T-Day

Left: The fabulous members of Thanksgiving Cooking Teams One through Three: Aravis, Rebekah, Randi, Adriana, Sadye and Mom (Jocelyn). And yes, we were matching on purpose. Photo day.

Our family doesn't have any uproariously funny Thanksgiving stories to speak of -- most of our holidays are enjoyable and crowded, but relatively tame. We always have four or five extra people hanging around our house during the holidays -- nieces and nephews, students, "adopted" family members, family-less friends.

A week before Thanksgiving, the cooking chores are split up between three teams. My mother is her own team of one, sometimes with my niece Sadye, 6, as the sidekick. My older sister Randi, 24, heads Team Two, and I am the captain of Team Three. Randi and I choose one of our younger sisters to be our "sous chef" for the cooking/baking extravaganza.

Rebekah, 17, is relatively innovative in the kitchen. She is familiar with most of the basic cooking commands, and can be trusted to execute them with a satisfactory degree of competence. She understands "chop the celery," "mince the onions," "let the broth simmer," and similar instructions that we might throw out at her. She also has been the unanimously decided "Messiest Family Member," several years in row. She has the mess-making skill of a young tropical storm.

Adriana, the youngest daughter at 15, is the newcomer to the kitchen. Three cooking older sisters has sheltered her somewhat from the necessity of learning how to cook. Her skills have had time to develop in the past few years, as Randi and I have been at school in San Diego. Her sous-chef abilities are limited, but she can carry out simple tasks with remarkable accuracy and speed when carefully instructed. She is also the neatest person in the family, surpassing our father in tidiness and organization skills. After the rare times that Ana cooks, it is almost impossible to tell that anyone has been in the kitchen recently -- or at all, for that matter. She has an uncanny ability to render the kitchen as spotless as it must have been before our brood of 8 moved in. After Ana has cleaned, the rest of the family members move through the kitchen in a daze, touching the scrubbed grout and shining stovetop with a wonderment that almost amounts to reverence.

Splitting up the cooking chores is in itself an act of negotiation rivaling the drafting of the Armistice agreement. The baking usually falls to me and my chosen sous chef. The cooking falls to Randi and hers. The macaroni and cheese and dressing is almost always the property of my mother. Once my father's side of the family agreed that her macaroni and cheese beat out my Aunt Lavonnia's, there was no going back. The daughters leave that dish alone.

There are a few exceptions -- I have done the turkey twice, and Randi always insists on making her "World Famous Pumpkin Bundt Cake." Every year I remind her that until the whole world has sampled and approved it, the cake must necessarily be known as the "Greater Area of Sacramento Famous Pumpkin Bundt Cake." An annual tradition is also the "Apple-Pie Bake-Off." Every year Team Two and Team Three make our own versions of the American favorite and badger our family members into trying both and voting on which is the best. Mine tends to be slightly overbaked. Hers tends to be grossly over-spiced.

On Thanksgiving, the sisters cook for most of the day. We set up the dining room table with extra spots for the inevitable extra people, and decorate with fall leaves and pumpkins.

Then, we eat.

The boys (Dad and 13-year-old twins Sean and Chris) do the dishes.

Left: Some of the boys: Dad and Mikhael, my "godbrother."

Using dollars to make a difference

"We want to reach the artisans and improve their way of life.” -Liz Allen

San Diego-based store Exotic World Gifts seeks to change the world -- one purchase at a time.

Del Mar residents Liz Allen and Mark Fangue left for Belize in 2006 celebrating six months of couplehood, escaping the Thanksgiving hustle and bustle of San Diego and looking forward to a tropical vacation. Driving along a dirt road in south Belize, Allen and Fangue unwittingly stumbled onto the next great event of their lives. On that back road near Monkey River, locals sold beautiful handicrafts, lovingly created products that would sell in any high-end gift shop in the United States. Here in Belize, the artisans were living in squalor, spending their time creating pieces of art and earning barely enough to get by.

As the owner of Instinct Marketing, a global marketing company, Allen was well-accustomed to traveling. But when faced with the world poverty she experienced in the places she visited, she wanted to do something more.

