Sam van Zweden

The customary end-of-year, start-of-year post

While these reflection and resolution posts are everywhere, I think it’s useful to look back and consider what’s been, and look forward to what’s yet to come. It feels foolish to move all the way through with eyes closed. This is probably the kind of post that benefits me more than it benefits you, the reader, but some element of public engagement usually helps with accountability. And I know I’ve been enjoying everyone else’s posts about their resolutions, so maybe you will too.

What was

2014 was Honours – I wrote a project and exegesis about food and memory. I worked harder than I have on anything before, and I said no to so much in order to finish the year with a piece of work I’m happy with. I travelled more in 2014 than I ever have as an adult, and got along to more festivals and events outside of Melbourne. I jumped the desk, speaking and presenting at a writers’ festival. I applied for a lot of things, and got knocked back a lot. I picked myself back up. I finished the year deeply uncertain of my readiness to move into full-time writing, a bit bummed about being rejected lots in a short time frame, and in need of a big break but really bad at ‘doing nothing’.

Last year there wasn’t much blogging here, because I was blogging elsewhere. In blogging the progress of a project, I found that I was able to reflect better on my work – what had succeeded, what hadn’t, what I’d learned, where I’d gone wrong. It’s changing the way I’m blogging here – I’m trying to move toward more of a scrap-booking model, pulling in bits of inspiration and interest as well as the longer things I’ve normally done like reviews. I also got a lot out of reading Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work recently, and mean to share more often.

In 2014, my working habits changed. I learned a heap about organisation and time-management, and these things have stuck. I’m now a super warrior of getting shit done (particularly useful habits acquired: bullet journalling and pomodoros). This is lucky, because for a large part of 2014 I held down two part-time jobs and did Honours full-time. In August, I dropped one of the jobs, but still never really had two spare minutes to rub together. I loved it, as I never had time to agonise or procrastinate, but I did need to be particular about how I got everything done. I’m looking forward to 2015 being a more productive year than ever.

If you look at my reading list of books completed in 2014, it looks pretty dismal – I finished 12 books, two of which were for review. The gender split of authors is even, and I feel like what I read covered a pretty broad variety of books. However, those 12 books represent such a piddling portion of what I read in 2014. The majority of 2014’s reading came from articles (and chapters). So. Many. Articles. I actually really enjoyed what this did for my reading though, I felt like I was more connected to ideas – in 2015 I’ll be sharing more of the short things I’ve enjoyed.

I also learned that research continues – writing is research. Rather than reading, making my mind up, and beginning to write incorporating what I’ve learned, I now read and write alongside one another, in a cyclical way. The writing I end up with is better, more considered, genuine.

What will be

I’ve always kind of poo-pooed mantras as being too new age for me – telling yourself something over and over doesn’t make it real. However, I do think that having some guiding principles helps to set up a true north for the ways that you act, and the things that you value. So for 2015 I’ve got a mantra.

Use it up. Say yes. Stop.

I’m surrounded by stuff. A lot of my stress-releases last year were about acquiring stuff – little stuff, most often. Nail polishes, cook books, stitching gear. Looking around myself now, I’ve noticed that I really have a lot, and I use very little. In 2015 I will use what I have. I will share more. I will have good nails and make good craft and cook the recipes I’ve got, and when I end up with too much good food I’ll share it with the people I love. I won’t sit on ideas, I’ll execute them as soon as I can. Speed, kindness, productivity, less wastefulness and hoarding.

I also want to ‘use up’ the unfinished project that Honours has left me with. While it’s self-contained as-is, I’d like to see it somewhere. I’d like to keep working on it. I’ll ‘use it up’ too, rather than letting it sit in a drawer.

I’ve missed saying yes to things in 2014, so 2015 is my space to stretch my wings again. I’ve realised in the last month or two that while I’ve been working hard, I also need to reacquaint myself with freelancing work and get back in the groove of writing more varied things regularly. I’ve also wilfully said no to a lot of things I regret – social things, mainly. I need to get back in the world after my year of being a hermit. I need to say yes.

And finally, I need to stop. I’m making more of a priority of meditating regularly, and of being mindful before making snap decisions, judgements, or communicating anything I’ll later regret. I’m promoting calm and slowness.

What did you learn in 2014, and what are your resolutions for the new year?

I’m having a go at writing something to submit to Brevity‘s “Holiday Smile” competition.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the entries that’ve gone up so far, and so many revolve around food. Special foods that are unique to this time of year. It’s the same story I’m trying to write in my attempt – I guess I knew that foods were important to people at Christmas, because gathering around a meal is the focal point of the day. But to see how many memories are particular to the food is surprising. (Mine is jam. Things in jars. A more recent holiday tradition in my family).

I also thought that a ‘smile’ themed prompt would result in almost entirely photograph-centred memories. The times when we turn and break from ourselves, putting a smile on for prosterity.

