My First Farmer's Box and Two Kinds of Carrot Cake

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

I was excited (and a little apprehensive) to order our first 'farmer's box' from Talula Farms last week.

Till now I've shopped mainly in morning markets and supermarkets, but I love their goal of striking a balance between supplying organic/ pesticide free foods and supporting farmers who are attempting to support nature with responsible water and soil management.

To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive that I would receive a box full of half-wilted kangkong, watercress, local lettuce and bananas that would proceed to die after clogging up my fridge for three days.

So I was pretty thrilled to find beautifully fresh spinach, cauliflower, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes...

As well as (surprising to me) apples, avocadoes, tangerines, zucchini and cucumbers!

I honestly hadn't realised peaches, apples, tangerines and avocadoes could grow in our climate!

Which made me think about how I'm probably still living with a whole other lot of assumptions about what's 'local' here.


But at the moment, the practical challenge takes priority: how can I best use the $55 worth of vegetables that came in my Farmer's Box?

The creed here for now is Nemo Resideo: No Vegetable left behind.

We've been having box veggies with all our meals:

and I think we've already got our money's worth--though it's barely dented the hoard in the crisper!

But the big step for me was using fresh carrots to make carrot cake cupcakes which turned out surprisingly well, given I'm not a baker and we didn't have any baking powder.

I substituted yoghurt and baking soda (which we keep for coffee stains--yes, studying Chemistry came in useful after all) and three got eaten while they were cooling, before I could take a photograph!

They were Delicious!

But the issue is, when you say 'I made carrot cake', here, it's automatically assumed that you've got chai tow kway on offer.

Singaporean Chai tow kway literally 'fried carrot cake' is made of rice flour paste and steamed radishes and contains no carrots. It's a (delicious) savoury dish that comes in black and white versions.

The confusion arises because in Hokkien both radishes and carrots are chai tow (菜头).

There's also Lo Pak Go, a Cantonese version of the dish, which is commonly and less confusingly translated as 'Cantonese Radish Cake'.

Maybe the most famous Chai Tow Kway hawker in the old days was Madam Ng of Serangoon Gardens. Not only because she added 'real' red carrots (more expensive at the time) to the dish, or because her carrot cake pieces were crisp outside, soft inside and bound together omelette style... but most of all because during the terrible floods of 1954, Madam Ng continued cooking at her Potong Pasir stall and offered her carrot cake free to flood victims there.

Over 10,000 people were affected by the floods that hit some of our poorest kampong communities. Singapore was still a British Crown Colony then, and the British government declared an ongoing state of 'emergency' in response to calls for aid and Independence which were perceived as part of a communist threat. 1954 also witnessed the formation of the People’s Action Party. Thanks to the PAP, those slums are barely a memory now, but I really hope we'll remember Madam Ng and her chai tow kway.

Singapore has always accepted and embraced disparities and dualities. It's part of our mixed heritage what keeps our identity evolving.

So yes, there's room for more than one kind of carrot cake.

And I suspect that's true of writing too. After all, what's 'local material' on a granite island where almost everything is imported?
As Aunty Lee would say, 'I am Peranakan, so what I cook must be Peranakan food right?'

Shakespeare on the Hudson

Annamaria on Monday

On this past Thursday, Hudson Valley Shakespeare cut the ribbon on its new home: The Samuel H. Scripps Theatre Center.

HVS has been a blessing on my life, since my involvement from its inception in 1986, first as a fan and for the past 20+ years, as a member of its board of trustees.

Over those decades, there have, of course, been times when things were not going well. After all, no adventure worthy of the name is always fun when you're going though it.  There were a few times when HVS got very close to the edge of a cliff.

Its first home was a gorgeous place on the banks of the Hudson River, fifty miles north of Times Square.  A place where the hills are still green thanks to the determination and spectacular generosity of environmentalists. HVS literally pitched its tent on on the east side of the river, on the grounds of Boscobel House and Gardens, without which HVS would never have gotten off the ground (so to speak). 

Over time, thanks to its artistic excellence, HVS outgrew that home.  

But the company had no where else to go.  And no spare funds to buy itself a new place to live. 

What followed was an act of this play replete with a brilliant, but perhaps impossible solution, hard work, a great deal of nail biting, determination, spectacular generosity, more good luck, good will among groups of people, more nail biting, some seemingly miraculous luck, and even more unbelievable generosity by hundreds of people, absolutely brilliant architects, and ultra capable builders.  The company now has this gorgeous theatre on 98 acres overlooking the majestic Hudson.