“In my travels,” says Allen, “I realized I wasn’t making a big difference, besides making money for me and the corporation.”

Allen and Fangue began to formulate a plan that could begin to eradicate poverty among third-world artisans like those they saw on the back road in Belize. Fangue, the COO Manager of Western Pump, regularly volunteered one night a week to a crisis hotline. He also had received training to counsel people in need.

“We both have tender hearts,” says Fangue. But they also had the corporate experience to formulate a plan that could guarantee sustainable incomes to some of the artisans living in poverty.

What these artisans in Belize needed was a company to guarantee them fair wages and to make their products available to a wide customer base. Allen and Fangue’s idea was to forge a connection between the artisans — the people who need resources — and customers in the United States — the people who have resources. They would do this by creating an online store where they could sell products purchased at fair prices from artisans in third-world countries.

Last January, a little more than a year after they returned from Belize, Exotic World Gifts was launched.

Allen and Fangue set out to reinterpret the basic principle behind the corporation. Rather than focusing on profit as the bottom line, Exotic World Gifts places equal weight on people, the planet and profits, creating a “triple bottom line.” This, they hope, will help them make a difference in third-world countries.

Allen has coined the term “compassion shopping” to describe what the company provides its customers.

“The message that we believe in is to connect people who need resources with people who have resources,” says Fangue.

Customers of Exotic World Gifts are “not just buying a gift, but buying a distinctive, authentic handcrafted product from around the world and making a difference in someone’s life,” says Allen. “It’s a value-added purchase.”
Exotic World Gifts abides by fair-trade tenets. These include safe working conditions, fair wages and a strict prohibition on child labor. To these principles Allen adds that the workers are treated with dignity and respect.

“It’s the opposite of free trade,” she says. “And it’s the only way to help people get out of poverty and give them a sustainable income.”

Fangue adds that “20 to 50 percent of the selling price goes back to providing sustainable lifestyles.”

“We’ve spent a lot of diligent time making sure the money gets to artisans, not to some middleman or head person who won’t distribute the money fairly,” says Allen.
Artisan stories are also an integral part of the company. Exotic World Gifts acquires and sells beautiful ceramic and woven bowls made by a group of women in Swaziland. The women use the money earned to support children orphaned by AIDS. Allen and Fangue are looking to help build a school for the children in the future.

A Swazi woman holds up a ceramic-and-glass bowl she crafted for sale in Exotic World Gifts' online store.

The products are available at J Gallery in Rancho Santa Fe and in the Unity Center’s bookstore, but Allen and Fangue have no intentions to open their own retail store.

“We are not retail merchants,” says Fangue, “and I don’t want to be. We want to reach the artisans and improve their way of life.”

Photos and video courtesy of Exotic World Gifts.

For more information:

To purchase products, check out Exotic World Gifts' Web site.