Jumble is a collection of food-themed personal essays from first, second and third-generation migrants, edited by the team at rip publishing – Zoya Patel, Farz Edraki and Yasmin Masri. It includes stories from Rafael Kabo, Adam Ridwan and Yen Eriksen. It’s beautifully produced, and has a foreword by Benjamin Law.

It also includes the story, reproduced below, from me. All stories in this collection are accompanied by a recipe for their dish. The recipe that goes with my story is simple: potato chips. Jimmy’s satay sauce. Whole-egg mayo. Job done.

I can’t even pronounce it correctly. Every time I try, the vowels slip around in my mouth and come out mangled. The memory of patatje flip lives in the failure of my speech, and in the taste I have for something that isn’t actually a real dish.

“Patatje flip”.

Patatje flip is potato fries with thick mayonnaise and a peanut satay sauce. Nightly, Dad would come up with new variations on sauce combinations, which never quite resulted in what he was searching for. His sauce-mixing experiments fascinated and entertained me, and I felt a kind of kinship in our search for The Sauce.

For 26 years I have watched Dad attempt to recreate those sauces at the dinner table. A Dutch table features condiments proudly in the middle, and whatever else might appear, mayonnaise is never missed. Not the sweet, runny commercial mayonnaise Australians favour, but thick, whole-egg mayo. The kind that peaks on the plate and dries clear if left on un-rinsed dishes overnight.

Jimmy Paste is an Asian, fish-based peanut satay sauce. The closest Dad got to patatje flip was to combine Jimmy paste with whole-egg mayonnaise. The two sauces would sit side-by-side, with a little ooze section in the middle where the two touched. The mixing was done by chip, picking up a little of both sauces from the swirl of satay and mayo.

Lord of the Fries was a revelation. Their fries are fries, and nothing particularly special, but their sauce selections are the stuff of magic. I took Dad and introduced him to the Asian fries, which combine Belgian mayo with satay sauce. This is it, by another name! I thought.

Dad chewed and tilted his head from side to side for a while.

“They’re nice.”

“Are they it?” I asked with a smile in my voice, because I was so sure that I’d given my father a connection with his homeland – so sure that I’d found the end-point to all the sauce-mixing and searching.

“Nup.”

I realise now that even if I did find the right sauces for patatje flip, this isn’t what Dad’s looking for.

—

I can point to all kinds of Dutch food as evidence of my heritage. The only member of my family born in Australia, and the only one who’s never been to Holland, I have still inherited Dad’s foreign palate.

Mayonnaise belongs on: steak, chicken, fish… all protein, really. And chips, steamed vegetables, or salads. And anything that doesn’t have a strong flavour of its own. And some things that do. My brother went through a thing with mint slice biscuits and mayonnaise.

I felt personally affronted and outraged when Gloria Jean’s introduced their “Coffee topper”. That’s not a coffee topper; that’s a stroopwafel.

How novel is apple sauce as a condiment? It’s not. That’s appelmous, which is similar to mayonnaise as a Dutch condiment that’s appropriate on everything.

Dad’s experiments with recreating pataatje flip weren’t the only thing he experimented with. He also bought a heap of large sandwich presses (like, you’d be able to do four sandwiches at a time if you wanted), and created stroopwafels which were much more cinnamon-y than the packet ones, and lacked the distinctive waffle print. At least with stroopwafels I had tasted the real thing, and I could judge that these were not the same.

I haven’t tasted the original versions of much of the Dutch food that I know and love. My palate is full of weird impostors; even if you gave me real patatje flip, I probably wouldn’t enjoy it. I’d rather Jimmy and mayo.

Then there’s the food that I don’t know the origin of. There are some confirmed strange foods – salty, fatty herring, chocolate sprinkles that are eaten on toast for breakfast, liquorice that tastes more like salt than like sugar. But there are also foods that could be blamed on my father’s weird, nation-less palate. Fresh strawberries on sandwiches (must be very, very fresh bread). Leftover rice microwaved with brown sugar and butter to make pudding. Lashings of butter and a thick layer of brown sugar on sandwiches after lunch, like a dessert sandwich.

Are these Dutch foods? Are they foods anywhere?

Chips with Jimmy paste and whole-egg mayo is not patatje flip. But they are my patatje flip, and they are the thing I picture when those words are spoken. They’re not the thing Dad pictures, and Jimmy and mayo are never ‘it’, just an attempt to go back. My father’s failed attempts at recreating the foods that remind him of where he comes from are my memories of home.

With many thanks to the Jumble team for their fantastic work on this publication. You can purchase a copy of Jumble here.

This piece is also part of my Honours work, which is about food and memory, particularly within my family.

I’m still alive, and I am engaging. The longer I am away from this blog, the bigger a deal it seems to post anything here. It’s like when I forget to cut my fringe for ages, and then when it gets to the point that I can’t deny how badly my hair is dangling in my eyes, I can’t do it. I’ve lost my nerve.