I highly recommend a visit, not just to see the beauty of its location, but to enjoy (with the accent on JOY) a wonderful performance of a play.  This summer, here are the choices:

I'll be seeing all of them.  At least once.

You can tell.  Right now I am doing the happy dance! 

Cops and Robbers, Greek Style

 

Jeff––Saturday 

For those of you who ask me (or simply wonder) where I get my ideas for the wild fictional adventures of Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis in his capacity as head of the Special Crimes Unit of the Greek Police (GADA), below is my Exhibit A answer to your question. It comes in the form of an article appearing in yesterday’s Ekathimerini—Greece’s newspaper of record––written by Yiannis Souliotis and titled, “Police warn crime boss of plots against his life.” 

Here’s the inspiration: 

Police’s organized crime unit twice intervened to warn Giorgos Moschouris of active plots to take his life, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation, months before the senior Greek Mafia figure was fatally shot in April 2025 in the northern Athens suburb of Halandri. 

The 55-year-old, known by the nickname “Thamnakias,” was killed in a hail of gunfire when assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles opened fire, hitting him with 54 bullets. The revelations emerged following recent arrests linked to his killing. 

According to information received by officers from the so-called “Greek FBI,” an attack against Moschouris had been planned at an entertainment venue he was known to frequent regularly. In an effort to prevent the assassination, police urgently summoned him to their headquarters (GADA), where investigators warned him during two private meetings in September and October 2024 that contract killings had been ordered against him. 

Moschouris reportedly responded by insisting he had withdrawn from criminal activity and declined to enter a witness protection program. 

He was considered one of the most influential figures in Greece’s organized crime underworld and had previously been convicted as the leader of a protection racket targeting dozens of businesses, mainly in the southern suburbs of Athens. Authorities also linked him to the fuel trade. 

In 2020, unidentified gunmen attempted to kill him in the parking lot of a bakery chain in Vari, east of Athens, firing 15 shots and wounding him in the abdomen. 

Police sources say that in the final phase of his criminal activity, Moschouris allegedly sought to expand into cigarette smuggling, a move that brought him into conflict with a group of ethnic Greek criminals from the former Soviet Union. Authorities attribute at least four killings of Greek Mafia figures to members of that group. 

Now to write the book. :) ––Jeff

What's in a Name

Annamaria on Monday

I have commented a few times here on MIE my doubts about AI.  To my way of thinking, the very wealthy and powerful creators are pushing far too hard on its adoption without properly considering the downstream risks.  They seem to carelessly brush aside all doubts.  They sweep the naysayers under the rug.  They respond, "That will never happen," without any useful explanation of what they are doing to prevent possible disasters.  In some cases, it seems as if they never try for a moment to ask themselves what could go wrong.  Not even in situations where doing so would be easy and quick: for instance the names they give their organizations. 

We writers of fiction carefully choose the names of our characters, because we know that given names influence what kind of person - real or fictional - the bearer becomes.  I am sure that if I named the heroine in my Africa series Valentina instead of Vera, she would have turned out to be altogether different.  This is true of all names.  Even of corporations.  Years ago, when two of my clients, Chase and Chemical banks merged, many of the people in the top executive jobs were from Chemical, but they called the resultant organization Chase.  Obviously to anyone, the better choice.

     Here are two examples of what look to me like mistakes made by AI companies when naming their organizations. I hope you will find this amusing.  You may even think I am being silly to bring them up. But I do worry about the lack of attention when it comes to the simpler task of choosing a name.  If they aren't looking carefully at that, wha else are they missing?

Some of the AI pushers fail to consider the way their corporate name will be received when spoken, rather then seen on the screen.  Before I ever saw these two, I heard them advertised on WNYC, my beloved public radio station.  

One, which I have been hearing on the radio station every morning is called Odoo.  Perhaps, in the language of the creators, Odoo is a complimentary term. But every time I hear it said aloud, I imagine employees who will be using the app saying, "Odoo is doo-doo." Now that I have seen it on the screen, it does not look so bad.  but did the developers test the name with people who would hear and speak it?  If they asked for feedback, surely someone would have pointed out that it rhymes with doo-doo.

The same question goes for Claude Ai.  On the screen it is fine, but when I hear it being advertised on the radio, I hear "clawed."  "Want AI so you can be more productive? Buy our product and get clawed!"