Interning

Interning at San Diego Magazine has its ups and its downs. Ups: Free bagels on Mondays, intern lunches at swanky restaurants, black-tie party invites. Down: Getting handed a stack of papers so thick it makes an audible THUMP when my editor slaps it onto the desk, and being instructed to call every name (30 names per page) to check the spelling.
I'm not just a general intern for SDM. I'm also the intern for San Diego At Home, which is the bimonthly magazine-within-the-magazine about home design. On top of that, I'm the intern for Exquisite Weddings Magazine, the biannual wedding magazine that SDM publishes. I'm also part of the web editorial team, which means that we update the Daily San Diego blog. We go to events and blog about them.
I've learned how to use a professional phone voice, how to track down high-resolution photos, how to tell people we don't want their story in our magazine, how to write on a deadline, and how a magazine works. I've managed to accrue a relatively thick stack of clips that were published either in the magazine or online. I've written about hardwood floors, home theaters, holiday decorating, holiday entertaining, Little Italy, Mission Hills, and others.
And I'm sad that next week is my last week.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona tells the tale of two young women’s whimsical journey through romantic Spain. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is a straight-laced graduate student with a passion for Catalan culture. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) is a free-spirited aspiring actress whose flightiness is matched by her friend Vicky’s rigidness. In Barcelona the friends meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a tortured artist with a beautiful, volatile ex-wife (played by Penelope Cruz), and complications immediately ensue. Both friends find themselves attracted to the brooding artist and his bohemian lifestyle, an attraction that proves particularly poignant in the case of Vicky. When her fiancée Doug (Chris Messina) appears in Spain, the sharp contrast between the passionate Juan Antonio and the phlegmatic Doug is highlighted, making Vicky wonder if a stable, predictable life really will satisfy her. Meanwhile, Cristina embarks on a journey of self-discovery in the company of Juan Antonio and his violently passionate ex-wife Maria Elena.
Woody Allen’s current muse, the versatile Scarlett Johansson, performs well in this film as the American girl with no idea what the future holds. Bardem – who won a Best Supporting Oscar for the Cormac McArthy novel-turned-film No Country for Old Men last year – also fills out his role satisfactorily. His dark sultriness marks a departure from the sociopath with the bad haircut he played in No Country for Old Men. It is almost astonishing to compare the eerie villainy of that character to the tortured but idealistic Juan Antonio in this film. Cruz is as sexy and volatile as her character demands, but it is relative newcomer Rebecca Hall who makes this film worth the ticket price. Her character, so resolute at the beginning of the film, begins to vacillate between wanting the steady life Doug offers and the wild, unfulfilling bohemian life that Juan Antonio provides. She is the most interesting character, as her indecisiveness is internal but easily recognized in Hall’s expressive features.
The cinematography is impressive, showing the arid grandeur of Spain in its sweep, alternating wide panoramas with intimate, color-saturated close-ups.
As of all Woody Allen films, this one winds up a little unfinished, with some loose ends untied. But the characters are so defined, so eccentric, and so familiar that we almost want to fly to Barcelona to meet them ourselves.

Mutts for Obama

The whole world is clamoring for news about the Obamas’ puppy.
Of course there is no a puppy yet. This is the whole point. But this is an important issue, ranking with the Iraq crisis, the economic bailout and the Oval Office redecorating plans.
One lucky canine is at this moment languishing in an animal shelter, waiting to become the nation’s next hero.
What kind of puppy should the Obamas get? What breed will be sure to make Sasha Obama happy and Malia Obama sneeze-free?
Debates abound, with dog-lovers, pet-experts, and Peruvian hairless dog-breeders all proposing the perfect breed for the young Obama daughters. The president elect has already famously declared that it will probably be a “mutt like [him].”
International politics also become mired in the decision, as dog breeds are analyzed and deliberated. Should the Obamas choose a Shih-Tzu/Chihuahua mix? Or an English Bulldog/Scottish Terrier blend? Alaskan Malamute is out of the question, naturally.
Whatever breed the Obamas choose will most likely disappear immediately from animal shelters as Americans snatch them up in a frenzy of Obamania.
It’s happened before. The dress from White House/Black Market that Michelle Obama wore on The View vanished from shelves and the black Iris & Ivy dress Sasha wore at Obama’s election night acceptance speech was almost instantly sold out.
Maybe the choice will spark spin-off Giga Pets and Tamagotchis. ObamaPets and Barack-o-Pets will become the newest fad among Americans in all walks of life. Middle school spelling tests, army training drills, high-powered coporate conferences will be interrupted with ObamaPets’ beeping (not high-pitched beeps like the virtual pets of the past, but deep and well-modulated like the voice of our own president elect).
Whatever great and far-reaching ramifications this historic choice may have, rest assured that you will hear every minute detail of the process.
Gear up for the next historic campaign: Fido 2012.
It’ll be a close race, since it most certainly will be running against Sarah Palin. We are all on the edge of our seats, waiting to see who Palin will name as her running mate: Garfield, or Tom (of ‘Tom and Jerry’ renown). On thing is for certain: the debates should be riveting.
(sidebar)
"I really don't care what kind of dog
Obama gets. It really frustrates me that the media are paying more attention to the dog than to Obama's economic policies."
Kristen Johnson, 21, senior International Studies major at PLNU