivered by the "angels" to the bottom of the "yalynka" (Christmas tree) after the ringing of the bells (or just clinking of cognac glasses if the grown-ups couldn't be bothered).

This year, my Australian wife said to me: "Hey, are we going to have those little ear-thing dumplings?" 

And, it made me listen. Listen to the love she gives me and those around her. Listen to her desire to make this Christmas special and better for our families. Listen to her implicit desire for renewal and connection.

I was fortunate enough to keeping listening, to really try to tune into my heart and my surrounds, down at the modern and gym-like Cathedral at Parramatta - filled with Filipinos, Chinese, Italians, "Aussie Aussies" and countless others in what's considered the world's most culturally diverse archdiocese.

As we waited for Christmas Mass, I first heard us fidgeting with newsletters and watched us checking out each other's outfits and waistlines. I looked at faces and made out that I saw worry about the success or failure of family lunches to follow, or whether the Council's gift of free parking was really legit. 

I thought about how we (okay me) get so caught up in the "business of busy" that seems to be modern life. When did a late train become so important? Why is a family member's or work colleague's off-the-cuff remark a dagger? How does the small stuff become my daily "fiscal cliff"? 

As the Go-Betweens song goes: "always the traffic, always the lights". Why is there always seemingly more noise and more clutter - or the "monkey mind" as the Buddhists call it?

But then I listened to the invited Tongan choir - flowing white robes against dark South Pacific faces - warm up by soaring through its "Gloria". And, I don't mean the Van Morrison or Laura Branigan songs. 

The choir singers as big as defensive tackles in the NFL - and that's just the girls - but with pure voices that took things above and beyond my daily chores, bores and snores. Truly transcendent "Gloria in Excelcis Deo".

Calming yet vibrant like a lush garden right after rain. I make out it was improbably but tenderly cultivated and grown in some crappy, rented Scout hall on many Wednesday nights after a working day cleaning other people's waste at the hospital, or driving a school bus of screaming kids, or getting tossed around by a road-side jackhammer.

During the sermon, I listened to the Sri Lankan priest - now safe from a brutal war - ask us to pray for tiny tots in Connecticut and how we were going to make this Christmas different.

So, I prayed - which is always harder than I care to admit. Then, I went home and put some "vushka" on, photographed them with a phone that's apparently smarter than me, and wrote what I hope are these simple if too many words. 

Because as those little "ears" float there in a soup of my making on a table in our house with my wife pottering, I am thankful to have heard the message of hope and light that is Christmas and share it with you.

Merry Christmas. Peace be with you.

(PS: Here's a link for "vushka" recipes from Olga Drozd: http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/index.php?topic=4920.msg7388#msg7388. Of Ukrainian heritage, Olga was born in Germany, raised in Australia and now lives in Canada, and I'm grateful for her really, really excellent website.)

Serious Dumplings, Serious Responsibilities and a Tragic Radio Prank

That dumplings provide nutrition and joy in the eating is well-established. That dumplings provide satisfaction in the making is also well-established.

It is, however, less acknowledged that dumplings are also a serious matter. A matter of responsibility to oneself and others, as we shall explore.

In Sydney, now in the midst of what a friend calls the dumpling 'meta-trend', that seriousness gets no more serious than where the trending may have started. 

Established around 15 or so years ago, Sea Bay* is a northern Chinese eatery on Pitt Street in the Haymarket section of Sydney's CBD, which specialises in fried pork dumplings. 

The Haymarket's never been glamorous and so it remains. It's flophouses of old - filled with wino's and guys 'known to the Police' - have been rebadged as hostels. They're now filled with Irish backpackers (read building site labourers) snapped in the arse by the tail of the Irish Tiger as he raced out the door.

Squat, dark, narrow and consisting of some dozen small cheap tables, Sea Bay stands in contrast to neighbouring Chinatown's long-established Hong Kong style food palazzos. It's all gold watches at Golden Century. Show and blow and if you don't have 40 fish tanks filled with sea creatures you don't count for nothing... 

Initially catering to newer migrants from the People's Republic of China, Sea Bay just gets on with what it has to do. Eg, continue to make among the city's finest pork and chive fried dumplings.  Dumplings that remarkably keep their firmness on this Westerner's clumsy chopstick rather than the "silky" type that flop about. Dumplings where I have to keep pondering the fine filling even though I obviously know what the menu said. "It can't possibly be just pork and chives and a bit of garlic..."

As I eat them, I also think this is a serious matter. Somebody has made thoughtful decisions to develop the recipe. Somebody has carefully selected ingredients and their suppliers. Somebody has recruited and trained the right cooks. Somebody keeps checking to make sure that somebody else - eg, me - is very pleased indeed with his feed. Somebody wakes early and goes to bed late for the seemingly simple exercise of me being about to nourish myself in a pleasurable way.

