Image courtesy Fred Truman.

This fall, I was fortunate to be able to have a class of smart graduate students at NYU’s ITP think through community interactions during our fourteen weeks together. (You can see our syllabus for “communitp” and go through our blog archive and Twitter account for more details.)

At the conclusion of class, I invited them over for dinner (to be precise, they asked, and I was delighted to cook for all of us).

Thinking about appropriate holiday food, I asked for dietary restrictions and allergies, so as to honor those, and was reminded that one of the students is vegan.

What often surprises me is how cooks feel they need to craft entirely separate menus for those with specific food preferences.

I found myself thinking about foods that are green and warming—and I formed a menu around inclusion, starting with the simple roasted tomatillo salsa (roast skinned, chopped tomatillos for 20 minutes at 425 degrees F) that I served with chips and traditional guacamole when they arrived.

I had roasted sliced fractal cauliflower (we discussed the science behind communities in class),

in between stirring crushed red pepper and minced garlic into chopped parsley for a chimichurri sauce.

Nothing builds happy communities at the table like garlic, I’ve found in intensive research.

And I roasted coins of purple carrots and halved brussels sprouts while the roasted green spelt (freekeh) bubbled and softened on top of the stove.

Everything was vegan (good oil is all you need to roast veg and stir into drained grains), except the seared pork shoulder that I had let burnish slowly for six hours during the day before pulling it apart and setting it aside.

When we could all be persuaded to pause just long enough to claim seats around the table, those of us who eat meat stirred little bits into the freekeh with roasted veg and chimichurri. In 2011, consider making meat optional and a condiment—you’ll find it liberating. For those of you worried about protein, whole grains like freekeh and quinoa are excellent choices.

We were too busy toasting and talking about the upcoming ITP Winter Show (which was great) for me to take pictures,

but we agreed it was a lovely way to finish the semester over dessert: my homemade brandied prune plums spooned over bourbon gelato, vanilla ice cream, and ginger sorbet.

Thank you again to the seven who made it to dinner, and to all fourteen of you who inspired me to think and work on community in new ways. I miss our class meetings already…

In Los Angeles a few weeks ago (after seeing the wonderful Ben and Jeremy), I drove down to Costa Mesa to spend a few days talking online community strategy with Roadtrip Nation, a group that loves to empower personal life paths…and cupcakes. They really love cupcakes.

One of the staffers convinced this mobile sugar delivery system, through repeated tweets, to swing by the headquarters of this team that puts students on the road to interview their personal heroes. (I know Roadtrip Nation from my days at PBS HQ.)

Like the students they work with, this is a younger group, inspiring to spend time with,

as the Founders (from left to right, Mike, Nate, and Brian) continue to expand the audience and focus their happy team on creating work they are all proud of as they build the Roadtrip Nation movement.

After work, the staff hangs out together,

and they often lunch together—on Wednesday, many of them showed up at nearby store/community space Generic Youth,

where the store upcycles donated clothing into stylized hoodies and flips burgers in the middle of each week at a donation event (your donation can be clothing).

Roadtrip has a beautiful new space for all the lovely people that work here with the green RVs that students drive across the country each year parked all around (and inside!)

It’s not unusual to find a staffer on top of an RV, like Ray—who works on the Outreach team—was one afternoon, prepping for a presentation to visitors.

I spent much of my time in Costa Mesa with Mariana, who leads online community for this company of neat people and big, huge ideas about how to lead and begin meaningful conversations about the direction of your life.

Working with someone who truly cares about how to begin and nurture everyone the Roadtrip television show, online content, and curriculum touches made the days fly by.

Look for new things from Roadtrip Nation as early as this Fall, and until I am in Costa Mesa again (missing those Banzai Açaí Bowls already), all my best to the Founders, staff, and roadies—

The biscuits were baking, the jam cooling, and the bacon sputtering yesterday morning, for brunch (not Grease, though the bacon rendered plenty) was the word—brunch was the time, was the place, was the motion; brunch was the way we were feeling.

A small group of the leading lights in digital innovation filled the magic cottage with laughter (Andrew was concerned not to find Shaq’s rap album in Pandora) and music, as the guitar was passed from David to Chris and back to George:

The cottage swelled with the energy of these wonderful experimenters, and then they were off to the airport to other coasts and colder climes—

I think I am happiest entertaining when I run out of glassware and silverware, and I spent the afternoon outside the cottage, thinking about possibilities,

how they uncoil in a multiplicity of loopy strands;

watching light glance off leaves,

I reflected that life subtly darts everywhere,

and that I must remember to look up, peer closer, watch for potential motion.

Facing the leaves, shadows layer in patterns;

from where the leaf faces, the future is blurry and sparkling…

Let’s rescue egg salad from a scoopable deli fixture.

Simple food, my friends. I dressed butter lettuce with oil, scrambled an egg and fried another, so the yolk breaks onto the leaves and completes the dressing. (I also fried some bacon because it’s Friday.)

Note: Salad is originally from the Latin word for salt, so I sprinkled Hawaiian red over the top.

Egg salad that is both egg and salad. Discuss.

In October, I sent an email to my advanced modernist survey students asking them to select a few lines from one of the assigned Eavan Boland poems to explicate in class, with the further instructions that they were to choose lines that formed a coherent quotation they might conceivably post on an online profile. Towards the end of a fruitful discussion section, we walked as a class to the Lawn and I distributed pieces of chalk; the students copied their quotations on the sidewalk, working together if they had chosen the same quotation, and walked away from class looking over their shoulders at their anonymous handiwork: difficult, aching text clouds interspersed the announcements for activities and events by organizations along paths that students in the humanities take a few times a day. More »»