Slovenia vodka

by Anton Zuiker on November 7, 2019

On my way home from work this evening, I listened to the Wine & Spirits episode of the From Scatch with Michael Ruhlman podcast. The first half is Michael in his New York City kitchen with chef Brian Polcyn cooking a jus lié (white wine sauce, recipe here), and it made me hungry, and want to spend time in my own kitchen this weekend.

Then, Michael was talking Cabernet Sauvignon with winemaker Dave Phinney and vodka with chef Peter Kelly, who explained how he came to produce Slovenia vodka after visiting that country and discovering the excellent source of buckwheat. Listen to a clip here.

I once had Slovenia vodka in its square bottle, a gift from my good friend and proud Slovenian-American Joe Cimperman. I’m not a regular vodka drinker, but I do remember it as being very good. I think a few other friends discovered it at one of our holiday parties and drained it dry.

At the moment in our freezer is a bottle of Russian Standard vodka. I was introduced that by a Russian friend here in North Carolina.

Styles of communication

by Anton Zuiker on November 6, 2019

I am nearing the ten-year mark in my role as communications director for the Duke Department of Medicine. I’m grateful for the job (and the excellent Duke benefits). I’m proud of how I’ve responded to the needs of the department’s leaders and faculty and medical trainees, and also how I’ve found ways to keep moving forward. The Duke River of News and the Voices of Duke Health listening booth and podcast are two examples.

A couple of years ago, as the department got a new leader (my boss) and big institutional initiatives loomed—workforce well-being, scientific integrity, how healthcare is paid—I recognized an opportunity to push myself to be more effective, creative, and visionary.

One way I’m doing this is by drafting a communications strategic plan to guide my team’s work over the next five years. I’ve worked on this over the last few months, writing and editing and gathering suggestions from colleagues. Many of them highlighted a certain phrase I used on the page describing the styles of communication we follow in our work: “small just, just ahead” was confusing to my colleagues, who clearly weren’t familiar with my blog post, Anticipation, that explains how I developed this perspective. So, I’ve adjusted the punctuation and description in my table of styles.

Here’s what that table now includes:

In my document, I also credit my friend Dave Winer for describing or developing a few of these styles. He’s written extensively about narrating your work, the natural born blogger, and the river of news. Dave recently celebrated 25 years of blogging.

The blogging style also references my own experiences as a blogger.

The park ranger style of communication is another one I’ve described on my blog, in Lone ranger walks again. That post references New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell and his long walks through the boroughs of New York City. I caught another, more-recent reference that suggests the educational role of a park ranger. The NYTimes Travel section last month featured this article about Frederick Law Olmsted’s tours of English parks and how that shaped his vision of landscape design.

In Central Park, Olmsted had established a security system that resembled the policing of city streets. But he returned to New York determined to try a gentler approach to security. Instead of relying on arrests, he blanketed the park with signs listing his rules, which forbade indecent language, throwing stones, picking flowers — even annoying birds. He also assembled a group of so-called park keepers who asserted control with friendly reminders and education.

I was last in Central Park in October 2017 with my family, and before that in May 2016, with Dave.

Back at work, the communications strategic plan has many more pages to reflect our complex and large department and all that we’re planning to communicate in the years ahead.

There will be more to report, I’m sure.

Michael Ruhlman's new book and new podcast

by Anton Zuiker on October 20, 2019

Michael Ruhlman has a nice new look for his website to coincide with a new book out last week: From Scratch. I’m hoping to pick up my copy at The Regulator Bookshop tomorrow. Michael also has a new podcast, From Scratch.

In his first episode, Michael’s guest Krishnendu Ray ends with a thought about the sensory memory of food, and how we externalize the world through food. I was listening to that as I was driving home from Greensboro tonight, and I reflected on my food memories, and immediately thought back to the smells of the tortilla shop in Caldwell, Idaho, where we often stopped for a bag of warm, fragrant, soft corn tortillas. I also remembered working beside migrant farmworkers as we planted Christmas-tree saplings in a dusty field, and my father driving me out to the simple living quarters where the workers ate their meals at the day’s end. My father worked to ensure that migrant farmworkers across Idaho get a toilet to pee in.

I wrote a longer post, Beside the farmworkers, about these Idaho experiences. I learned a lot from those hard-working Mexican farmworkers. I learned a lot from my parents as they treated these men with dignity, respect, and often a meal in our home. I should be telling these stories more.

Back to Michael’s podcast.

In his second episode, Citrus, Michael features an interview with Miami chef Michelle Bernstein, a name familiar to me. Erin and I celebrated an anniversary with dinner at Bernstein’s restaurant, Michy’s, in 2008. I blogged about that delicious meal (and others in Miami Beach) here and here.

Here in North Carolina, the nights are getting cooler, so I’ve brought the Meyer lemon tree in from the porch. Two lemons are turning yellow, three more smaller green fruit have months to grow.

Sweet silence

by Anton Zuiker on October 16, 2019

I work in a hospital, and the HVAC systems are in a constant whirl. My desk sits underneath an air duct that constantly blows out air to cool or heat my office. There’s a thermostat to control the temperature, but there’s no way for me to stop the flow above.

Except, on rare occasions and for unknown reasons, the air stops, and my office becomes silent, and I become calm. It’s always an unexpected moment of relief, lasting but a few minutes.

I appreciate the quiet, the stillness. I crave it.

Finally, a rainy day

by Anton Zuiker on October 13, 2019

My brother, Joel, and I are going to camping soon. All the North Carolina state parks were booked up, so we reserved a campsite at a park in Virginia. Earlier this week I got an email alert from the park about a burn ban, reflecting how dry this part of the country has been. So no campfire conversations.

Here at home, our cars have been perpetually coated in dust from the gravel road, and I’ve worried about all the fallen leaves and dry branches in the woods around our house.

Today, though, it’s finally raining in Chapel Hill, a nice steady light rain. I’d just sat down on the deck with the NYTimes travel section—a 52 Places essay about Marseilles mentions nearby Calanques National Park and Cassis, where Erin and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary a few years ago—and a cup of Yunnan tea when the first drops fell. The white ginger lily at the base of the deck seemed to perk up immediately, the fragrant white flowers spreading for the moisture.

I retreated to the kitchen to prepare habanero hot sauce. Our garden has been abundant these last weeks, and each evening I’ve come home from work to pick cayenne and roselle and heirloom tomatoes, and the orange habanero. I donned gloves to take out the seeds, then layered chopped onion and yellow pepper and fresh pineapple and torn habanero inside the fermentation crock. I purchased this crock two years ago from the Duke Arts Health Network holiday sale that features pottery and jewelry and other items from local artisans. The crock has been up on a shelf, and I was embarrassed to have not used it yet. It’s full now, the lid on and water in the moat, sitting on the counter next to the cocktail cherries and cherry pit-infused vinegars from this summer.

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