Somebody clearly knows and meets their responsibilities to their dish, their business, their suppliers and employees, and their customers. 

Or to paraphrase an acquaintance, somebody's being the adult in the room. 

This week, as I eat my dumplings and write about them, and as I read the really horrible news about a London nurse perhaps taking her own life due to the shame she felt for being radio-pranked, I am thinking a fair bit about "the adult in the room". 

Sure, I'm as interested as everybody else in the 2Day situation's permutations when it comes to the law and media ethics. But I'm more concerned to ask of myself: 

Would I have been the adult in the room? Would I have been responsible enough to ask the hard questions? Would I have been responsible enough to pull things up before they went too far and possibly hurt another? Am I consistently responsible to myself, those around me and the world - or do I just turn up when it's convenient? Am I really and fully present to the stuff that I'm doing so that I can really and fully do the right thing?

And, frankly, I can't say that I am. I seek to honour the memory of a distant nurse, wife and mother by looking at my own responsibilities. I reflect and ask for presence, patience and wisdom. The kind of presence, patience and wisdom that constantly brings me back to my connection to others and their well-being. The kind of presence, patience and wisdom a dumpling maker has shown in her small task that touches my heart in a bigger way than she might know.

* There are now Sea Bays in the 'burbs including at Burwood. The Pitt Street original remains the best - and most serious. Try also: lamb skewers with cumin; spring pancakes with jellied noodles, and; cold cucumber and garlic salad.

Pyrizhky - And What They Tell Me About Letting Go But Not Falling Down

Do we see things because we are looking for them? Or, are things we're meant to see put into our view?

I was thinking about this today when I came upon a Facebook friend's post. She'd decided to have a go at 'pyrizhky' - a Ukrainian (and presumably otherwise Eastern European) fare of pastry dough around a filling of either a ground meat with onion and mushrooms, or sauerkraut, or cheese. Unlike many dumplings, 'pyrizhky' are baked, which is similar to the 'burek' of the Turks, Bosnians and others.

And, some folks - and this I really need to try - also further cover and cook them in a creamy dill sauce. Here's a link for an amazing recipe: http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/index.php?topic=2355.0

Across 15,000 kilometres of land and sea, and some 30 years since we last spoke in person, I loved reading my FB friend's 'pyrizhky' post. It seemed filled with love for what she was doing and the places of the heart it comes from, including her getting instructions from her mom. It was also gave me a glimpse at the serious work and effort involved in her dumpling making labours. 'Pyrizhky' - with several stages of dough mixing and kneading, filling preparation, and baking etc - sure ain't like going through Drive Thru at McDonald's.

It said something to me about getting the balance right in my life - hopefully as good as the memorable guy's on the right.

I sometimes wonder - including aloud right here - whether we make our lives a certain way or they're just meant to be a certain way. Maybe, neither. I don't pretend at the final answer, but I'd like to think I at least have a good relationship with my own failures!

Indeed, the harder I have tried to make my life a certain way - the more I whipped and kicked it into a particular shape of expectations - the less it worked in the end. In fact, the more I forced things in my own drill-sergeant and arrogant way - be they relationships, jobs, material aspirations - the more stuffed up they got for me and those around me.

Some would say it's because I was pushing against the grain of stuff that's a whole lot bigger than me or that I was trying to impossibly realign the planets into an order that spells out my name (which is really hard when they've just demoted Pluto and there's only one Earth for E and no planets for T or R). 

A mate who used to work as a dealer at the casino says: "You and you're $50 - after a long night at the bar - just aren't going to beat me and my backer's billions."

Or, to put it another way that I like: "If you want to make God laugh, make a plan."

(Not that God and casino owners are quite in the same category.)

So, if only because my pain threshold isn't what it used to be, it's about balance nowadays for me. On the one side of the scales, I put my dreams and intentions. Sometimes, I think of these as hopeful seeds that I plant in the soil that is my heart and soul. On the other side, it's about the higher power of all our lives doing what it needs to do - and me getting right out of the way! 

Dumplings teach me about balance and acceptance. The right amount of pastry to filling. The right amount of frying, steaming or boiling so the dumpling's neither too soggy or too tough. The right amount of dedication and preparation so that it's still fun and fulfilling and not hard slog. The right amount of will and determination coupled with belief in my higher power and just letting go in favour of The Bigger Plan (with a really big capital B).

So, to my 'pyrizhky'-making FB friend, may you and yours have a wonderful feed. I won't be able to have even a bite, but I've already been nourished.