Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies: Breathe the air and fly away...

i used to spend a lot of time at the waterfront of port imperial in weehawken, nj during my high school years. alexander hamilton park offered a scenic view of the skyline of nyc, and the many out of the ordinary scenes of the untouched waterfront were great for photographing as well. a few of my friends back then used to accompany me to take pictures for our photography class in h.s. one of those people, diana, pictured in this photo, accompanied me quite a few times. i remember on one occasion we tried to walk up the 7 stories of stairs that took you from the waterfront to the park at the top of the cliff... we made it 2 or 3 stories and gave up, but it's a memory that i think of often. after moving away for a while, it had been quite some time since i returned to the port. on a recent trip 2 weeks ago, i was saddened by the numbers of townhouses that now obstructed the waterfront itself. the view from the park is just as beautiful but the waterfront will never be the same.

at the exact spot where i took this photo of diana, now stands a 2 bedroom townhouse that is for rent, at a mere $5200 a month. i'm happy that i have the photos to remember those times, and am even happier that i have recently reconnected with diana through the miracle of myspace. we lost touch when we went off to college, but i'm happy to know that she has recently gotten married, and is happy and healthy. this one is for you di...

the story behind ssp&e:

so i'm not sure if you're anything like me, but being the 'off the cuff cuisine' chef that i am, i try not to let anything go to waste. you know, when you bring home some bk or mickey d's, and after consuming your poor excuse for food, have ketchup packets or sauce shots left over that you throw in the door and forget about. same goes for chinese food, and you know they always give you enough sauce to put out a fire at the pentagon with your order. you throw them in your refrigerator door and forget about them. then one day you're trying to impress some last minute guests that have decided to stay at your place for dinner and all you have in your 'gourmet' kitchen are some ramen noodles, frozen veggies and some leftover grilled chicken from last weekend's cookout. the makings of a superb, on-the-fly stirfry. but wait, OH SHIT!, how are you going to make a sauce for your stirfry with no sauce? you look in the fridge and all you see is a bottle of ketchup, french's mustard (i use the term mustard loosely when describing french's), and a jar of pickle juice. oh no, what to do, what to do. then you bust open the butter holder, that invariably has never seen a stick of butter in it's life, and VOILA! soy sauce, duck sauce, hot mustard! packets, but instant chinkychow sauce nonetheless! each one of those packets, collected over time, came from a meal, inevitably eaten over conversation, an argument or during a lone lunch of self-reflection, came from a time and place in the past. as are our lessons learned. we learn through the years how to cope, how to inspire, how to teach, and how to live. we don't always remember those lessons, as we throw condiment packets in the fridge we throw life-lessons into the back of our heads, until one day we find ourself in a situation where it becomes relevant and we pull them from the back of our minds as to not waste the advice and lessons of the past. the moral of this story, and the linking of it to my blog- our life experiences are our 'soy sauce packets,' our hidden links to our experiences of our past...

e·piph·a·ny - noun - a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. [www.dictionary.com]

the epiphanies that we experience in life, questions or situations that we find ourselves in, and don't know how to resolve, can most often be solved my raking our brains in search of a 'soy sauce packet.' an answer to a question. a solution to a problem. and so this, this blog, is simply an ever-expanding culmination of soy sauce packets in my butter box, and the epiphanies that have helped to make room for more butter in my fridge...

Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies

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Breathe the air and fly away...

Saturday, January 26, 2008

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