My general concern here is that AI creators and pushers don't seem to understand the importance of doubt in decision making.  They ought to be working hard to figure out what could go wrong and what needs to be done to avoid it.  That they approach their work without any doubts is dangerous. 

A Day for Honoring Mothers is Upon Us.

 

Jeff—Saturday

I can’t wait to get back to Greece.  There, at least, the relentless onslaught of agenda-laden, ratings-driven media political analysts, candidates offering transparently undeliverable promises, and crowds cheering for more of their savior’s particular flavor of flimflam Kool-Aid, are all delivered in a language I barely understand. 

Then again, I can barely understand what’s happening in America, and fear it’ll all end in tears.

But I have no time for that now. It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow, and so to all you mothers out there, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! 

I bet most of you don’t know that our present day US form of Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1908 in West Virginia as a memorial service offered by Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) for her mother, peace activist Ann Reeves Jarvis (1832-1905).  It was in large part the relentless efforts of Anna Jarvis that drove President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 to sign a proclamation declaring the second Sunday in May a national holiday to honor mothers.  Interestingly, Anna Jarvis later regretted the rampant commercialization of the day and tried (unsuccessfully) to have it removed from the calendar.

Mother Ann Reeves Jarvis

Daughter

Although some also credit Mother’s Day to Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), another prominent social activist who in 1870 wrote “The Mother’s Day Proclamation” advocating June 2 as Mother’s Day for Peace, it was not her vision of Mother’s Day that President Wilson proclaimed a national holiday.  But Ms. Howe still holds national prominence in other ways, for not the least of her accomplishments was authoring The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Others, too, are credited for their efforts at establishing a Mother’s Day—notably Juliet Calhoun Blakely (a pioneer Michigan woman), Mary Towles Sasseen (a Kentucky school teacher) and Frank Hering (a Notre Dame football player and coach)—so to all of them moms across America should say, “Thanks.”

 

(1818-1920)

Mary Towles Sasseen (1860-1906)

Frank Hering (1874-1943)

Just in case you’re wondering what possible Greek connection there is to all of this Mother’s Day talk, permit me to answer in a My Big Fat Greek Wedding sort of way: A day celebrating mothers and motherhood can be traced directly back to the ancient Greeks.  Each spring they held a festival dedicated to worshiping Rhea, considered the “mother of gods” for her children Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera, and Zeus fathered by the Titan Cronos—a fellow best known for eating his children.  And, yes, in an act worthy of earning Rhea her very own Mother’s Day, mom helped to ultimately save them all.

Bravo, Mom!

 

(Rhea and Cronos, together again)

Thanks for everything!

––Jeff 

West with the Night

 

Michael - Alternate Thursdays

This story is really more up Annamaria’s street. It takes place at the time of her Africa novels - early twentieth century – and takes place where those novels are set – colonial Kenya. It’s the story of a truly remarkable contemporary of Karen Blixen – Beryl Markham. She was an aviator, a racehorse trainer, and a serial lover of such celebrities as Baron von Blixen himself, Denys Finch Hatton (of Out of Africa fame), and she added the Prince of Wales and his younger brother to her tally. She was married three times, but that certainly didn’t interfere with her affairs. Kenya was full of remarkable characters in the White Mischief era.

The main reason that Beryl Markham is remembered is not because of her sexual exploits, but because she wrote an extraordinary memoir titled West with the Night. The title comes from her feat of being the first person to fly solo from England to North America, flying west away from the sun into a long night. In fact, that adventure – during which she nearly died – occupies only the last chapter of her book. Most of it relates to her life growing up, training racehorses, and flying small planes in colonial Kenya.

The book didn’t attract much interest when it was first published. It did well enough while people remembered her record flight, but then sank into obscurity. Perhaps the fact that it mentions none of her husbands or her affairs disappointed the everyday reader who was looking for something more salacious. Ernest Hemingway, however, appreciated it. He wrote to a friend:

“Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? ... She has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book.”

The friend was so taken with the book that he persuaded a US publisher to pick it up and republish it in 1983. The book became a best seller, and there was even some speculation and claims of (at least) co-authorship. None of those have ever been supported by the facts. The success of the book rescued Markham not only from obscurity but also from poverty in her old age. (She lived to 83.) It was a fitting ending to her story.

