Itadakimasu: wearing gratitude

“Itadakimasu," a Japanese word said before eating, roughly translates as "I humbly receive." It's an expression of gratitude for the meal and for those who prepared it. When I traveled to Japan with students we taught them to say, “Itadakimasu” before any meal.

A film crew from a Japanese news show came on the Friday after my book launched to interview me about the kerfuffle around the salt but also about the making of tea. (You can watch it here, the scene where I make a cup is at the beginning. Yes, it’s in Japanese.)

They had asked me to be prepared to make a cup of tea for them on camera, which I did. When I handed the interviewer the cup that I had made, he murmured, "Itadakimasu." In all the whirlwind of those days that one word — said so quietly, so matter of factly — touched me deeply.

I’m grateful for so much lately. I’m trying to “wear gratitude like a cloak” (to quote Rumi) to let it be what I wrap myself in, to let it be what I show first to the world. Itadakimasu.

Lessons in chemistry

One of the questions I’ve often been asked in the interviews I have done around the tea book has been, “Have you read the book Lessons in Chemistry?” and when I acknowledge that I have, the logical follow up:“What did you think of it?”

The first time the question arose I was surprised, and had to scramble for an answer. I shouldn’t have been. It is a best selling book, it has been made into a series. It has chemistry in the title. The interviewer is fishing for a bridge to what’s in the current cultural zeitgeist. 

But for me the answer is, as the kids say, complicated. Even though the book is set slightly earlier than my time as a graduate student and newly minted scientist, my experiences were not so different from Elizabeth Zott’s. There was enough similarity that it was an uncomfortable read at the start. And then there is the day that Elizabeth‘s partner is suddenly killed. When I was reading the book, it was like a gut punch.  It was as if some enormous hand had picked me up and dumped me back into the confusion and chaos of that April night when Tom died so suddenly. Still, I needed to read to the end. I had to know if Elizabeth made it out of the depths of grief. Truth  be told if I known what the plot was, I wouldn’t have read the book. (I really want something like the website “Does the dog die?” for books. No children in peril, no suddenly grieving widows.)

Of course, to say that I found the book difficult for a very personal reason is not the answer a reporter is looking for. I finally settled on saying that I enjoyed the scenes where Elizabeth gave as good as she got, and that the historical difficulties of being a woman in science inspired me to teach the next generation. True, and truly bland. Next question!

Scathed by totality

"There is a mysterious woundedness that somehow goes with great blessing. When we truly encounter the night in all its beauty and terror, we have no assurance whatsoever that we are going to come out unscathed."

— David Steindl-Rast

 I came to upstate New York, to Canandaigua on the Finger Lakes, to give a retreat around the theme of the solar eclipse, and then stayed to experience totality. The weather forecast oscillated for days, partly sunny to mostly sunny and back to partly sunny and finally to mostly cloudy. And mostly cloudy it was. We had a single glimpse of the sun about two minutes before the moon began to eat away at the disc. As the time approached for totality, there was really no sign that an eclipse was on the way. I wondered if this would just be like the experience of a thunderstorm where the sky grows dark, but night doesn't fall. I fitfully checked the radar on my phone, hoping that the break in the image would translate to, if not clear skies, clearer skies. It did not. 

The clouds were louring and dark, as before a summer thunderstorm. It grew colder. Suddenly there was a deep violet funnel shape visible on the horizon. Even with the sun hidden behind the clouds, we could see the shadow of the moon flying at us at 1800 mph. It got darker and darker. The horizon, where the shadow had yet to fall, was smudged with the deep pastel colors of sunset. And it got darker yet. Nightfall had come. 

Totality lasted over three minutes where I was standing. Three minutes is longer than you think in these conditions. Annie Dillard was right. The difference between a total eclipse and a partial eclipse is like the difference between kissing someone and marrying them. I have seen partial eclipses, the first in Illinois when I was young (1963), one unexpected in California, and one in 2017. This was nothing like them. While I wished I could've seen the corona, the swiftness of nightfall, and the swifter return of light left me breathless. The enormity of that shadow hovering over us rang a disquieting chord inside of me. And it did not leave me unscathed.

Taking tea with a grain of salt - the Boston tea party

Tomorrow is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, the day protesting American colonists dumped 42,000 kg¹ of tea into Boston Harbor. That's enough to make about 21,000,000 cups of tea. While that might sound like a lot of tea, several billion cups of tea  are drunk across the world  every day². Each year humans drink enough tea to to fill Boston Harbor end to end. That's a bit less than half a cubic kilometer (which in those terms I confess does not sound like very much - but Boston Harbor).

The tea, once dumped in the harbor, was unusable due to contamination not only by the salt water, but by the sewage that surely polluted the bay. (I was fascinated to find that a vial of the tea leaves purportedly collected from the harbor still exists.)

Salt would seem to be the last thing you want in your tea, but in the eighth century manuscript Classic of Tea, the tea master Lu Yu recommended adding a dash of salt to water before using it to brew tea. Salt, actually the sodium ions in it, suppresses our perception of bitterness. A small amount of salt, not even enough to taste, reduces the bitterness in a cup of tea. Other ions will do this too, including zinc. Beware, zinc also interferes with the perception of sweet!

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1. If you prefer this in Imperial units, that would be 92,000 pounds.

2. At this point I'm apparently contractually required to tell you that tea is the most popular beverage in the world. Virtually everything I read about tea made sure to make this point early and often.

If you want to know more about the chemistry behind tea, my book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea comes out from the Royal Society of Chemistry Books in January 2024. You can sign up to hear me talk about the chemistry of tea on February 15 with Chemistry World.

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Vampire diaries

On Tuesday morning I had a procedure on my eye which left me as sensitive to light as a vampire and with very blurry vision.  I came home and spent the afternoon like a Victorian lady with the vapors. In a dim room propped on many pillows, eyes closed while someone read to me. It lacked only the cool compress on my forehead and some smocked white lawn dress to be a woodcut right out of a 19th century novel, well that and my intrepid book reader was not the vicar's daughter but my iPhone. 

No email, no desultory browsing the news, no list of household chores to get through, I drifted along to the voice in my ears, letting someone else choose the pace at which the story progressed. All in all it was a tiny retreat, a meditation on surrender and control.

By bedtime I could see well enough to pray Compline, “Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in His peace.” Two Advil (the local had worn off) and indeed I slept in peace, and rose in gratitude to a less blurred day.