Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies: "The worst thing of all, is to be forgotten." [JFK]

i've had a keen interest in john f. kennedy and his life since the seventh grade, when my english teacher, mrs. lee, would go off on hour long tangents about elements of his political career. the class was typically bored to death, but i always found the veil of mystery that surrounded the president and his family to be intriguing. recently, new audio tapes of fireside conversations on the eve of president kennedy's election have surfaced. brian williams played portions of them on the nightly news last night. i feel like a fresh piece of history has been unearthed; and couldn't have been found at a better time. i blogged on sunday night about the chills of history, and found myself last evening experiencing them in deja vu. i think you will be struck by president kennedy's intellect, his respect for the political process and the voters, his candor, and how our language has changed in the course of a generation or two. you can find the twenty-two minute edited video HERE if you are interested. and if you continue to be as intrigued as i was, the unedited audio is available at the jfk library online, HERE.

[via msnbc, jfk library]

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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"The worst thing of all, is to be forgotten." [JFK]

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

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