I reread the book recently and was again struck by the breadth of it, and by the almost cinemagraphic images. Here is a scene from her childhood that gives a flavour of both her writing and the Kenya of those days. It seems that people at the time seemed to think it a good idea to keep their own “tame” lions wandering around on their farms. Her father’s friend, Jim Elkington, had one.

“I was within twenty yards of the Elkington lion before I saw him. He lay sprawled in the morning sun, huge, black-maned, and gleaming with life. His tail moved slowly, stroking the rough grass like a knotted rope end. He was not asleep; he was only idle. He was rusty-red, and soft, like a strokable cat.

I stopped and he lifted his head with magnificent ease and stared at me out of yellow eyes.

I stood there staring back, scuffing my bare toes in the dust, pursing my lips to make a noiseless whistle – a very small girl who knew about lions.”

She holds her courage and walks past the lion, singing a defiant song.

“What lion would be unimpressed by the marching song of the King’s African Rifles?

Singing it still, I took up my trot towards the rim of the low hill which might, if I was lucky, have Cape gooseberry bushes on its slopes.

The country was grey-green and dry, and the sun lay on it closely, making the ground hot under my bare feet. There was no sound and no wind.

Even the lion made no sound, coming swiftly behind me.”

Obviously she lived to tell the tale, but not without scars to tell it for her.

“The lion had lived and died in ways not of his choosing. He was a good lion. He had done what he could about being a tame lion. Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?

I still have the scars of his teeth and claws, but they are very small now and almost forgotten, and I cannot begrudge him his moment.”

It’s a wonderful autobiography, whatever its biases or omissions.

 

Singapore Slings, Peanut Shells and Singapore Crime Fiction

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

I’ve been working on a piece about Singapore crime fiction for an encyclopedia of Global Crime Fiction and it's driving home to me how little I know on the subject. Plus I have to admit that none of my current 'fun' reading books originated here in Singapore.

One is A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto. The other is a slim German for beginners krimi, Die Dritte Hand. But I do have an excuse--we read to get encounter broader experiences, so I'm getting to visit Japan and Germany in my down time.

But it feels a bit like betrayal because there are local books I haven't yet read... which is a huge change from how it was forty years ago when I started writing. In those days I didn't just read pretty much all the locally published (in English) books, I believe I attended most of the book launches or at least spoke to the authors!

And maybe it's a great, glorious thing that my reading can no longer keep up!

But what is Singapore crime fiction?

It made me think about what we tell visitors who ask about 'real Singapore food'.
We bring them for a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel and introduce them to yellow chicken curry or Nonya laksa.
But what do we eat when left to ourselves?
Something like prata for breakfast, maybe Mala hotpot on a rainy day like today and some sushi or ramen for dinner; food that was originally Indian, Chinese, Japanese, but tweaked to please local tastes and a big part of our lives here.

And maybe our reading habits evolved much the same way.

Because if I’m honest, my reading taste—especially when it comes to my beloved mysteries—was formed by books from our former colonial masters. And after getting hooked on glorious British golden age mystery sleuths I met Americans like Nero Wolfe and Ellery Queen and there was no looking back.
They still remain the chicken rice and satay of my writing, even as Indian, Japanese and Scandinavian sleuths have become part of regular reading life and I suspect I’m not alone.

All of which just adds to the difficulty of figuring out if there's really such a thing as authentic “Singapore crime fiction”?

Singapore's often described as one of the safest cities in the world,thanks to low crime, strong laws, hyper efficient policing and internalised social order. Not the most obvious breeding ground for murder and mystery.

But we have Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh--grumpy, overweight but persistently effective. And the wildly successful Sherlock Sam series by A.J. Low (yes I know they're for younger readers but I still like them!)

While these books clearly fit into global crime traditions, they are clearly rooted in Singapore's characters, food, language and geography.

In Singapore we automatically switch between languages, registers, social settings and religious sensibilities on a daily basis. We read Richard Osman, Vaseem Khan and Uketsu, watch The Frog and Mercy for None (Korean thrillers) on Netflix and and scroll through American true crime/ news reports, on an island that's very different (at least on the surface) from the realities they present.

And, perhaps most importantly, we absorb, adapt and rework what comes in.
That's what I'm hoping to do with my own crime fiction, now that literature ('Poetry' in LKY's words) is no longer a luxury we cannot afford.

Think of it as having a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel. Not even the most 'authentic' Singaporean does that on a weekly or monthly basis, but it's nice knowing there's a space here where you can drink, tell tall tales and crush peanut shells underfoot without getting fined.